Subject: acka-research-digest V3 #187
From: [email-masked] (acka-research-digest)
To: [email-masked]

acka-research-digest     Tuesday, August 11 1998     Volume 03 : Number 187

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Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 17:02:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Another idea

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Eric Plumb wrote:

> - 867-5309, whose .sig generator seems to like the below message (and who
> also saw Tombstone again last night, and thus considers its prescience
> fulfilled)
> 
> A Smith & Wesson beats four aces every time. 

As Nasty Canasta and Daffy Duck once said:

NC: (shoving gun up Daffy's bill) I've got a 3 of Clubs.
DD: (with all the other 51 cards) Beats me.

- -- 
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
Ackanomic - Web-Harfer, Clerk of the Court, ChessUmpire, Map-Harfer

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 17:05:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Another idea

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, JT wrote:

> On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, else...if wrote:
> 
> >  This is another idea I just thought of.  Using a new currency,
> >called, for the moment, Quirons, players can buy words for 10 times as
> >many times as the word has been used in all proposals to the date. 
> 
> This could be really hard to calculate unless someone wants to run all of
> the proposals to date through a word counting program?

I think it might be a better idea to go with how often it appears in the
current rules, not in every proposal ever written.  Otherwise, JT is
right, it would simply be too hard to check.  I can't even say offhand if
the records go ALL the way back.

And why use a new currency?  Just go with A$.  Lord knows there would be
lots of opposition to creating a new currency, for whatever reason.

I think this is a vaguely interesting idea, but I don't know if it is
really appropriate to limit what people can put in their proposals, which
is what would happen once people started running out of Quirons or A$ or
whatever.

Vynd

[email-masked]

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 17:09:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Another idea

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, John Frederic Mc Coy wrote:

> On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, JT wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, else...if wrote:
> > 
> > >  This is another idea I just thought of.  Using a new currency,
> > >called, for the moment, Quirons, players can buy words for 10 times as
> > >many times as the word has been used in all proposals to the date. 
> > 
> > This could be really hard to calculate unless someone wants to run all of
> > the proposals to date through a word counting program?
> 
> I think it might be a better idea to go with how often it appears in the
> current rules, not in every proposal ever written.  Otherwise, JT is
> right, it would simply be too hard to check.  I can't even say offhand if
> the records go ALL the way back.

I can.  They do.

> And why use a new currency?  Just go with A$.  Lord knows there would be
> lots of opposition to creating a new currency, for whatever reason.
> 
> I think this is a vaguely interesting idea, but I don't know if it is
> really appropriate to limit what people can put in their proposals, which
> is what would happen once people started running out of Quirons or A$ or
> whatever.

{{Replace all instances of the text xyzzy in the rules created by this
proposal with the concatenation of the text strings "Hub" and "ert".}}

It can't do anything really.

- -- 
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
Ackanomic - Web-Harfer, Clerk of the Court, ChessUmpire, Map-Harfer

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 17:11:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Another idea

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Eric Plumb wrote:
>> Perhaps.  That certainly avoids the hubert situation of just buying by
>> fiat, which I think is a good thing to avoid.
>
>I am placing the minimum bid of my Total Worth against the word "Hubert." 
>
>Hubert Hubert Hubert Hubert Hubert Hubert Hubert Hubert Hubert Hubert.
>
>Try it, /dev/joe.  Say it.  It feels good. :-)

To explain for the newcomers to the game.  There is a treasure which will
be found by the last eligible person to say 'hubert' in a public message.
(I'm already disqualified from finding it).  There is another treasure
which will be found by the player who can get the most other players to
disqualify themselves from the first treasure.

- --JT

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

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 17:12:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: Eric Plumb <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Enquiry

Does anyone (esp. breadbox) know what happened to the Highlander's Sword
blueprint?  JT and the others seem to be acting as if it's been Qualified,
but I don't see it in the Rules.

Thanks,

- - 867-5309

A Smith & Wesson beats four aces every time. 

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 17:28:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal RFC (Office Simplification)

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Duncan Richer wrote:

> On Sun, 9 Aug 1998, John Frederic Mc Coy wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> > On Sun, 9 Aug 1998, Duncan Richer wrote:
> > 
> > > Here is the first part of my suggested reform of Offices.  It covers all
> > > of the major changes - the only parts remaining are minor tinkering to
> > > other Officers necessary to ensure this works.
> > > 
> > > Useful comments would be much appreciated.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > #submit proposal Schultz, Office!
> > > 
> > > [Aim of this proposal: To radically revamp the structure of Offices in the
> > > game, by simplifying the system.
> > > We currently have three types of Offices: Functional, Political, Capital.
> > > Why?  The lack of significant difference between the way these offices are
> > > used indicates we can probably bring them all back under the one system.]
> > 
> > While I understand your motivation here, I'm not sure if trying to
> > radically simplify the offices is such a good idea.  Yes, they are
> > complicated, but I think that is because they need to be.  Simplification
> > isn't ALWAYS a good idea, in my view, so I would like to hear why you
> > think we should simplify things at all, seeing as how things seem to work
> > fairly well as they are.
> 
> The section of the rules dealing with Offices is, with the exception of
> the Games & Contests Rule Suite, the largest single block of rules in the
> game.  When I last checked the size of each 100 block, the 400s were the
> only section (other than the 1250 rule suite) whose html file exceeded
> 100K.  I appreciate that there are a lot of Offices, so there may not be
> much that can be done.  However, the complexity in this section limits the
> amount of complexity that can be introduced elsewhere.

Well, as you say above, there are a lot of offices.  I have certainly
noticed that the offices section of the rules is very large.  But the
changes you propose don't look to me like it will actually make it much
smaller.  Nothing will accomplish that other than outright elimination of
a number of offices, because most of that section of the rules is made up
of a large number of more or less typically sized rules. Granted you will
be condesning two very large rules into one large rule, but since this
section is so big, I dare say it will barely be noticed.

> 
> The Speaker is a political office.  Yet the Clerk of the Court is
> functional.  One is the substitute for the other.  Why must this be so?
> I cannot see any reason for maintaining the divide between Functional and
> Political Offices.
> 

I think breadbox has very clearly expressed the basic differences between
types of offices.  One thing that seems to have been lost track of in the
shuffle, by the way, is Optional offices.  I think that designating some
offices as optional has been one of Acka's better attempts to streamline
itself in recent memory.  Why get rid of it now?

In any event, the Speaker is certainly not what I would consider a typical
political office.  Indeed, I would say it is politcal in name only.  If
you wanted to convert it and only it into a functional office, this
argument might persuade me, but as a case for eliminating any distinction
between types of offices, it isn't very strong.

> > 
> > I can think of a few good reasons NOT to do this, I'm curious why you did.
> > It doesn't seem to be necessary.  As usual, I feel like I'm missing
> > something here.
> 
> One thing it does is make the transfer of Offices much easier when someone
> wants to get rid of an office.  With Functional Offices we need only wait
> for nominations, but with Political ones we need to go through the whole
> election shebang.  This creates discontinuity in Office holding
> (especially in the Speakership) - if we can simply transfer (even for a
> fee) the Offices it might be a better system.

Personally, I don't think there are such great flaws with our current
system that we need to do this.  Yes, it might make life easier if there
is a situation where one player decides he wants to quit an office and
there is already another player ready to take his place.  But thats the
only situation where it will help, and this is precisely the situation
where help is the least likely to be needed. It also opens us up to all of
the problems which I presented before that would come from tradeable
offices.  Some of which you still haven't addressed.  What about
organizations, or other nomics, owning offices? Don't treasures "own" the
entities in them?

> 
> > I'm guessing that you don't really intend to hand out a salary to every
> > office holder. Indeed, I would think it would be easier to specify what a
> > salary is, and then say the default is none.  Then specify in their
> > respecitve rules the few offices that actually collect a full salary.  But
> > thats just a suggestion, I'm sure it woudl work either way.
> 
> Well, a couple of things here:
> (1) Part of the full changes (possibly this bit would merit a separate
> proposal) would strip the designation of Officer from Swingerships.  That
> would reduce the number of Offices.  
> 
> (2) However, I don't see why the
> President should not receive a Salary while the Speaker does, nor why
> the Chess-Umpire gets one but the RuneMaker doesn't.  There are a lot of
> inconsistencies in the Office salary structure - I think that simply
> paying each officer a flat A$25 would be straightforward, reasonably fair,
> and hopefully simpler to administer.
> 

I believe breadbox has already addressed this at least as well as I could.

> 
> > OK this I just don't understand.  Are we suddenly in such a big hurry that
> > we don't want to vote in our own elections.  I mean, sure, if it was the
> > real world I'd go for this, who can tell politicians apart these days.
> > But there have been players in this game (coughHovercoughmumble) that, to
> > be brutaly honest, I wouldn't trust with the office of Poet Lauterate, let
> > alone Speaker.  But there's nothing in this new system that would stop
> > them from nominating themselves, and they'd have every bit as good a
> > chance of getting the office as someone who had held it for a year or so.
> > I can't think of any circumstances when I would vote in favor of a system
> > where our officers were randomly selected.
> > 
> > It seems to me that you're trying to sort of mesh the methods of choosing
> > Political and Functional Officers together.  I would say that you have
> > sacrificed the best points of both methods in favor of speed.  And, as I
> > said, I don't even understand what the big hurry is here.
> 
> When I saw that the RuneMaker job took over a month to fill, I started
> wondering why we bother with the trappings of elections for Offices.
> 
> The Functional Office mechanism as it stands is a vehicle for Presidential
> patronage.  The Political Office mechanism is reasonable, but I'm getting
> a bit concerned about the time elections are taking.
> 

I have to protest to calling the entire election process "trappings."  Why
bother calling them elections under your new system, for they certainly
wouldn't be.  Elections are interesting, in my opinion they are wothwhile
in and of themselves.  And while elcted offices are generally not as
important as functional ones here in Acka, I generally do think that the
person I vote for will do a better job than the others.

So far as the selection process for functional officers goes, I have
neveer heard any complaints about it before.  This is a method which
*is* quick and to the point, and it is this way because the functional
offices need to be filled with permanent officers as quickly as
possible. In my time here, I've never seen anyone appointed to a
functional office who I thought was clearly unfit.  If this had happened,
we could ahve impeached said person, and impeached the President too.

Even if the Presidential selection method is flawed, I certainly find it
preferable to your method, which I think it is safe to say is a crap
shoot.  After all, it isn't an election, because no one gets elected.  And
it isn't really a selection process, because no one is actually
"selected," except by default or by the dice. 

To be blunt, I think this part of your new system stinks.  I would never
vote for it, and I encourage no one else to vote for it either. OK, so it
took awhile to get a new RuneMaker appointed.  Is that really cause to
reform the entire system?  And such reforms!  Is speed of selection and
office transfer really our overriding concern here?

> Easy way to fix the impeachment problem: The Office goes Somewhere Else.
> Regardless of who is holding it.  Would that be alright?
> 
> Also, to avoid the auction problems, if an Office ever becomes unowned,
> rather than go to the Treasury, it goes Somewhere Else.  If an Office is
> ever owned by a non-player entity, that non-player entity loses ownership
> of that Office.
> 
> If people continually switch an Office between themselves to avoid term
> limits, then if it becomes enough of a problem Impeachment (as amended)
> should fix the problem.

This would be an improvement, although it doesn't fix everything.

> 
> > 
> > There's probably more stuff like what I've mentioned lurking around, that
> > was just off the top of my head.  A slightly different issue is what to do
> > with all the offices that don't fit the standard mode, such as the
> > Scientists, the Harfmeister, Count Tabula.
> 
> (1) I am hoping that two of the Scientists will be repealed.  If not, I
> may have to deal with it.  The Archaeologist could always remain an
> exception, just changing the "holding" language to "owning".
> 
> (2) The Harfmeister is a Title, not an Office.
> 
> (3) breadbox (I believe, I know someone did) has already suggested that
> the roles of Count Tabula and the Tabulator should be divorced (e.g. when
> he became Acting Count Tabula when MTM was on vacation).  Presumably the
> appointment of CT by the Tabulator would cease if such division occurred.
> 
> (4) The other wierd offices I can think of are the Swingers, which I
> wanted to redefine away from being Offices anyway.
> 

OK, so if ALL of these other ideas, some of which I have never seen
mentioned before and have yet to form an opinion on, are passed, then this
might work.

Vynd

[email-masked]

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 17:38:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brandon Ray <[email-masked]>
Subject: Voting "No" on 3370

I wish to announce that I am voting "No" on 3370.  This is not because I
am hostile to the idea -- I think I would vote in favor of the basic
idea.  My problem is that I believe the new language to be ambiguous.
Specifically, it reads:

Amend Rule 716, "Patent Infringement" to read as delimited by FASTTRACK
below:

FASTTRACK
When a rule change occurs that causes a new named entity or named class
of entities to exist, and a Player owns an entity
with the same name as the new entity or class, and said entity was
created after the rule change was publically declared(i.e.
after a Proposal was distributed by the Promoter, a CSR was announced by
the CSRR, a State of Crisis Resolution
Document was issued by the President, etc.)but before the rule change
took effect, that Player shall be Guilty of Patent
Infringement.

When a Player becomes Guilty of Patent Infringement they shall also be
held in Contempt.
FASTTRACK
[This eliminates the Gaoler reference, plus it makes Patent Infringement
a slightly more serious crime.]

I believe that by invoking the penalty for creating an entity "after the
rule change was publically declared", is an error, and that the author
intended to say "after the PROPOSAL was publically declared".  The
parenthetical commentary after the phrase I quoted makes this pretty
clear, and I think the wording used would be a source of controvery,
since a RULE CHANGE is not proclaimed until after voting is concluded
and the results announced.

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 17:48:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Voting "No" on 3370

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Brandon Ray wrote:
>I believe that by invoking the penalty for creating an entity "after the
>rule change was publically declared", is an error, and that the author
>intended to say "after the PROPOSAL was publically declared".  The
>parenthetical commentary after the phrase I quoted makes this pretty
>clear, and I think the wording used would be a source of controvery,
>since a RULE CHANGE is not proclaimed until after voting is concluded
>and the results announced.

The problem with that is that a CSR or a State of Crisis Resolution
document aren't proposals and thus with your change could be subverted in 
the manner referred to in the propoal. I think that 'standard english
meaning' here would hold sway and uphold that any of those as well as a
proposal would constitute 'rule changes being declared' rather than 'rule
changes taking effect' especially in context of the rest of the rule.

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

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 17:54:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal RFC (Office Simplification)

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, John Frederic Mc Coy wrote:

> 
> 
> On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Duncan Richer wrote:
> 
> Well, as you say above, there are a lot of offices.  I have certainly
> noticed that the offices section of the rules is very large.  But the
> changes you propose don't look to me like it will actually make it much
> smaller.  Nothing will accomplish that other than outright elimination of
> a number of offices, because most of that section of the rules is made up
> of a large number of more or less typically sized rules. Granted you will
> be condesning two very large rules into one large rule, but since this
> section is so big, I dare say it will barely be noticed.

Actually, I did a check on the sizes of the rules.  Taking the rules which
I repealed in this list, I got a 17K chunk.  The first message I sent on
this, which included all the stuff which replaced it (plus a little bit
more) was 8.5 K.  8.5 K is not a negligible amount of reduction - sure it
isn't as much as the Scores removal proposal will slice, but it is
something.

> 
> > 
> > The Speaker is a political office.  Yet the Clerk of the Court is
> > functional.  One is the substitute for the other.  Why must this be so?
> > I cannot see any reason for maintaining the divide between Functional and
> > Political Offices.
> > 
> 
> I think breadbox has very clearly expressed the basic differences between
> types of offices.  One thing that seems to have been lost track of in the
> shuffle, by the way, is Optional offices.  I think that designating some
> offices as optional has been one of Acka's better attempts to streamline
> itself in recent memory.  Why get rid of it now?

Frankly, I think that if an Optional Office can't be filled, it is
probably better off being canned altogether.  After all, when we can't
find the time for anyone to bother administering a particular segment of
the rules, why bother having it?

That's why I abolished the Optional designation, because I think that,
when an Office's optionality actually has an effect, it is because most of
us can't care enough about the rule (or are too busy with our other Acka
and RL commitments) to work with it.

> 
> In any event, the Speaker is certainly not what I would consider a typical
> political office.  Indeed, I would say it is politcal in name only.  If
> you wanted to convert it and only it into a functional office, this
> argument might persuade me, but as a case for eliminating any distinction
> between types of offices, it isn't very strong.

> Personally, I don't think there are such great flaws with our current
> system that we need to do this.  Yes, it might make life easier if there
> is a situation where one player decides he wants to quit an office and
> there is already another player ready to take his place.  But thats the
> only situation where it will help, and this is precisely the situation
> where help is the least likely to be needed. It also opens us up to all of
> the problems which I presented before that would come from tradeable
> offices.  Some of which you still haven't addressed.  What about
> organizations, or other nomics, owning offices? Don't treasures "own" the
> entities in them?

I actually fixed this problem lower down, by saying that Offices go
Somewhere Else if they are ever owned by a non-player entity.

> I believe breadbox has already addressed this at least as well as I could.

The Political Offices which are deservedly Political are those which, as
breadbox said, have privileges but no real Duties.  The Senate is the most
obvious case in point.  The President is actually a doubtful one IMHO, as
the privilege appointing Functional Officers is offset by having to be the
Acting Functional Officer for any FO for which a vacancy arises.  This can
be a pretty hefty duty.

Other than that, I can't actually find any Offices where the privileges
significantly outweigh the Duties.

Justices - Political Office - why? (in all other respects they act
Functional)
Historian - Optional Political - yet no real Privileges.
Poet Laureate - Optional Political - Duties and Privileges well matched
IMHO.
Spelling Exchequer - Optional Political - probably only to avoid it
getting a Salary.  Given its nature, being almost all Duty, it would seem
more appropriately Political.
Illuminatus - Optional Political - Big on Duty (managing the Agenda Hats),
only one real privilege (the low score - although that may well disappear)

That is the complete set (excluding President and Senators, which have
been mentioned above) of the Political Offices listed in the 400s in the
Rules.  I can't see why any of those, except the Senators, should be
classed as Political.

> > > It seems to me that you're trying to sort of mesh the methods of choosing
> > > Political and Functional Officers together.  I would say that you have
> > > sacrificed the best points of both methods in favor of speed.  And, as I
> > > said, I don't even understand what the big hurry is here.
> > 
> > When I saw that the RuneMaker job took over a month to fill, I started
> > wondering why we bother with the trappings of elections for Offices.
> > 
> > The Functional Office mechanism as it stands is a vehicle for Presidential
> > patronage.  The Political Office mechanism is reasonable, but I'm getting
> > a bit concerned about the time elections are taking.
> 
> I have to protest to calling the entire election process "trappings."  Why
> bother calling them elections under your new system, for they certainly
> wouldn't be.  Elections are interesting, in my opinion they are wothwhile
> in and of themselves.  And while elcted offices are generally not as
> important as functional ones here in Acka, I generally do think that the
> person I vote for will do a better job than the others.
> 
> So far as the selection process for functional officers goes, I have
> neveer heard any complaints about it before.  This is a method which
> *is* quick and to the point, and it is this way because the functional
> offices need to be filled with permanent officers as quickly as
> possible. In my time here, I've never seen anyone appointed to a
> functional office who I thought was clearly unfit.  If this had happened,
> we could ahve impeached said person, and impeached the President too.

Okay, fine. 
The more I look at the Political Offices, the more I realise that the
majority of them are not deservedly Political, and that the Functional
designation would be more appropriate.  The main reason the Functional
designation was not chosen was probably to ensure that those Offices would
receive no salary.  Given that in all cases I mentioned (excluding
President and Senators) I believe that the Duties outweigh the Privileges,
I can't see why salaries shouldn't be paid, and Functionality declared.

So why not make all Offices, except for President, the subject of
Presidential patronage, as with existing Functional Offices.
President can remain an Election, but could always be easily rewritten as
a Hearing, to avoid duplication of legislation.
(A Hearing, Count Tabula to be the Hearing Harfer, the valid responses to
be the names of the Nominees, and the period to be 7 days).

> 
> Even if the Presidential selection method is flawed, I certainly find it
> preferable to your method, which I think it is safe to say is a crap
> shoot.  After all, it isn't an election, because no one gets elected.  And
> it isn't really a selection process, because no one is actually
> "selected," except by default or by the dice. 
> 
> To be blunt, I think this part of your new system stinks.  I would never
> vote for it, and I encourage no one else to vote for it either. OK, so it
> took awhile to get a new RuneMaker appointed.  Is that really cause to
> reform the entire system?  And such reforms!  Is speed of selection and
> office transfer really our overriding concern here?

Okay.  Consider it gone.  What do you think of the revision?

> 
> > Easy way to fix the impeachment problem: The Office goes Somewhere Else.
> > Regardless of who is holding it.  Would that be alright?
> > 
> > Also, to avoid the auction problems, if an Office ever becomes unowned,
> > rather than go to the Treasury, it goes Somewhere Else.  If an Office is
> > ever owned by a non-player entity, that non-player entity loses ownership
> > of that Office.
> > 
> > If people continually switch an Office between themselves to avoid term
> > limits, then if it becomes enough of a problem Impeachment (as amended)
> > should fix the problem.
> 
> 
> This would be an improvement, although it doesn't fix everything.

What doesn't it fix?  Tell me and I can work out how to fix it.

> > (1) I am hoping that two of the Scientists will be repealed.  If not, I
> > may have to deal with it.  The Archaeologist could always remain an
> > exception, just changing the "holding" language to "owning".
> > 
> > (2) The Harfmeister is a Title, not an Office.
> > 
> > (3) breadbox (I believe, I know someone did) has already suggested that
> > the roles of Count Tabula and the Tabulator should be divorced (e.g. when
> > he became Acting Count Tabula when MTM was on vacation).  Presumably the
> > appointment of CT by the Tabulator would cease if such division occurred.
> > 
> > (4) The other wierd offices I can think of are the Swingers, which I
> > wanted to redefine away from being Offices anyway.
> > 
> 
> OK, so if ALL of these other ideas, some of which I have never seen
> mentioned before and have yet to form an opinion on, are passed, then this
> might work.

I can include (3) in the final form of this proposal, (1) is in a proposal
currently in the queue, and (2) is a truth.

I was waiting on some other proposals to go through before I actually
submit my Swinger reform.  There are some synergies it would benefit from.
- -- 
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
Ackanomic - Web-Harfer, Clerk of the Court, ChessUmpire, Map-Harfer

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 18:06:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal RFC (Office Simplification)

>So why not make all Offices, except for President, the subject of
>Presidential patronage, as with existing Functional Offices.
>President can remain an Election, but could always be easily rewritten as
>a Hearing, to avoid duplication of legislation.
>(A Hearing, Count Tabula to be the Hearing Harfer, the valid responses to
>be the names of the Nominees, and the period to be 7 days).

The Count Tabula would then be almost redundant though since pretty much
the only duty at the moment is todeal with elections. If you were to make
this change then you might as well repeal CT. 

Overall I have to say I don't overly like this idea. What I wouldn't mind
seeing though would be some of the political offices changed to functional.
Justice should probably remainpolitical though since they are in the most a
"fun" office, at least for those who wish to fillthem.

MTM, Count Tabula, Justice.

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 18:09:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Tabula Stuff

>K 2, I suggest that you submit your six individual Gadget repeal
>proposals.  It will serve us right for not voting in sufficient numbers to
>even have an effect here.

What I would prefer to see, and what I will propose if no-one else does
would be a permanent great-debunk rule whereby anyone could call a
great-debunk hearing if there hasn't been one in the past month.

MTM.

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 18:10:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal RFC (Offices - Thread 2)

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, John Frederic Mc Coy wrote:

> I think breadbox has very clearly expressed the basic differences between
> types of offices.  One thing that seems to have been lost track of in the
> shuffle, by the way, is Optional offices.  I think that designating some
> offices as optional has been one of Acka's better attempts to streamline
> itself in recent memory.  Why get rid of it now?

Just one thing here - the creation of Optional Offices was accomplished by
Proposal 1326 - "Lots of Office Stuff".  It was promulgated at
Tue Oct 08 01:31:16 EDT 1996, which is over 22 months ago.  Acka has been
running for less than 31 months.  That doesn't look like "recent memory"
to me.

Yours,
Slakko
who has always played Acka under optional offices
- -- 
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
Ackanomic - Web-Harfer, Clerk of the Court, ChessUmpire, Map-Harfer

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 18:11:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal RFC (Office Simplification)

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Tom Walmsley wrote:

> Overall I have to say I don't overly like this idea. What I wouldn't mind
> seeing though would be some of the political offices changed to functional.
> Justice should probably remainpolitical though since they are in the most a
> "fun" office, at least for those who wish to fillthem.

They are Political, yet they are never elected.
How sensible is that exactly?

- -- 
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
Ackanomic - Web-Harfer, Clerk of the Court, ChessUmpire, Map-Harfer

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 18:24:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3351 accepted

>I guess we have a difference in philosophy.  I believe the opposite --
>that a minority
>should not be able to force change on a majority, and that disinterest =
>contentment with
>the status quo.

	I think I disagree with both of you.  I think disintrest means
exactly that.  You don't care, and will accept whatever a majority of the
players who do care prefer.

- --
- -Henry Towsner

	<[email-masked]>

	Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and
enjoy it.
		-Logan Pearsall Smith

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 18:24:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Another idea

>This could be really hard to calculate unless someone wants to run all of
>the proposals to date through a word counting program?
	I'm hopeing there either is a program that can do this, or that
someone could throw it together.  It doesn't seem too complicated.

>If the word's owner doesn't point it out does it become 'public domain'?
	I was thinking about something of the sort.

>:) (I would also say that common words (used more than 1000 times prior
>to this rules enactment?) should be public domain as well. (that would
>hold things like 'the' and 'a' free.)  If that cannot be done due to
>retroactivity, I'll buy the words 'the', 'a', 'an', and 'it' :)
	If someone can get enough cash together to buy "the", more power to
them.  I was thinking there should be a monthly fee of some kind, so that
words can be unprofitable.

>While I think the idea is kinda cool.  i think implementation could be a
>bear.
	The real problem would be the word counter, but I think a simple
CGI script should be able to handle it.  Other than that I don't see any
problems.

