HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bob@werple.apana.org.au (Bob Blanchett)
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
Subject: uniform changes to judge
Date: 24 Nov 1992 16:54:20 +1100
Organization: Werple, Public Access *NIX, Oz
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: werple.apana.org.au

Now that Ken Lowe has bowed out I would like to start some 
discussion regarding what may happen as a result of his absence.

As Ken was both the admin and the creator of the judge in the 
US, he was perfectly entitled to make changes to the source 
and in fact, it appears that the Durban judge and my home judge
in Perth (there's lotsa openings come on down, the weather's great!)
mirrored the changes made by him and dutifully upgraded.
                            
Now that Ken has left us, how is this consistency to be maintained?
                                                        
While the judge admins are perfectly entitled to make changes as they
wish, I feel that haphazard, arbitrary changes which are not uniform
across all judge sites will lead to the situation where variants of
the same name are not in fact the same variant, due to minor changes
to a map file or to source code.

This consistency of rules across sites has allowed truly global net
diplomacy to flourish, it would be a tragedy if each judge was 
to become an island simply because of these arbitrary changes.

We have all enjoyed facing off far-flung opponents and consistency
across sites is a factor that positively encouraged this.

A dip player in france should be able to sign on to any of the 
judge sites and play ahaead secure in the knowledge that the 
game of Machiavelli is, barring the usual options the same one 
he played in Perth or in Durban.

This is especially important since the demise of Blake as the 
satellite judges may have to share the load of players seeking 
gamestarts for as their games on blake finish they may not be
able to find a place on the EFF judge as a limit has been placed
on the number of new games starting there.

How are we to prevent this sort of problem in the future?  

I would suggest perhaps a review panel made up of all the judge 
admins and a few active members of the email dip community (appointed
by acclamation) to ensure any new variants introduced by admins or
any changes made to existing variants are uniform across all 
judge sites. Ken Lowe de-facto fulfilled this role but now he 
is out of the picture we must ensure chaos does not take his 
place.

It is my feeling that now that a new U.S. judge site has been 
found, this is probably the most important problem the email dip
community faces. 

David Kovars has graciously offered to become the official maintainer of the
judge and he can make an enormous contribution to this work, but I feel it 
would be best to spread this job around in such a panel as I have suggested
to avoid burnout of any one individual and also to promote diversity and also
the continuity of work should anyone drop out. (viz. the panic when the
close of the U.S. judge was announced)


 
Look forward to hearing from you all.
Bob.



Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
From: jek@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (James E. Kittock)
Subject: Re: Imminent death of the Net predicted; film at 11
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University.
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 20:30:04 GMT

In article <1992Nov18.172630.1015@muddcs.claremont.edu> irilyth@fenris.claremont.edu (Josh Smith) writes:
>In a prior article, Tom (clune@physics.berkeley.edu) writes:
>> It seems that we need to divide the role of the judge into two parts.
>
>I've thought about various client-server models for the judge, and haven't
>really been able to come up with any. However, another scheme for splitting
>the judge occurred to me the other day: it might be easier to get people to
>create a number of single-variant judges rather than a single multi-purpose
>one. 

This sounds like a good idea.  Might want to have
several of each type of judge or whatever.  One
question we would need an answer to is: does it take N
times as much effort to manage a judge running N games
as it takes to manage a judge running 1 game.  In other
words, when does managing a judge become a real chore?

Another thought is this: only allow one game per person
per server.  I realize that some people like to be
involved in 20 bazillion games at once, but this just
exponentiates the demand on judges.  Better to play a
little than none at all.

I wonder if Ken would provide us with some usage
statistics at some point?  I am esp. curious about the
number of games per player.

