Subject: ackanomic digest V3 #271
From: [email-masked] (ackanomic digest)
To: [email-masked]

ackanomic digest       Thursday, August 13 1998       Volume 03 : Number 271

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 03:31:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Tabula Stuff

On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, David Scheidt wrote:

> On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, Aaron V. Humphrey wrote:
> 
> > > Next off is the great debunk. Essentially, nothing happened here because
> > > not enough people voted. If people want all the gory details then I'll go
> > > and try to find them.
> > 
> > Was this ever announced?  I was expecting some sort of official announcement
> > after the Proposal's passage, although I didn't read it that closely.
> 
> Count Tabula made an anouncement that the hearing was starting.  It was
> not an official announcement, as e did not tell us what legal votes were,
> so I am not sure the hearing has ever really been called.

From Proposal 3324:

 {{The Great Debunk hearing is called}}

I think that that is pretty much a clear cut indication that the Hearing
has actually been called.

- -- 
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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 08:19:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: K2 <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Tabula Stuff

Duncan Richer wrote:

> >From Proposal 3324:
>
>  {{The Great Debunk hearing is called}}

even so (according to the rules) it still required an announcement by CT for the
hearing to _start_. The rule/proposla only called for it, in much the same way as I
now call for an election for Historian, yet the elecetion hasn't actually started
yet ;)

K 2

>
>
> I think that that is pretty much a clear cut indication that the Hearing
> has actually been called.

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 08:24:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Tabula Stuff

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, K2 wrote:

> Duncan Richer wrote:
> 
> > >From Proposal 3324:
> >
> >  {{The Great Debunk hearing is called}}
> 
> even so (according to the rules) it still required an announcement by CT for the
> hearing to _start_. The rule/proposla only called for it, in much the same way as I
> now call for an election for Historian, yet the elecetion hasn't actually started
> yet ;)

It may not have started.  rufus only asked whether or not it had been
called.  Clearly it has been called.

- -- 
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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 09:21:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Tabula Stuff

>Count Tabula made an anouncement that the hearing was starting.  It was
>not an official announcement, as e did not tell us what legal votes were,
>so I am not sure the hearing has ever really been called.

Okay then, here is the text of the relevant message:

">> > {{The Great Debunk hearing is called}}
>> > 
>
>Who, may I ask, is the Hearing Harfer for this?  Or are votes to be cast
>publically?

As Count Tabula I'm the Hearing Harfer I think. I think that the rule
itself called the hearing so you have 3 days from then to respond I guess.
You may reply to this message to send your votes (set to acka-priv).

MTM, Count Tabula."

Whether or not this is valid or not I don't know, and will leave to other
people to figure out. Personally I think it's close enough..

MTM, Count Tabula.

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 09:21:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: INPs

I have just received these two INPs. You may reply to this mesage to vote
on how you wish Acka to vote on them. The first proposal should it pass
will add Bluesmobile Nomic into the game should it be removed as per a
previous proposal.

MTM, Ambassador.

- ----

INP 381
submitted by Micronomic

PROPOSAL
Amend Rule 215 to read: "The voting members of this Nomic are: New
Rishonomic, New Rishonnomic, Ackanomic, Agora, Thring, Bluesmobile Nomic,
Pumpkin Patch Nomic, The People's Republic of MacroNomic, MicroNomic, and
InterNomic. The moderator maintains a list of non-voting members."
PROPOSAL

- ----

INP 382
submitted by New Rishonomic

Amend rule 215 to read in full:
The Moderator of Internomic has the duty to maintain a list of all member
nomics and their current status in Internomic. This list will be made
available on request.

The current voting members of Internomic are: New Rishonomic,New
Rishonnomic, Ackanomic, Agoa, Thring, Pumpkin Patch Nomic, The People's
Republic of Macronomic, Micronomic, and Internomic. This paragraph deletes
from this rule.

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:24:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Twit

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, K2 wrote:

>Remember this: ?
>
>>I direct that the Church of The Book give The Funds of The Holy Church
>>of The Book of Chorg to me.
>>I distroy The Funds of The Holy Church of The Book of Chorg for cash.
>>I gift A$525 to JT.
>>I gift A$1021 to Attila the Pun.
>
><Looks sheepish> <blushes>
>it should have been more like:
>I gift A$325 to JT.
>I gift A$821 to Attila the Pun.
>
>The amounts I just gave you were the amounts contributed - thus didn't
>include A$200 for the secret lab....

I'm SOOOO tempted to give that excess A$ to the twits for you, but.....

I give K2 A$200.

- --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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:29:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: INPs

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Tom Walmsley wrote:
>I have just received these two INPs. You may reply to this mesage to vote
>on how you wish Acka to vote on them. The first proposal should it pass
>will add Bluesmobile Nomic into the game should it be removed as per a
>previous proposal.
>
>INP 381
>submitted by Micronomic
[*snip*]
>INP 382
>submitted by New Rishonomic
[*snip]

Surprisingly enough, I have a reason for actually voting on these and I
vote FOR on them.

If my EBS is allowed to vote on these as well (I think they are hearings
so it might be able to), it also votes FOR on both of them.

- --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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:46:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Another idea (fwd)

> Which wouldn't be much use if we wanted to find out how many times the
> word "Chartreuse" occurs in the Rules.

22.

rufus

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:47:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: RFC: The extra-nomic EN:

[Seeing "Pumpkin Patch Nomic" in the book of chorg log that was posted
recently, and thinking about the *other* Pumpkin Patch nomic which is a
member of Metamorph made me rethink an old idea I had, and I came up with
a format that might not be so nasty that people couldn't stand using it.

We can't regulate the names that extra-nomic entities have, but we can at
least provide a system for avoiding name clashes with them when they occur.]

I. Append to the end of Rule 500.1, "Entity Names", the following paragraph:

"
The three characters 'EN:' are a prefix.  Whenever a name beginning with
'EN:' is used, it refers to an extra-nomic entity with the extra-nomic
name following the colon.  Ackanomic entities are never referred to with
such names.  If there are reasonable Ackanomic and extra-nomic entities
which a specific name not beginning with 'EN:' could refer to, it refers
to the Ackanomic one.
"

Append to the paragraph ending "and the space character" in Rule 500.1
the text "The colon (:) is only a valid name character for the purpose
of writing prefixed names with prefixes defined by the rules."

II. Throughout rule 419.1, "Ambassador", and rule 419.3, "How are things out
there", replace "Internomic" with "EN:Internomic" wherever it appears.

Amend rule 419.2, "Internomic Interface", by changing the heading of
section I [ now "Internomic Entityhood"] with "Internomic Membership"
and changing the text of that section to read: "Ackanomic is a member
of the extra-nomic entity EN:Internomic." and then replacing all
occurrences of "Internomic" or "InterNomic" in subsequent sections of
the rule with "EN:Internomic", except in the section headings where it
is replaced by "Internomic".

{{ Destroy all the named tradeable entities representing the member
nomics of EN:Internomic. }}

[I am not sure how this should interact with Imported entities...]

III. Amend rule 251.1 by changing section a) to read
"a) The True Name for the new player is initially set to that player's
Real Life name, with the three characters 'EN:' prepended."

{{ The True Name of each player has the three characters 'EN:' prepended
to it. }}

[Possibly, some of the entities referred to in the G&C General Equipment
section should also be renamed like this... The HTML Standard would have
been a good one to get this treatment too, back when that was part of
the rules.  Anything else?]

[Note that the system is extensible, so you could later add other prefixes
which have other specific meanings.]

/dev/joe

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:59:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: INPs

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, JT wrote:
[A message that really should have been private]

I donate A$5 to the twits.

- --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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 12:45:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: RFC: The extra-nomic EN:

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Joseph W. DeVincentis wrote:
>III. Amend rule 251.1 by changing section a) to read
>"a) The True Name for the new player is initially set to that player's
>Real Life name, with the three characters 'EN:' prepended."
>
>{{ The True Name of each player has the three characters 'EN:' prepended
>to it. }}

This is the only part of this that I really don't like :)

- --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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 12:58:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Proposal delay question

Several times over the past week various players have written to me
with the same concern, so I thought I'd just make a public
explanation.

Normally when I distribute a batch of proposals, I send out everything
I've received up to that time. If I've fallen behind in my Promoterly
duties, then a lot of proposals go out at once. This results in a lot
of votes to tabulate over the next seven days, and then a lot of
proposals coming due at once, all of which puts me behind again ... and
so the cycle goes.

This past week, I have been deluged with proposals, what with all the
talk in the air about radical changes. In an attempt to avoid falling
into the aformentioned vicious cycle, I've been delaying proposal
distributions, trying to keep down to no more than a dozen or so per
day (without violating the Speed rule, of course).

So the upshot of this is: If you send me a proposal, and you don't see
it in the next batch, don't fret; it's almost sure to appear in the
following one.

And I do apologize for this. I really hate to see proposals get
delayed, but right now I'm just trying to avoid that critical point of
being "too far behind". I won't be doing this for much longer. (And by
the way, rest assured that I'm not going to frob the proposal queue.
After the last time, I swore I wouldn't exercise that privilege again
unless it was truly necessary.)

breadbox

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 13:02:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: CFJ 642 (Studge)

Studge has been selected.

Statement:

There is no Rule 1319.

CFJ Reasoning:

On the 13th of July, K 2 achieved a Winning Condition by a method
described in what was, at the time Rule 1319.2.  The achievement of that
Winning Condition caused some other effects to occur, as follows:

"However, upon eir return, e shall achieve a Winning
Condition. At this time all the entities donated to the CEIS shall be
destroyed, except for the spacecraft which shall be Decommissioned. This
Rule, as well as Rules 1319, 1319.1 and 1320 [the RERS, FEPS and End of
the World rules], shall be repealed then, and all occurrences of the
word "flat" in Rules 1307 and 1309 shall be replaced by "cubical", all
occurrences of the text "the topside of the earth" in Rule 1309 shall be
replaced by "the other faces of the earth", and all occurrences of the
text "the underside of the Earth" in Rule 1311 shall be replaced by "the
face of the Earth which includes Ackanomia". "

Since this time, no Proposal creating a rule numbered 1319, or renumbering
a rule to 1319 has passed.  Hence there is no Rule 1319.

- -- 
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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 13:09:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3360 accepted

>>> Proposal 3360 - Wed 05 Aug 1998 11:02 EDT
>>> Grease is the Word
>>> Brie Clump (Tom Walmsley)
>
>Grrr.. this means war Tom.. Honest :)

Don't blame me for it. How was I supposed to know it would pass? Maybe I'd
best start resigning from a few offices before you start making lots of
work for me :-). I also note to either JT or K 2, whoever's duty it is to
track cheeses, that I believ I get a cheddar for this because I think this
is my third harfy proposal to pass since cheeses. Oh yeah, and whilst I'm
at it I go to the library and down to *that* room. Whilst I'm down at the
library I play "We Want a Rock" by They Might Be Giants on the ASS.

Mr. Tambo.

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 13:18:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3360 accepted

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Tom Walmsley wrote:

>>>> Proposal 3360 - Wed 05 Aug 1998 11:02 EDT
>>>> Grease is the Word
>>>> Brie Clump (Tom Walmsley)
>>
>>Grrr.. this means war Tom.. Honest :)
>
>Don't blame me for it. How was I supposed to know it would pass? Maybe I'd
>best start resigning from a few offices before you start making lots of
>work for me :-). I also note to either JT or K 2, whoever's duty it is to
>track cheeses, that I believ I get a cheddar for this because I think this
>is my third harfy proposal to pass since cheeses. Oh yeah, and whilst I'm

I believe that duty falls to K2.  And I can and will blame you.  You can't
stop me.  Neener. :)

- --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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 13:26:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: CFJ 642 (Studge)

At 13:02 13/08/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Studge has been selected.
>
>Statement:
>
>There is no Rule 1319.

Not wanting to be unkind or anything, but who submitted this, and when?

Also, did you get the message I sent regarding the CFJ archives? I got a
message saying that it had been trying to get through to you for four hours
and hadn't managed but would keep on trying.

MTM.

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 13:27:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked] (Dice server)
Subject: Acka: Ackanomicon Determination

- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Dice rolls requested by: JT <[email-masked]>
Rolls also sent to:
    [email-masked]

# Player: Mr. Tambourine Man
# Ackanomicon Determination
# based on the following (using a 50 sided die)
#  1 - 15 Arcane Trivia
# 16 - 20 Vile Prophecies
# 21 - 25 Inner Workings
# 26 - 30 Arcane Lore
# 31 - 33 Terrorizing Pages
# 34 - 34 Ancient Artifact
# 35 - 36 Mutation
# 37 - 38 Dark Domain
# 39 - 40 Long Lost Treasure
# 41 - 41 Forbidden Fruit
# 42 - 42 Catastrophe
# 43 - 46 Not so Forbidden Fruit
# 47 - 47 Ancient One
# 48 - 49 Judgement Day

No. of sides on every die:     49
No. of dice for every roll:     1
No. of dice rolls requested:    1
No. of rolls per line:          1

     20

Information on the dice server:
   DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE!
   Replies to [email-masked] vanish into a seldom-read mailbox.

   For instructions on using the dice server, send a message with
   subject "help" to [email-masked], or see http://www.pbm.com/dice/

   The dice server is provided by:

      Shadow Island Games
      http://www.pbm.com/

=================================================
             ** NewHoo Web Directory **
    An army of editors surfing the web for you!
               http://www.NewHoo.com/
=================================================

Original message follows:
> From [email-masked]  Thu Aug 13 10:28:36 1998
> Received: (from smtp@localhost) by xkey.com
>       id KAA24333 for <[email-masked]>; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 10:28:36 -0700
> Received: from herne.dragoncat.net(207.54.31.1) by xkey.com via smtp (V1.3)
>       id sma024323; Thu Aug 13 10:28:35 1998
> Received: from localhost (jtraub@localhost)
>       by dragoncat.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id KAA05749
>       for <[email-masked]>; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 10:28:39 -0700
> Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 10:28:39 -0700 (PDT)
> From: JT <[email-masked]>
> To: Dice Server <[email-masked]>
> Subject: Acka; Ackanomicon determination
> Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
> 
> #P [email-masked]
> #S 49
> #D 1
> #R 1
> #L 1
> #T Acka: Ackanomicon Determination
> 
> #C Player: Mr. Tambourine Man
> #C Ackanomicon Determination
> #C based on the following (using a 50 sided die)
> #C
> #C  1 - 15 Arcane Trivia
> #C 16 - 20 Vile Prophecies
> #C 21 - 25 Inner Workings
> #C 26 - 30 Arcane Lore
> #C 31 - 33 Terrorizing Pages
> #C 34 - 34 Ancient Artifact
> #C 35 - 36 Mutation
> #C 37 - 38 Dark Domain
> #C 39 - 40 Long Lost Treasure
> #C 41 - 41 Forbidden Fruit
> #C 42 - 42 Catastrophe
> #C 43 - 46 Not so Forbidden Fruit
> #C 47 - 47 Ancient One
> #C 48 - 49 Judgement Day
> 
> 
> [-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
> [ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.                  ]
> [ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
> [-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
> 

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Version: 2.7

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=iiHX
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------------------------------

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 13:29:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3360 accepted

> Don't blame me for it. How was I supposed to know it would pass?

Oh, come now. Did you honestly think its chances were poor?

> Oh yeah, and whilst I'm at it I go to the library and down to *that*
> room. Whilst I'm down at the library I play "We Want a Rock" by They
> Might Be Giants on the ASS.

For no particular reason that I can discern, I am suddenly taken with
an intense desire to obtain a Rock to Wind a String Around. I rush to
/dev/joe's Vending Machine and spend A$6 in the purchase of said Rock.

breadbox

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 13:33:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Spelling Exchequer please

From the rules:

> Another Duty of the Office of Spelling Exchequer is to select one or
> more links to on-line Dictionaries of the English language, as
> well as to maintain a copy the Ackanomic Lexicon and make it accessible
> to players upon request. The term "Official Dictionary", as used
> elsewhere in the Rules, shall be construed to mean the union of these
> Dictionaries and the Lexicon. 

Since the recent rule Grease is the word requires me to select a word from
the 'official dictionary', I would like a copy of the Lexicon as well as a
pointer to countable lists of the words in the other dictionaries.

Should these not be available it will be impossible to give 'all
possibilities an equal weight' for the random determination because it
will be impossible to determine what all of the possibilities are.

- --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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 13:43:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked] (Micah Smukler)
Subject: Acka: Re: Twit

I gift A$200 to K 2.

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 14:10:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Spelling Exchequer please

> Since the recent rule Grease is the word requires me to select a
> word from the 'official dictionary', I would like a copy of the
> Lexicon as well as a pointer to countable lists of the words in the
> other dictionaries.

Yessir.

The Ackanomic Lexicon currently contains:

frank
frink
frinks
frinking
guberniya
harf
harfed
harfer
harfs
harfy

(I told myself I'd put the Lexicon on a page when someone actually
requested it; I suppose I should go do that now.)

The Official Dictionary is, of course, defined as the union of:
1) the above Lexicon; 2) the wordlist located at the ftp site
sable.ox.ac.uk:/pub/wordlists/dictionaries/Unabr.dict.Z (note that
this selfsame wordlist can also be found at the URL
http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/acka/Unabr.dict.gz); and 3) the
list of words accepted by Marldoom, at eel.st.usm.edu, port 7777.

The last one is, of course, the sticky one. The dictionary used at
Marldoom is one of the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionaries. The
one currently in use is identified as "TWL98". Now, I have a wordlist
for the second edition of the OSPD (from the Moby project), but I
don't know if these are the same. Perhaps someone else knows more?

breadbox

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 15:40:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: Uri Bruck <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3368 rejected

As I waddle through the current batch I note that this proposal had a big
turnout. A larger number of yes+no votes than the other proposals.
Although I am dissapointed that it failed - I consider it successful in
the sense that it made people vote!

Niccolo Flychuck

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, nomicbot wrote:

> Results of Proposal 3368
> 
> 21/25 votes: Quorum achieved
> 13/24 YES votes: Proposal rejected
> 
>   YES:
> Mr. Tambourine Man
> K 2                  (AVPP)
> Alfvaen              (MetaMorph)
> Robin Hood           (AVPP)
> Slakko               (SPAM)
> 867-5309           (Boomerangs)
> Niccolo Flychuck     (MetaMorph)
> IdiotBoy             (AVPP)
> J. M. Bear           (MetaMorph)
> MetaMorph Unity Vote
> Bonus Vote                              [Niccolo Flychuck used a Bonus Vote]
> Bonus Vote                            [IdiotBoy used a Bonus Vote]
> Tammany                                 [Niccolo Flychuck bribed Tammany A$25]
> 
>   NO:
> Vynd                 (Vulcan)
> /dev/joe             (Vulcan)
> Rex Mundi            (Klingon)
> else...if            (SPAM)
> rufus                (SPAM)
> JT                   (Boomerangs)
> Publius
> breadbox
> Studge
> Ethelred             (AVPP)
> Piz
> 
>   BAA!:
> Attila the Pun       (AVPP)
> 
>   ABSTAINED:
> Calvin N Hobbes      (Harf)
> ThinMan              (Vulcan)
> two-star
> Fortunato
> 
>   INACTIVE:
> Wild Card            (SPAM)
> Joe Java             (Boomerangs)
> Ayla
> Horny Protoceratops
> 
>   PENDING:
> Zaknafein Dourden
> Rig R. Mortis
> 
> > Proposal 3368 - Wed 05 Aug 1998 11:11 EDT
> > ...and the Swingers Shall Lead.
> > Niccolo Flychuck (Uri Bruck)
> > 
> > This is a Modest proposal.
> > 
> > If R411 replace the string "Senators" in the third sentence with the string
> > "Swingers"
> 
> ------------------------------
> 

