HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ahabig@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu (Alec Habig)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: 3rd space planet taking
Date: 12 Aug 92 16:31:30 GMT
Article-I.D.: usenet.BsvpwI.FIK
Organization: Indiana University Astrophysics, Bloomington, IN

In article <1992Aug12.142800.26957@dsd.es.com> rjones@dsd.es.com writes:
>In article <Bsv9qv.J18@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>, ahabig@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu (Alec Habig) writes:
>>Isn't trying to win playing the game?
>
>Not always.  I am the server god for local games.  It would be trivial for
>me to send a TSTP signal to someone's process, ogg them, then restart their
>process.  I'm just trying to win, no?  Am I playing? no.  Third race
>scumming is looked upon by some as "I don't like playing against you, so
>I'm going to take my toys somewhere else and play.  But I'll still use this
>slot, rather than give it up to someone who wants to play against the other
>team, rather than just in the same galaxy."

Mucking around with their process is most certainly cheating - 3rd race
scumming is not (at least yet, that's what this discussion is about, after
all).

>It's trivial to pull off.  Scum a kill, run into your space, repair, get a
>single escort to stop the robots, go the wrong way out of your home space
>(you might encounter a single SC bomber), and bomb then take the nearest
>enemy agri.  Let your escort kill the Hoser.  If you need to, go ferry
>armies from your space or your SB until the agri pops...  
>
>Any half-clue can do this.  

This might be the case, but would be certainly less easy if someone from the
opposing team was to try and defend against it.  Taking homeworld agri's is a
pretty easy thing to do when no one defends against it.

>That's because the rules of baseball specifically specify that you can only
>get a home run by hitting the ball, not by catching/running/throwing it.
>The rules of netrek do not specify this, but perhaps they should.  This is
>the point that Tom is trying to make.  (I think.)  Either that or he's
>saying that even though it isn't against the rules, you should treat it
>like it is, since it's really difficult to make sweeping changes to the
>rules of every server.

I interpreted Tom's point as being that people who would consider flanking the
enemy through nuetral space are somehow already cheating.  My point is that
they aren't, just using a different way to skin the cat.  I would agree that a
tactic which allows a side to get an easy win because there are no effective
defenses should be banned (game balance and all).  However, this tactic seems
not to be unbalancing, simply because if it was, it'd happen a lot.  It seems
to be used only as a way of breaking an LPS stalemate w/o resorting to a timer.
Any server gods out there with stats on what percentage of wins come from 3rd
space scumming?  I'll bet it ain't much.

Of course, if this were to become a tactic on the scale of say, ogging, then it
most certainly should be banned, as it would unbalance the game.  But somehow I
don't think that will happen.

	Entropy
Xref: sparky rec.games.netrek:5539 news.groups:16955
From: tom@soda.berkeley.edu (Tom Holub)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,news.groups
Subject: Re: CFD anyone?
Followup-To: news.groups
Date: 19 Aug 1992 02:51:25 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley, CS Undergraduate Association
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu

In article <34477@cbmvax.commodore.com> jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) writes:
)spot@CS.CMU.EDU (Scott Draves) writes:
)>r.g.n.programmer
)>r.g.n.play
)>r.g.n.borgs
)>r.g.n.hockey
)>r.g.n.league.inl  (moderated?)
)
)	I would have:
)r.g.n.programmer
)r.g.n.play (rename of r.g.n)
)r.g.n.inl

If you people are serious about a reorganization, I suggest you read the
guidelines posted in news.groups (amongst other places) and get a real
RFD going.  Discussions of this sort should take place in news.groups, 
and I have directed followups there.

I would be against a split; I don't think the current volume warrants one.
 -Tom
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: rjones@sulaco.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Ray Jones - Perp)
Subject: Re: YAR.C (yet another reserved.c)
Reply-To: rjones@dsd.es.com
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp.
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 17:28:02 GMT

In article <1992Aug14.131616.6064@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>, adc@tardis.msu.edu (Alan D. Cabrera) writes:
>RSA is not public, it is covered by a United States Government patent.
>Exporting it is COMPLETELY forbidden.
>
>Go ahead and thumb your nose at them.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Perhaps we are thinking of different things when we say "RSA".  I am
thinking primarliy of the function e = a ^ <key> mod N.  N is the product
of two large primes, <key> is one of two numbers that are selected based on
the properties of those two primes.  I got this info out of a book that I
am sure is available in other countries.  A patent on a simple mathematical
formula?  How could I not thumb my nose at them?  

