HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jdymond@tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Jason Dymond)
Subject: Re: HELP - Ontology of Internet
Organization: University of Western Australia
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 13:15:46 GMT

mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. "will do TCP/IP for food" Ranum) writes:
: >Yes, but what about the interface between people and "knowledge
: >objects", or data structures ?
: 
: 	WTF is a "knowledge object"? It's hard to get particularly
: worked up about how I interface with the bloody thing if I've never
: seen one. The interface between people and data structures is entirely
: person-centric. What *is* data but another word for information. The
: data in and of itself is meaningless; it's when it's interpreted by
: an intelligence that it means something. Data is the raw material
: of communication.
:

Yes yes, but here we seem to have a fundamental difference of opinion. I
contend that the knowledge is still there, irrespective of the presence
of a suitably equipped "interpreter" . Surely the data of the genetic
code, to take the cybernetic view of the universe, is not meaningless
without an interpreting intelligence. It may *appear* meaningless, but
appearances, as we know, can be deceiving.


Jason.
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: slayer@acca.nmsu.edu (Slayer)
Subject: ALLANITE is RIP for good
Organization: New Mexico State University
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 19:43:00 GMT

 	Allanite is down for good and forever rip gone. May it now rest in peace.
 Any questions mail me at slayer@acca.nmsu.edu

Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: ghond@acca.nmsu.edu (ICE-9)
Subject: Re: HELP - Ontology of Internet
Organization: New Mexico State University
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 07:54:40 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.183835.802@decuac.dec.com>
mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. "will do TCP/IP for food" Ranum) writes:

> In short, when someone talks about "the net" they are describing
> the forest, as if it's something other than just a bunch of trees.

In short, when somone talks about "Mozart's Requiem", they are
describing the music, as if it's something other than just a bunch
of frequencies & amplitudes.

Why would you possibly expect romance from mjr?  ;)

-- stephen
-- 
stephen white			| the priests and the friars
ghond@sloth.nmsu.edu		| approach me in dread
				| because i still love you,
				| my love, and you're dead - s. o'connor
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: cdent@europa (Christopher Dent)
Subject: Re: HELP - Ontology of Internet
Reply-To: cdent@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 15:53:34 GMT

In article <1992Jul26.212845.29650@decuac.dec.com> mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com  
(Marcus J. "will do TCP/IP for food" Ranum) writes:
> >Where exactly do you conceive of the interchange of communication as
> >occurring on the net. By this I don't mean the physical location of
> >files etc on site hardware, but rather the notional location in terms of
> >the "space" accessed on the virtual network.
> 
> 	Nowhere. Communication only occurs when data is interpreted by
> an intelligence. In other words, when I post this, communication only
> occurs between you and I when you read it. Otherwise, I have simply
> transmitted some data - it could be line noise - which remains without
> meaning until given some. Fundamentally, computers and 'the net' don't
> care or comprehend what passes across them.
[Stuff deleted]

How unromantic. The net seems like a place. When thinking of the information I  
conceive of it as being "out there somewhere" and that somewhere is the net: a  
sort of bulbous gooey thing that floats around out of sight.



> 	Have we just undergone communication? Was it good for you? Do
> you want a cigaret?
> 
> mjr.

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Dent                        | cdent@indiana.edu
"It's not that it was so bad...   | access@indiana.edu
 ...just that it could have been  | Access MicroCenter 
 so good" - a country song        | Indiana University
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
Subject: Re: HELP - Ontology of Internet
From: amolitor@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Date: 30 Jul 92 06:05:32 EDT
 <1992Jul28.130640.12056@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> <1992Jul28.183835.802@decuac.dec.com> <1992Jul30.075440.16923@nmsu.edu>
Organization: Wesleyan University

In article <1992Jul30.075440.16923@nmsu.edu>,
	ghond@acca.nmsu.edu (ICE-9) writes:
> In article <1992Jul28.183835.802@decuac.dec.com>
> mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. "will do TCP/IP for food" Ranum) writes:
> 
>> In short, when someone talks about "the net" they are describing
>> the forest, as if it's something other than just a bunch of trees.
> 
> In short, when somone talks about "Mozart's Requiem", they are
> describing the music, as if it's something other than just a bunch
> of frequencies & amplitudes.

	Comparing "the net" to "Mozart's Requiem" is wildly amusing ;)
The people who admire "the net" as a spiffy new mode of communication,
and as "virtual reality" and so on are more like a someone watching two
trains collide at high speed, and bubbling about how great it is that
all those passengers are meeting one another so fast.

	"the net" is a bunch of protocols and services, some less broken
than others, that let data of various kinds get shipped around. People
have been using these services partly for social interaction. There is
nothing mystical or special about it -- it's just a mode of communication.
Did the telephone network transform humanity? Did the postal service? Is
either mystical or special? No, they're just a wads of equipment and
staff that, among other things, let people talk to other people.

	"the net" does and will do no more.

	Andrew

> -- stephen
From: mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. "will do TCP/IP for food" Ranum)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
Subject: Re: HELP - Ontology of Internet
Date: 28 Jul 92 06:23:20 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Washington ULTRIX Resource Center

>[...] the sumerians first started publishing papers on
>USENET - using mud tablets passed around from reader to reader.

	Note - this is the origin of the "sendbatch" command. Batching
tablets was considered valuable until the batch size grew to a point
where several news admins were crushed while running "rnews". The
ihave/sendme protocol dates from shortly after this incident. It is
also of historical significance to note that after those news servers
were crushed, the death of the net was predicted by several sages,
who were later added to the XI legion's kill files when the Romans
took over the management of the backbone.

mjr.
Organization: Johannes Kepler University Linz - Computing Center
Date: Thursday, 23 Jul 1992 10:37:26 CDT
From: <K111114@ALIJKU11.BITNET>
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
Subject:    new host

Hi!
Holy Mission has been moved to a new host.
Our new IP is: mud.edvz.uni-linz.ac.at at port 4242
Bye, Herp.
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. "will do TCP/IP for food" Ranum)
Subject: Re: HELP - Ontology of Internet
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Washington ULTRIX Resource Center
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 06:35:51 GMT

>Quantum networking!

	I realized that my posting sounded like more QM-meets-philosophy
poseur crud but in fact I think it's pretty reasonable. The dictionary
is pretty vague on "communicate" (to make known, to impart). Is there
communication in the absence of a listener?
	Arguably there are multiple levels of communications taking
place in this thing that we call the net:

	person to person
	host to host
	router to router
	process to process

	Which is the most important? I say the first, since it's for that
reason that all the rest are caused to exist.

	Fiat Lux.

mjr.
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. "will do TCP/IP for food" Ranum)
Subject: Re: HELP - Ontology of Internet
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Washington ULTRIX Resource Center
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 18:38:35 GMT

>So what then is the ontological status of what they *are* talking about?
>It seems self contradictory to say that there is nothing there except
>the physical components , data stored on physical media and such, then
>in the same breath, that "the internet is usually conceived of as
>something *other* than these. 

	That was my point. People often conceive of simple things as
larger units ("the net") rather than components because it is convenient,
and, frankly, some of them don't understand the darn thing enough to
even know what the components are.

	In short, when someone talks about "the net" they are describing
the forest, as if it's something other than just a bunch of trees.

mjr.
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: jdymond@tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Jason Dymond)
Subject: Re: HELP - Ontology of Internet
Organization: University of Western Australia
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 12:11:49 GMT

dali@hardy.u.washington.edu (Lance J. Jensen) writes:
: In article <1992Jul27.063551.6897@decuac.dec.com> mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. "will do TCP/IP for food" Ranum) writes:
: >is pretty vague on "communicate" (to make known, to impart). Is there
: >communication in the absence of a listener?
: >	Fiat Lux.
: >
: 
: 
: 	"If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it,
: 			does it make a sound?" -Old Proverb
: 
: 	I believe that something which doesn't reach a listener can't
: 	really be considered communication because it doesn't have an
: 	opportunity to make any difference in the listener's life. 


Perhaps I was a little vague in formulating the original question. It
might be better phrased as:

"What is the ontological status of the "virtual network" on which the
transfer of data occurs, and what is the ontological status of the
"knowledge objects" which reside thereon ?"

What I am getting at is the ontological status of the objects of Karl
Poppers "World 3".


	"Moreover, a book, or even a library, need not even have
	 been written by anybody: a series of books of logarithms,
	 for example, may be produced and printed by a computer.
	 It may be the best series of books of logarithms - it
	 may contain logarithms up to, say fifty decimal places.
	 It may be sent out to libraries, but it may be found too
	 cumbersome for use; at any rate, years may elapse before
	 anybody uses it; and many figures in it (which represent
	 mathematical theorems) may never be looked at as long as
	 men live on earth. Yet each of these figures contains
	 what I call "objective knowledge"; and the question of
	 whether or not I am entitled to call it by this name is
	 of no interest."

	Karl Popper "Knowledge: Subjective vs Objective"



Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: jdymond@tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Jason Dymond)
Subject: HELP - Ontology of Internet
Organization: University of Western Australia
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 03:35:15 GMT

I am working on the ontology of the internet in the philosophy dept.
here, and am interested in hearing from other net users re: the
following.

Where exactly do you conceive of the interchange of communication as
occurring on the net. By this I don't mean the physical location of
files etc on site hardware, but rather the notional location in terms of
the "space" accessed on the virtual network.

I know that this doesn't seem immediately appropriate to this newsgroup,
but it was suggested by a MUD player, and it does seem that those who do
play are perhaps more aware of the virtual spatial metaphor of
interaction with the computer than non players.

Thanx.

Jason.

Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc,reg.games.mud
From: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
Subject: Re: HELP - Ontology of Internet
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 18:44:06 GMT

In article <Bs3M7y.LBD@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca> jwtlai@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Jim W Lai) writes:
>Examples only can falsify a truth, not prove it.  But you should know that
>from Popper.  Now, look at it from an information theory viewpoint.  Given a
>string of seemingly random bits and a proper means of interpreting it, then we
>can extract meaningful data.  Applying it to a biological example: if given a
>proper decoding, I can decipher a Shakespearean sonnet from the positioning of
>a grove of trees.  Does not a grove of trees have semantic content?

I suggest that there is indeed semantic content, but the content is present in
the decoding scheme.  Given a coding scheme a priori, so that you were unable
to introduce content via your decoding scheme selection, you would find that no
more content is present in groves of trees than can be accounted for by chance
alone.
--
Hi! Ani mutacia shel virus .signature. Ha`atek oti letoch .signature shelcha!

Ken Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
     INTERNET: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: hawks@seq.uncwil.edu (part-time criminal)
Subject: internet usage
Summary: internet usage
Keywords: internet usage
Organization: Univ. of North Carolina @ Wilmington
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 17:20:31 GMT


Hi fellow mudders, 
  I wonder if anyone has any statistics on how much bandwidth actually playing
mud over the internet takes.  Does anyone have any comparison figures between
playing mud and actually downloading something using ftp?  How much do players
actually account for as traffic on the internet?  Is it substantial or nominal?
I am interested in hard figures if anybody has them.  Also anyone have any 
comparison figures on actual local system resources used while playing?  Are we
players using up valuable resources that could otherwise be better spent?  Are
we slowing the net down?  I keep getting harassed by anti-mudders and would like
to know if I am wrong to play?  Am I hurting someone else?  Or do they just want
to hurt me?  Please mail me any information you might have.  I can see potential
flames here, if I have said something bad please mail me ok?  Please do not
start a flame war I just need information to either help my case or for me to
see differently.  I see no harm in playing mud and would like information either
supporting me or information to help me see differently.

-- Dave (hawks@seq.uncwil.edu) 
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc,rec.games.mud.lp
From: bkdavis@eos.ncsu.edu (B K DAVIS)
Subject: Re: The Black Hole is back !!!
Originator: bkdavis@c00059-100lez.eos.ncsu.edu
Reply-To: bkdavis@eos.ncsu.edu (B K DAVIS)
Organization: North Carolina State University, Project Eos
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 07:23:10 GMT


He he he
Brebane Lord of Darkmages
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc,rec.games.mud.admin
From: D. "Maverick" Miller <dmmiller@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: Looks like Good-bye...
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 04:49:30 GMT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]


Buckeye the terrible speller is leaving the mud world.

NOT by his choice...he may even be back in a few weeks..

But for now he is losing net access.(due to loss of school account).

I am still reachable via ids.net message boards.

But I hope to have full net access with a few weeks.

Just to let everyone in the big world of lpMuds know...

Buckeye loves lpMUDs and hopes to be back soon!

For now...

GOOD-BYE.


/* Buckeye's Sig file. */

inherit "std/disclaimer";
#define WIFE "Kim@TMI|UnderDark|Muddog";

void create() {

     set_short("Buckeye");
     set_long("miller.795@osu.edu");
     set_living_name("Maverick");
     set_level("God");
     /* Well a a few places at least */
     call_out("telnet",0);
     }

telnet(string str){
     if(str = "TMI"){ address = "dogstar.colorado.edu";
             port = "5555";  return 1; }
     else
     if(str = "UnderDark") { address = "152.1.43.9";
             port = "4269";  return 1; }
     else
     if(str = "Scattered Realms") { address = "not released yet";
            port = "comming soon"; return 1; }
     else
        {  write("The Mud you have attempted to reach is not worth the
        effort\n");   return 0;
     }
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: dali@hardy.u.washington.edu (Lance J. Jensen)
Subject: Re: HELP - Ontology of Internet
Organization: Byte Me Computing -=Byte Me=-
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 08:35:41 GMT

In article <1992Jul27.063551.6897@decuac.dec.com> mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. "will do TCP/IP for food" Ranum) writes:
>is pretty vague on "communicate" (to make known, to impart). Is there
>communication in the absence of a listener?
>	Fiat Lux.
>


	"If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it,
			does it make a sound?" -Old Proverb

	I believe that something which doesn't reach a listener can't
	really be considered communication because it doesn't have an
	opportunity to make any difference in the listener's life. Of
	course, it could make a differnce if something is _NOT_ read
	also... Communication exists only if: It is transmitted (i.e.
	spoken, sent by E-mail, etc) and is also recieved (i.e. heard
	read, seen, etc). Of course, the listener or sender need not 
	be human, and human communication is not necesarily the most
	important kind. Even thinking can be considered communictaion
	in a way, YOU are communicating with YOURSELF, making decisions
	all the time. This may infact be the most important communique
	of all. For net purposes you can't look into all the vague
	ideas like this, but I think this might broaden the topic for
	you a little.

>>-Poe-> Chris.
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: jwtlai@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Jim W Lai)
Subject: Re: HELP - Ontology of Internet
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 12:19:10 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.045422.13845@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> jdymond@tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Jason Dymond) writes:
>fortony@sonne.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>: Popper is unfortunately spouting what I consider to be crap here.
>: Epistemologically speaking, the books he describes contain almost
>: nothing -- if a zulu native picks them up, he might find the glyphs
>: to be aesthetically pleasing, but he is gaining no knowledge.
>: Knowledge requires a knower familiar with the context.
>
>To use Poppers biological example, you are saying that a wasps nest is
>no longer a wasps nest after the wasps have left it, and if it is never
>again inhabited by wasps. I would suggest that you would still call such
>a thing a wasps nest. Consider also, a long dead language - linear A or
>linear B - do you think that it has no semantic content just because no
>one alive is able to understand it. What happens when it is "cracked",
>and we have access to the content ?

Examples only can falsify a truth, not prove it.  But you should know that
from Popper.  Now, look at it from an information theory viewpoint.  Given a
string of seemingly random bits and a proper means of interpreting it, then we
can extract meaningful data.  Applying it to a biological example: if given a
proper decoding, I can decipher a Shakespearean sonnet from the positioning of
a grove of trees.  Does not a grove of trees have semantic content?
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: umsmigi0@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Trevor Allan Smigiel)
Subject: ?Great? idea/concept.  Richie Rich MUD!
Summary: A MUD Based on the Richie Rich comics.
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 08:48:41 GMT

Sure, it would be a great idea.  Everyone is a kid running around in Richie
Rich's estates.  Richie has a gazillion playhouses(castles) to play in.
Parents(Wizards) can build new playhouses or whatever.
I think its a wonderful idea, has anyone done it yet, or going to do it?

Trevor

Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. "will do TCP/IP for food" Ranum)
Subject: Re: HELP - Ontology of Internet
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Washington ULTRIX Resource Center
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 06:06:41 GMT

>Yes, but what about the interface between people and "knowledge
>objects", or data structures ?

	WTF is a "knowledge object"? It's hard to get particularly
worked up about how I interface with the bloody thing if I've never
seen one. The interface between people and data structures is entirely
person-centric. What *is* data but another word for information. The
data in and of itself is meaningless; it's when it's interpreted by
an intelligence that it means something. Data is the raw material
of communication.

>Admittedly the person to person
>communication could be dismissed as being just like any other form of
>person to person interchange,

	The tautologies can all be dismissed as tautologies - what is
your ever-so-subtle point?

>however I don't think that the interaction
>between people and data is the same here as it is say in a physical
>library.

	Why not? Because it's silicon rather than paper? It serves
the same purpose and is processed by the mind the same way. If you
are trying to argue that somehow "the net" is inherently different
from any other big chunk of storage you've got a long way to go.
If, for example, it *were* so amazingly different, we'd likely have
a different way of accessing it - sorry - it's still just english
words on a page, with some occasional pictures.

	You can cloak the net in all the fancy verbiage you like
but it's nothing new under the sun. Faster, maybe a little weird,
but the fact that people are able to assimilate it and interact
with it so easily argues against it being a significant departure
from all the other forms of information exchange that we've been
using since the sumerians first started publishing papers on
USENET - using mud tablets passed around from reader to reader.

mjr.
Xref: sparky rec.games.mud.misc:343 rec.games.mud:8043 rec.games.mud.tiny:124
From: Edward.L.Wallace@dartmouth.edu (Edward L. Wallace)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc,rec.games.mud,rec.games.mud.tiny
Subject: Re: Powermongering God/desses and Wizard/Immortals
Date: 21 Jul 92 13:37:51 GMT
 <1992Jul17.221925.23716@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> 
 <1992Jul18.125644.16946@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu> 
 <1992Jul19.214948.5133@math.okstate.edu> 
 <YeOXnHi00aw_QEkmsh@andrew.cmu.edu>  <1992Jul21.032951.7327@math.oksa
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

In article <1992Jul21.032951.7327@math.okstate.edu>
kruger@math.okstate.edu (Valentine) writes:

> 	Wait a second. I control the account for both Valdemar and
> TinyKrynn, yet neither place am I god. Now, is this just a rarity?
> 	Maybe things are just really different on muds as opposed
> to mushes? I mean, besides the obvious differences, is the power
> structure a lot different? Most mushes I'm on don't have a god
> that's truly "in charge" no matter what, since all the wizzes usually
> know the god password. Then again, most of the mushes I'm on were
> started by friends, and everyone who is a wiz is known to be a

I control the account where DragonsFire is currently run.  However we
do not use a 'God' account.  I am the 'first among equals' currently
more because I have a relatively free summer and can access the MUSE
several hours each day, and two of our five directors are w/o summer
access.

There is a 'God' character of course - but any director who wants the
password can have it, and use it - but there isn't a single reason to
use the character, other than to install a new director.  We do not
have a director who fulfills the role of a 'God' either.  Instead, all
major policy decisions are made via consensus. That is, if it isn't
unanimous, then it isn't going to happen.  This means that, at worst it
takes some time to persuade one person who's holding out.  At best it
ensures lively discussion (or should) of any policy before it is
implemented.

I also should state that when setting up a MUSE or a MUSH (or similar
non-'MUD' M*) that you are given the option of choosing whom will be in
power -- it is advisable therefore to choose people that you respect
and work well with.  This doesn't necessarily mean five of your closest
friends.

On another thread -- power abuse by any member of DragonsFire is
>extremely< discouraged and highly frowned upon.  This is a tame and polite way of saying that if I'm not in a REALLY good mood when I hear about a blatant abuse you better assume that someone is going to be @nuked. Powers are a privelege, NOT a right.
And when you don't exhibit responsible and intelligent use of them they
should be removed. period.

But then, I'm more than averagely anal about powers and I know it.

Falryx @ just about wherever
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc