Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!decvax!tektronix!midas!jeffw
From: jeffw@midas.TEK.COM (Jeff Winslow)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: 9-volt / rocket launcher?  (Poll)
Keywords: poll,wisdom,knowledge,responsibility
Message-ID: <3835@midas.TEK.COM>
Date: 4 Jan 89 17:15:37 GMT
References: <2557@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <2862@kitty.UUCP> <12974@cup.portal.com> <2867@kitty.UUCP> <13062@cup.portal.com> <1575@kodak.UUCP>
Reply-To: jeffw@midas.UUCP (Jeff Winslow)
Followup-To: somewhere.else
Distribution: na
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Lines: 30

In article <13062@cup.portal.com> mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) 
writes:
>Am I right or am I wrong?  C'mon net.electronics, pass judgement on Larry
>Lippman vs. me!  Do you want maximum facts, or just the facts you can be
>trusted with?

It would be dangerous for anyone to have more than the facts they could be
trusted with. Think about what the phrase means, literally, and you'll see
what I mean. The problem is that nobody knows which facts I can be trusted
with, and I sure as hell want more than the facts somebody else thinks I
can be trusted with, whether that someone else is Mark or Larry or the
Federal government (especially them) or anyone else! Therein lies the rub.

Three or four years ago, I would have said the net community was restricted
enough that your information would be very unlikely to get to someone who
would misuse it. Now I'm not so sure.

On the other hand, your information would not be all that hard to figure
out on one's own. Thus the loud trumpeting about "irresposible people 
setting off bombs" right and left seems to me a rather self-righteous
overreaction - you didn't make possible something that was formerly
impossible, you just made it a little easier.

Of course, the most obnoxious articles are ones like this, that go on and 
on about the issue in sci.electronics, and then say "any further discussion
should go somewhere else".  :-)

In short, a plague on both your houses.

						Jeff Winslow