chrys@alberta (09/09/83)
I include here an article that I felt I should make comment on:
"On our system here 4.1bsd VAX11/780 we obtained
version 5.2 rogue or what ever it was and found
we could not restart a game. The local powers
rather than cure this returned to version 3.6.
This is because games received a justified low
priority. Since then games have be removed
completely - sigh.
Richard Loken"
I just wanted to make two comments:
1) I feel games to be a great relief after a session of long concentration
or to relax before getting down to work. Hence, I feel games to be
a necessary (?) part of a system (even research systems).
2) We cannot have games on systems if the users cannot be responsible for
their actions to the degree that they
a) don't get their work done or
b) bother others (who are trying to get their work done) by
i) creating undo load on the system,
ii) making a lot of noise in common work areas, and/or
iii) tying up needed resources (e.g. terminals) during
busy periods.
Our system has had a lot of the problems associated with point 2 above.
The systems people are valiantly attempting to create an
"academic/research" environment on the system. I just hope that the
irresponsibilty of few won't cause loss of priviledges to all.
My plea is that we (general user community) be VERY sensitive to what's
going on on our respective systems in order to avoid such penalties. I
see that this is equally applicable to the entire USENET system, as well.
Chris Helmers {sask,vax135,ubc-vision}!alberta!chrysnewman@utcsrgv.UUCP (Ken Newman) (09/10/83)
My two cents: I think the notion that games are useful for RELAXATION or unwinding is naive. Good games, being very competitive among good players, are very intense and nerve- wracking and do anything but relax you. When you get killed on level 20 in rogue with good magic left, do you feel calm and peaceful? Also I don't understand why games can't be trivially controlled. Simple shell files can be set up to change the mode on the /usr/games directory during peak hours; there are other methods. People disturbing others while playing games should be just approached about it. Rogue has excellent features for monitoring load average etc.
allan@qusavx.UUCP (09/10/83)
If people on your system are playing games at unreasonable times, then you can restrict access to games to times that are reasonable. You can do this with crontab by removing access rights to stop people playing games, and giving the access rights back when they can. Of course, this does not stop people taking private copies of games, but then neither does deleting them if they know they are going to be deleted. Allan Pick (qusavx!allan)
barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) (09/14/83)
Around here (MIT) a fairly simple mechanism was used to restrict access to games in various ways. All the games had access set so only the user "games" could execute them. There was a small set-uid program that would check if running a game was permitted and then exec the game. This way you don't have the problem of people making private copies (I don't know if we were careful enough to protect the source, too, but that is another thing that would be necessary). This is also better than the crontab mechanism, since it allows fancier control than just time. For instance, the computer that ran this policy only had one dial-up, which was very much in demand at night (this is a school, so everyone hacks at night), so it would only allow you to play a game at night if you were on a hardwired terminal; there was also a chaosnet connection, but use of it burdened the CPU (just a little 11/23 with one disk) so the games manager would not let you play from the network. -- Barry Margolin ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar
woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) (09/15/83)
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