From: esj@cs.brown.edu (Eugene Santos Jr.)
Subject: Re: Lack of borg hosts
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 01:11:28 GMT

In article <5700@news.duke.edu> mel1@soc6.acpub.duke.edu (Douglas Melamed) writes:
> [... Borg support-stuff deleted ...]
>
>
>Thank you for your time, I just wish the anti-borgers would show some rationality
>for a change.
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Sincerely yours,
>Muckraker	(Author of MuckBorg)
>

This is one of the few times that I really feel the need to respond to the
"TO BORG OR NOT TO BORG" issue. I have always been an anti-borg person although
I have played them several times before (I still like PigBorg above all the
other borgs.) I think all your arguments are quite valid and I wholeheartedly
support them. Unfortunately, you're assuming one critical component that
is generally absent from most of the netrek community especially in the
newbie to some-clue segments. You argue from the point of view that everyone
is MATURE both in real life and in netrek. By in netrek, I refer to people
who have experienced the thrill of playing as a team and succeeding.

I generally see most borg users especially new players to be those who
have one and only one thought in mind: "HA! HA! HA! I CAN BLOW YOU UP
WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT IT!" No one can get away from this sort of childish(?)
gloating. Someone tell me to my face that they have never felt that
orgasmic pleasure of just dominating another player in dogfights.
Unfortunately, many anti-borg users are just as childish in their own
rights. Why do people go to borgs sometimes? Because there are 
non-borg players who can dogfight but only have one thought in mind:
"HA! HA! HA! I CAN BLOW YOU UP WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT IT! AND I DON'T NEED
A BORG!"

There are the more "technical" issues of course such as cloak-see which
certainly changes the nature of the "bronco-type" game. But I usually
find these as minor annoyances until I get really frustrated. That's about
the only time I will say something ANTI-BORGISH. But slamming on others
while being frustrated is part of human nature which is hard to beat
unless you live on tofu and bean sprouts and shave your head.

If you want a group of "mature" people who will at least listen to your
views, try checking out some of the INL players. I would like to believe
that the majority of them will agree with your position.

Next time I run into you again, I am pretty sure I won't get annoyed
when you keep blowing me up in your borg. All I'm gonna do is work on a
new strategy to get around you and to my objective :) 
Good luck and keep spreading this philosophy to any other would be
borg players and human players.

Well, time to play!!


Quovadis (Admiral scws9) (Flt. Capt. bronco) (Flt. Capt. bezier)
Limofel (Flt. Capt. bronco) (Commodore rwd4)
StarBase (Flt. Capt. scws9)
timid (Captain bronco)
Susie (Captain bronco) (Commander rwd4)
(plus a wide variety of others)


uucp:	...!{ihnp4,decvax}!brunix!esj		Eugene Santos Jr.
bitnet:	esj@browncs.bitnet			PO Box 1910, Computer Science
arpa:	esj%cs.brown.edu@relay.cs.net		Brown University
csnet:	esj@cs.brown.edu			Providence, RI 02912