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Re: signatures and keyservers



ozymandias G desiderata [really?] wrote:

> Of course, this would be a different story if the web of trust were in
> more common usage, but it's not, outside of debian-maintainers and
> some small klatches of die-hard cypherpunks, some of whom are too
> paranoid to admit who they know anyway.

Besides Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity, of course... :-)

> Sorry for the off-topicness, but you pushed one of my buttons, Hubert.
> 
> Forrest L Norvell,
> GnuPG key available upon request ;)

At the risk of going further off-topic, your non-de-plume reminded
me of a poignant prophetic priceless parody you've probably never seen
unless you participated in the VM Group of SHARE, Inc. during the
late 1980s when IBM began its move away from mainframe source code
distribution (OCO--Object Code Only).  I found it again in the VMSHARE
Archives at Princeton...

File: MEMO HUMOR90

Append on 04/13/90 at 23:16 by Donna Walker, VM New User Project, 301/564-0300:
 
In cleaning out my office at home, I ran across the following which was
just too good to pass up!  I couldn't find a date, though I'd put it
somewhere after 1982! :-)
 
*--------------------------------------------------------------------------*
                          P.B.S. Nixes O.C.O.
    Popular Poet Pooh-poohs Pusillanimous Program Protection Policy
 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley, long silent on matters of concern to the
computer industry, has just announced a new release of
"Ozymandias," his well-known commentary on the transience and
futility of unchecked power.  Typically, he has placed in the
public domain the entire source for the new release, which we
publish with the original for update and maintenance purposes.
 
 
            Ozymandias                              O.C.O. Madness
                                                (Ozymandias, Release 2)
 
I met a traveler from an                 I met a former client of Big
        antique land                            Blue
Who said: "Two vast and                  Who said: "Our vast but
        trunkless legs of stone                 sourceless tapes of code
Stand in the desert.  Near               Mold in the archive. Near
        them, on the sand,                      them, molding too,
Half sunk, a shattered visage            Lie heaps of salvage hardware,
        lies, whose frown,                      once so proud
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of           To run those systems now
        cold command,                           eclipsed from view.
Tell that its sculptor well              Our refuse tells how well we
        those passions read                     read the cost
Which yet survive (stamped on            Of waiting for "the fix."  Old
        these lifeless things),                 software thugs
The hand that mocked them and            Were stymied, true;  old
        the heart that fed;                     customers were lost.
And on the pedestal these                On distribution tapes these
        words appear:                           words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king             'My name's O.C.O. Madness,
        of kings;                               King of Bugs;
Look on my works, ye Mighty,             View not my source, just run
        and despair!'                           me, sans repair!'
Nothing beside remains.  Round           Nothing beside remains.  Our
        the decay                               revenues
Of that colossal wreck,                  Now go to vendors not allied
        boundless and bare                      with SHARE
The lone and level sands                 For living systems we can mold
        stretch far away."                      and use."
*--------------------------------------------------------------------------*
 
*** APPENDED 04/13/90 23:16:40 BY $NU ***



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