From: lwl@hula.seas.upenn.edu (Lydia Leong)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pern
Subject: PernMUSH: A log, of sorts (The Nothing)
Date: 18 Nov 92 11:14:37 GMT
Organization: Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow

In early December of last year, PernMUSH was running the beta version
of TinyMUSH 2.0.  We were having a problems with attributes vanishing
off objects completely -- all strings (including the name) would simply 
be wiped from the object, and disappear without a trace.

This bug was christened "The Nothing" by the players of PernMUSH. For
several weeks the wizards endured incredible amounts of whining about
the problem, whose exact cause was never determined. Finally, one
afternoon, a large crowd of players at #0 badgered me (Amberyl) to the
point where I finally gave up trying to explain what was going on, and
decided to try instead for a Harper ballad.

I'm posting this by request -- I no longer have a complete log, so this
is just the "ballad" itself. I came up with the thing on the spur of the
moment and saved it as a macro file, so it's not exactly a polished piece
of work. For this post, I've edited the macro file into a somewhat more
presentable format.

Enjoy the memories.  :)

-----
Amberyl lowers her voice and says in hushed tones:

Long long ago, in a Hold far far away, a Wise Man was born.
Proclaimed the Wise Man, "One day the Devourer will come and punish Pernies
  for building objects with overly long attributes and PDA in public.""
And, lo, the day came, when a Wise Wizard logged on, and he saw that his DTU
  was no more.
And the people wailed.
They cried out to the God, and the God in his wisdom said:
"DEAL WITH IT."
And there was great suffering in the land.

From a faraway land came another wise man, and looked he at at the code.
Proclaimed the wise man, "The hash table is corrupted!"
And the people cried out to the wizards,
"Where did my Big Fluffy Bed go?"
And the wizards said, 
"We can't do @finds; they freeze the game for twenty minutes."

But the wise man left a clue -
"One day will arise a Champion, who will tread through the land of Treacherous
  Code, and rip out the hash code and replace it!"
And the people rejoiced.
But behold ye, until the day that such a Champion arrives, thou shalt be
  subject to having thy attributes chomped, to feed the endless appetite of
  the Devourer. Just be glad he hasn't demanded thy first-born child (yet).
And the wrath of the Devourer descended upon the hapless Pernies, and
  devastation swept through the database.

The prophets warned the people to heed the words of the Wizards, and
  @decompile their objects to logfiles, that they might have Insurance lest
  their objects be sacrificied to the gaping maw of the ever-hungry Nothing.
But ye who are patient shall be rewarded, for somewhere there lurk Missing
  Attributes, in a nirvana all their own.
The day shall come when the nuked are restored, and the kidnapped pointers
  ransomed, and the database uncorrupted!
And ye shall send the Champion many baskets of flowers and large sums of cash,
  before he collapses to get some sleep.
And the people muttered, but the Wizards commanded, "DEAL."

Amberyl awaits the Arrival of the Champion, and the new Unter Hash Code. :)
-----

Historical footnote:  Camac replaced the original MUSH database layer
  with a db layer from UnterMUD, and is the Champion referred to above.

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------\
|  Lydia Leong / Amberyl  |  The few. The proud.       |  lwl@csa.bu.edu      |
|  lwl@seas.upenn.edu     |  The certifiably insane.   |  lwl@elof.iit.edu    |
|  lwl@imsasun.imsa.edu   |  The wizards of PernMUSH.  |  128.2.250.30 4201   |
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