--james
-- 
james kittock -- cs grad student
"Adaptation is a recursive process in living systems." -- Alex. M. Andrew
From: vincent@cc.und.ac.za (Russell Vincent)
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
Subject: Re: New Judge?
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 08:45:41 GMT
Organization: University of Natal (Durban)
NNTP-Posting-Host: pc10.cc.und.ac.za

hirai@cc.swarthmore.edu (Eiji Hirai) wrote:

> BTW, I should warn folks who might be thinking of using the South African
> judge that the network connection to South Africa is somewhat flakey.  (I
> regularly send email there.)  I heard from some network guru there that their
> link to Portland, and hence to North America is

Actually, that has just changed!  This w/e our new 64K link, to somewhere 
more central, went in - what a difference!!   :-)

The only problem being that I cannot have too many (>15-20) games running at 
once because the machine is also used for other stuff. (I might even rethink 
those figures). Although I will definately do my best to keep this judge 
going. (Being one of the machine administrators helps a lot!)

Please feel free to start new games - I only have 3 running at the moment - 
one just finishing.

 -Russell
 

--
Russell Vincent,  Computer Services, Univ. of Natal, Durban, South Africa
Vincent@cc.und.ac.za
From: randall-joshua@yale.edu (Joshua Randall)
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
Subject: Re: Diplomacy maps
Date: 16 Nov 1992 17:46:51 -0500
Organization: Yale University Science & Engineering UNIX(tm), New Haven, CT 06520-2158
NNTP-Posting-Host: minerva.cis.yale.edu

In article <1992Nov16.200349.5536@news.weeg.uiowa.edu> holthaus@news.weeg.uiowa.edu (James R. Holthaus) writes:
>I have not been able to successfully retrieve the maps from
>u.washington.edu.  That is, I can FTP them and open them with MS Word 5.0,
>but all I get is header information--no map.  The file does appear to be
>postscript and all of that.  As well, I am open the files as EPS.  Since I
>don't have Cricket Draw or access to it, howcan I look at a and print
>these maps?  Suggestions?

Using MSWord, you won't see anything but the header.  Just print it on
a PostScript printer (Apple LaserWriter, e.g.) and you'll have a map.

-- 
Joshua E. Randall                       randall-joshua@yale.edu
From: kbs@cs.utexas.edu (Kenneth Brian Samuel)
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
Subject: Re: mapit1.2.tar.Z, part 1/3 mapit source
Date: 17 Nov 1992 16:11:03 -0600
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
NNTP-Posting-Host: levelland.cs.utexas.edu
Summary: Problems compiling mapit...

I am getting errors when I try to compile the mapit that was posted
here recently. What is wrong?

% cc -o mapit mapit.c
mapit.c: 8719: undefined control
mapit.c: 8728: undefined control
mapit.c: 8729: undefined control
mapit.c: 8730: undefined control
mapit.c: 8731: undefined control
mapit.c: 8732: undefined control
mapit.c: 8735: undefined control
mapit.c: 9042: undefined control
mapit.c: 9044: undefined control
mapit.c: 9047: undefined control
mapit.c: 9049: undefined control
mapit.c: 9053: undefined control
mapit.c: 9056: undefined control

Ken

Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
From: tarjan@iastate.edu (RC Cola)
Subject: Re: Computer Diplomacy
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 16:09:07 GMT


Thanks to all those who replied! 

It works great now!

Well I hope to be playing all of you soon!
From: ken@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (Ken Primer)
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
Subject: Re: Constantinople
Date: 18 Nov 92 22:54:25 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.Bxxoyr.75A
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana

ch166@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Louis Moreau) writes:


>> Can a fleet
>>pass from the Black sea to the Aegean sea? Thanks much.
>
>Yes but it MUST STOP in Constantinople; it cannot jump over it.
   It's not constantinople, it's Istanbul.

*ducking and running for cover*

-- 
  "Free is when you don't have to do nothing or pay | ken@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu
nothing. We want to be free, free as the wind!"     | member of the church
-teenage wind by Frank Zappa  (ugliness RULES!)     | of the eternally
MEEPMEEPMEEPMEEPMEEPMEEPMEEPMEEPMEEPMEEPMEEPMEEPMEEP| clueless.
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
From: mmunoz@vxcrna.cern.ch (MUNOZ,MARC./DG)
Subject: Re: Diplomacy maps
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 13:51:00 GMT

In article <1992Nov18.000203.10235@muddcs.claremont.edu>, irilyth@fenris.claremont.edu (Josh Smith) writes...
>In a prior article, Jim Holthaus (james-holthaus@uiowa.edu) writes:
>> I have not been able to successfully retrieve the maps from
>> u.washington.edu.  That is, I can FTP them and open them with MS Word 5.0,
>> but all I get is header information--no map.  The file does appear to be
>> postscript and all of that.  As well, I am open the files as EPS.  Since I
>> don't have Cricket Draw or access to it, howcan I look at a and print
>> these maps?  Suggestions?
> 
>It may just look like header information, but it is in fact the whole map.
>The maps on the judge are plain text Postscript, not formatted Macintosh
>files. If you open them with MS Word, you see the text of the Postscript
>file, just like any other text file. If you try to print them from Word,
>you'll get pages and pages of output, since Word isn't clever enough to
>realize that this is a Postscript file already--so it generates a Postscript
>file which prints the contents of the map file, and then sends that.

Or, in Word, choose the PS text and choose the style to be PostScript, then
sent to the printer.

Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
From: nick@sunburn.uwaterloo.ca (Nick Fitzpatrick)
Subject: ***FLASH*** Ken announces demise of judge
Originator: nick@sunburn.uwaterloo.ca
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 00:07:05 GMT

I just received the following from Ken

 
From: Judge Dash Request <jdr@u.washington.edu>
Message-Id: <9211172339.AA00189@dewey.cac.washington.edu>
To: nick@sunburn.uwaterloo.ca
Subject: The fate of the Judge

> I fear that if the load increases much more, that the judge will be 
> unusable.

I fear that if the load remains the same it will be unusable.  I've
decided that I've had about all the Diplomacy that I can take for
this lifetime.  It was fun up until a year ago, but I've gotten a
case of burnout and am now ready to call it quits.  Other interests
in my life have taken priority and keeping up with the judge has become
a chore rather than a pleasantry.  I'm ready now to disable the create 
command altogether and let the current games play to their conclusions 
without my help.  End of an era, I guess.  I only got one tee-shirt and
four postcards from players (three of the postcards came from John 
O'Regan) so the support I'm getting for my efforts is such that I don't
really feel too obligated to continue.

If other people want to start up their own judges, I'd say that now is
the time to start making them public if they're not already that way.

> Since about the end of September, the judge appears very slow during 
> the day.  Is there other software running on blake that didn't used 
> to be there?

No, the only thing that blake does is to process Diplomacy.  The judge's
databases were never really designed to handle the number of players or
games that are currently involved.  A lot of redesign would be necessary
to streamline it to support this many people easily.  I'm not prepared
to put in the effort to do that work.  Blake is only a little surplused
Micro-Vax II.  The judge currently averages 650 cpu minutes per day.
Yesterday's usage was a whopping 1078 minutes and that doesn't include
the overhead of sending out the mail.  1440 would be 24 hours.  I'd say
we're saturated here.

> I will not be assigning any more, from angel on... (hmm, angel, bible, 
> christ, devil, ... god, hallelujah, ...  jesus ... :)

No; angel, bass, carp, dogfish, flounder ...  :)  I'm going to shut off
the generic games before we get past bass if I can code it that quick.
Games seem to be starting at the rate of 1 per day and it is increasing
geometrically.

-Ken

Ps: Please publish this in EP Ch 2 and/or DIP-L.

Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
From: nautilus@lachesis.acm.rpi.edu (John M. Twilley)
Subject: Re: Diplomacy Adjuciator
Organization: The Voice of Fate
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 04:06:09 GMT

In article <MAPPLER.92Nov19131831@titan.ucc.umass.edu> mappler@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Matthew A Appler) writes:
>Why not explore something i have been toying with which is go through
>the irc and make a diplomacy 'bot.  The system is already there, you
>just need to write the robot that would run through ircII and manage a
>game.  I've been told it wouldn't be all that difficult.  I don't have
>the knowledge to do it, but this would keep system resources from
>being tied up, because IRC is already up and running.....
To begin with, show me the IRC client that wil support:

"Turkey jumps up and down screaming at Russia."
"Russia says, 'The Black Sea is mine!!!'"
"Russia laughs evilly."