I won't be the one distributing it, anyway, at least not directly.  I`''
just frop it off in some public ftp site, after compiling it for the
various architectures.  I get on a few of the popular server, tell everyone
there that a client with the new blessing scheme is available.  I send out
mail to some of the netrek mailing lists I'm aware of.  I put the blessing
code in the INL server (that's one other advantage of using Public Key I
found...  The INL server can be blessed, finally!).  I don't post to it or
tell anyone that it's out there in any form that can be linked to me
directly.  (I can forge the mail...)  By the time anyone outside the netrek
community figures out that "their" algorithm is being used without "their"
permission, a thousaned copies of it will be out there and in use. 

But thank you for the warning.  I'm not thumbing my nose at that.  I don't
particularly want to be sued, so it's nice to know that I'll have to take
action to make it less likely.  If RSA oggs me, I won't be the one
carrying.  

>---
>Alan Cabrera				internet:  adc@tardis.cl.msu.edu

-- 
                                          Ray Jones
                                          rjones@dsd.es.com
From: bharat@shadow.Eng.Sun.COM (Bharat Mediratta)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Playing with lag
Date: 14 Aug 92 02:31:32 GMT
Reply-To: bharat@shadow.Eng.Sun.COM
Organization: Sun Microsystems
NNTP-Posting-Host: shadow

In article 92Aug13163102@soda.soda.Berkeley.EDU, mehlhaff@soda.Berkeley.EDU (ERic Mehlhaff) writes:
>

[...]

>I'd been contemplating something along these lines for some time. My idea
>was more like a 'time-warp', where the 'lagged' player disappears from the
>map as soon as the server realizes he is gone.  When the net's back, the 
>player mysteriously reappears where they disappeared, exactly as they were
>before.  
>	The primary abuse I can see from this is that their opposition might
>realize this and be waiting for them to reappear at that point.  Obvious
>solutions to that are to displace randomly (if enemies are near? ).
>
>What'cha all think?
>
>..s

How about this:

	   If you die after being completely lagged for 8 seconds your
	   kill message is different, the kill doesn't count, and your armies
	   aren't destroyed.  When you are reconnected, you are placed at
	   your home planet with your armies and the same damage as when you
	   died.

The 8 second time lag will help prevent people yanking the ethernet cable
in tricky situations (they'll die before the lag factor kicks in) but will
probably save most people from death by ghostbustage.  Obviously, there are
going to be some situations where it'll be advantageous to fake a network
overload, to save your butt, but you'll be taking quite a risk...

---
    /\        Bharat Mediratta
   \\ \       Graphics Continuation Group
  \ \\ /      
 / \/ / /     
/ /   \//\    SUN Microsystems, Inc.	
\//\   / /    Mailstop: MTV18-218
 / / /\ /     2550 Garcia Avenue, Building 18
  / \\ \      Mountain View, CA 94043
   \ \\       Phone:  (415)336-4347, FAX:(415)336-5471
    \/        Email:  bharat.mediratta@eng.sun.com
From: jch+@cs.cmu.edu (Jonathan Hardwick)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Enough of this misinformation (was Re: YAR.C (yet another reserved.c))
Date: 14 Aug 92 18:39:41 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

adc@tardis.msu.edu writes
> In article 713753667@murphy, fortony@sonne.cso.uiuc.edu () writes:
> > Nobody's making any money off netrek, except perhaps the companies who
> > make blankets for the homeless and the distilleries who make Mad Dog 20/20.
> 
> Doesn't matter, RSA is still protected under US patent law.

Ok, I actually went and asked someone (shock horror).  The e-mail
encryption package is built around RSA-REF (probably wrongly
capitalized) which is a reference version provided by RSA for the
public domain.  They *had* to provide it because DARPA included a
"public use" clause in a contract of theirs (nice one DARPA -- I bet
that pissed off the lawyers when they found out about it).  So all Ray
has to do is ask RSA if he can be an official distributor of RSA-REF
in noncommercial software.  They ask him what he wants it for, he sez
"a networked computer game that needs better user authentication, and
which no-one makes any money out of", and he gets a neato free
license. 

No patents.  No angry lawyers.  No big nasty company to thumb your
nose at.  No seized assets.  No closed-down FTP sites.  No bogeymen.

Overseas players may be hosed, depending on whether or not RSA-REF is
exportable, and whether or not the RSA-REF license comes with any
clauses like "thou shalt make thy FTP server software do nasty things
to anyone logging in from abroad".

Jonathan H.
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: osyjm@cs.montana.edu (Jaye Mathisen)
Subject: Re: CMU Egos
Organization: CS
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 05:14:43 GMT

In article <seXn1jO00VoxNAr18n@andrew.cmu.edu> tw1r+@andrew.cmu.edu (Timothy C. Worsley) writes:
>*sigh* From the very beginning, "We are better than you." was supposed
>to be part of the Arrogant Assholes persona.

I personally thought it was great.  The best thing about cute slogans is when
they're also true...

"I'm not as good as you..." 
-- 
 Jaye Mathisen, COE Systems Manager                (406) 994-4780
 410 Roberts Hall,Dept. of Computer Science
 Montana State University,Bozeman MT 59717	osyjm@cs.montana.edu
From: hadley@vlsi.ics.uci.edu (Tedd Hadley)
Subject: Re: UDP performance criteria
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Organization: UC Irvine Department of ICS
Date: 23 Aug 92 01:26:43 GMT
Distribution: rec

In <1992Aug21.190611.4820@ecl.psu.edu> jgr@ecl.psu.edu (Jim Reisman) writes:


>1)  How are the results of the ping utility related
>to UDP lag times.  Just by inspection, I feel that when
>I log in overseas I am getting better response times
>then suggested by the ping utility.  Also packet drop
>rates seem to be better as well.  Can I assume that ping
>times are a test of TCP performance?  Is their a modified ping
>utility that will give me the true expected lag and UDP
>drop rates?

   ping uses ICMP which is almost identical to UDP in that both
   are just simple interfaces to the low-level IP.  Possible reasons why ping
   may not accurately predict delay:

   1) ping shows round-trip times, so the time shown for a 1000 byte packet
   is actually the time to send 1000b to the host plus the time for the host
   to send 1000b back.  A netrek client, on the other hand, usually sends very
   small packets but receives large ones.

   2) ping sends 1 packet per second so it's not likely that outgoing packets
   will collide with echo responses or that ping will saturate the connection.
   Both are possible with a netrek client (though the former seems unlikely
   if the client packets are small).

   3) network packet loss is usually unpredictable unless there's a defective
   router somewhere, but I suspect that the faster you send packets the
   more likely it is to get dropped (idea: /usr/etc/spray -- better netrek
   delay predicter?)

   4) the slower the server daemon runs the less the perceived client delay
   (as long as the ntserv processes are keeping up).  (Interestingly, a daemon
   running at 200 ms per cycle could probably support players at twice the
   usual distance to the server without them noticing the lag ... unfortunately
   slo-mo netrek just isn't that fun).


>2)  Also, when playing netrek, at what settings do you
>normally have the UDP at?  I normally use fat UDP/ enforced
>state and weapons. Under what curcumstances should I change
>these settings?

   I use simple receive with enforced state/weapon send, based on the
   assumption that receive is the real bottleneck, not send.  But if you
   don't want to risk missing a planet army or player # kills packet then
   you should use fat (though it's been suggested that armies and kills
   should be always sent with TCP to guarantee transmission).  Based on
   ping experiments (for what they're worth -- see above) I would guess that
   fat UDP would probably contribute between 0-5 ms delay each cycle.  Not
   much, but since lag is my obsession :) I put up with a few dropped packets
   now and then.

   -ted
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: rjones@dsd.es.com (Ray Jones - Perp)
Subject: Re: YAR.C (yet another reserved.c)
Reply-To: rjones@dsd.es.com
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp.
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 92 16:04:31 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.065115.26342@newshost.anu.edu.au>, jaa101@gorton.anu.edu.au (James Ashton) writes:
>Sorry if I missed the start of this thread but I'm dying to know.
>Never mind all the legal mumbo-jumbo:  why is RSA much more secure than
>the current method?  How do people break the current system?  They
>disassemble the code and patch the same functionality into their borgs
>and robots.  Surely they can do the same for any more complex code.  I
>don't see how there's any way to ensure that they're running a
>particular binary in the absence of some internet feature allowing you
>to (say) checksum the code of the process making a connexion.
>
>Please note that I'm not saying there aren't some handy things you
>could do with RSA in netrek.  It's just that I don't see how it can be
>used to solve the main problem that `reserved.c' attempts to address.

There are a few advantages:

1 - Blessing a server now only requires that you get a copy of the latest,
greatest list of Public Keys for accepted clients.  That right there, I
think, makes this a Good Thing (IMO).

2 - If one of the clients is "cracked" then you just remove its key from
the list, and generate a new one, with the key hidden better.  

3 - I *think* that the real problem right now is not that the binary is
being cracked, but that reserved.c is available...

>Of course if there is some neat method that I've missed, you can avoid
>all those nasty export problems by letting some non-US trekker (like
>me) do the coding and we'll import it for you.  After all, that's
>what's happening with all the other encryption stuff in the world.

I'm talking to RSA now.  I hope to get permission to modify the RSAREF
distribution, so that I can chop out most of their code, so there isn't so
much to distribute.  

>James Ashton						  System Administrator
>Email James.Ashton@syseng.anu.edu.au	 GPO Box 4 Canberra ACT 2601 Australia

-- 
                                          rjones@dsd.es.com
From: labc-4aa@web-2h.berkeley.edu (CS 60C Lab Assistant)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Multiple INL teams
Date: 16 Aug 92 01:02:37 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: web-2h.berkeley.edu
Originator: labc-4aa@web-2h.berkeley.edu


The more teams the merrier I say.
I think if a school has the resources and
drive to have lots of teams then they 
should be allowed to. They just better 
make sure they have enought subs for 
each team because I really doubt that
I would show mercy about allowing them
to sub in members from other teams.
Not like they wouldn't anyway. So it really
doesn't matter.

The Masters fought well but due to lack of
inexperience (mostly due to my fault of not
following my gut instincts at the time) and not
skill.. we lost to akira but that still doesn't
mean that we couldn't have made it to the finals.
We didn't even have playoffs and I didn't even
have the chance to adjust my strategies from the
information I have gotten. You guys claim to
have won the Battle and The War but the war
wasn't even over. You can claim to be the winners
of last season INL but as far as I'm concerned
time ran out and we can honestly say that
no one knows for sure who would have won.

Duck Dodgers
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: fortony@sonne.cso.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: CMU Egos
Originator: fortony@murphy
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 07:14:58 GMT

jch+@cs.cmu.edu (Jonathan Hardwick) writes:

>fortony@sonne.cso.uiuc.edu writes
>> Anyway, the point will become moot in the fall when whatever CMU
>> team or teams entered into the INL lose their first match.

>Agreed.  This is why the idea of a single CMU team is such a bad one.
>Not only will no-one else ever beat them (bad for the INL, and Tom's
>blood pressure), but the CMU collective ego will never be cut down to
>size (bad for the bandwidth on rec.games.netrek). 

>Of course, it'll soon be an honor thing inside CMU not to be on the
>first [S]INL team to lose to a non-CMU team :-)

And the cool thing about *that* is that all the studs will amscray from
the wimpy teams, leaving them to the hounds.  And as soon as some CMU
teams start getting slaughtered and genocided and sent packing, people
like ME will start posting enormous game summaries on the network with
the word CMU in eighty point bold blinking inverse text.  You guys
will never live it down, and the game will finally be interesting. ;)

>Spaceman Spiff
-- 
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Felix Sebastian Ortony	fortony@murphy.gis.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: ahabig@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu (Alec Habig)
Subject: Re: Beef Client Borg?
Organization: Indiana University Astrophysics, Bloomington, IN
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 08:06:40 GMT

From the beef blesser's original post, he embarked on this carreer of crime
because he didn't want to hassle with getting someone to bless his VMS client.
This is an understandable concern (although his response is still uncool) -
look at how long the guy from ulowell has been asking to get his VMS client
blessed!  How about somebody with reserved.c getting off his butt, spending 1/2
hour and blessing this client?  It might prevent future hacks, and certainly
would help those in the world of physics whose bosses still insist on FORTRAN
and VMS as standards (and who also buy the machines we use).

