HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dank@calvin.usc.edu (Dan King)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Lags to servers + Other stuff ...
Date: 14 Sep 92 19:28:20 GMT
Reply-To: dank@usc.edu
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: calvin.usc.edu


In article <18tsmlINN5es@phakt.usc.edu>, rone@phakt.usc.edu (Ron Echeverri) writes:
|> In article <92Sep11.234409edt.9074@rock.db.toronto.edu> wang@db.toronto.edu (Huaiqing Wang) writes:
|> >I believe calvin is lagged badly mainly because it is run on a slow
|> >machine (DEC 3100). :( U$C actually have a very good network
|> >connection.
|> 
|> DEC 3100?  Say wot?  I don't think usc has EVER had anything by dec... we have
|> some sort of special contract with Sun and with Sun only.  
|> 
|> % hip show host calvin
|> Name:                     calvin.usc.edu
|> ...
|> Cpu:                      Sun-4/490
|> Operating system:         Unix_SunOS-4.1.2

Old news.  Calvin is a Sun 4/690 now.  Very fast.  Very nice.

Yes, USC does have a very good internal network.  The problem is that our connection
to the rest of the world is via CERF which is French for Really Slow Network :).

What's a DEC?  And who starts these vile rumors?  Bets that we'll have people posting
to the net for months now claiming calvin is a DEC?

|> 5150
dank
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org (Felix S. Gallo)
Subject: iastate
Followup-To: rec.games.netrek
Summary: and now the truth can be told
Keywords: the reality
Organization: Roue Text and Steel
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 19:15:42 GMT


The wretched GA-scummer exodus@iastate mewls:

> blah blah blah it's not scumming it's fair blah blah mew
> mew drool and besides I know a bunch of players at iastate
> who could beat you mew mew drool spit :w:q!!ZZhelp!!

Your foolish words are as but the whinnyings of a crippled mare.
You will be ground in the mills of God, and your family and those
who know you will be cast down, steeped in a pit of vile degradation
and abject humiliation.  Your children will be hooted at by monkeys
and pelted with offal.  The land you call your own will be parched,
stricken by a blight and a plague of cicadas; the sun will turn blood
red in your sky, and the rain shall destroy that which it falls upon.
Your cleft-palated effeminate reedy pulings of would-be greatness
will echo in your mind as devils pile stones upon your stomach.
Even the tree you used to climb as a child will be gutted by termites,
etched into by worms, overcome by rotting ivy and blasted into char
by great sheets of lightning.

And so I say this to you, and those who you call your own, and
those who they call their own: you are accursed, a mongrel loping
in the sunless lands, a stunted animal with rheumy eyes and the
face of a jackal.


rear ensign sunscreamer
minister of truth
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Felix Sebastian Gallo                              rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: mehlhaff@soda.Berkeley.EDU (ERic Mehlhaff)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Amiga or IBM client.  Does one exist?
Date: 12 Sep 92 22:07:51
Organization: The Dis-Orginization
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: brianh@pdx031.intel.com's message of Wed, 9 Sep 1992 06:11:24 GMT

In article <BRIANH.92Sep8221124@pdx031.intel.com> brianh@pdx031.intel.com (Brian Holscher) writes:

	   I would like to play netrek from home.  We have it running at work
   and I would like to play late at night and on weekends without driving into
   work.  We have 9600 baud connections with work, so this is what I am
   thinking.  I port the client to run on my Amiga from home (Lots of graphics
   work and I should get the enhanced graphics chips).  To communicate with
   the server, the Amiga client would communicate in some yet to be defined
   protocol with another program running on my workstation.  This program
   would translate this protocol and do the socket communications with the
   server.


An amiga client exists, but the people over at Commodore who ported it haven't
released it.  Supposedly it still has some proprietary/unreleased networking
code in it.  Hopefully they can just release the non-networking parts and
and let us hack together a serial client as you suggest. But only time will 
tell.

Reputedly, a 9600 line will _barely_ have enough bandwitdth, andintense
dogfights might make it a little rough.   There are ways to compress/optimise
the data, however, so there is hope.

