From: frechett@spot.Colorado.EDU (-=Runaway Daemon=-)
Newsgroups: alt.irc
Subject: Re: Useless Bots
Date: 27 Jul 92 20:29:44 GMT
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder

In article <1992Jul26.035708.8997@news.cs.brandeis.edu> oren@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Oren Kastner) writes:

>Wowowo, hold on a minute.  When you run a server it is NO business of yours
>how many users you have on the server and what/who they are -- UNLESS they

Now here you've finally crossed the line you were treading on and are now 
swimming in a pool of utter bullshit.  A server admin has EVERY right to 
decide who uses his server and for what purpose.  The users of irc do not pay
for the privledge.  As cruel as it sounds they have no RIGHT to do anything.
This doesn't mean I can't be courtious but it also don't mean that one
has to extend any special privledges.  I don't get paid to run my server.  It
has support from my admin but they, like me, wouldn't care to know that a 
significant chunk of system resources is being used to support a bunch of 
automatons.  

>cause problems (like harassment).  Other than THAT, if you see someone called
>``BuckTooth'', why should it make a difference to you if that is a regular
>user or a bot (program)?  You are there to provide and manage a service, NOT
>to ``select'' who is fit to be honored by your approval.  If you decide that

Wrong again.  I do provide a service, but I don't provide a service guaranteed
you by some constitutional right (pick the approriate document if from
another country).  

>your server can't handle the ``load'' then maybe you should think about
>restricting hosts from which you will accept connections rather than kicking
>of users you think are bots who are just a waste or your time and resources.

This has little to do with whether the machine can handle the load or not.  
It's a matter of wastefulness.  Just because the server can handle the load
doesn't mean that it should all the time.  And that's what bots are: A constant
load on the system all the time.   Even when someone writes an arguably useful 
service it ends up being based on the same sloppy, inefficient ircII script 
code of other people such as Baloobear and noone learns a thing.  I remember 
when irc clients didn't have ON and I wrote a bot in TinyTalk script code.  It 
was amusing and I learned something.  But now people don't learn shit.  I've 
run into so many people who write stuff based on a pattern but with 
absolute know idea of why they do what they do.  "Well BalooBear's script
does this, but when I try to do this, it doesn't work." Puke.
I might find bots less objectionable if people put some creativity or humor
into them or at least learned what efficiency meant.  How to optimize 
some action.  How to avoid having 5 bots on a channel all op someone at the 
same time.  Like you need those 5 damn bots in the first place.

Same thing happens with perl robots to some extent as there is some
handy skeleton code around for people to bash on with no learning or
understanding involved.  

BTW.. if you were to ask me if we needed NickServ, or NoteServ, I'd say they
could go away and it wouldn't bother me in the slightest.

	ian
Newsgroups: alt.irc