Subject: ackanomic digest V2 #266
From: [email-masked] (ackanomic digest)
To: [email-masked]

ackanomic digest        Friday, August 22 1997        Volume 02 : Number 266

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Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 23:05:29 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Flap Flap

> Okay, then, by right of Entity Litigation, since Red Barn's house FALSE
> is suing my house, I will go to his house and, just to spite him, I'm
> going to put the Gravitational Monopole on it.  I'll bet _this_ time
> it'll hurl it down into space.  Ha!  That'll teach it to sue my house!
> I press the Red Button.  Then I'll rest and watch it plummet.  :-)

This works.

Malenkai
who doesn't feel like looking for the parka today

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Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 21:21:06 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Acka: Big White Gazette Issue 4

The Big White Gazette Issue 4
"Wasting bandwidth since last month sometime"

This issue: A History of The Rebellion!
            The Nature of BWG!
            The Parade That Never Was!
            plus other tidbits!

[The following manuscript was submitted anonymously to the offices of
the BWG.  We decided to run it because we believe that the ruling class of
Ackanomic, whatever else they may do, seem to believe in the freedom of the
press.  It does, also, seem to fit the criterion of a Historical
Dissertation.]

                 A History of The Rebellion
                    by "Luke Skywalker"

Many of the newer denizens of Ackanomic are doubtless puzzled by the
mysterious references to "The Rebellion".  What, they wonder, is there to
rebel against?  In their brief time here they have probably seen no
evidence of the oppression that cries out in the heart of many Ackanomians.

On July 25, a day that will live in infamy, a harmless-looking Proposal
called "Senate Resolutions" passed.  It had been submitted by ThinMan
a week earlier, and was assigned the number 2241.  It gave the Senate
the power to make swift changes to the Rules, with what looked like
sufficient built-in safeguards, such as the automatic impeachment of
any Senator who voted for such a Resolution(to prevent abuse), and a
once-per-calendar month limit for each person eligible to submit such
Resolutions.  Even noted Ackanomian Niccolo Flychuck said that he could
not demonstrate that the Senate could attain "dictatorial powers" with
the Proposal.

The first inklings of suspicion should have come when the proposal passed,
with a clear majority, but also with three bonus votes cast for it, by
/dev/joe, Malenkai, and ThinMan--who each also bribed Tammany for it to
pass, and who, as the membership of the Vulcan Party, also added that
Party's Univy Vote to the tally.  But the fact that only three players
voted against the Proposal only shows how thoroughly all were duped.

Almost immediately, Senate Resolution 101 was submitted by Senator
/dev/joe, and the rest of Ackanomic saw the loophole that had been left:
The new Rule 411.1 was not prohibited from amending itself.  SR 101
abolished all the other safeguards that had been built into the Rule, and
inserted new ones.  The Supreme Court could not affect SR's with Acts of
Justice; Senators could not be impeached without a Senate Vote confirming
it.  /dev/joe accompanied this Resolution with a speech that declared the
Senate's intention to "[take] Acka back to something that resembles Nomic".
The Resolution passed, /dev/joe, ThinMan, and Vynd voting for, and only
Robert Sevin voting against.

Impeachment Papers were almost immediately submitted against the three
affirming Senators, many of them overlapping; ThinMan himself retaliated
by submitting one on Robert Sevin.  All of these IP's failed, though the
public voting seemed to be in favour; perhaps they would have succeeded
had the Senate not been able to vote them down.  The Senate was now
entrenched as a Tyrannical Ruling Elite.

On July 29th, Alfvaen founded The Rebellion.  A few other joined publicly;
others preferred to work from behind the scenes, giving aid and advice,
without letting their alliances be known.

On July 30th, SR 102 was submitted by Malenkai, and the real plan became
clear.  Rule 411.1 was to be amended so that the Senate would not be
the deciding body after all, but the Vulcan Party.  The Vulcan Party
already occupied half of the Senate seats, and the tiebreaking vote was
held by the Speaker, Malenkai, another Vulcan.  But instead they tried
a roundabout way of avoiding the vote entirely; Malenkai declared the vote
tied(at 0-0), and in his prerogative voted FOR to break the tie, and then
reported the voting results.  The validity of this procedure was
challenged, and eventually the judgement was passed to the Supreme Court.

Now all seems quiescent.  The Vulcan Party(now seen as the real Tyrannical
Ruling Elite)is waiting on the results of the Call For Justice to determine
whether or not their takeover was successful.  The Rebellion is waiting on
the full-fledged resumption of the Proposal queue to fire its own volley.
So all seems quiet...but it is only the calm before the storm.

                   The Nature of Bandwidth-Wasting Gizz
                               by Alfvaen

The field of studying Bandwidth-Wasting Gizz has been denigrated by some.
It is true that so far I have seen no sign in the Codex of Kra that the
Ancients studied this matter in any depth, and many of my colleagues would
hold that any field not studied by the Ancients is not worthy of study.

But our world may be different from that of the Ancients, and so may
necessitate different areas of study.  It may be that the Ancients had
more bandwidth than they knew what to do with, and so the question of
how it may be used more efficiently, let alone more inefficiently,
never arose.  (For philosophical reasons, I doubt this, however.)
Perhaps the subject was simply taboo.  In any event, I shall in this
essay endeavour to enumerate the various kinds of Bandwidth-Wasting Gizz.

To begin with, we must first define our terms.  "Bandwidth" is the easiest.
It is a simple measure of the rate of data transmission, data in this
case having its simplest definition, as opposed to "information", as
anything that is transmitted through electronic means.  The more data that
is transmitted in a period of time, the more bandwidth is consumed.  No
value judgement is involved, merely a simple calculation.

The other two terms are more subjective, and related.  The term
"information", referred to above, may be considered to mean the data which
is "relevant".  Relevance will vary depending on the particular forum, of
course, and even from thread to thread within that forum.  (A thread may be
irrelevant to its forum, all the posts that make it up relevant to the
thread.  But I digress.)  "Gizz" may be considered to be that data which is
not "relevant", and the bandwidth is consumes is thereby "wasted".

Let us take the particular example of Ackanomic.  At what level would we
consider there to be no bandwidth wasted in the public forum?

At minimum, there would be no posts other than those mandated by the Rules.
The Officer in Charge of Random Things would note weekly who received the
Potato and which rule numbers the Aliens attempted to abduct; the
Bond-Harfer would biweekly note bond dividends; and little else.  For a
true minimum, no non-officer would post at all, since it would not be
required, or even cause an officer to have to post(by submitting CFJs or
Proposals).  I think there is little disagreement that Ackanomic would be
mind-numbingly dull in such a state, but this is a state of minimum
bandwidth usage.  (For a true minimum, only posts such as "Potato: Ben;
Aliens: 411" are necessary.)

Still, bandwidth is not truly "wasted" if what is posted is "relevant".  So
what is relevant to the game of Ackanomic?  Let us say that any action that
actually has a game effect is relevant, and thus any post consisting
entirely of public actions(and whatever descriptive text is necessary)does
not waste bandwidth.

Now let us presume that a player makes a post which consists entirely of a
large number of repetitions of: "I create a trinket named Foo, value A$1,
whose description is 'Bar baz quux'.  I destroy Foo for money."  It
consists entirely of game actions, and is thus relevant, but few would
disagree that bandwidth was in fact being wasted.  Some other
considerations come into effect--for instance, the _net_ effect on the game
is null for each of those pairs of sentences.  But if the two sentences are
separated by several months, then they become individually relevant.  In
this case, the game state has been changed for long enough that other
actions become possible using the altered game state as a basis.

But it is still conceivable that actions can be performed that change the
game state in the long term, but may still be considered to waste
bandwidth.  So perhaps it is not merely all public actions that are
relevant, but also those which are used to _play the Game of Ackanomic_.
This is a very subjective definition, but one that we might be able to
agree upon.  There is also some text which does not consist of public
actions, but of, for instance, confirmations or denials by Officers as to
the success of such actions.

Having determined what is not Bandwidth-Wasting Gizz, then we are ready to
subdivide it into categories.  The first level would be those public
actions considered in the two prior paragraphs, that change the game state
for an infinitesimal length of time and are immediately nullified, or
change it in a way irrelevant to the playing of the Game of Ackanomic.

Beyond that is the second level, which consists of statements about public
actions.  Comments about the wisdom of performing said action(positive
or negative), wishes that one had thought of it first, etc.  There may
be a sub-level in between of comments that are slightly more relevant
than mere comments.  Here would fit RFC's, which have no direct game
effect but may nonetheless cause a Proposal to be a form that passes as
opposed to fails, or keeps a Proposal from being submitted at all, and
reasoning on CFJ's, which may influence the judge's decision but again
has no direct game effect.  The other type of comments may also prompt
actions, but they may not, and it is probably impossible to distinguish
them before the fact, and for simplicity they may all be grouped together.

Then there are those threads which do not concern Ackanomic at all.  These
form a third level of bandwidth waste, and the one that most people would
agree should be dealt with.  They may deal with peripheral topics, such as
technical aspects of possible game extensions, or be entirely personal.
Another sub-level, of slightly greater relevance, may consist of length
philosophical discussions with some marginal relevance to a broad area of
the game(i.e. economics), or Nomic in general.

The level beyond that, which we are thankfully free of on the mailing
lists, is that of "Spam", which does not even have a specific intended
audience in mind, but is sent mindlessly to anyone that can be found.

I will point out here one final complicating matter, which is that of
treasure maps.  It is not inconceivable that any bandwidth that is
apparently wasted in fact contains treasure clues.  However, we cannot
determine this relevance beforehand, so it should not interfere with
classification at that time.

This is not entirely comprehensive or satisfactory.  Determining the level
of bandwidth waste of a single message, or thread, is not always easy, and
the divisions between the different levels of BW are highly arbitrary and
subjective, so will not necessarily be agreed upon.  Research into this
exciting field still continues, and new discoveries will doubtless continue
to be made.

[Here we have another piece from Alfvaen, this time as the author of
Proposal 2276, which was retracted under extreme danger of quorum failure.
His plans for the celebratory parade were already made up, and rather than
waste them, or wait for another opportunity which maybe a long time in
coming, he shared the plans with us here at the BWG.]

                    The Parade That Never Was

BWG: What was to be the overall plan of the Parade?
A: I had planned for it to be in three parts, with very different musical
accompaniments.  The first part would be a more or less standard march, in
rows of eight with an initial row of four.  For the introduction, I had
taken two bars of an existing 4/4 composition and modified it by removing
alternating notes so that it would fit into 2/4 time.
BWG: What was the 4/4 composition?
A: It was a piece by a French composer, whose name I forget momentarily(I
think it translated as twenty-something), his Op. 26, I recall.  I had
heard a slightly different version of it by another French fellow(whose
name I also forget), entirely for winds.  Anyway, I had borrowed some of
his ideas for the music to my recent Prayers for Deliverance, which
unfortunately did not come across well in a plain-text medium.
BWG: How about the second part?
A: This was to be more experimental, and possibly controversial, since it
would be in 7/8 time.  In a way, it's a good thing that it was cancelled,
bcause the marchers were having little luck adapting to it; they kept
missing the first beat out of every eight.
BWG: And the third?
A: A standard march again, but the choreography was going to be marvelous.
A square of 256 marchers, some bearing a cymbal, some bearing none at all.
Then, in a prearranged pattern, some of them would arrange themselves into
a line which would spell out a message.  Unfortunately, there was a minor
mixup in the original performance, but we've decided to stick with it
rather than confuse everybody by going back to the original setup.
BWG: Thank you for speaking to us.  While we're here, would you like to
give us any clues to your treasures, which still have not been found?
A: No, I believe that sufficient information was already been given out.
Though some of it may be buried in the BWG.

Tidbits:

The Mad Scientist has announced, finally, the beginning of work on eir new
Monster, Lushrike.  After an initial false announcement in which e
overlooked a later-submitted part, e finally published the Blueprint(which 
can be found elsewhere, so we feel no need to reproduce it here), and
commenced work on August 19th.  Sources say that the Mad Scientist plans to
retire after his work is complete on the 26th.  Lushrike will then be given
into the possession of Malenkai.

The original document has somehow been lost to us, but we have been
meaning to remind players of two-star's statement to the effect that
any player who can find a particular date reference in a work on the
Literature List is welcome to come to his house on that date, provided
that you post the excerpt from the work that contains the date.  A gift
is promised.  (We would also recommend that you not bother with Douglas
Adams, who seems to have an aversion from including dates of any kind
in his books.  Whether a collaborative work counts as Literature may
be undetermined.)

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Album--Phantom of The Opera Soundtrack
Current Book--Isaac Asimov:Life And Energy
Pardon my circumlocutions, I seem to be soliloquizing.

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

Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 21:23:30 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Re: Acka: S.R. Also Concerning the Senate

> I am pleased to report that all three Senators have voted to
> accept the Senate Resolution provisionally entitled "Also
> Concerning the Senate".  The voting is complete; the Senate
> Resolution is accepted.

It is a pity that "Luke Skywalker" didn't have the opportunity to put this
occurrence into his historical article.  But all history runs the risk of
being overrun by the present.

I would like to encourage everyone who wishes to fight the Evil Tyrannical
Ruling Elite that is the Vulcan Party to join the Rebellion, either
publicly or secretly.  We accept both kinds of members.  (If Chaos had
managed to work out his plan for Organizations-as-Rule-Suites, then perhaps
we would be able to enforce secrecy rules a la the departed Narfalone
Family...)

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Album--Phantom of The Opera Soundtrack
Current Book--Isaac Asimov:Life And Energy
The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out

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

Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 21:24:12 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Re: Acka: Flap Flap

> > Okay, then, by right of Entity Litigation, since Red Barn's house FALSE
> > is suing my house, I will go to his house and, just to spite him, I'm
> > going to put the Gravitational Monopole on it.  I'll bet _this_ time
> > it'll hurl it down into space.  Ha!  That'll teach it to sue my house!
> > I press the Red Button.  Then I'll rest and watch it plummet.  :-)

> This works.

What, this works by sending it plummeting into the depths of space?  What
luck!  :-)

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Album--Phantom of The Opera Soundtrack
Current Book--Isaac Asimov:Life And Energy
Because electrons are brave.  Braveness is nice, don't you think?

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

Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 21:44:38 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Acka: Rebellion

I am pleased to welcome Whiz as a member of The Rebellion.  Long may it
fight!  Unless, of course, it wins sooner.

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Album--Phantom of The Opera Soundtrack
Current Book--Isaac Asimov:Life And Energy
People who live in magnesium houses shouldn't throw Molotov Cocktails.

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

End of ackanomic digest V2 #266
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