OT

[John Clizbe]

vedaal at hush.com wrote:
>>Message: 9
>>Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2007 07:26:19 -0500
>>From: "Robert J. Hansen"
>>Subject: Re: RSA or DSA? That's the question
> ..
>>While I agree that a cryppie's definition of "break" 
>>is not the same as a practical break,
> ..
> ..
> a little OT here:

More than, and
> ..
> i have a fair amount of interaction with the disabled, and for those who are
> not aware, 'CRIP', (less often, 'crippie') is the nickname they use for
> themselves, especially paraplegics and quadraplegics, and while they use it
> freely amongst themselves, they are very sensitive about it if it is used by
> someone out of their own community whom they don't know,

I call foul.

The *only* way to get the pejorative connotation you refer to is to conflate
cryppy with the homophone you cite, crippie - something that is a bit difficult
to do via written text.

I have several "difficulties" of my own that I deal with in daily life. Someone
more sensitive than I might take offense at your use of 'dis-abled'. Most folks
are not 'dis'-anything, most are 'differently-abled', eg they still hear and
see, they just hear and see a bit differently than most.

Sorry, but I don't want written discourse to fall down the rabbit hole of
rendering the inoffensive as offensive, The next stop is the PC-speak hell of
the overly adverbially modified.

> ..
> if the term CRYPPIE is used within the cryptographic community, i'm sure that
> none of us would mean to inadvertently upset anyone in the disabled
> community, so,

From a wiki of US Navy slang
(http://www.mshtawy.com/en-wiki.php?title=U.S._Navy_slang):

    Cryppy/Cryppy Critter: Cryptographer, also seen on a highway near the
    Cryptography School (aka Goodfellow Air Force Base) in San Angelo, Texas
    without vowels, as CRYPPY CRTTR.

The US Navy has a long (very long) and honored history of SIGINT and
cryptography going back to the beginnings of radio. This early history may be
found in public histories of what are now the NSA and the CIA.

-- 
John P. Clizbe                      Inet:   John (a) Mozilla-Enigmail.org
You can't spell fiasco without SCO. PGP/GPG KeyID: 0x608D2A10/0x18BB373A
"what's the key to success?"        / "two words: good decisions."
"what's the key to good decisions?" /  "one word: experience."
"how do i get experience?"          / "two words: bad decisions."

"Just how do the residents of Haiku, Hawai'i hold conversations?"

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