Subject: Ackanomic Discussion Digest V2 #23
From: [email-masked] (Ackanomic Discussion Digest)
To: acka-discuss-digest

Ackanomic Discussion Digest   Friday, March 21 1997   Volume 02 : Number 023

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Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 18:45:58 -0500 (EST)
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Acka: Archeologist 

>As the acting archeologist, I'm building an electric potato.

The electric potato has been built and I am initiating a public auction, with
the minimum bid set at A$1

Narf
Archeologist

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 17:47:00 -0600 (CST)
From: Jason Orendorff <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: About CFJ 360

Breadbox, Narf, I think your conversation neglects the fact that it is
very, very easy to fake your email address.  It's not that we necessarily
want to rely on trust (although I do--probably most of us do) but that we
have little choice. 

- --Mohammed

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 17:54:52 -0600
From: Mitchell Harding <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Inventor 

>> >	I bid A$ 45.
>>   I bid A$80.
>Grrrr... I bid A$ 90 for the Plunky Monkey Wrench.

I bid A$100 for the Plunky Monkey Wrench.

Robert Sevin

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 17:57:20 -0600
From: Mitchell Harding <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Return from vacation 

>Calvin N Hobbes
>who also considered leaving many times, but then who'd annoy everyone?

You & Bascule definitely need to stay... And I hear that some players who
departed our game a long time ago may soon rejoin us...

Robert Sevin
Who might be the only player who never has considered leaving...

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 19:14:14 -0500 (EST)
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Acka: About CFJ 360 

In a message dated 97-03-20 13:27:47 EST, Vynd wrote:

>  So they're not going to be able to register the
>  address ahead of time.  This would almost certainly be true of my case,
>  where my access is very stable and only something unforseen would be
>  likely to force me to use a different account.
>  

Then how about the idea of keeping a password on hand for each player?  That
would certainly solve 95% of the problems.

I don't dispute that everyone from time to time may be forced into using
another address.  What I dispute is the idea that we will never have players
dishonest enough to attempt to forge mail or other sneaky plays.  We
certainly can't prevent all of them, why not do what we can to make it more
difficult?

Narf

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 19:26:07 -0500 (EST)
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Acka: Return from vacation 

In a message dated 97-03-20 18:05:54 EST, you write:

> Calvin N Hobbes
>  who also considered leaving many times, but then who'd annoy everyone?
>  

Ummm.... <looking around nervously>

Narf
Who seems to find himself continuosly at the center of one controversy or
another.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 19:27:47 -0500 (EST)
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Acka: Archeologist 

In a message dated 97-03-20 18:55:06 EST, you write:

> > The electric potato has been built and I am initiating a public auction, 
> with
>  > the minimum bid set at A$1
>  	I bid A$ 87 for this.
>  
>  --Mohammed

I myself am bidding A$ 100

Narf

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 19:30:09 -0500
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: About CFJ 360

Narf wrote:

> But there will always be players (hopefuly none
> are currently involved in the game) who value winning above honesty.

I know of no player who has ever legally registered in this game that
fits this description, with the possible Joan of Arkansas exception,
and "cheating", in that instance, cannot be confired by my rendering of
that word (although the play was underhanded).  

I was going to remain silent on this issue after my initial critique of
CFJ 360, but as there is still resistance to conceding the general
point here, I will explain my thoughts as clearly and objectively as
possible on this matter, in a good faith attempt to acheive consensus
in the general philosophical question at issue here.

Point one, one I strongly believe in, is that you cannot legislate 
out cheating, or playing out of the spirit of the game, so don't bother.
My defense against cheating is to simply quit the game -- I won't play
with cheaters.  I used to play bridge with a player who cheated thusly:
They, when dealer, would shuffle the cards so that an ace was always on
the bottom the deck directly before dealing, thus assuring themselves of
a slight advantage whenever they dealt.  The rules of bridge do not 
disallow this behaviour, but it is clearly 'cheating'.  I no longer play
with that individual.

That has always been my mindset in a game like nomic, where following
the rules is the whole point, and my defense against cheating.  

Rule 101 basically says, thou shall not cheat.  Rule 0 basically says,
thou shall non-destructively participate in, or observe, the virtual
community, and at least respect social convention, if not participate
in its constructive evolution.  These terms are not objective,
but I, along with Godel, firmly believe a formal system of law that
is complete and consistent and algorithmically handles all actions 
without need of judgement and common sense cannot be developed.  There
is an old saying that sums this up:  'If you don't know what jazz is,
I cannot explain it to you'.

That said, I generally object to attempts to legislate cheating and
spirit of the game stuff.  As breadbox pointed out, such attempts
clutter the ruleset, and are rarely, if ever, needed.  What is being
done, when one attempts to do this, is burden the everyday case with
the error case, rather than streamline the everyday case, and burden
the error case.  People with this attitude should not be unix 
programmers ;).

Narf proposes a fix to a problem that has not existed in the game since
I have been playing it, and I have been playing nearly as long as
the game has existed.  Cheating, and 'out-of-spirit-play', have never
or rarely existed:

> Since we can't easily screen them out and this particular problem
> seems to me to have an easy fix, why not implement it?

The proposed fix has the following flaws:

1) It requires someone to do more work to track the extra registered
addresses.

2) It requires more work on the player to register addresses which they
will most likely never use.

3) As Vynd pointed out, and as I tried to point out as well, the
necessary address in an emmergency, such as the one mr cwm used when the
hurricane approached the Georgia coast (and it was Savannah, not 
Augusta, I believe), probably would not have been on file.

4) If your ISP goes out of business, and you have no alternate on file,
you are removed from the game, your character destroyed.

5) If you are the Financier or Speaker (and probably a few of the
other hard working functional officers in this game), not only must
you check *every* message for the To: address, you must now check EACH
AND EVERY From: ADDRESS to make sure it is one of the legal addresses!!

Quick: Tell me Panther's, Techno's, and my e-mail address from *memory*.
I think it is obvious the extra work this will create for people to check
each play in the game to make sure the from address is one on file.  It
would kill me.  If only you had the job of Financier after the Postal
Code became reality to see the hardship imposed on the To: address, you
would see it.  This would be much worse.

Given the flaws, and the non-existant problem it aims to fix, I think
this is a no-brainer, and argue that the fix is not 'easy'.

Given that you cannot stop cheating in the game anyway, why try to stop
it here, given the high cost reward ratio?

Lets look at the 2 alledged instances of this sort of thing:

1) The Joan of Arkansas business:  First of all, it was not the same
thing.  This individual went through the Registrar 3 times to join the
game illegally.  There is a clear rule against what was done; it was not
the same thing as using a bogus or different e-mail address.  It still
cannot  definatively be called cheating, because it was not clear that
the newbie knew about the rule preventing multiple registrations.  In any
case, Narf's proposed fix would not have changed this situation in any
way.

2) snowgod's forged votinggnome.com:  This was not cheating.  This was
general harf during the Gnomic Wars.  snowgod sought no game advantage
via this action, and was just having fun.  Some feathers were ruffled,
and if enough were, a rule could have been passed to put snowgod in 
Gaol or expel him.  Clearly his action at the time warranted neither.
While Narf's proposal would make what snowgod did a crime, in all 
likelyhood, it would be overhead added to the general case of hurricanes,
bad ISPs, travel, computers going down, using cron jobs on the unix server
at work for the machine, etc; for something that can be handled on a 
case by case basis.

Also, as Mohammed pointed out, e-mail forgery could be performed *anyway*
if such a prohibition existed, if the player wanted to cheat, neutering 
it!.  Having personally written an SMTP client myself, I can attest to
the ease with which the entire header can be bogufied.  Again, if we
are really trying to find a rule to prevent these people, we will have
problems, and given the cost of this, it is a bad bet.

> Do we close our eyes to the possibility of more incidents like that or
> prepare for them as best we can and deal with them on a case by case
> basis?

We try not to legislate spirit of the game and cheating, we do not clutter
the general case to handle the once a year case, we handle instances of
cheating on a case by case basis, as a culture, and we realise that
while not closing our eyes to the possibility of cheating, we spend our
energies, talents, and limited capacity for work and ruleset size 
tolerance to fun development of the game, not this sort of stuff.

We do, if we want to as a game action, try to plug loopholes in the
rules.  The difference between these two things is clear to me, but I
cannot explain it to you -- it comes back to 'If you don't know what
jazz is ...'.

Malenkai
Speaker

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 19:51:51 -0500 (EST)
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Acka: About CFJ 360 

In a message dated 97-03-20 19:37:35 EST, Malenkai wrote:

>  If only you had the job of Financier after the Postal
>  Code became reality to see the hardship imposed on the To: address, you
>  would see it.  This would be much worse.

Fortunately for my own sanity I do not have said job, but I do recognize the
hardship imposed by the new postal code (it's rough for non-officers as well,
just trying to figure out where to post something), and I have already spoken
my peice about the new code.

>We do, if we want to as a game action, try to plug loopholes in the
>rules.  The difference between these two things is clear to me, but I
>cannot explain it to you --

And there is no need to.  I understand the difference, but I don't entirely
agree with you on where the line should be drawn.  I seek/sought no game
advantage with my second CFJ, and have stated my willingness to resubmit my
paradox CFJ (should 360 be ruled TRUE) so that I keep the goose.
 
>it comes back to 'If you don't know what
>jazz is ...'.

Hmmm... American music developed especially from ragtime and blues and
characterized by propulsive syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing,
varying degrees of improvisation, and often deliberate distortions of pitch
and timbre?

<hoping the irony isn't lost...>
Narf

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 19:56:52 -0500
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: About CFJ 360

Narf wrote:

> >it comes back to 'If you don't know what
> >jazz is ...'.
> 
> Hmmm... American music developed especially from ragtime and blues and
> characterized by propulsive syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble
> playing, varying degrees of improvisation, and often deliberate
> distortions of pitch and timbre?

I rest my case

Malenkai
lol

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 19:14:08 -0600 (CST)
From: Jason Orendorff <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Return from vacation

> You & Bascule definitely need to stay... And I hear that some players who
> departed our game a long time ago may soon rejoin us...
	Well, don't keep us in the dark-- who are they?

- --Mohammed

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 19:23:50 -0600 (CST)
From: Jason Orendorff <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: About CFJ 360

> Then how about the idea of keeping a password on hand for each player?  That
> would certainly solve 95% of the problems.
	It would be a fairly trivial exercise to have a bot somewhere that
would accept messages, and forward them to the list iff the user supplied
the appropriate password.  The part of the message containing the password
would be stripped from the message before the message was forwarded, so
that each player's password would be kept secret.  Only the player and the 
bot would know it.
	I wouldn't mind having a system like this on the books but 
inactive, set up in such a way that the Speaker could turn password 
verification on and off by mandate.  We don't need it now-- but we may in 
the future.
	Take, for example, my friend Mattie (Eer in the YORL game). 
Mattie started playing Diablo (it's a PC game similar to nethack but less
interesting to play, and with fancy schmancy graphics & sound) and found
out that there were enough ways to cheat that it was more fun to spread
chaos and madness than to play legitimately.  Mattie started a "chaos
guild" on BattleNet and really ran riot... I can't begin to tell all the
stories; suffice it to say I think he was the main reason they patched the
game.  :o)
	It's not that Mattie wanted to ruin Diablo.  He just had more fun 
when he was playing outside the boundaries of what most people consider 
good taste.

- --Mohammed

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 19:30:31 -0600 (CST)
From: Jason Orendorff <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Vacation

> The prez should appoint a CSRR officer, or act the job himself.  ThinMan
> is Acting Justice by rule.
	As a side note, seeing the "CSRR" in that sentence, I have added 
an amendment to the Chess RFC that would fix the defending/protecting 
"bug" (if it can be called that) in the Pawn pcpd rule.
	I will not gain any points for the fix.

- --Mohammed

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 20:32:07 -0500 (EST)
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Acka: About CFJ 360 

In a message dated 97-03-20 20:29:48 EST, you write:

> 	It's not that Mattie wanted to ruin Diablo.  He just had more fun 
>  when he was playing outside the boundaries of what most people consider 
>  good taste.

While I personaly don't want to play OUTSIDE the boundaries of what is
considered good taste... I certainly do enjoy pushing those boundaries :)

Seriously, I don't really TRY to become the center of the storm, it just
seems to happen that way <grin>

Narf

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 19:44:43 -0600
From: Mitchell Harding <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: About CFJ 360 

>with cheaters.  I used to play bridge with a player who cheated thusly:
>They, when dealer, would shuffle the cards so that an ace was always on
>the bottom the deck directly before dealing, thus assuring themselves of
>a slight advantage whenever they dealt.  The rules of bridge do not 

I always thought that was why the dealer was obliged to offer to let the
deck be cut immediately before dealing.

>We try not to legislate spirit of the game and cheating, we do not clutter
>the general case to handle the once a year case, we handle instances of
>cheating on a case by case basis, as a culture, and we realise that
>while not closing our eyes to the possibility of cheating, we spend our
>energies, talents, and limited capacity for work and ruleset size 
>tolerance to fun development of the game, not this sort of stuff.

Early in the game, the view was held that the Speaker held a meta-power over
the game. No rule said that, but it seemed to be an unspoken belief. I've
often thought that Acka could use some "guardian angel" that could fix
situations from outside, when the rules broke down. I agree we shouldn't
spend a lot of time worrying about "bad players" joining the game -- if
someone joins and tries to ruin the game, the Speaker should remove them
from the game, or at least some mechanism should exist to remove players
from the game that are ruining it. On the other hand, that's a lot of power
for someone to have... But personally, if we ever get a Speaker that doesn't
understand the spirit of Acka, we're in trouble anyway.

Robert Sevin

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 19:46:25 -0600
From: Mitchell Harding <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Return from vacation 

>> You & Bascule definitely need to stay... And I hear that some players who
>> departed our game a long time ago may soon rejoin us...
>	Well, don't keep us in the dark-- who are they?

Rumor has it -- and this is just word on the street, you understand, that
Perfect Tommy and Simon Marty Harriman may be rejoining...although chess
piece face is still holding out...

Robert Sevin

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 20:56:30 -0500
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: About CFJ 360

Robert Sevin wrote:

> I always thought that was why the dealer was obliged to offer to let the
> deck be cut immediately before dealing.

But that is the point.  In a game of friends, the useless, wasted
step of the formal cut evolved out long ago.  You have completed my
analogy, and this is the part of law and social interaction that I
do find interesting (and sometimes frustrating).  You would never
*expect* cheating; the damage to the social relationship would far 
outweigh the benefit of winning.  Of course, that can contribute
to the explanation of the distribution of crime (and out of spirit
play, if you will), in RL society.

> I've often thought that Acka could use some "guardian angel" that could fix
> situations from outside, when the rules broke down.

I think the crisis resolution thingee may work.  Hating the feel of
absolute power, I structured the rule to be a power-share between the
Speaker and Prez (and put all the risk on the prez :)).  Of course, there
may be a superior implementation.  My original plan was to create a 
subgame called 'Willard', whose rules were always a mirror of acka, with
one additional super-precedent meta-rule that allowed the players of 
Willard to change the rules of Willard by popular vote and reimpose them
back onto acka, but the game could only be played when acka was judged 
to have crashed.  There were a few implementation problems, but the idea
seemed interesting.

Malenkai

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 21:08:39 -0500
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: About CFJ 360

Narf wrote:

> Seriously, I don't really TRY to become the center of the storm, it just
> seems to happen that way <grin>

I've been a center of the storm as long as I've been around here.
Perhaps you can take over, and I'll shuffle off to Kansas someday and
watch.  I'd really like that :)

Today is also the anniversary of me officially joining the game 
(although my welcome message from chess piece face is dated March 18,
1996).

I originally wanted to just be an observer, weird how things work out.

When I joined, the crisis du jour was was the rule 416 crisis, a
fascinating issue for a young nomic (we'd probably have it for lunch
today), and the reorg du jour was the common office rules (now in the
low 400s).  There was talk of the rules being too big and unwieldy
then.

Back then, CFJs were appealed by popular vote, Ackanopoly was being
developed, the e-mail volume was about the same, cycles took forever,
there was alot more score related voting, we had a Pollster and a 
Populist, but not a Clerk of the Courts, I tried to from a political
party (the Markovian Party) on about my second day (Mohammed and 
Gaby actually signed up at one point, but not at the same time), I
wrote godawful lousy proposals (One thing I have noticed over the
last year is the immense improvment of proposal and CFJ writing of
everyone)  CFJs could have books for statements, and proposal in
the queue could be modified by CFJ.  The Quantloo was the predecessor
to the A$ in a failed proposal, the Horrid Green Thing was the
predecessor to the Chartreuse Goose in a failed proposal, bonds and
the government stuff was being proposed, everyone used 'Ackanomic' in
their subject lines, TMBG was still the unofficial official band.  I
guess as much as the rules change, that will always be true...

Oh well, enough looking back to my anniversary.  Its been a hell of alot
of fun; I hope it has been as much so for everyone else.  Time to
stop wasting bandwidth.

Malenkai

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 17:44:17 -0900
From: Phil Ackley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: gnome 

>(Not counting some attempts by snowgod to impersonate the
>>Voting Gnome.)

Hey Mr Historian!!!  It wasn't just me!  this is not a name sent out at
least 3 gnome messages!

snowgod
just clearing things up

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 21:04:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Tornado

> > 2) The following houses are dangling (actually, I seem to recall
> > breadbox reattaching his, I'm not sure?):
> > 
> > Calvin N Hobbes: dislodged
> > snowgod: no effect
> > Niccolo: no effect
> > 23 Skidoo: dislodged
> 
> I actually forgot to roll breadbox's in case it is 
> dangling.  The roll shows no effect.

I did in fact reattached my house successfully, using the
Gravitational Monopole.

In addition, snowgod's house has already been reattached.

The Map is a little out of date w.r.t. these things. (The Map also
still claims that I am still standing outside my house w/ my
possessions and the GM attached to the house, when I have in fact put
everything back in my house. This is probably my own fault, since I
announced these actions at the bottom of a message containing several
other things.)

If there is any debate over these facts, I will be happy to go through
the archives and double-check them. (No disrespect meant by this; I am
offering to help out rather than add to the workload of the
Map-Harfer/Postmaster.)

breadbox

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 21:15:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: About CFJ 360

> Breadbox, Narf, I think your conversation neglects the fact that it
> is very, very easy to fake your email address.  It's not that we
> necessarily want to rely on trust (although I do--probably most of
> us do) but that we have little choice.

Actually, this is exactly my point. Nothing short of passwords is
sufficient to get around this problem. And of course, some might point
out that this just creates more problems. Should it be a Crime to use
someone else's password? How do you go about proving that your
password was stolen?

I don't want to have to play the game like this if we don't have
to. And I don't think we do. I want to rely on mutual trust for as
long as possible.

(There are some who would like to see Ackanomic grow to have hundreds
of players. I think that if that happens, it is quite possible that
something like passwords may have to be created. It is always more fun
to create havoc and destroy something that is bigger, and with more
people there is a greater chance that there will be someone who would
prefer to bring the game to its knees rather than build upon it. This
is part of the reason why I don't want to see Ackanomic get that big.)

b

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 21:25:11 -0800 (PST)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: About CFJ 360

> I concede the validity of this point.  Unfortunately, in this sense
> there is little choice (as I see it) but to become entangled in the
> real world.

I have to disagree. No matter how far you go, there will always be
more problems in the Real World. You cannot legislate them all. The
issue is to balance what can be easily legislated and what is likely
to actually happen. Where these things balance is what we appear to
disagree on.

> Real people play this game, and each player has their
> own motivations.  The majority of players play for the fun, the
> comraderie.  Some others play for the intellectual challenge.  Some
> play to win.  Most play for a combination of these and other
> factors.  But there will always be players (hopefuly none are
> currently involved in the game) who value winning above honesty.
> Since we can't easily screen them out and this particular problem
> seems to me to have an easy fix, why not implement it?

Then I guess the difference of opinion we have is on the ease and
simplicity of the fix.

> Obviously, there are some areas more difficult to screen for
> cheating (such as looking up words in Ghost) and we simply have rely
> on trust.  I agree that if that trust shoul fail, it will be a sad
> day.  Do we close our eyes to the possibility of more incidents like
> that or prepare for them as best we can and deal with them on a case
> by case basis?

Dealing with them on a case-by-case basis is exactly what we are doing
now. What you have been arguing for is legislation, which I do not
want to see.

Board games, in general, do not includes rules that forbid knocking
over the pieces, along with a list of penalties that are accrued when
this rule is broken. That is the sort of thing that is best dealt with
a) on a case-by-case basis, and b) outside of the game itself. I argue
that the same is true with this issue.

b

------------------------------

End of Ackanomic Discussion Digest V2 #23
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