More of the 'body cues' can be expressed through MUDs than on IRC,and
with a dedicated MUD, you won't be distracted by non-Dip traffic.

Also, if the MUD is freshly written, the support code can be added so
as to provide some automatic adjudicator functionality.  You might
not be able to be as cool as the judge (conditional orders would be a 
a cast-iron pain to program into a MUD, I would think), but the benefits
would outweigh the losses.

>
>  Matt
>--
>Matthew Appler - Unichussetts of Massaversity
>mappler@titan.ucc.umass.edu
>
> -You can only be young once, but you can ALWAYS be immature....:)


-- 
John M. Twilley             | It's only premarital sex if 
nautilus@acm.rpi.edu        | you're going to get married.
twilley@dewey.nusc.navy.mil |                --anonymous
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
From: ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Re: Announcing:  a game for newcomers only!
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation Tech Central
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 22:47:36 GMT

Gary> == Gary Arkoff <arkoff@sun.lclark.edu> 

 Gary> Oh, yes.  In order to sign on, you must first register with the
 Gary> judge.  That procedure is covered in the "help" text.  To get
 Gary> that, send a letter to judge@morrolan@eff.org with the word
 Gary> "help" in the text.

That's judge@morrolan.eff.org.  judge@morrolan@eff.org might work if the
moon is full, the cards are right, the planets are in alignment, etc,
etc; i.e. don't count on it.

Note that 'uno' is also available for new Judge users.

--
Christopher K. Davis      | ``Usenet seems to run much like the Kif (or,
<ckd@eff.org>   EFF #14   |   for the TV generation, Klingon) high command.
System Administrator, EFF |   Whoever takes action and can be heard wins.''
+1 617 864 0665  [CKD1]   |   --Peter da Silva <peter@ferranti.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
From: thorinn@diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
Subject: Re: Judge Relocation Project
Date: 19 Nov 92 19:38:30 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen

irilyth@fenris.claremont.edu (Josh Smith) writes:
>my list of people who might be interested in starting a new central
>Adjudicator is limited to someone named Lars,

That's me, I guess, but you'd better count me out. While I'm employed
in the computer department here, and could easily set a Judge up on
this HP735 I'm writing at now, it would be a bad example --- we'd have
the lusers clamoring at the door to be allowed to run their MUDs, too.
(DIKU is a hotbed of MUD hacking, as witness the name of one of the
main variants out there --- but we can't afford to let every man jack
in the Internet at our already hotly contested cycles.)

It's true that I did have a hacked Judge set up at one time, running a
single variant game that I GM'ed, but that was only because the
Washington Judge could not support it; in fact, it wasn't my intention
that it should appear in Nick's Guide at all.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@diku.dk> (Humour NOT marked)
From: jbeason@s.psych.uiuc.edu (Joseph E. Beason)
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
Subject: Re: Computer Diplomacy
Date: 15 Nov 92 20:55:52 GMT
Organization: UIUC Department of Psychology

Has anyone considered using a mapping program (e.g. MapInfo or Atlas)
to do this?  You could develop a map of the territories, then have the
program update the tables used for shading the regions.  
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
From: jjfink@skcla.monsanto.com
Subject: Re: Imminent death of the Net predicted; film at 11
Organization: Searle, Skokie, IL
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 12:20:42 GMT

In article <1992Nov18.203004.6077@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>, jek@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (James E. Kittock) writes:
> Another thought is this: only allow one game per person
> per server.  I realize that some people like to be
> involved in 20 bazillion games at once, but this just
> exponentiates the demand on judges.  Better to play a
> little than none at all.

Whoa!  You've just invalidated dedication, unless the judges can somehow share
that information (distributed databases are a royal pain!).

If you do this, the Dip bandits from the arthurian-magician-named site will be
impossible to trace and track down and stomp out.

-- 
jjfink@skcla.monsanto.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I want peace on earth, and goodwill towards man."
"We don't do that kind of thing, we're the United States Government!"
  -- from _Sneakers_
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
From: starkey@netcom.com (Sean Starkey)
Subject: Re: New game "first" starting on EFF judge
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 23:02:26 GMT

Two games "lowe" and "eff" have been created on the new judge 
(judge@morrolan.eff.org).  They are standard and open to all players.

The game "first" still exists on the judge, and is restricted to new judge
players.  Since this game seems to be in high demand, there probably will
be a second game for new players.


	Sean Starkey			starkey@netcom.com
Home:	444 Saratoga Ave.	Work:	Process & Cryogenic Services, Inc.
	Apt. 19K			2220 Martin Ave.
	Santa Clara, CA 95050		Santa Clara, CA 95050
	(408) 985-1454			(408) 727-3700

Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
From: dyer@rtsg.mot.com (Bill Dyer)
Subject: Re: mapit1.2.tar.Z, part 1/3 mapit source
Organization: Motorola Inc., Cellular Infrastructure Group
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 22:14:10 GMT

In article <BxtyzL.E7M@world.std.com> kovar@world.std.com (David C Kovar) writes:
>
>  This is the "mapit" program that someone just requested. It interprets
>several different types of output from judge (moves, lists, builds, etc) 
>and generates various postscript maps, including arrows, icons, and summary
>reports. The postscript is much slicker than anything I could write, so
>I stopped working on my PostScript generator. However, I may work on the
>parser a bit.
>

Well, I'm not sure who wrote the parser, but it has major problems
with pointers and such.  The person who had trouble printing it should
check and see if the program actaully ran.  On my Sun it core dumps
before it even parses anything.  I am in the progress of getting it
to run.  If anyone is interested  let me know and I will send it to 
you, or post it if there is enough interest.

Later,

-Bill
-- 
_____________________________________________________________________
|  I am not a .sig, but I play    |Bill Dyer  (708) 632-7081        |
|  one on the net.                | dyer@rtsg.mot.com  (work)       |
|                                 | or p00112@mail.psi.net (home)   |
From: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu (Michael Rawdon)
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
Subject: Re: Thanks to Ken Lowe
Date: 18 Nov 92 21:26:19 GMT
Reply-To: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
Organization: University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Dept., Madison, WI

In <BELBOZ.92Nov18141719@hoe.frc.ri.cmu.edu> belboz@frc2.frc.ri.cmu.edu (Barry Brumitt) writes:
>Or might limiting the number of games happening at one be feasible?

The problem with limiting the number of games-per-person is if someone
decides that they would rather go play game x instead of game y (say, if
they're struck by a whim to go play a Youngstown game forming instead of the
standard game they're in).  That would leave game y without a player,
whereas the player might have been willing to continue in game y *as well
as* game x if he hadn't been limited to (say) 3 games at one time.

But, then since *my* days of playing lots of games at once are long past, it
doesn't make a WHOLE lot of difference to me. :-)

-- 
Michael Rawdon				 rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Department, Madison, WI

Mondays are not part of the productive work week:
	...eight hours and all I did today is compose this memo...
	...actually, it's more like a sentence than a whole memo...
	...and it probably needs a verb to be a sentence...
							- Dilbert
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy
From: mappler@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Matthew A Appler)
Subject: Re: Diplomacy Adjuciator
Organization: /usr/users/user4/mappler/.organization
	<MAPPLER.92Nov19131831@titan.ucc.umass.edu> <qlz1yt@rpi.edu>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 05:15:29 GMT

Well....You can set channels up to be invite only, therefore, you
create a meeting place, called #Diplomacy...then you get the people
you want and start a game on a private channel....Then, you can use
private messages, action messages, etc and do anything that you could
do on a MUD.  You would just do it through the normal chat features of
irc.  Then you would send a message to the 'bot.  The bot wouldn't
interpret any of the chat that goes to the whole group, only private
mail to it....which is the way the adjudicator works now anyways.....


   Matt
--
Matthew Appler - Unichussetts of Massaversity
mappler@titan.ucc.umass.edu

 -You can only be young once, but you can ALWAYS be immature....:)
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy