Subject: acka-research-digest V3 #100
From: [email-masked] (acka-research-digest)
To: [email-masked]

acka-research-digest      Wednesday, May 13 1998      Volume 03 : Number 100

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 01:12:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3059

On Wed, 13 May 1998, nomicbot wrote:

>Proposal 3059
>The REAL Fair Play Award
>Hubert (Eric Plumb)
>
>Append to the end of Rule 1250.10, "Fictionary," the string "As
>being Walking Dictionaries is just as illegal as consulting Official
>Dictionaries, neither the player who originally joined Ackanomic with the
>name of Alfvaen nor the player who originally joined Ackanomic with the
>name of JT may take part in a game of Fictionary; this sentence takes
>precedence over any other clause in this Rule Suite where there is a
>conflict. {{ The current game of Fictionary is updated to follow the
>revised rules. }}"

Hubert,
  While I see the humor in this, the humor really should end with the
proposal of this and not the implementation.  I honestly hope you will
retract this.

  I don't know about the history of the game in detail, but I think a rule
that discriminates based on a specific player and their out of game
abilities is completely unworthy of this game.

- --JT

[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.                  ]
[ It's hard to sieze the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 01:12:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3059

On Wed, 13 May 1998, nomicbot wrote:

>Proposal 3059
>The REAL Fair Play Award
>Hubert (Eric Plumb)
>
>Append to the end of Rule 1250.10, "Fictionary," the string "As
>being Walking Dictionaries is just as illegal as consulting Official
>Dictionaries, neither the player who originally joined Ackanomic with the
>name of Alfvaen nor the player who originally joined Ackanomic with the
>name of JT may take part in a game of Fictionary; this sentence takes
>precedence over any other clause in this Rule Suite where there is a
>conflict. {{ The current game of Fictionary is updated to follow the
>revised rules. }}"
>

[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.                  ]
[ It's hard to sieze the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 01:56:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: K2 <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2992 accepted

>  (I don't enjoy
> having to constantly make these kinds of unilateral judgement calls as
> Rule-Harfer.)
>
> breadbox

Shame on you breadbox, not corrpted by power.

K 2

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 01:56:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: K2 <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3037

Eric Plumb wrote:

> On Tue, 12 May 1998, nomicbot wrote:
>
> > Proposal 3037
> > Medium Rare
> > K 2 (Kelly Kelly)
> >
> > This is a Modest Proposal.
> >
> > Create a rule numbered 920, titled "Outcast, and Rightly So!", with
> > the text:
> >
> > When a streak of nine proposals is followed by a rejected proposal all
> > hell will break lose, the sky shall rain fire, and earth shall be rent
> > with gigantic chasms.
>
> As harfy as this is, K 2 (and believe me, it is) I think this would hapen
> upon any rejected proposal.  Check your wording again...
>
> Or perhaps that was your intent, in which case it's doubly harfy. ;-)
>

Streak is a rule defined term meaning (rule 919):A Streak begins when a
proposal is accepted and there is no Streak already underway. The Streak
includes the proposal thatstarted it and all the accepted proposals that
follow, until the next time a proposal is rejected. The Streak is then
broken.

Thus a streak of nine proposals is implictly any set of nine proposals in a
row that were accepted.

K 2

> -Hubert
>
> So many pedestrians, so little time.

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 01:56:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: K2 <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Little Lamb

JT Traub wrote:

> I approve of Hubert's suggestion that the Razor Boomerangs take possession
> of the Little Lamb.
>
> I then spend A$ 10 and take possession of the little Lamb (which oddly
> enough is still legal)
>
> --JT

I would say this worked, interestingly the Razor Bomerangs are not charged for
this (herefore, any player who possesses the Little Lamb will be charged A$10
each time e takes possession of the Little Lamb.)

JT is of course

K 2

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 02:11:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Re: Question Forty-Two ;)

Sunflare, I humbly request that you put "Acka" in your subject lines.

Now, as to your email....

> Hmm.  I see Nomicbot is back up and running, which certainly makes
> everyone's life a good bit easier.