ERic mehlhaff, mehlhaff@soda.Berzerkeley.EDU
netrek-hacker extraboredinaire
--
ERic mehlhaff					Hoser at large
mehlhaff@soda.Berzerkeley.EDU
mehlhaff@ocf.berkeley.EDU
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: josh@cqs.washington.edu (Josh Hayes)
Subject: I really hate it when.....
Organization: University of Washington
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 19:38:26 GMT

.....I'm cruising around with three kills in a moderately fun
game and my boss shows up and I have to hit the panic button.
Argh.

(this morning. rwd4. argh again.)

doctor

--
Josh Hayes, Quantitative Sciences HR-20 U of Washington
josh@mowgli.cqs.washington.edu             206 685-2793
Exclaimer: Hey!           Plan: Birth School Work Death
Organization: Senior, Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 14:33:35 -0400 
From: Kevin Michael Bernatz <kb32+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Dogfighting II

Ok,
	It seems that people have taken extreme offense to my opinion that good
players don't concentrate on dogfighting.  Let me explain a little why I
feel this way, and maybe this will clear things up a bit.
	When I first started playing ~2 years ago, I concentrated on
dogfighting and was actually considered quite good at it  (>1 ratio
after my first 100 ships).  However, it wasn't until I began ogging that
I consider myself to be a decent player.  There have been many players
who concentrated so much on dogfighting, that they have often missed
planets being taken right out from under them because they were
concentrating on dogfighting someone.   Yeah, this even happens to me
occasionally when I drift back into my 'dogfighting' mode.  Whenever I
just fly up to dogfight, I am not really helping the team and after a
little while I "snap out of it" and go back to
ogging/planet_scumming/etc.  I still don't think Quar ever had above a 1
ratio... and I'm sure that anyone who ever played against him would
consider him to be an exceptional player.  He never was a good
dogfighter, but he still got kills and he could ogg the pants off of
almost everyone.  
	The point I was trying to make in my first post was that new players
should NOT concentrate on learning to dogfight to the point where they
can average >1 ratio.  Obviously you have to be able to get kills, but
to be what I consider a good dogfighter you would need to be similar to
Pendragon/BLEP/etc and have the 1.3 - 1.5 ratio after a few hundred
deaths.  To spend the time to learn to fight that well is.. well... a
waste IMO.  Lance seems to be slightly different since he has more of a
natural talent.. this is just a guess though.  
	I guess I make a distinction between dogfighting and simple survival
ability.  To me, dogfighting is where you simply fly up to the front
solely for the purpose of engaging the first enemy on your screen
no_matter who he is (which seems to be the most common tactic for the
majority of players nowadays).  THAT is dogfighting..... while it may be
usefull to get kills, it is also a waste of time.  To get kills, all I
do is fly up to the front at high warp, sorta_human_target someone, and
if I live limp back with my kill.  With the lack of clue on most servers
nowadays, it is surprising easy to put 8 torps into someone (with or
without a little help from T/P beams) and still have enough internal to
fly away at a decent speed.  That is NOT dogfighting in my book... that
is simply a derivative of suiciding where you want to live, though don't
really care if you die.  If you really fuck up, then you end up killing
the guy and give away your kill later... that's why I said you need to
"learn" how to suicide.  
	As for the other posts, they have all been people's opinions, and I
respect them for that.  Maybe I shouldn't have said "As any good player
knows", but heh... if I can't be controversial then who can? :>

-KB
 Rear Admiral "Mr. Controversy" Akira
From: paulsen@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Brian C. Paulsen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: beginner UN-luck
Date: 14 Sep 92 22:42:50 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <8ehAUsS00VpNNO9FAg@andrew.cmu.edu> kb32+@andrew.cmu.edu (Kevin Michael Bernatz) writes:
>Excerpts from netnews.rec.games.netrek: 14-Sep-92 beginner UN-luck Jason
>D Bowles@IASTATE.E (803)

)Ok everybody, repeat after me...
)	"Dogfighting is useless... dogfighting is useless....dogfighting is useless"
)	As any good player knows, dogfighting ability means squat!  All you
)need to be able to do is suicide.. if you can do that, then you can be a
)good player.  Dogfighting skill used to be something that everyone
)thought was mondo, until that great guro of netrek, terence "God" chang
)taught us CMU *veterns* about ogging.  To be a good, respected player
)(IMHO) this is what you need to know:

Is this why you are such a Free Kill? :-)
Dogfighting separates the men from the boys...  Dogfighting is not the most
important thing, I must admit.  However, it is still much more important than
you give credit to.  It does wonders to help you stay alive and avoid oggs.
It also helps you get kills, and if you know how to use kills, you can always
be a pain-in-the-ass to the enemy.

Brian
-FreeKill
From: yap@heroes.UUCP (Yap Yap Yap)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: TBird
Date: Fri, 04 Sep 92 11:43:58 CDT
Organization: The Inn Of Heroes.  Public Access UUCP BBS.

haefner@IASTATE.EDU (Ralph I Haefner) writes:

> In article <u40cqB2w165w@heroes.UUCP>, yap@heroes.UUCP (Yap Yap Yap) writes:
> >      I think TBird is a very silly server.  With the jacked up scouts, I 
> > can't imagine anyone actually enjoy playing there.  The Galaxy class 
> > ships made it worse.  What a keen idea - give the high ranked players
> > the best ships...  It *is* kinda fun to go in and just ogg the GA's 
> > though.  Is it just a joke server or what??  An attempt at a chaos 
> > server??  Product of the mentally disturbed?  :-]
> 
> As a former Tbird fanatic who learned to play the game there, i must say 
> the galaxy class and scout problems have made it one of the most worthless
> servers availible now.  I hate to say it, but it is true.  Another problem is
> severe server lag due to a wimpy machine.  
> 
     True true.  TBird could be a lot better, but it seems the server god 
decided to accomodate a few weenie's whims.

> Doorstop used to be much better, but now Gajah has tried some split queue thi
> that makes getting a tmode game impossible to get in on, at least ive not 
     Doorstop is WAY better than Tbird.  It is usually funner to play 
then on Discovery.  Although there is no contest, Bronco is the best.  
(If MUCUS plays there, it's GOT TO be the best.)

> seen one there the last 4 times i looked.  Hopefully he will read this
> (Hi Gajah!) and fix it somehow.
> 
> As a ISU player, I hang my head in shame at my treasonous flaming of our two
> servers . . .
> 
     Well hold your head up high, you're only saying the truth..  
(Although I am not sure about the Doorstop bug)..
From: tom@soda.berkeley.edu (Tom Holub)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: lag stuff, was (Re: Clued games?)
Date: 15 Sep 92 03:13:41 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley, CS Undergraduate Association
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Sep15.011610.13080@u.washington.edu> archmage@milton.u.washington.edu (Michael Bakkemo) writes:
)
)He's a weenie who uses a borg. You can tell because he hits you with his
)phasors when you're cloaked on his first shot, and never misses after that.
)Borg sign sure enough.


BZZT, wrong answer, but thank you for playing.  Phaserlocking is the
*worst* way to detect a borg; a good human phaserlocker is better 
than the best single borg at getting the first phaserlock (the Pigs with 
cloaker-position-averaging might be better, but that takes a number of borgs).
And good humans almost never lose the lock; certainly, if you're trying
to take a last planet or ogg a base against a good human defender, it
can seem like he never misses, but again, this is not a reason to 
accuse him of being a borg.

It is really very difficult to tell a borg from a good player by
watching them play.  Probably the best way is to sit by their home
planet and try to ressurection-scum them; borgs will start firing
as soon as they appear.  If they turn auto-firing off, though, it's
nearly impossible.
 -Mojo
From: jimmyhua@aludra.usc.edu (Jimmy Huang)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Clue level on bronco
Date: 13 Sep 1992 21:15:37 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Distribution: na
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu

Another possibilities, especially in cases of failed ogg attempts is 
something called lag.  

Ogging just when packet losses occur is really imossible, but some 
people like me try (and fail) it anyways. 
Failed ogg attempts still keeps planet takers humble and true. 

Either that, or you run like hell when you see cloakers coming at you, and
then you poop on them when they uncloak.
From: leonard@mimsy.umd.edu (Leonard Dickens)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: RSA based reserved.c done
Date: 8 Sep 92 18:29:48 GMT
Organization: Universal Export Ltd, Regent's Park, London

Ray Jones writes:
>
> ... finishing the RSA-reserved.c.
>
>Now, the big question.  How to use it?  I'm willing to be "maintainer" of
>the keys.  I plan to have net access for a few years at least.  Having more
>than one maintainer is probably not a really bad idea, but not really
>necessary.

The number of maintainers is not really an issue as long as they have
only public keys that anyone could get anyway.

