Subject: ackanomic digest V2 #330
From: [email-masked] (ackanomic digest)
To: [email-masked]

ackanomic digest       Thursday, October 9 1997       Volume 02 : Number 330

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

Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 22:03:50 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Acka: Cross Words

When my term as President expired, I was awarded a Blue Cross Bonus.  I am
now awarding myself a second Silver Stripe in a moving but tearful little
ceremony in front of my mirror.

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Song--The Monkees:Daydream Believer
Current Book--Storm Constantine:The Fulfilments of Fate And Desire
Somewhere the rainbow's over

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

Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 21:55:57 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Acka: Officer Salaries for October

A couple of days late, which is entirely my own fault.  (Well, my computer
was acting up last night.  Also, I just got "Pirates! Gold" on the
weekend...)

Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +35 A$ Malenkai: salary - speaker 35
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ breadbox: salary - promoter 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ Alfvaen: salary - web-harfer 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ breadbox: salary - tabulator 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ Malenkai: salary - count tabula 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ Alfvaen: salary - registrar 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ Alfvaen: salary - scorekeeper 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ Alfvaen: salary - financier 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ Malenkai: salary - clerk of the court 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ Vynd: salary - CSRR 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ breadbox: salary - postmaster 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ two-star: salary - map-harfer 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ Alfvaen: salary - undead-harfer 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ Alfvaen: salary - bond-harfer 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +25 A$ Alfvaen: salary - trinket-harfer 25
Oct 06 12:00 EDT: +1 autosculp Malenkai: salary - treasure-harfer 25

The office of Chess-Umpire is vacant, so nobody gets that salary.

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Song--Doctor & The Medics:Burn
Current Book--Storm Constantine:The Fulfilments of Fate And Desire
Eagles may soar, but weasels aren't sucked into jets...

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

Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 21:41:10 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Re: Acka: Random OC determination

> # Player: /dev/joe
> # I am using the dice server to determine the random otzma card
> # delivered from the boon based on the following
> # schedule:

> # 6 - swinging sale

>       6

Since the instance limit for this kind of card is 1, and one still exists
in the possession of the Undead You can call me Al, one of the two cards
must be chosen at random, by Rule 1240.1, to be destroyed.  So the Boon may
short-lived.  :-)

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Song--Rod Stewart:Another Heartache
Current Book--Donald Kingsbury:Courtship Rite
I am you, and you are me, and we are all together in a Yellow Submarine.

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

Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 21:46:37 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Re: Acka: Prez

> Alfvaen was the only volunteer for president and thus
> holds the office.

I'd like to thank all those who did not run against me, for their
confidence in me, or sheer terror at having to hold this office
themselves.  I would like to thank Malenkai for Hosing me at the
appropriate point, although it seems to have worn off now.  Pity I didn't
get a chance to take better advantage of it.  Maybe I'll compose a few
poems anyway.  Though perhaps not with the upcoming offices' salaries
announcement...

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Song--Bauhaus:She's In Parties
Current Book--Storm Constantine:The Fulfilments of Fate And Desire
'Sure, when...' OINK FLAP OINK FLAP '...I'll be damned.'

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

Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 22:56:46 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Acka: Dictionaries

I am looking for some good new wordlists on the Net suitable for serving
as Official Dictionary.  It looks like there's a few lookup dictionaries
(none better than the one we have for Fictionary), but not many wordlists.
I have found a few, though, which would have to be downloaded(though it
would certainly be possible for someone with disk space to set up a simple
search page).  I'm still evaluating them, though.

I'd like a few guidelines on what people want in their Official Dictionary.
As in, words(specific, or types)that it should or shouldn't have.  For
instance, I found a promising one, that probably has most of the words one
would want, but also has a number of proper nouns included without
distinction(like "zeus", "apollo", "andvari", etc.)  I think this would be
a bad thing, so am continuing my search.  (If anyone wants URLs to look at
them emself, let me know.)

Failing that, we could write one ourselves.  :-)

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Song--Wang Chung:Dance Hall Days
Current Book--Storm Constantine:The Fulfilments of Fate And Desire
You know, if your arms fell off, you couldn't pick them up.  --c.a. smith

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

Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 22:16:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Dictionaries

> I'd like a few guidelines on what people want in their Official
> Dictionary.  As in, words(specific, or types)that it should or
> shouldn't have.

At least one dictionary needs to have "ing".

Seriously, though, I still want to know the proble(s) that Vynd had
using the ones we have now.

Which reminds me - hopefully the dictionaries will be easily used
under Lynx. For some reason dictionary forms seem to be especially bad
at using bad HTML that Netscape overlooks but Lynx doesn't. Twice now
I've had to download the HTML and contstruct my own page just to
access a dictionary....

breadbox

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

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 01:49:27 -0400
From: "Michael James" <[email-masked]>
Subject: re acka dictionaries

Failing that, we could write one ourselves.  :-)

Alfvaen you are of true genius! I think this is a splendid idea, imagine an
official Ackanomic dictionary. The best part is that we could pass
proposals to include or declude words to the Ackanomic Dictionary, this is
Harf, and to think you left the harf party, then come up with this.

- - Karma (Harfaghasted)

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

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 01:35:01 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: re acka dictionaries

Karma responded to Alfvaen:
> Failing that, we could write one ourselves.  :-)
> 
> Alfvaen you are of true genius! I think this is a splendid idea, imagine an
> official Ackanomic dictionary. The best part is that we could pass
> proposals to include or declude words to the Ackanomic Dictionary, this is
> Harf, and to think you left the harf party, then come up with this.

The only problem with this is that a decent dictionary is a really big file.

The two current word lists used as Acka's dictionaries are the official
American Scrabble word list (the Marldoom one) which contains about 160,000
words of average length 9 letters, and a downloadable word list which
contains over 213,000 words of average length 10 letters.  I think there
is less overlap between these than you would normally expect, and that the
union of the two contains about 280,000 words, a 3 megabyte file.

The only feasible way for some Ackan to assemble the initial dictionary is
to copy it from some source(s), and then we aren't really any better off
than we are now.  If some player wishes to make available an alternate
means of accessing the existing word lists, we don't need this to be
legislated within the rules.

If you just want to write our own dictionary as a supplement to the others,
we already have this, in a way, due to the inclusion of words in the rule
set as part of the official dictionary.

/dev/joe

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

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 10:12:19 +0200 (EET)
From: Uri Bruck <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: acka : non-institutionalized RFC

On Wed, 8 Oct 1997, Bollinger, John C. wrote:

> Niccolo Flychuck wrote:
> 
> > A proposal that has the following effects:
> > 
> > I. Repeal R1001 - "Institutions"
> > 
> I don't object, in principal, to getting rid of the concept of
> Institutions.  However, I think the implementation leaves something to
> bedesired.  In particular, some current institutions depend on rule
> 1001 to supply at least defaults for their behavior.  Repealing R1001
> and changing the current institutions into entities without providing
> for default behavior will break those institutions.

Actually it's Only the Senate that's affected.
> 
> > II. In R1040 "Party Hall" Replace the string "Institution" with the
> > string
> > "Entity"
> > 
> This one probably doesn't much matter, as Party Hall doesn't actually
> do anything as a group.
> 
> > III. In R411 "Senate" replace the string "Institution" with the string
> > "Entity"
> > 
> The Senate, however, depends entirely on the institutions rule to
> establish its behavioral parameters.

I considered this, and then I thought that the Senate doesn't do much
anyway. But I can add the current default behavior to the Senate rule.

> 
> > IV. In R1303 "Synod" replace the string "Institution" with the string
> > "Entity"
> > 
> Rule 1303 describeshow each delegate's vote is weighted, but not the
> time period in which votes are to be cast or the timing or method
> for reporting the results.
The rule sdoes specify reporting. The Yor-Delegate acts for the Synod in
public.

> It is also notable that the above Institutions each specify that certain
> players/officers are their members or parts.  These rule changes would
> thus augment the current containership principles in Ackanomic.  That
> is not necessarilly bad, but then again, it may not be what we want.  I
> would preferthat instead of turning the current institutions into plain
> entities, they be integrated into the Organization framework.

One of the reasons I stated for repealing the Institutions rule, is that
Institutions were more different than alike. The containership principle
wasn't working with them in the first place, and in practice it just
provided a lot of default behaviors.

integrating them into the Organization framework is possible, however, it
would just mean complicating the Organizations  framework. I always
argued, and still do, that modularity simplifies the construction of such
entities, but modularity ceased being modular when the default procedures
are a rare exception. 

I'll look into it

Niccolo Flychuck

 > 
> 
> ThinMan
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> End of acka-research-digest V2 #159
> ***********************************
> 

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

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 07:17:34 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Re: Acka: Dictionaries

> > I'd like a few guidelines on what people want in their Official
> > Dictionary.  As in, words(specific, or types)that it should or
> > shouldn't have.

> At least one dictionary needs to have "ing".

> Seriously, though, I still want to know the proble(s) that Vynd had
> using the ones we have now.

> Which reminds me - hopefully the dictionaries will be easily used
> under Lynx. For some reason dictionary forms seem to be especially bad
> at using bad HTML that Netscape overlooks but Lynx doesn't. Twice now
> I've had to download the HTML and contstruct my own page just to
> access a dictionary....

Well, I don't have the disk space to put up an online Official Dictionary
interface, and from what I've seen it's unlikely I'll find a decent one.
So if you want to write one, you can make it as lynx-compliant as your
heart desires.  :-)

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Song In My Head--The Doors:Touch Me
Current Book--Storm Constantine:The Fulfilments of Fate And Desire
Do not meddle in the affairs of C programmers, for they will cast you to void.

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

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 08:25:06 -0500
From: "Bollinger, John C." <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: acka : non-institutionalized RFC

Niccolo Flychuck wrote:

[I wrote:]

[[Niccolo:]]

> > > IV. In R1303 "Synod" replace the string "Institution" with the
> string
> > > "Entity"
> > > 
> > Rule 1303 describeshow each delegate's vote is weighted, but not the
> > time period in which votes are to be cast or the timing or method
> > for reporting the results.
> The rule sdoes specify reporting. The Yor-Delegate acts for the Synod
> in
> public.
> 
I guess I phrased it badly.  What I meant was that the Synod rule relies
on rule 1001 to specify the length of a vote and the conditions under
which the voting period may end and the results be posted early.
Without R1001, the Synod would have serious problems making decisions.

> > It is also notable that the above Institutions each specify that
> certain
> > players/officers are their members or parts.  These rule changes
> would
> > thus augment the current containership principles in Ackanomic.
> That
> > is not necessarilly bad, but then again, it may not be what we want.
> I
> > would preferthat instead of turning the current institutions into
> plain
> > entities, they be integrated into the Organization framework.
> 
> One of the reasons I stated for repealing the Institutions rule, is
> that
> Institutions were more different than alike. The containership
> principle
> wasn't working with them in the first place, and in practice it just
> provided a lot of default behaviors.
> 
> integrating them into the Organization framework is possible, however,
> it
> would just mean complicating the Organizations  framework. I always
> argued, and still do, that modularity simplifies the construction of
> such
> entities, but modularity ceased being modular when the default
> procedures
> are a rare exception. 
> 
I agree, but I think that part of the problem was that we had groups
specified to be institutions which weren't really -- they were just
groups of players (Party Hall, Historian's Guild).  As I see it, there
are only two "real" Institutions, both of which rely on the
Institutions rule to one degree or another.

I think it makes more sense to have a single set of rules governing
subgroupings of Ackanomians, and the Organizations framework seems to
be seeing more use than the Institutions one did.  Various ways of
overhauling the Organizations framework have been under discussion
lately; perhaps I can come up with some ideas that will kill two or
more birds with a single stone.

ThinMan

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

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 09:50:57 -0500 (CDT)
From: Mitchell Harding <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Dictionaries

>I'd like a few guidelines on what people want in their Official Dictionary.
>As in, words(specific, or types)that it should or shouldn't have.  For
>instance, I found a promising one, that probably has most of the words one
>would want, but also has a number of proper nouns included without
>distinction(like "zeus", "apollo", "andvari", etc.)  I think this would be
>a bad thing, so am continuing my search.  (If anyone wants URLs to look at
>them emself, let me know.)

I'd prefer a dictionary that has the word harf in it.

Also, the following obscure words can only be found in the most select of
dictionaries: dzo, zaranathan, zarzuela, abiogenesis.

I'm sure there are more, but my memory fails me.

Robert "I saw something nasty in the woodshed..." Sevin

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

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 09:52:21 -0500 (CDT)
From: Mitchell Harding <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: re acka dictionaries

At 01:49 AM 10/9/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Failing that, we could write one ourselves.  :-)
>
>Alfvaen you are of true genius! I think this is a splendid idea, imagine an
>official Ackanomic dictionary. The best part is that we could pass
>proposals to include or declude words to the Ackanomic Dictionary, this is
>Harf, and to think you left the harf party, then come up with this.

We'd also have to make sure that "brrr" was in there, as a tribute to /dev/joe.

>- Karma (Harfaghasted)

Robert Sevin (Flabberharfed)

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

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 12:05:53 -0400
From: "Michael James" <[email-masked]>
Subject: re acka dictionaries

D/J wrote:

, and that the
union of the two contains about 280,000 words, a 3 megabyte file.

Karma: I have a few hundred mb free, this does not pose much of a
situation.

The only feasible way for some Ackan to assemble the initial dictionary is
to copy it from some source(s), and then we aren't really any better off
than we are now.  If some player wishes to make available an alternate
means of accessing the existing word lists, we don't need this to be
legislated within the rules.

If you just want to write our own dictionary as a supplement to the others,
we already have this, in a way, due to the inclusion of words in the rule
set as part of the official dictionary.
/dev/joe

Karma: I was thinking of combining the already avaliable dictionaries and
supplementing it with Ackaspeak. Also R. Sevin mentioned a couple of words
that aren't as yet found in the present dictionaries these too can be
added. Also if we choose to add Eg:" Harf" we would also include all the
suffixes that would be possible "ing", "ament" (maybe).

- - Karma

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

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 14:04:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Dictionaries

On Wed, 8 Oct 1997, Brian Raiter wrote:

> > I'd like a few guidelines on what people want in their Official
> > Dictionary.  As in, words(specific, or types)that it should or
> > shouldn't have.
> 
> At least one dictionary needs to have "ing".
> 
> Seriously, though, I still want to know the proble(s) that Vynd had
> using the ones we have now.

Basically I just have trouble accessing them.  I can download the gziped
thing, although I would then ahve to find and figure out how to use gzip,
but I don't have room for it online.  So I can leave it on my computer,
but a lot of the time when I am doing Acka stuff I am not using my own
machine.  The marldoom thing I couldn't connect to until just recently,
for some reason.  My connections there are still rather poor.

I must say that when I asked that new dictionaries be looked into, I
didn't give it a whole lot of thought myself.  I don't really know what
kinds of dictionaries are out there, and I wouldn't want anything changed
just to make things easier for me if what we have is already the best
available.

                                  - Vynd

[email-masked]

> 
> Which reminds me - hopefully the dictionaries will be easily used
> under Lynx. For some reason dictionary forms seem to be especially bad
> at using bad HTML that Netscape overlooks but Lynx doesn't. Twice now
> I've had to download the HTML and contstruct my own page just to
> access a dictionary....
> 
> breadbox
> 
> 

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

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 17:20:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked] (Clair Anthony Viglione)
Subject: Re: ackanomic digest V2 #325

        I would like to state that I would like to remain a player. In
addition to this, I am submitting a proposal.

        Create a political position entitled "Wise Man". This would be an
elected office - a full scale election must be held. The Wise Man's role is
simple: an ideal candidate for Wise Man is one who can foresee future
problems with proposals.
        The Wise Man has these powers: On a "nay" vote to a proposal, the
Wise Man's vote counts as two votes. He has no added power when voting
"yes", however. The Wise Man's powers are expressly limited to these.
        Because of this power, I am introducing a "Wise Man @boot". A Wise
Man @boot may be called for anytime. A player who wishes a wise man @boot
will send this request to the list. The time that the wise man @boot
request was sent will be logged. All other players now have 48 hours to
vote on the wise man @boot, at which time the votes will be tallied. If the
wise man @boot succeeds, the wise man is booted out of office.
        Only one wise man can be elected at a time, and there are no
secondary wise men (vice wise man, etc.). The only way a new wise man can
take office is if the current one is wiseman @booted.
        The first (and only) election for wise man will start immediately
after this proposal's acceptance, and will end one week after the start.

                        /|  /|
                        ||__||
                       /   O O\__
                      /          \
                     /      \     \    - Clair Viglione (yes, this is  what
I
                    /   _    \     \     look like!)
                   /    |\____\     \
                  /     | | | |\____/
                 /       \| | | |/ |     __
                /  /  \   -------  |_____|
               /   |   |           |       --|
               |   |   |           |_____  --|
               |<-|_|_|_|--<<<     |     \----
               /\                  |
              / /\        |        /
             / /  |       |       |
         ___/ /   |       |       |
        |____/    c_c_c_C/ \C_c_c_c

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

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 17:22:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked] (Clair Anthony Viglione)
Subject: Re: ackanomic digest V2 #329

I am hereby ammending my "Wise Man" proposal to include:

        In the vote for a Wise Man @boot, a Wise Man may not vote, much
less get his Wise Man voting powers.

                        /|  /|
                        ||__||
                       /   O O\__
                      /          \
                     /      \     \    - Clair Viglione (yes, this is  what
I
                    /   _    \     \     look like!)
                   /    |\____\     \
                  /     | | | |\____/
                 /       \| | | |/ |     __
                /  /  \   -------  |_____|
               /   |   |           |       --|
               |   |   |           |_____  --|
               |<-|_|_|_|--<<<     |     \----
               /\                  |
              / /\        |        /
             / /  |       |       |
         ___/ /   |       |       |
        |____/    c_c_c_C/ \C_c_c_c

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

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 16:01:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Dictionaries

> Well, I don't have the disk space to put up an online Official
> Dictionary interface, and from what I've seen it's unlikely I'll
> find a decent one.  So if you want to write one, you can make it as
> lynx-compliant as your heart desires.  :-)

No, what I meant was that I had to download the HTML for the form
submission page and edit it so that Lynx would accept it. Just one
page, not the actual engine.

breadbox

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

End of ackanomic digest V2 #330
*******************************