Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
Subject: Re: Australian Muds banned?
From: bmw@nutmeg.cs.ntu.edu.au (Brett Whinnen)
Date: 8 Apr 92 10:40:55 +0900
Distribution: world
Organization: Information Technology, Northern Territory University

  As a high member of the afore mentioned Mud I would like to say that this Mud 
has developed over the last (amount of time up and running) into quite an 
environment. Yes there are several players from all over the world, but in 
general these players use the Mud environment to converse in groups rather than
use e-mail or talk. 

  Also it has been my experience that the vast majority of Mud players who make
the immortal status of wizard all benefit from this experience. It is a rare
occasion when we have to banish a player and/or site from using the Mud due to 
not following the set rules. These people who make the wizard stage then proceed
to learn a subset of the C language (written by Lars Penjsl (I hope I have
spelt his name correctly), who is also the founder of LPMud), this is a highly 
OOPs language and helps them subconciously to program in an OOPs style, (which 
I'm sure many lecturers would agree is not an easy thing to teach).  Mud also 
allows people of various disciplines (not just Computer science) to interact 
with on another and share views and opinions. I myself have often asked advice 
on how to do things regarding my degree work.

  The one big contributor to the bandwidth used by Muds is MTP or Mud Transfer
Protocol. This is Mud's version of the notorious FTP. I would suggest that all
Mud administrators make MTP usable only after hours. Many of the wizards on Muds
prefer to download their castles and edit them on a local machine, this causes
a mahor amount of traffic.

  Another interesting fact I found was an anonymous player came onto the Mud 
(we allow a guest character onto the Mud) and wanted to do a study on;
  "How Mud players differ between playing Mud and Real Life."
I found this to be very interesting as some players do use Mud as a release on
extra energy and frustrations, they can go onto Mud and kill a monster to 
get rid of their frustrations. But the main point of this is to say there are
people out there who are interested in how Mud can effect people.
  
  Now the basic security of the Mud is fairly poor for new Muds, as the original
source code had several holes in it. Between a group of people here at our site
and some friends interstate we managed to fix these problems. Wizards of a 
higher level also get the task of keeping security at its maximum, I am happy
to say that all people involved with this are students at our local site.
This minimises the risk involved as all can watch the others closely. I think
that any Mud that has just been compiled from source should not be readily open
to players from outside that local machine. For an experienced programmer with
both C and LPC (Mud variant of C) this will be no problems, if however the
persons involved have no prior knowledge I'd strongly suggest they leave well
enough alone. There are always people around the network who can help and 
most of them will be willing to give advise and help.

  In conclusion I would suggest that MTP be banned during peak hours both
locally and overseas. If Mud itself was banned in Australia I think that the
percentage of bandwidth used by electronic mail and 'talk' would dramatically
increase. All people who make wizard, whether they have no computing background
generally learn to program in a variant of C. This variant which is highly 
Object Oriented teaches them to use OOPs techniques and is highly beneficial. I
myself have seen students after programming with LPC move onto C and have only
minor problems coping. Muds also give students an easy way to have group 
discussions over long distances, these discussions run from the highly personal 
through World events to research and study. I have seen LISP code shouted around
the Mud to help a student who was having troubles, surely things such as these 
can help people decide in favour of not banning Muds and Mud usage over Aarnet.

  The above is my own opinion and in no way represents that of the organisation
which employs and teaches me,

  Brett Whinnen,

+----------------------------------+------------------------------------------+
| Brett Whinnen.                   |     e-mail bmw@pandanus.cs.ntu.edu.au    |
| Tutor & 3rd year Student         |                                          |
| Department of Computer Science,  | snail-mail PO box 39664                  |
| School of Information Technology |            Winnellie NT                  |
| Northern Territory University.   |            0821          Australia       |
+----------------------------------+------------------------------------------+




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