I should point out here that Nomicbot is not really "up and running" -
not the way you might think, anyway. In the past couple of weeks, I
have indeed made good progress on my scripts, but a lot of that
progress is invisible to everyone else. There is still a lot to be
done. The visible changes that have occurred (e.g., the web forms, or
the nomicbot "from" address on the email) are actually the direct
result of pretty minor additions.

> Do you think that automation, such as the Nomicbot, is a good thing?

In some ways. Not entirely.

Ackanomic, as it is usually played, pretty much requires the core
functional offices to utilize a fair bit of automation. (Either that,
or be held by people with a *great* deal of free time. It so happens
that I had the latter when I first took on these offices. Now I don't,
and so I'm working madly on the former.) In particular, the Tabulator,
Scorekeeper, and Financier Offices impose almost impossible burdens on
mere humans. (And I note that these offices have almost always been
held by three different people, the exceptions that I can recall being
Elder Wayne and, of course, Alfvaen.)

In one sense, having this automation is a good thing. The nomicbot
(such as it is) allows me to deal with a much greater volume of
proposals (and the subsequent voting) than I ever could otherwise.
The automation employed by all of the Functional Officers, together,
allows the game to be much more active and alive than it could be
otherwise. However, it also encourages people to make the game more
and more dependent on such automation, and this is often not a good
thing.

If the machine that hosts muppetlabs.com were to be vaporized by a
bolt of lightning, the game would suffer hugely. There is a great deal
of game state stored on this machine, and reconstructing it all
without those files would be hell. Even if by chance some player had
up-to-date copies of all of the web pages I maintain, it would be a
great deal of work to get the game back on its feet, and it is likely
that many deadlines would be violated in the meantime. (This machine
gets backed up on a relatively regular basis, though, so such a
catastrophe is actually even more improbable. But my point is to
emphasize how dependent we currently are on having all this data at
hand.)

What if I was hit by a bus? Even assuming that someone was immediately
willing to step in and take over all of my offices, it's unlikely that
they could make much sense out of my scripts in their current form,
not without any help from me. (Presuming they could get their hands on
all of them.) They would probably have to harf things by hand, at
least for a while, and that would be no fun for them. I was very
fortunate in that I took on many of my offices just before our biggest
period of quiescence. (There were actually moments when the proposal
queue was completely empty, if you can believe that. A few times an
entire weekend would go by without a single email!) This gave me
plenty of time to adjust to the new workload. If someone had to take
on these offices now, cold, the game would probably have to slow to a
near-standstill for a while.

(Again, I am positing this scenario just to illustrate a point. Even
though my scripts would likely be opaque to someone else, the data
files, which are the truly important stuff, are actually pretty
self-explanatory, and I think someone else could be handed the data
files and be able to put them to use without help. In fact, I have
intentionally avoided using database programs in my harfing - all of
my data are kept in human-readable flat-text files, and nothing more
than emacs (or vi, or even notepad) is actually *required* to fulfill
my duties.)

I think about this stuff a lot, as you've probably guessed by now. It
seems to me that things are getting worse, not better. A lot of the
recent changes to the game have only added to the amount of work that
has to be done to track its state. The assumption seems to be that we
can count on always having as much harfing power as we do now. That
might very well not be true, and if we lose some of our harfers
without advance warning, the game could be up a creek.

breadbox

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 02:24:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Re: Question Forty-Two ;)

On Wed, 13 May 1998, Brian Raiter wrote:

[quite a lot of good points, snipped for brevity]

I would also agree that reliance on automation of this sort is in some
ways bad in that as the esteemed breadbox pointed out, it WOULD slow the
game to a crawl should something like this happen.   The way to avoid that
is to a) replicate the data and the scripts and b) to have an assistant
who is 'learning the ropes' so to speak of whatever Harfer-spots they
might be interested in so that should something happen suddenly to a
player who is vital to the game, there would be someone else there to step
in and take over relatively quickly.

I suspect that there are a decent number of programmers, myself included
who given the scripts and the data files could in fact get them up and
running again in 'reasonable' time.
However, it might not be a bad idea to 'archive' these datafiles and
scripts to various locations as a matter of course.

- --JT

[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.                  ]
[ It's hard to sieze the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 02:32:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3057

> IX.  If a proposal specifies the addition, deletion, or replacement
> of text, and it is possible to determine from context that this a)
> applies to a rule and b) which rule it applies to [IE: the text to
> change/delete is quoted and it occurs in only one place in the rule
> set, or the text to add is specified as being added before or after
> certain text and that text is distinguishable as above], then that
> proposal will be treated as if it correctly specified the rule to
> amend.

I certainly understand the motivation for this, but I have to ask how
useful it really is, as balanced with the extra work it places on me
(as Rule-Harfer) - not to mention the voters. I mean, if you're
quoting the text to change, it seems that you must have the rule in
front of you to quote from. Surely, then, it's not too much to ask
that you include the rule's name and/or number in the proposal.

As I've said, I dislike having to make judgement calls when
Rule-Harfing. The reason is that eventually I make a choice that
others disagree with, and then it has to go to a CFJ, and then we have
to harf a thread split. I like to keep the actual contents of the
ruleset out of thread splits whenever possible.

So, when it comes to proposal-writing, my feelings is that: redundancy
is good. The best proposals are crystal clear as to what effects their
enactment will have, and avoid hidden or unintended results caused by
a common typo or a misplaced word.

breadbox

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 02:36:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3003 accepted

On Wed, 13 May 1998, nomicbot wrote:

> Results of Proposal 3003
> 
> 19/26 votes: Quorum achieved
> 14/17 YES votes: Proposal accepted

Dearie dearie me.  This one hasn't been around for a week yet.
Anyone going to change their vote now? 
> 
> > Proposal 3003 - Wed 06 May 1998 07:45 EDT
It still isn't 07:45 EDT on Wed 13 May 1998.
So what happens now?

- -- 
Duncan C. "" Richer aka
Slakko (Lost) Warner - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/ - Queens' College
Cambridge, 1st Year PhD(Pure Maths), CUDipSoc, CUSFS, CUSTS, CURS etc
Acka - President, Web-Harfer, RuneMaker, ChessUmpire, Map-Harfer

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 02:42:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3057

>I certainly understand the motivation for this, but I have to ask how
>useful it really is, as balanced with the extra work it places on me
>(as Rule-Harfer) - not to mention the voters. I mean, if you're
>quoting the text to change, it seems that you must have the rule in
>front of you to quote from. Surely, then, it's not too much to ask
>that you include the rule's name and/or number in the proposal.
>
>As I've said, I dislike having to make judgement calls when
>Rule-Harfing. The reason is that eventually I make a choice that
>others disagree with, and then it has to go to a CFJ, and then we have
>to harf a thread split. I like to keep the actual contents of the
>ruleset out of thread splits whenever possible.
>
>So, when it comes to proposal-writing, my feelings is that: redundancy
>is good. The best proposals are crystal clear as to what effects their
>enactment will have, and avoid hidden or unintended results caused by
>a common typo or a misplaced word.

My thought here was actually that it would be less work in having to harf
resubmitted proposals.

The fact of life is that people will make mistakes.  If the intent behind
the mistake is discernable it seems like less work overall to treat it as
the intention.

Leaving off a rule number/name is an honest mistake.  The players of
Ackanomic understood the intent of the changes, and not one of them
realized that the mistake had been made until this discussion today.
This proposal is an attempt to harf those cases cleanly rather than doing
as I did today and resubmitting an already passed proposal with exactly
one line changed (and I bet I forgot to make it modest again too.. damned
cut and paste, I did indeed).

If you truly feel this will make more work for you instead of less, then I
will not have a problem retracting it.  It is proposed to help you out,
rather than hinder you after all.

- --JT

[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.                  ]
[ It's hard to sieze the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 02:48:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Re: Question Forty-Two ;)

> I would also agree that reliance on automation of this sort is in
> some ways bad in that as the esteemed breadbox pointed out, it WOULD
> slow the game to a crawl should something like this happen.  The way
> to avoid that is to a) replicate the data and the scripts and b) to
> have an assistant who is 'learning the ropes' so to speak of
> whatever Harfer-spots they might be interested in so that should
> something happen suddenly to a player who is vital to the game,
> there would be someone else there to step in and take over
> relatively quickly.

As I mentioned, all data at muppetlabs.com is backed up on a regular
basis. (Hey, this is a class act here.) Also, the rules necessitate
some overlap of state tracking between Offices. If Alfvaen were to be
abducted by aliens, we'd be hurting, but the rest of us could probably
reconstruct a fair bit of the game state he tracks. So there already
is some redundancy. Alfvaen's practice (inherited from /dev/joe, I
believe) of making his logfiles available on the web is a wise one,
and I will probably start doing the same with some of my data files at
some point.

As for point b - well, I certainly agree it would be nice, but I don't
expect it to happen. It's rare that we have a surplus of people
willing to fill Functional Offices. And when it does occur, the result
is usually that more work gets created for those people to do. (The
Stock Market is a fine example of this, I think. That Office requires
much more effort than anything the game has recently seen, as far as I
can tell.)

On the other hand, these kinds of catastrophes have happened in the
past, and we've always managed to recover. I am the game's fourth
Tabulator, and none of us have ever reused a single line of code from
the previous Tabulator's bot. (Wayne left somewhat abruptly, and I
don't think any of the programmers were in a position to take on the
job. snowgod, I believe, used a rather eccentric system, and Mohammed
had the unusual luxury of being able to get his bot in working order
before taking on the Office. Of course, Mohammed wrote his bot in
Python, which I had no real desire to learn, so I started from scratch
as well - also with the hope of being able to avoid the sorts of
problems his bot was prone to.) So, in case anyone felt I was painting
a gloomy picture in my last post, let me counter that by saying that I
believe, come what may, the game will survive. (Hell, we survived
Malenkai's departure - we can probably survive anything now.) But we
should try not to press our luck.

breadbox

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 02:53:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: That Nyarlathotep thing.

I don't think H*bert is destroyed.

While Rule 594.23 does state that "After successfully reattaching a
building, Nyarlathotep is destroyed", the new rule specifically states
that it is the "player holding the Office of Nyarlathotep".  Clearly this
player is not, in fact, Nyarlathotep, as otherwise Hubert could just have
said "Nyarlathotep" to get it to happen.  E went to great lengths _not_ to
say simply Nyarlathotep, so, by the game custom which states that all
parts of a rule should be given a non-null meaning if possible, this
clearly means that the player holding the office of Nyarlathotep is
distinguished from the Nyarlathotep itself.  Hence all buildings are now
reattached, as Nyarlathotep has never reattached a building, but H*bert
reattaches any building as soon as it comes loose.

- -- 
Duncan C. "" Richer aka
Slakko (Lost) Warner - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/ - Queens' College
Cambridge, 1st Year PhD(Pure Maths), CUDipSoc, CUSFS, CUSTS, CURS etc
Acka - President, Web-Harfer, RuneMaker, ChessUmpire, Map-Harfer

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 06:15:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: K2 <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: We screwed up on a CFJ

> When Rex Mundi resigned as Mad Scientist, therefore, as no Gadget called
> Nyarlathotep existed, the corresponding Blueprint was destroyed by Rule
> 594.  Hence no Office of Nyarlathotep has existed since Saturday 2nd May,
> when Rex Mundi left the Office of Mad Scientist (by Rule 596, a Mad
> Scientist has the title of Scientist, and so Rule 594's debunking sections
> can be applied).

The second of May huh... _before_ officers salaries were paid?

;)

K 2

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 06:25:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked] (L'homme a tete de choux)
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2976 accepted

>Not to mention, as I should, that you've been a player for pretty much
>exactly four weeks now, and so you've lost your "new" status...

Bugger.

Doesn't time fly when you're having fun?

Pandora

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 10:33:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: Matt Miller <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Re: Question Forty-Two ;)

On Wed, 13 May 1998, JT wrote:

> I would also agree that reliance on automation of this sort is in some
> ways bad in that as the esteemed breadbox pointed out, it WOULD slow the
> game to a crawl should something like this happen.   The way to avoid that
> is to a) replicate the data and the scripts and b) to have an assistant
> who is 'learning the ropes' so to speak of whatever Harfer-spots they
> might be interested in so that should something happen suddenly to a
> player who is vital to the game, there would be someone else there to step
> in and take over relatively quickly.
> 

Maybe we need official Understudies.

IB

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 10:41:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Astro" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Eurovision

>TGW, who wouldn't watch Eurovision if you paid him (unless it was an awful
>lot :-).

I create a trinket with name "Eurovision" and description as delimited by
the following delimiter:
the following delimiter:
The Eurovision is an international song contest.
the following delimiter:

I offer to pay TGW A$100 if e will watch Eurovision.

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 11:35:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Joel Ricker" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Re: Question Forty-Two ;)

[breadbox's comments snipped -- what if e was hit by a bus?]

Or what if two meteors came hurtling towards the earth and the 
governement covered it up and then tried a failed attempt to move 
these said meteors out of the way and we all had to try and win a 
lottery to see if we will be allowed to live since evacuation 
wouldn't work and most of us would die?  How do you think Acka would 
fair then?

- -- Sorry.. saw this movie twice yesterday.. it rocked!

Carrying on to more important stuff:

> I suspect that there are a decent number of programmers, myself included
> who given the scripts and the data files could in fact get them up and
> running again in 'reasonable' time.
> However, it might not be a bad idea to 'archive' these datafiles and
> scripts to various locations as a matter of course.
> 
> --JT

Smashing idea JT (opps.. there it is again.. sorry).  Just as any 
large business would backup important datafiles constantly and 
consistently, we should take heed and do the same.

BTW, archiving web sites and pages wouldn't be a difficult thing.  
There are many programs that will completely d/l a web page or site 
and store it locally.  Maybe we should create the Ackanomic 
Preservation Project?

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

     Joel Ricker [] [email-masked] [] ICQ# 6244364
       http://www.Geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arena/1047/
         Home of Eleusis Nomic -- Join Today!

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 11:42:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2993 rejected

On Tue, 12 May 1998, Jonathan David Amery wrote:

>  Why the no-vote?
> 
>  It's even harfy!
> 
>  H*bert.
> 
> 

Well, I voted against it because I like the rule the way it is, a fact
which should surprise no one.

                              - Vynd

[email-masked]

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 11:49:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Question Forty-Two ;)

On Tue, 12 May 1998, Towsner wrote:

> >Do you think that automation, such as the Nomicbot, is a good thing?  If so,
> 	Absolutely.  What possible problem could there be?  I can't think
> of any disadvantages, and it takes some of breadbox's workload.

Well, the problem is that by relying on automation to take cre of certain
parts of the game, we restrict our ability to alter said parts.
Malenkai's (sorry, I just can't seem to spell the new name right) Fuzzy
Voting proposal was quite interesting in my opinion.  But someone rightly
pointed out that it would kill nomicbot, and this was one factor in why I
voted against it.  Of course, it would quite possibly kill the tabulator
as well, but there are other examples.  This is by no means the first time
someone has asked what role automation should play in Acka.

                                - Vynd

[email-masked]

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 13:04:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jonathan David Amery <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Eurovision

On Wed, 13 May 1998, Astro wrote:

> >TGW, who wouldn't watch Eurovision if you paid him (unless it was an awful
> >lot :-).
> 
> I create a trinket with name "Eurovision" and description as delimited by
> the following delimiter:
> the following delimiter:
> The Eurovision is an international song contest.
> the following delimiter:
> 
> I offer to pay TGW A$100 if e will watch Eurovision.
> 
 This doens't work.

 A) This is acka-research.
 B) You haven't specified a value...

 H*bert.

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 13:27:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Tom Walmsley" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2993 rejected

> >  Why the no-vote?
> > 
> >  It's even harfy!
> > 
> 
> Well, I voted against it because I like the rule the way it is, a fact
> which should surprise no one.

Likewise. I also didn't particularly like the return of the keys to the
vault.

TGW.

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 13:27:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Tom Walmsley" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3057

> As I've said, I dislike having to make judgement calls when
> Rule-Harfing. The reason is that eventually I make a choice that
> others disagree with, and then it has to go to a CFJ, and then we have
> to harf a thread split. I like to keep the actual contents of the
> ruleset out of thread splits whenever possible.

And then there's the fact that my inefficient CotC-ing slows these down
considerably. :-)
Again I appologise, exams and the likes.

TGW.

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 13:28:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Tom Walmsley" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Eurovision

> I offer to pay TGW A$100 if e will watch Eurovision.

I watch Eurovision. I then accept the offer.

TGW.

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 15:34:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Sunflare <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Apology

In a bout of stupidity, I forgot to put 'Acka:' in front of my message.

I steal everyone's tools of self-inflicting damage, and proceed to bonk
myself repeatedly over the head with them.  Since I'm not an active player
in the game, this doesn't happen, but neither do I care. ;)

Sunflare

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 16:19:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3055

>A suggests the AREB add the specific action of 'The AREB can
>unilaterally amend the ruleset'.
>B agrees.
	That would be great.  Then, should that ever happen, the market
would increase by 1/ACT.

- --
- -Henry Towsner

	<[email-masked]>

	Success is the child of audacity.
		-Benjamin Disraeli

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 16:19:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Re: Question Forty-Two ;)

>Well, the problem is that by relying on automation to take cre of certain
>parts of the game, we restrict our ability to alter said parts.
>Malenkai's (sorry, I just can't seem to spell the new name right) Fuzzy
>Voting proposal was quite interesting in my opinion.  But someone rightly
>pointed out that it would kill nomicbot, and this was one factor in why I
>voted against it.  Of course, it would quite possibly kill the tabulator
>as well, but there are other examples.  This is by no means the first time
>someone has asked what role automation should play in Acka.
	If automation fails then we're no better off than we would have
been without it.  No gain, but no loss either.

- --
- -Henry Towsner

	<[email-masked]>

	Success is the child of audacity.
		-Benjamin Disraeli

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 16:46:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3055

On Wed, 13 May 1998, Towsner wrote:

>>A suggests the AREB add the specific action of 'The AREB can
>>unilaterally amend the ruleset'.
>>B agrees.
>	That would be great.  Then, should that ever happen, the market
>would increase by 1/ACT.

Okay.. I see what you meant now.. I misread your proposal as the AREB
could specify actions that the AREB could take within the game.

My mistake, however, it might want to be slightly clearer in the rule
wording.

- --JT

[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.                  ]
[ It's hard to sieze the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]

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Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 18:11:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Eric Plumb <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: That Nyarlathotep thing.

On Tue, 12 May 1998, Duncan Richer wrote:

> I don't think H*bert is destroyed.

You're right, but your reasoning is, IMHO, wrong.  CFJ 583 established
firmly that "at least one of the instances of the word 'Nyarlathotep' blah
blah blah refers to either the Office of Nyarlathotep, or the player
holding the Office of Nyarlathotep."  R594.whatever states clearly that
"After successfully blah blah blah, Nyarlathotep is destroyed."  That has 
to refer to either H*bert or the Office of Nyarlathotep if there is no
Frankenstein Monster, as you and H*bert are wont to argue.  I don't see
how it's possible for H*bert to have eir cake and eat it too in this
situation either.  Fortunately for em, later in the Blueprint, it says
that Nyarlathotep is an entity that can only be destroyed by Acid Rain.
Though it could be argued that the first sentence implies that the Acid
Rain is what's doing the destroying, I have no desire to CFJ this and get
rid of H*bert.  I just wanted to scare em.  On the other hand, if you seem
too inclined to argue this, I just might. :-)

Oh, and only one building was reattached.  My intent with that proposal
which was to create a list of one-time effects, which would be applied in
order and then lost.  If that's not what happened (i.e., a new Rule was
created instead), I suppose a lot of players (including Slakko) got their
buildings reattached for free.

[ Editor's note: This message is assuming the Blueprint for Nyarlathotep
still exists.  Too, it has been predated to before the renaming of the
Office of Nyarlathotep. ]

- -Hubert

Barney: what happens when you feed a Smurf after midnight. 

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

Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 22:54:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3047

> Proposal 3047
> I Don't Want Your Poxy Approval
> K 2 (Kelly Kelly)

I almost forgot to mention ...

This proposal is identical to Proposal 3046 and is therefore invalid.

breadbox

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Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 23:45:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Fictionary

Well, both of the word lookup dictionaries seem to be inaccesable to me.
I've never been able to get at that zipped list, and now the OSPD place
gets me an unknown host.  Didn't someone propose that the definition
dictionaries be legal lookup dictionaries as well?  So far as I can tell
this isn't currently the case, but my current situation has me wondering
why.

                                - Vynd

[email-masked]

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End of acka-research-digest V3 #100
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