Private keys are a different issue.  Each one should be known by as
few people as possible, preferably just one.  To this end what we need
is a program to search for the next-largest prime number given some
input number.  Anyone writing a client should be able to simply
generate two large numbers (128 digit or so), have this program find
the corresponding next largest primes, and then plug one of them into
a standard key.c template.  The multiplicand could then be sent to the
maintainer(s) if desired, or the writer might just appeal to server
dieties directly.

Meanwhile, we could write and distribute reserved.o files that would
call key.c functions in order to get pointers to the key when it is
needed, and maybe a few other calls such as key_done() to allow the
client to erase the key as soon as possible.  In this manner, the
stuff in reserved.c need never be available to the casual public
eye... and doing some sort of digestifying on the client to get a
digital signature might still be possible.

-Leonard
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: jasonp@cunix4.Prime.COM (Jason R. Pascucci)
Subject: Reserved.c and INL At-large teams (unrelated)
Organization: Prime Computer, Inc.
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 06:51:26 GMT

-- About the Reserved.c
Who is currently in charge of handing out the reserved.c file?
(I have a copy, but I won't hand it out unless I either
get no response, or get permission.)

I would like to give my copy of the reserved.c to the people running 
the KSU chaos server, whose no borg policy (splattered all over 
their motd) is being broken left and right, and they
claim they can't do anything about it because they don't
have the standard reserved.c module. 

I would be less pissed if these were half clued borg-players, but 
I shouldn't be able to dogfight a borg at my (#$*%&*$#%&) 
varying 100-1900ms lag and *WIN*. Ever. If they were clued,
and just blowing me out of the sky (which happens occasionally), 
I just grumble and go away (as I've done in the past), but I 
really can't stand this. 

-- About INL At Large teams

I think I have enough time coming up such that I would like to join one. 
I'll even try out, if you want. My major problem is lag due to a (sometimes) 
crappy 56kb connection, such that my ping times to the next site
out vary from 38ms (correct and expected) to 4000ms,
and it's not constant. (I.E. a few packets will go full speed,
then two or three will be held up, then it will catch up, etc...)

Give me a ring if you are interested.....

Steele/OggMe
-- 
Jason R. Pascucci
jasonp@primerd.prime.com
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: wang@db.toronto.edu (Huaiqing Wang)
Subject: Re: attack of the killer newbies
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Date: 6 Sep 92 01:50:43 GMT

In article <1992Sep5.230420.18587@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> ramid@nyx.cs.du.edu (Rudy Amid) writes:
>jch+@cs.cmu.edu (Jonathan Hardwick) writes:
>
>>(Third, wait for the Netrek For Beginners guide, or whatever it will
>>be called).
>
>>If you *still* have problems, *then* post or e-mail.
>
>
>   I think ppl will have trouble reading documentations so the 
>practice approach is still the most effective learning tool.
>Btw, when you first started Netrek, do you have documentations to help
>you gain experience?  
>
>   On that note, who can you call Netrek veterans?  ie. who are the first
>bunch of people who started playing netrek?
>
>
>--
>!Rudy Amid               ///
>                        ///
>amid@r-node.gts.org    ///
>Netrek/IRC: Radix   \\X//

Frankly, I didn't know any doc for netrek existed until somebody local
pointed out them to me. :) Then again, I didn't know about torps until
my 3rd week of netreking. :> :> :>

	-- Chen Wang
.
From: nlc@vulcan.xtel.co.uk (Neil Cook)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: RE: attack of the killer newbies
Date: 8 Sep 92 08:57:54 GMT
Organization: X-Tel Services Ltd.

In article <18gmuoINN80h@agate.berkeley.edu>, jreza@ocf.berkeley.edu (Jaime Garcia Reza) writes:
|> 
|> Your definition of veteran is entirely correct mojo. 
|> But the definition only has a vague sense of time..
|> It only says "a person of long experience in agiven
|> activity." Let's put it this way.. we all agree that
(rest deleted)

The point is, the original question was:
"Who was around when the game was written" (or something like that)

then someone said:
"I suppose they were the veterans"

then Tom comes up with his list of them.

This was entirely correct - I presume they were the playtesters for Smith
and Silvey when they WROTE netrek at UCB.

If you take it out of context, then no, they are not the only veterans.
Anyway, veteran is a subjective term depending on how long you've been playing.

Let me repeat Tom's words once more, in case people weren't
listening the first time:
VETERAN DOES NOT IMPLY ABILITY, only length of service...
Use the english language correctly.

We now return to your regularly scheduled discussion.

Neil Cook.
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: rjones@sulaco.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Ray Jones - Perp)
Subject: Re: INL scrim: Hells Bagels vs. CMU #3
Keywords: inl, sunscreamer, bagels, cmu
Reply-To: rjones@dsd.es.com
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp.
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 92 14:18:16 GMT

In article <1992Sep14.033621.16952@wixer.cactus.org>, rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org (Felix S. Gallo) writes:
>Actually, I'm kinda happy right where I am.  I accomplished everything I
>wanted to accomplish with the Twelve Angry Men -- we beat a CMU team into
>the playoffs and ended up ranked 4th out of around 12.  Not bad for a
>completely random at large team.

It was sort of unexpected, wasn't it.  Started out, "Let's try not to
get beat by every team."  Then, "Let's try to beat at least one team."
And, "Let's beat at least half the teams."  Finally, "What team should
we beat next."  

>I'm also pretty happy I made mention into the team designed to beat the
>pants off CMU this fall.
>
>However, netrek, for me, is about having fun (and writing posts I hope
>are interesting).  After our glorious victory over the wretched swine
>of CMU, any further play with the 12AM would be a letdown.  Playing with
>the TWNN would be like being one of sixty nuclear bombs raining down
>on a goatherd's tent: all you really need is *one*, after all.

Are you saying that nuclear bombs aren't fun?

>But playing with the Bagels means that, for the first time, I can see
>the face of someone else on my team and maybe have lunch with them or
>invent some arcane team handshake.

Yah, that's what I'd like to be able to do myself.  Not much chance of
that with an At Large team.  Then again, I'm still deciding whether or
not to go to graduate school... Leseee.... CMU, Berkeley, ...

Or maybe I'll just form up a Univ. of Utah team.  Yah, we coudl call
ourselves SOD or something like that :)

>Oh yeah, and massacre the living daylights out of clueless newbies
>from iowa and then guffaw about it in real life, that's important.

It's the simple things that are the most important...  Of course, with
my vertical dyslexia that sentence came out to be, "Oh yeah, and
massacre the living daylights in real life..."  

>-- 
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Felix Sebastian Gallo                              rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- 
                                          rjones@dsd.es.com
From: fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: TBird
Date: 11 Sep 92 23:36:49 GMT
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

In article <1992Sep11.154751@IASTATE.EDU> exodus@IASTATE.EDU writes:
> Them's fightin' words..........I'll take myself, or about a dozen other
>
>ISU players, over Sunscreamer just about any day. So yes, you are right,

First there was Streaker and Penn.

Then we had some KSU guys claiming they were god's gift to dogfighting.

Then there was, well, all of CMU.

Now we have iastate.

Swell.  Go back to alt.games.xtrek where we don't have to look at you.


(who's up next?  UCLA?)

-- 
fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
[ Above opinions are mine, Amdahl has nothing to do with them, etc, etc. ]
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: mccoy@ils.nwu.edu (Jim Mccoy)
Subject: Re: RSA-reserved.c
Reply-To: mccoy@ils.nwu.edu
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 01:00:04 GMT

In article <0bBo03FS7a0200@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com>, fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden) writes:
> [regarding the new PKE system for clients and servers...]
>
> [...]
> 
> The weak link is the client (as usual): if somebody can pry the private key
> out of the client code, they can add it to their borg.  What makes this a big
> win is that having the server code doesn't do anything for you (so it can be
> distributed freely), and getting somebody's client code isn't that helpful
> anymore because the clients can be selectively deactivated and redistributed
> with far less impact on the Netrek community as a whole.

My understanding of how RSA fits into the new "secure" electronic documents
thing is that it also uses a process (md5?) to hash the message and create
a sort of checksum that can be used to determine if the document has been
tampered with.  Would it be possible to include something like this into
the client?  A sort of "hash argc[0] and use this and the string we send to
the server" so that the server could also check the client a little.  I
suppose it is possible to get around this, but it may add another level of
tinkering for someone trying to slip in a borg.  I guess the question is,
would this help at all?

RobinHood
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek