From: rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org (Felix S. Gallo)
Subject: Re: Scattered Pops in INL- I vote NO!
Followup-To: rec.games.netrek
Organization: Real/Time Communications
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 19:51:11 GMT

fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden) writes:
>paulsen@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Brian Paulsen) writes:
>>A pop clock is a modified version of xclock as far a I can tell.  I haven't
>>ever used a pop clock - instead, I found that xclock suits my purpose well.
>>I would assume that someone will make the pop clock source available via
>>FTP, soon.
>
>Gimme a break.
>
>main(){char foo[8];gets(foo);while (1){sleep(40);printf("%c",7);}}

nice printf("%c",7), Andy.  What's wrong with \007?

>This could potentially get out of whack, since sleep() doesn't guarantee to
>sleep for EXACTLY 40 seconds.

let's see --
main(){char x;fgets(stdin,x);for(;;){usleep(4000);printf("\007\n");}}

After all, gets() is unreliable, and I/O isn't guaranteed to get flushed
unless newlined, and usleep() is awesome.

The unsolvable problem we're about to have is that we're playing a game on
an "open platform" (X11) for which the source code is widely available and
for which binary editors exist and for which many people are willing to
cheat.

The advent of the X11 SHAPE extension means that people can overlay 
transparent windows on top of their netrek window.  At the simplest level,
this means that people can have phaser-range and det-range circles and 
heads-up pop timers.  At the grossest level which I would sink to if I
had as much free time as I used to have, such programs can basically act
exactly like an info-borg by doing horrid things like listening in on the
socket transaction and diddling with memory.  If someone clever at CMU
or Berkeley doesn't yet have a heads-up overlay which prints out, Terminator-
style, crucial information about cloakers and distances as well as vectors
of all torps and ships (and averaged vectors), I'm extremely disappointed.
It would even be possible, if not trivial, to provide an annotated list of
people locked on to you or to an important planet.  One could also simply
create a macroing facility by abusing X11's message stream, I suspect.

Fixing the pop timer is a step towards solving the symptoms of the problem.
What we really need is to cultivate in those players who we teach netrek
the axiom that netrek is no fun if people play outside the boundaries of
the game as it's given to us.

It's hard setting a threshold beyond which an attempt to do well at the
game is cheating.  Clearly, taking an action to reduce the enemy's ability
to play netrek (shooting them, running loadmaster on their machines,
unplugging their ethernet, having your girlfriend strip naked and perch
on their keyboard) is cheating.  Similarly, finding a better machine with
a functional mouse and a color monitor is not.

Sunscreamer's First Law of Morality: if someone brings up Sunscreamer's
First Law of Morality in relation to something you're doing, don't do
it any more.

There, that works.

>-- 
>fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
>[ Above opinions are mine, Amdahl has nothing to do with them, etc, etc. ]
-- 
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Felix Sebastian Gallo                              rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org
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Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek