Subject: ackanomic Digest V4 #159
From: [email-masked]
To: ackanomic digest users <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 00:00 EDT

ackanomic Digest	Thursday, June 17 1999	Volume: 04  Issue: 159

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From: Mueller <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Acreage for a summer home.
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 04:54:42 -0400 (EDT)

I go to the Town.

I buy the following kaas:

N1W3, N1W2, N1W1

N0W3, N0W2, N0W1

S1W3, S1W2, S1W1

Each is A$20 for A$180 total.

Then I go back to the City and home.

Studge

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From: Matt Miller <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Studge's Purchase - denied?
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 11:24:13 -0400 (EDT)

The rules require that he mentions the cooridinates of the Kaas he is
purchasing.  However, the coordinate system is undefined.  I challenge
Studge's purchase on the basis that it is not unambiguously specified.

Yes, I'm just doing this because I know I'm going to have to harf more
when the rules are fixed.

IB

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From: "Gavin Logan" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Phoebe (Robin Hood)
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 15:05:14 -0400 (EDT)

rufus failed to post Phoebe's wisdom.
Robin Hood has found Phoebe's matchbox.

King Felix
(OiCoRT)

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From: "Gavin Logan" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: did we remember the pasta?
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 15:05:15 -0400 (EDT)

I change my state to voting. I place myself on the mentor list.

King Felix

p.s. speaker like harfing will be accomplished asap.

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From: "Euphrates" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Stuff
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 16:00:15 -0400 (EDT)

Neil Young is Canadian.

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From: "James McGregor" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Euphrates
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 16:30:53 -0400 (EDT)

From: "Euphrates" <[email-masked]>
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 16:00:15 -0400 (EDT)

Who is this strange Euphrates. There is no such Ackan. This invader must be found and killed before he does any damage. Who knows what devious plans he has. He may steal all our plates.

Pure Haste

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From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: CFCJs 179/180
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 18:23:41 -0400 (EDT)

Towsner wrote:
> 
>         On February 28th, I reappealed CFCJs 179 and 180 to the full
> Supreme Court.  We have still not received a ruling.  This situation is
> absurd.  There is no reason for this delay, and I ask the Court to promptly
> reach and publish a decision.

Hmm, I'd forgotten about them. I know I am on the supreme court but
cannot remember who else is. Anyone?

Laa Laa, Justice.

-- 
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: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Stripe
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 18:23:43 -0400 (EDT)

According to my sources the acceptance of P4147 caused /dev/joe to reach
a blue cross rank of 130 and so it is with great pleasure that I award
em a new silver stripe.

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: "Gavin Logan" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Stuff
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 18:25:10 -0400 (EDT)

>Neil Young is Canadian.

Neil Young is... oh b*gg*r it.

King Felix
(caught in a temporal dampening field)

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

From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: CFCJs 179/180
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 18:27:43 -0400 (EDT)

>Hmm, I'd forgotten about them. I know I am on the supreme court but
>cannot remember who else is. Anyone?

	JT, /dev/joe, Slakko, K2

--
-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: "Gavin Logan" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Educational Hearing
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 18:58:30 -0400 (EDT)

As Dean I call an educational hearing on the following thesis authored by
else...if. Valid responses are "Burn the Heretic!" and "Students who THINK?
What will they come up with next...".

Reply to vote.

King Felix
(Dean)

***
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)

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

From: "Gavin Logan" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: ignore this message
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 18:58:30 -0400 (EDT)

Blest Lax Monk Pal and Pure Haste have jointly found treasure 202 containing
such goodies as "the pasta", "jam" and "the pixies". All their plates are
now taken away. The map to this treasure was:

This treasure shall be found by the first two people to move faster than the
author of this map.

I frink oil. I remark on how fast my arteries are moving now.

King Felix
(right - that's enough silliness)

p.s. did I say pasta?

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

From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: CFCJs 179/180
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 23:23:05 -0400 (EDT)

On Thu, 17 Jun 1999, Tom Walmsley wrote:
> >         On February 28th, I reappealed CFCJs 179 and 180 to the full
> > Supreme Court.  We have still not received a ruling.  This situation is
> > absurd.  There is no reason for this delay, and I ask the Court to promptly
> > reach and publish a decision.
> 
> Hmm, I'd forgotten about them. I know I am on the supreme court but
> cannot remember who else is. Anyone?
> 
> Laa Laa, Justice.

I believe the members of the SC are myself, /dev/joe, Laa Laa, K 2, and
Slakko.

--Dragon Mage

-- 
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ 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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End of ackanomic Digest V4 #159
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