From: escott@csuvax1.csu.murdoch.edu.au (Evan Scott)
Subject: Re: Sarcasm and Ember
Organization: Murdoch University
Date: 29 Aug 92 14:14:12 GMT

jlw@HEBREW.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (James Waldrop) writes:

>escott@csuvax1.csu.murdoch.edu.au (Evan Scott) writes:
>>beeman@cats.ucsc.edu (Adam Beeman) writes:
...
>Oh please.  As people have said, Buddha was being sarcastic.  No one
>has claimed that MudOS is the font of all wisdom, rather we've explained
>what MudOS will do.
Sulam, sulam, this is why I put the first statement in.  I did realize
that this was meant to be sarcastic (and presumably sarcasm being
a form of humour, was meant to amuse us) BUT all the folx from TMI
_have_ consistently played the one-upmanship game as good as the
next guy.  So I felt that it was somewhat ironic that in an attempt
to be funny, Buddha was (it seemed to me) summing up what you people
have been saying since the inception of the driver project.

>  Is it "oxymoronical self-aggrandizing foolishness"
>to explain in which ways MudOS is different from the other LP drivers
>out there?  
No, this statement was applicable to the line 'years ahead of its time'
and I am happy to defend my assessment word by word if you like.

>I'm not really sure what "ivory tower" we're speaking from
>either.
Hehehe.  Those looking down from its lofty heights rarely realize they've
climbed their ivory tower until they fall off.  The ivory tower syndrome
is where a person in doing research/development/management lose contact 
with the normal everyday people for whom all the work was originally 
being done.
I thought it was an apt parallel, but then I'm a pretentious bastard
aren't I sulam?

>TMI can't really be blamed for the malformed assumptions you
>make about its goals.
I made no comments on TMI's goals (though I _was_ present at both
the inception of the Mudlib project as well as the driver project and I
remember the _original_ goals stated at the time, though it seems those
goals have changed considerably).  I made comments about TMI's attitudes
and methods in achieving their goals.

[ ... my description of what I believe are the two motivations behind
 sharing ideas =in general= ... ]

>I think the person who sits back and says "I've done this, but if I tell you
>how then you'll go out and do it yourself, and I won't get credit for it,
>so instead I'll just ridicule your efforts while refusing to discuss mine",
>is pretty firmly in camp A.  TMI, on the other hand, distributes its driver
>publicly, and allows online access to the people who write that driver, so
>that bug reports and suggestions for improvement are more easily discussed.
>Like anyone, if our code is used directly, we'd appreciate a header saying
>so, but ideas are dealt with in a fairly open manner.  I think this places
>us smack in the middle of camp B.
Sorry sulam, you missed the point.  In this debate _all_ that I have seen
are egos doing battle.  It is not a pleasant sight.

[... my bits deleted ...]
>If you had actually come to us saying "I have this suggestion", and we
>had refused to listen to you, perhaps your opinion would be justified.
Surprisingly enough Sulam, Pinkfish and I put forward a joint initial
proposal for ideas to incorporate into the driver at the very start ...
as I recall it got a vague reply from you, and then dropped into
obscurity never to be mentioned again.  I hate to bring PF into this
ugly debate without his permission, but I do recall him in some other
message recently on this very newsgroup saying something like
'TMI's 'mud driver development mailing list' had all of one message',
as well as expressing disappointment generally with the receptiveness
of TMI to suggestions.  As I recall the first development done on the
driver was done unilaterally by one person with little consultation or
discussion among interested parties.

>As it is, though, you really don't know what your talking about.
Thank you.

[... after saying that the major work was not done by a 'select' few ...]
>As for other cliques on rgm.lp,
>the only one I can identify is the Geoff/Mike gang.
Lets not mention the Jacob Hallen/Joerne Renecker claws to throat war shall we?
Unfortunately bitterness and flames seem to be all too common in the Mud
Personality world.

[... me suggesting that drivers should differentiate on lines of 
   philosophy/ideology rather than implementations and personalities ...]
>You're implying that this isn't happening.  Have you ever talked to me
>about the MudOS driver, or TMI in general?
Mostly i've been in the background ... looking over other peoples shoulders
(literally ... great shortage of logging in possibilities at times for me ;(
and hearing Pinkfish's & others comments ... I have talked with you briefly
a few times, but usually in unusual circumstances)

>I do know that I've had such talks with Tintin, Pinkfish,
>Tenghil, and Zellski.
You name drop with the best of them.

>My views with respect to the long term goals of MudOS
>and TMI have been stated on several different occasions, and even logged at
>a few meetings we've had.  The goals of the CD team have also been pretty
>clearly expressed.  Could it be that you weren't there to hear, or weren't
>listening?
I have been around, and I have been listening (although I must admit
I did miss about 4 months while I did not have net access).
CD's goals have been very clearly expressed, but these goals are almost
totally in the mudlib ... their driver mods have been aimed at optimisations
to increase speed & stability.  It seems that especially here where the
goals are simple and clear cut, the battle of egos surfaces most profoundly
with quite bitter debates about who has the best solution.

TMI's goals have always been very vague to me - mostly about easily
broadening platform bases and mudlib support.  I have always thought
that CD was much more down to earth ... simply because they started
with the premise of a working, playable mud.  All their efforts have
gone into improving the game play, and I heartily applaud them for this.

I don't really want to flame TMI, other than to say that it has not
lived up to its promises of being a place of communication and learning.
With the fragmentation of drivers and mudlibs, TMI seems to have lost
its original purpose. This was to facilitate training people in the arts
of developing virtual realities in a nice standard way so that they could
be let loose on the Mud world at large with a good chance of doing something
productive.  Since then, instead of rising to the challenge to generalize
and specialize to meet the tide of new muds (generalize to cover the concepts
found across muds, and specialize in the major versions around for finishing
touches), they created a new reason for existence  - being their own mudlib,
and their own driver.  In doing so (as far as I was able to tell) they
went basically with the people who were forceful enough to get their
pieces of code into the driver.  This is not surprising, and is the way
most program project development IS done.  Programmers as a general
concept are a touchy individualistic lot.  But to claim that it was all done
in a spirit of openness and receptiveness cries false.
[ did I say I didn't really want to flame tmi?  Well I lied. ]

Iggle wop, I think I'll go and drown now.
Evan the now very depressed.