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 16:36:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked] (John Bollinger)
Subject: Acka: about CFJ 630

Lest any eager beaver jump the gun tomorrow, this is notice that TEFKATSC
has, in fact, reached a verdict on CFJ 630.  We are finalizing the reasoning,
and the verdict will have to be passed to and forwarded by the CotC.

ThinMan
Justice

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 16:52:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Spelling Exchequer please

> The Official Dictionary is, of course, defined as the union of:
> 1) the above Lexicon; 2) the wordlist located at the ftp site
> sable.ox.ac.uk:/pub/wordlists/dictionaries/Unabr.dict.Z (note that
> this selfsame wordlist can also be found at the URL
> http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/acka/Unabr.dict.gz); and 3) the
> list of words accepted by Marldoom, at eel.st.usm.edu, port 7777.
> 
> The last one is, of course, the sticky one. The dictionary used at
> Marldoom is one of the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionaries. The
> one currently in use is identified as "TWL98". Now, I have a wordlist
> for the second edition of the OSPD (from the Moby project), but I
> don't know if these are the same. Perhaps someone else knows more?

The ENABLE wordlist available at
http://personal.riverusers.com/~thegrendel/software.html
promises to be a better-researched list than the TWL98 one on Marldoom,
and most likely is a superset of that list, or at least a close enough
approximation that it is unlikely anybody will find any difference. :-)
I would suggest that the word choice be performed by taking the
ENABLE list, merging it with the other list and the official lexicon,
deleting duplicates, and having a couple players do this and perform
some simple checks to ensure we are all working from the same list.

If the word ultimately chosen is one of those in ENABLE but not in
any of our official lists, ignore it and take the next word chosen.
There are a couple simple things you can do to try to make the list
match Marldoom's more closely - delete words over 15 letters and words
on ENABLE's "signature words" list.  Or, alterantively, we could replace
the Marldoom list with the ENABLE list with a CSR before the determination
is made. :-)

Then roll several d1000's from the dice server, since we are supposed
to use that if possible, and combine the results pairwise to generate
numbers from 1 to 1000000, which is certainly more words than are in our
lexicon but not so many that we will have a hard time getting a number
in the limit of the length of the list (you could use a number less than
1000, or "wrap" the numbers around by making N+1 correspond to word 1
where N is the total number of words in the list).  Ignore any results
greater than the number of words in the list, or over 2N or 3N
(whichever is the largest multiple under 1000000) if you use the wrap
procedure.

/dev/joe

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 17:21:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Spelling Exchequer please

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Joseph W. DeVincentis wrote:
>> The last one is, of course, the sticky one. The dictionary used at
>> Marldoom is one of the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionaries. The
>> one currently in use is identified as "TWL98". Now, I have a wordlist
>> for the second edition of the OSPD (from the Moby project), but I
>> don't know if these are the same. Perhaps someone else knows more?
>
>The ENABLE wordlist available at
>http://personal.riverusers.com/~thegrendel/software.html
>promises to be a better-researched list than the TWL98 one on Marldoom,
>and most likely is a superset of that list, or at least a close enough
>approximation that it is unlikely anybody will find any difference. :-)

I have the ENABLE list on my machine already.  I also believe that TWL98
is available on the net, but haven't (yet) gone searching for it.
(well I lied, I just went and searched for it and it's available for
$9.95 from the National Scrabble Association)  Given that, I would in fact
support a CSR to change us from using MarlDoom to Enable.  However, I
doubt that this will occur before I do the determination this evening.

I will use the Unabridged list + the Lexicon + the Enable list to generate
a maximum number of words which I will then sort and uniqify in a
case-insenstive manner (just in case there are any proper names in there).
I will not add in any of the OSPD additions or OSW additions to the ENABLE
list, so it is possible that I will not take into account a word that
would be valid, and note that if this is the case, I will expect you to
prove it :)
I will then use the dice server to generate 20 numbers in this range.
I will then check those 20 words against marldoom if the word isn't in the
Unabridged list or the lexicon and take the first word that fulfills the
above criteria.

This won't get done until this evening just because I don't want to mess
with large text files over a link from work when my home machine is on the
end of a 28.8 link.

If anyone has any problems with this method of selection (since I'm only
encouraged to use the dice server) please speak up.

The only suggestion of /dev/joe's that I'm not performing is the
validation of the list by other sources.  Since I said above how I intend
to merge the lists, it should be trivial to duplicate the list I generate.

I also will determine how to perform the dice server manipulation once I
see how many words I have.
I suspect that my method will be to divide the list into 1000 piece
chunks, figure out how many chunks I have and generate 20 number in the
range of chunks and 20 numbers from 1 to 1000 which should (when combined)
generate 20 numbers in the range of the list rounded to the nearest 1000.
I would thus also ignore any result that was outside of the proscribed
boundary.
To avoid the overflow situation, I could alternatively divide the list
into 1000 word peices, chose 1 number to determine the piece and then have
2 other sets of 20 rolls, 1 set of 20 numbers between 1 and 1000 and 1 set
of numbers between 1 and however many are left over which would only get
used if the first number was in fact the representor of the final sub-1000
member set.

I believe that both of these methods would provide all members of the
word-set with equal probability, but I'm not a mathemetician or
statistician and won't claim that with any certainty.

I'm willing to amend these proceedures if someone gives me a better way of
doing it, but they seem simple and correct.   Since I won't be doing this
for another 6-8 hours (until I get home from work) that should give time
for people to object/complain/suggest.

- --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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 17:54:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Spelling Exchequer please

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, JT wrote:

> This won't get done until this evening just because I don't want to mess
> with large text files over a link from work when my home machine is on the
> end of a 28.8 link.
> 
> If anyone has any problems with this method of selection (since I'm only
> encouraged to use the dice server) please speak up.
> 
> The only suggestion of /dev/joe's that I'm not performing is the
> validation of the list by other sources.  Since I said above how I intend
> to merge the lists, it should be trivial to duplicate the list I generate.

The concatenation of the lexicon, the thing from sable.ox.ac.uk, and
ENABLE, sort | uniq is 172823 words.  Does the dice server not support
aribtrary dice?

ruufs

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 18:08:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: acka:  using the dice server to pick large numbers

172823 factors to 7*7*3527
172872 factors to 7*7*3528, close enough for folk music
  (more completely to 2 2 2 3 3 7 7 7 7 )

so pick 392 groups of 882.  Creative use of bc, head and tail will let you
pick the correct word pretty easily.  

rufus

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 18:11:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Spelling Exchequer please

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, David Scheidt wrote:
>The concatenation of the lexicon, the thing from sable.ox.ac.uk, and
>ENABLE, sort | uniq is 172823 words.  Does the dice server not support
>aribtrary dice?

According to the dice server page (http://www.pbm.com/dice/)
the range of dice rolls is 1-1000 inclusive.

- --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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 18:16:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: acka:  using the dice server to pick large numbers

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, David Scheidt wrote:
>172823 factors to 7*7*3527
>172872 factors to 7*7*3528, close enough for folk music
>  (more completely to 2 2 2 3 3 7 7 7 7 )
>
>so pick 392 groups of 882.  Creative use of bc, head and tail will let you
>pick the correct word pretty easily.  

My way seems to require me to have the dice server do less work and gives
me 20 different values so that I can check those words against the
MarlDoom thing (since ENABLE != MarlDoom) thus making sure that whatever
word I pick is in fact in the official dictionary.

- --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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 18:17:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: acka:  using the dice server to pick large numbers

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, JT wrote:

> >172823 factors to 7*7*3527
> >172872 factors to 7*7*3528, close enough for folk music
> >  (more completely to 2 2 2 3 3 7 7 7 7 )
> >
> >so pick 392 groups of 882.  Creative use of bc, head and tail will let you
> >pick the correct word pretty easily.  
> 
> My way seems to require me to have the dice server do less work and gives
> me 20 different values so that I can check those words against the

I realized that I mis-stated what I meant shortly after

> MarlDoom thing (since ENABLE != MarlDoom) thus making sure that whatever
> word I pick is in fact in the official dictionary.
> 
> --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: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 18:20:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: acka:  using the dice server to pick large numbers

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, JT wrote:

> On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, David Scheidt wrote:
> >172823 factors to 7*7*3527
> >172872 factors to 7*7*3528, close enough for folk music
> >  (more completely to 2 2 2 3 3 7 7 7 7 )
> >
> >so pick 392 groups of 882.  Creative use of bc, head and tail will let you
> >pick the correct word pretty easily.  
> 
> My way seems to require me to have the dice server do less work and gives
> me 20 different values so that I can check those words against the

I realized that I mis-stated what I meant shortly after I sent the
message.  What I meant was a word is determined by two numbers, one fromj
the range 392, the other 882 to 1.  The product ofthe two is the index
into the list.  Sorry if I was unclear.

ruufs

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 19:36:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: RuneMaker's Page

I now have something up at http://website.lineone.net/~t.walmsley/runes.html

Essentially it is no more than what Slakko had up with a few cosmetic
alterations. I'm not sure whether it's going to be there permanently or
move to brain in the future. I'll see how reliable lineone turns out to be,
and also see if I continue having problems FTPing to brain. In the
mean-time though, that is where it is to be found.

I'll probably call an otzma day fairly soon as well.

MTM, RuneMaker.

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 19:55:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: fraH

Hear yea, hear yea, 

In my infinite harfy wisdom I am announcing that P3418 is harfy.

Mr. Tambo, harfmeister for a record equallintg fifth time (I'll overtake
you eventually Vynd, you mark my words!!)

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 21:44:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Acka: I'm Back!

I'm back...

.. I wish to change my status to Active and Non-Voting (just for now).

- -- Joe Java
Joe Java
Imperial Emporer of ImpNom #28 v2.0
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arena/impnom.html

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

Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 21:55:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Acka: Random Word Determination

No, obviously what you need to do is this:  generate random sequences of
letters and the first word that comes up in the sequence is it.  (Which
increases our chance of getting "a" as our official word...hmmm.)

Okay, get some kind of approximate distribution of words by length.  Then
pick a length at random, and then generate a random sequence of letters
of that length.  If it's not a word, repeat.

Also, the best way to pick a random item from a list, without knowing its
length, is to pick the first item; determine whether you take the second item
instead(1/2 chance); determine whether you take the third item instead(1/3
chance); and so on until you run out of list.  If you multiply all the
probabilities out it works out even.  :-)

I'm only sorry I don't get to do this myself.

- --
- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page:http://www.connect.ab.ca/~alfvaen/)
Current Album--Jon & Vangelis:Page of Life
Current Book--Chinua Achebe:Things Fall Apart
No excuse, really, just brain made of turnips.

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

End of ackanomic digest V3 #271
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