- --
- -Henry Towsner

	<[email-masked]>

	Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and
enjoy it.
		-Logan Pearsall Smith

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 18:24:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Another idea

>Perhaps rather than letting the player just buy the word he wants, it should
>go through a bidding process?  In essence, the player posts a public action,
>"I am placing the minimum bid of A$XXX against the word voluminous.  If no one
>responds in three days, it's mine!"

	How about all unowned words are in the treausry.  Then you can call
an Auction Them Entites on them.

- --
- -Henry Towsner

	<[email-masked]>

	Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and
enjoy it.
		-Logan Pearsall Smith

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 18:24:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Another idea

>I think it might be a better idea to go with how often it appears in the
>current rules, not in every proposal ever written.  Otherwise, JT is
>right, it would simply be too hard to check.  I can't even say offhand if
>the records go ALL the way back.
	I'm pretty sure they do, but it's not a big deal.

>And why use a new currency?  Just go with A$.  Lord knows there would be
>lots of opposition to creating a new currency, for whatever reason.
	Scaling.  A$ are too valuable, we need a smaller currency (i.e. one
there's more of.)

>I think this is a vaguely interesting idea, but I don't know if it is
>really appropriate to limit what people can put in their proposals, which
>is what would happen once people started running out of Quirons or A$ or
>whatever.
	I don't want people do be unable to make proposals with certain
words.  (Although you can try to work around the words).  I was thinking
that if the player cannot pay the fee a different penalty would be
assessed.  (How about bringing back PFBonds and having the other player
gain 1% of the player each time?)

- --
- -Henry Towsner

	<[email-masked]>

	Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and
enjoy it.
		-Logan Pearsall Smith

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 18:27:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal RFC (Office Simplification)

>> Overall I have to say I don't overly like this idea. What I wouldn't mind
>> seeing though would be some of the political offices changed to functional.
>> Justice should probably remainpolitical though since they are in the most a
>> "fun" office, at least for those who wish to fillthem.
>
>They are Political, yet they are never elected.
>How sensible is that exactly?

I don't see why it needs to make sense, it just needs to work. If it ain't
broke don't fix is an old adage which would seem to apply here.

MTM.

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 18:34:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: Matt Miller <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal RFC (Offices - Thread 2)

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Duncan Richer wrote:

> Just one thing here - the creation of Optional Offices was accomplished by
> Proposal 1326 - "Lots of Office Stuff".  It was promulgated at
> Tue Oct 08 01:31:16 EDT 1996, which is over 22 months ago.  Acka has been
> running for less than 31 months.  That doesn't look like "recent memory"
> to me.
> 

I remember that!

IB
smart-aleck

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

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 20:23:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal RFC (Offices - Thread 2)

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Duncan Richer wrote:

> On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, John Frederic Mc Coy wrote:
> 
> > I think breadbox has very clearly expressed the basic differences between
> > types of offices.  One thing that seems to have been lost track of in the
> > shuffle, by the way, is Optional offices.  I think that designating some
> > offices as optional has been one of Acka's better attempts to streamline
> > itself in recent memory.  Why get rid of it now?
> 
> Just one thing here - the creation of Optional Offices was accomplished by
> Proposal 1326 - "Lots of Office Stuff".  It was promulgated at
> Tue Oct 08 01:31:16 EDT 1996, which is over 22 months ago.  Acka has been
> running for less than 31 months.  That doesn't look like "recent memory"
> to me.
> 
> Yours,
> Slakko
> who has always played Acka under optional offices

Ah, but when you consider Acka's other streamlining attempts, you will
discover why this one stands out. :)  I must admit I thought it was more
like sometime in the last year, though.

Vynd

[email-masked]

> -- 
> 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
> Ackanomic - Web-Harfer, Clerk of the Court, ChessUmpire, Map-Harfer
> 

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

End of acka-research-digest V3 #187
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