	Entropy
From: tw1r+@andrew.cmu.edu (Timothy C. Worsley)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Mucus... how good is he? (was Re: I will assault MUCUS(and he will not respond))
Date: 14 Aug 92 02:24:55 GMT
	<l8juinINNcjl@alcor.usc.edu>
	<geWdKZe00VB3JiYmYD@andrew.cmu.edu>
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Excerpts from netnews.rec.games.netrek: 13-Aug-92 Re: Mucus... how good
is he.. Greg K Chung@andrew.cmu. (925)

> God only knows... the only people *I* recognize IN THAT LIST (in
> addition to the Immortal MUCUS himself) are:  SpaceAce!, Red Shirt,
> Mergatroid, Videodrome, ZZnew Guy, Mr. Wizard, EEK!!, YeaBoy!!!!,
> Drewski, Beck and Balton.

> Those others...they're not important.


	I know that you're venting your CMU arrogance, Greg, but you seem
unaware that Duck Dodgers is an honorary CMU player.  

ZZnew guy
From: yohan@wyatt.ksu.ksu.edu (Jonathan W Newton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: CHAOS sites????????
Date: 19 Aug 1992 14:15:54 -0500
Organization: Kansas State University
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: wyatt.ksu.ksu.edu


I know of KSU, arizona, and a german chaos server.  Does anyone know of any other
chaos servers?  BTW, whatever happened to foghorn?
From: rone@girtab.usc.edu (Ron Echeverri)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: SINL playoffs
Date: 18 Aug 1992 23:44:56 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: girtab.usc.edu

In article <keYFF6e00awGE6reQy@andrew.cmu.edu> "Joseph E. Beck" <jb8n+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>Felix Ortony writes:
>>And in case you're wondering, yes, it IS the fate of Team CP to
>>suffer through sunscreamer posts for their questionable sportsmanship.
>Promise us you'll write the game summaries for whatever team you're on
>next year?  What does everyone think about making this an INL rule?

Seconded.  What should his official title be?  INL Poet Laureate?

5150

Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
From: wansari@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Waheed A Ansari)
Subject: Re: .xtrekrc question
Organization: The Ohio State University, Department of Geological Sciences
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 03:23:04 GMT

In article <btd.713816074@pv7413.vincent.iastate.edu> btd@iastate.edu (Benjamin T Dehner) writes:
>	I have a real quick question.  Is there a way to specify in the
>.xtrekrc file the position/size/etc. of the 'wait queue' window?  Since I

>Ben
>Cthulhu

I use the following to specify the wait window geometry in my .xtrekrc:

wait.geometry:          180x60+850+180
count.geometry:         115x40+60+15
waitquit.geometry:      50x40

The main window here is "wait", and 180x60 is its default size, if you are
using the bronco UDP v 1.0 client.  The "Xtrek: Game is full." message
is 15 pixels high.  Change the +850+180 to the coordinates you desire.

Waheed
From: botelle@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Justin Botelle)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Ged. . . how good is he?
Date: 14 Aug 92 04:18:23 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Aug14.033508.8313@dsd.es.com) mmoore@itchy.dsd.es.com (Michael Moore) writes:
)In article <weWluPS00Vp3I4mmlx@andrew.cmu.edu) "Timothy C. Worsley" <tw1r+@andrew.cmu.edu) writes:
)	Let me just lay it straight.  One more time.  I consider myself
)a competent player, and when I see things such as Balton being exhalted
)as the best base, and MUCUS being one of the top 5 players, and yet
)I do not have anymore trouble with them than with Wreck or Gadfly,
)I speak out about that.

MUCUS is one of the top 5 IMO, and Wreck would be up there if he ever ogged.
He certainly can take planets well, is very clueful, and is one hell of a
base.  Leonard: ogg.  I don't really know much about Gadfly.

)	You of course want to keep the pinnacle of CMU excellence in 
)pristine tact, so you see all my assertions that these folks are not
)any better than scores of others as attacks.  You translate my
)willingness to speak out into arrogance, for in your mind that is
)what it truly is.  How dare Ged speak out against his betters.  He's
)not *even* from CMU...

Really, I think your letting things get to heart.  But you do have a point.
There are many people from CMU who think they are great, and who in fact
are kind of mediocre.  It comes from having a larger portion of the best
players than any other school, which comes from a larger number of players.
Nothing special, though I laugh when I hear someone say "They're from CMU,
so they *have to be clueful."  There is no exclusivity on newbies, nor should
there be.

)
)--
) ---------------------------------------------------------------------
)|Michael Moore                      \  "Art is best known through its |
)|Evans & Sutherland Employee         \  highest representative, not   |
)|University of Utah Student          /  through those who daub."      |
)|Email      : mmoore@dsd.es.com     /                                 |
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