Subject: ackanomic Digest V4 #158
From: [email-masked]
To: ackanomic digest users <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 00:00 EDT

ackanomic Digest	Wednesday, June 16 1999	Volume: 04  Issue: 158

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Subject: Acka: ACKA
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 00:14:14 -0400 (EDT)

I hereby announce the formation of the Institution "All Canadians're
Kind & Amiable", with membership of Alfvaen, K 2, and ThinMan.  I might
as well give it a Spherical Rator as well.

--
--Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.connect.ab.ca/~alfvaen/ )
Current Album--Firesign Theatre:How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All
Current Book--Thomas Pynchon:The Crying of Lot 49
If you meet this sentence on the board, erase it.

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Subject: Re: Acka: ACKA
From: Joseph DeVincentis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 01:09:14 -0400 (EDT)

Aaron V. Humphrey wrote:
> 
> 
> I hereby announce the formation of the Institution "All Canadians're
> Kind & Amiable", with membership of Alfvaen, K 2, and ThinMan.  I might
> as well give it a Spherical Rator as well.

I have added this sphere to the bot, calling it ackna for short
to differentiate it from the Anti-Canada Kamikaze Alliance which
was already acka.

Here are the existing spheres, now:

abbr.  full name              members
-----  --------------------   ---------------------------------------------
hypno  Hypnotist of Ladies    /dev/joe, Dragon Mage, Slakko
tocpe  Tocpe                  IdiotBoy, rufus, else...if, Niccolo Flychuck
wow    Wombles of Wibbledon   Laa Laa, Blest Lax Monk Pal, rice, King Felix
acka   Anti-Canada Kamikaze   Ai! Pedrito!, Studge, 404 Not Found
         Alliance
ackna  All Canadians're       Alfvaen, K 2, ThinMan
         Kind & Amiable

Note: as far as I can tell, nothing automatically removed else...if from
Tocpe while he was On Ice, so he is still a member of Tocpe.

/dev/joe

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From: Gabe Drummond-Cole <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Empty COTC (attn Slakko)
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 03:36:54 -0400 (EDT)

r-attila the farce has gone on ice.

I call for an election/appointment/whatever for COTC.

Slakko is both Count Tabula and Speaker (in Acting Capacity)

-- Ai! Pedrito!
DeeJay * Wrangler

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

From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Empty COTC (attn Slakko)
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 09:48:02 -0400 (EDT)

Gabe Drummond-Cole wrote:
> 
> r-attila the farce has gone on ice.
> 
> I call for an election/appointment/whatever for COTC.
> 
> Slakko is both Count Tabula and Speaker (in Acting Capacity)

He is not, however, the president. I announce the start of a nomination
for clerk of the court. You have three days in which to reply to this
message and nominate.

Laa Laa, President.

-- 
Tom "I am not a walrus" Walmsley. mailto:[email-masked]
http://website.lineone.net/~t.walmsley/index.html ICQ: 2925739
"Among wizards?" said Ridcully. "Mister Stibbons, unusual behaviour is
perfectly ordinary for wizards." - Terry Pratchet, The Last Continent

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

From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Student
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 10:27:44 -0400 (EDT)

	I go to the university.  I pay the SHF to become a student of History.

--
-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

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

From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Joint Frames of Reference in Inter Nomic Relations
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 11:12:59 -0400 (EDT)

The following is submitted to complete a Bachelors of Arts degree in
Inter Nomic Relations.

Joint Frames of Reference in Inter Nomic Relations

by else...if

	A Frame of Reference, for the purposes of this paper, is a definition
of a number of entities.  A Nomic defines a Frame of Reference, since
it defines the players and other items created in its rules.  Under
normal circumstances, Frames of Reference are totally
independant--Agora does not recognize anything that exists within
Ackanomic.  Frames of Reference also exist in the real world, for
instance within the Frame of American law, British contracts don't
exist without specific provisions within that Frame to recognize
British entities.

	Those who witnessed the collapse of Internomic(1) recall that it was
caused (in part) by a dispute over the identity of the Agoran liaison. 
Without going into the details, Agora claimed that one player was the
Agoran liaison, while Internomic denied that it had been legally
changed.  Another near scam earlier in Internomic's history was when
one person created a number of nomics in which e was the sole player,
but with the same names as the members of Internomic, and then claimed
they were the real members.  Both issues had to do with Joint Frames of
Reference.

	Unlike a typical nomic, Internomic had to do more than just define a
Frame of Reference and things to exist in it.  It had to interact with
other Nomics, and other Frames.  This required agreement between the
two nomics on enough information to allow communication.  Both nomics
had to agree on the other's existance (and which nomic named Agora was
the Agora being communicated with), and on a method of contact.  In
order to do this, a Joint Frame of Reference was established.  A Joint
Frame is like an airlock between Frames; it enabled communication
between two Frames of Reference by enabling each to define a minimum of
common terms, but enough to communicate.  As long as the Joint Frame
remained Joint, there was no problem.  The problems arose when the two
nomics creating the Joint Frame disagreed; in other words, the Joint
Frame collapsed.

	The Internomic method of creating a Joint Frame(2) is slightly
different than the one used in the Inter-Nomic Treaty Organization(3),
and the difference merits notice.  Internomic created the Joint Frame
by defining a few key terms (for instance, Liaison), a few methods for
operating on them (like changing Liaisons) and let each nomic
participating "plug in" to the Joint Frame by defining the Joint
pieces.  This could be called the Shallow method.  The important factor
is that there is a specific protocol for communication of operations:
it is not enough for Agora to change Ambassador, it must also go
through a process for Internomic to recognize the change.  INTO, by
contrast, recognized only nouns and operations on each other directly,
not operations on the Joint nouns.  A nomic would define its liaison
and a few other terms, but instead of defining operations, INTO would
determine things not by carefully regulated actions, but by inspecting
the nomic's gamestate.  This could be called the Deep method.  Both
methods are problematic.  The Shallow method does not allow for unusual
situations or nomics which need more operations.  If one nomic is
unable to communicate to the other what happened, the Frame may need to
be fixed legislatively.  While these problems make a Shallow Joint
Frame difficult to create stably, a perfect (or near-perfect) Joint
Frame is probably possible, with sufficiently many and flexible
operations to allow for any situations a participant might encounter. 
Deep Joint Frames are easier to create (just define the nomic as "the
one whose rules were the first to be located at <<address>"), but lack
a useful property of Shallow Frames--they pass on uncertainties.  If a
nomic has internal problems (a thread split, the need to undo something
which occured two months ago), a Shallow Joint Frame does not "spread"
that.  A nomic which communicates through a Shallow Frame doesn't care,
because either actions did or did not occur under the Joint Frames
definitions (the old liaison did or did not send a message saying that
the liaison has changed).  A Deep Frame spreads the uncertainty: the
other nomic has to look at the game state of the troubled nomic, and
would, for instance, be split by a thread split.  Note that a clause
such as "the liaison may only cast a vote in accordance with the rules
of the nomic they represent" "deepens" the Frame, since it requires
inspection, and could carry thread splits.  (This means that Joint
Frames are technically more or less Deep, instead of being one or the
other.)

	To recap, a Shallow Frame protects the nomic on the other side from
problems, but risks breaking the Joint Frame, while a Deep Frame
carries the problems over, but keeps the two nomics in sync.

	One other term is important.  A Frame of Reference can be Parent to
another Frame of Reference.  This means that the Child is defined under
the terms of the Parent.  This is immensly important because a child
Frame is actually a subset of the Parent Frame, and therefore any
disputes defer to the Parent Frame, making it impossible for the Frame
to break.  Technically this is a Joint Frame so Deep that it "swallows"
the Child Frame.  As an example, the Universe is the Parent (or an
ancestor) of every nomic.  When a nomic refers to a web address, it is
using the Parent Frame.  Earlier, when I suggested that a nomic could
refer to another one by defining it as "the one whose rules were the
first to be located at <<address>", I was suggesting that the nomic
refer unambiguously to another nomic by using the Parent Frame to
"resolve" the references for it.  In fact, Inter Frame connections are
impossible unless the two Frames share a Parent at some point
(something impossible to avoid with current technology).

	The fundemental problem in Inter Nomic relations has to do with the
problems inherent to Joint Frames of Reference.  I will assume for this
discussion that a Joint Frame is either Deep or Shallow; any Joint
Frame can be broken up into a set of Frames, each of which is either
Deep or Shallow.  For instance, between Internomic and Ackanomic,
liaisons were controlled by a Shallow frame, while voting was
controlled by a Deep frame (since it required inspection).

	If, for instance, two nomics exchange entities, and one of them later
realizes that the trade was invalid, but the other has a pragmatism
clause, problems will ensue.  If the Frame is Shallow, the nomics will
disagree on whether the trade took place, and the Shallow Frame breaks,
since the two nomics can no longer agree on the state of the Joint
objects.  If the Frame is Deep, the exact wording of the Joint Frame
determines what happens, but at the cost of sovereignty.

	In effect, a Shallow Frame acts like a fragile plug.  It allows things
to be communicated, and if pressure is put on it, it breaks.  A Deep
Frame is more like a door: anything can go in or out, including
instability.

	Understanding the interactions of Frames can help to create more
stable Joint Frames.  Part of the problem in Internomic was that its
law held that the new Ambassador was also the new liaison.  Agora
treated the Joint Frame as though it were Deep; if its laws had
acknowledged that the Frame was Shallow the problem might have been
more easily dealt with.

(1) OFF: Ambassador's Report thread, [email-masked] (Sept.
1998)

(2) Rules of Internomic

(3) Rule 17-1, _The Rules of Ackanomic_ ed. 4189, (Ackanomic Printing
Guild:1999)

-- 

-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

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

From: Thierry Joffrain <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: MTG*: *ping*
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 12:11:53 -0400 (EDT)

Today is Wednesday, the 16th day of June, and the Machine That Goes *ping*
Has Gone *ping* today. Since I have been scholar, the Machine has gone
*ping* 9 times.

CnH

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

Subject: Acka: dotted lines
From: Joseph DeVincentis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 20:18:32 -0400 (EDT)

I sign on the dotted line.

/dev/joe

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End of ackanomic Digest V4 #158
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