A.G.Poole@newcastle.ac.uk (Ford (Alex Poole)) (06/06/91)
Hi... this isn't really like the sort of things you seem to have been discussing so far, but it is a matter of policy, so here goes... What are other Uni's attutudes towards Multi-User Domains (MUDs)? I've been told (*8-) that there is one (or 3?) here, but they are all being wiped for good in the next week or so, and the ports we can currently access to allow them to run will be locked. Is this the same for other Uni's? I've also heard that American Uni's actually support MUDs.. or is this folklore? How are they justified if this is so? Any comments or arguements for MUDs appreciated, comments against burnt *8-) (only kidding... arguements both ways will be welcome) Thanks Alex (PS... those people who program such things... not me of course... are trying to find a way of stopping it, so if anyone has had the threat of removal, and has overcome it somehow, please tell us how!!!)
dpassage@tornado.Berkeley.EDU (David G. Paschich) (06/06/91)
In article <1991Jun5.182009.26836@newcastle.ac.uk> A.G.Poole@newcastle.ac.uk (Ford (Alex Poole)) writes: >Hi... this isn't really like the sort of things you seem to have been >discussing so far, but it is a matter of policy, so here goes... > >What are other Uni's attutudes towards Multi-User Domains (MUDs)? I've heard them referred to as Multi-User Dungeons, but hey, what's in a name? (c.f. misc.activism.general) >I've been told (*8-) that there is one (or 3?) here, but they are all being >wiped for good in the next week or so, and the ports we can currently access to >allow them to run will be locked. Is this the same for other Uni's? > >I've also heard that American Uni's actually support MUDs.. or is this >folklore? How are they justified if this is so? > >Any comments or arguements for MUDs appreciated, comments against burnt *8-) I don't have problems with users playing MUDs running on other systems, since most MUD clients have a system load comparable to telnet, but starting one up without permission is asking to be squished. One of our users started a MUD without permission on one of our machines; we were tipped off by another user who saw an announcement about it in rec.games.mud. There are MUDs running on university machines all over the place; the one here at Berkeley (sequent.berkeley.edu, port 4000) runs on the same machine as the campus Xtrek server (another game which wastes a lot of MIPS). Basically, the machine is unused after hours, so it doesn't cost the university anything to let folks run games off of it. I don't think it's supported as an official university project, but it's there. I mostly view MUDs as harmless, unless some random user tries to start one up on my system without permission. David G. Paschich Open Computing Facility UC Berkeley dpassage@ocf.berkeley.edu "They might be brain / They might be washed / They might be Dr. Spock's back-up band"
davis@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu (Palmer Davis) (06/06/91)
In article <1991Jun5.182009.26836@newcastle.ac.uk> A.G.Poole@newcastle.ac.uk (Ford (Alex Poole)) writes: > >I've also heard that American Uni's actually support MUDs.. or is this >folklore? > Depends on what you mean by "support." We have one MUD up and going (well, it died a while ago of a database crash followed by a write over the only backup, but I hear rumors that it's back) due to its administrator's ability to scrounge a spare machine (half a spare machine, actually) to run it on. Although the university isn't formally providing it with a home, there is a club on campus ("CRUMMM") that has formal University recognition, and consequently *does* get University funding for activities. They have requests pending for money for something like an old workstation to run the MUD on (though something less like a hard drive is more likely); there was a get-together that it sponsored last term. > >How are they justified if this is so? > "Justified?" Who said anything about "justified?" If there's a machine sitting around with an administrator willing to waste cycles on a MUD, there isn't really too much that the University has to say about it unless it does something obnoxious. We have fiber-optic ethernet running into all our dorm rooms here and are slowly migrating toward making the NeXT our standard platform, which raises the possibility of literally thousands of student-owned 15 MIPS workstations available for running MUDs, with enough raw bandwidth that the net isn't going to be the bottleneck unless a *lot* of people try to be MUD administrators. Most people around here would rather play on MUDs than hack them, so that isn't very likely. I can see how a policy of forbidding MUDs would be reasonable, though, in an environment with considerably scarcer computing resources. (I'll resist the temptation to tell you about the multimedia MUD I have under development for the NeXT right now.... :-) :-) ) >(PS... those people who program such things... not me of course... are trying >to find a way of stopping it, so if anyone has had the threat of removal, and >has overcome it somehow, please tell us how!!!) Find an aging VAX that isn't running X, and put the MUD on port 6000. They *can't* block that without breaking everyone's X server.... Or take over some other well-known port reserved for something that nobody ever uses, like SUPDUP or RJE. -- PTD -- -- Palmer Davis <davis@po.cwru.edu> I'm probably wrong, so don't blame INS. CWRU Information Network Services Life is short. "Where I came from, we were taught that lawyers had a high social status. But my father never would have friends who were lawyers." -- Lim
dylan@ibmpcug.co.uk (Matthew Farwell) (06/06/91)
In article <1991Jun5.182009.26836@newcastle.ac.uk> A.G.Poole@newcastle.ac.uk (Ford (Alex Poole)) writes: >What are other Uni's attutudes towards Multi-User Domains (MUDs)? I take it you mean Multi-User Dungeons etc. >I've been told (*8-) that there is one (or 3?) here, but they are all being >wiped for good in the next week or so, and the ports we can currently access to >allow them to run will be locked. Is this the same for other Uni's? Probably. The admins I know from universities tend to get quite annoyed at people using their resources (even at night). Resources of course doesnt just include cpu time, but includes bandwidth into the machine, esp. if you only have a limited number of lines into the machine. >(PS... those people who program such things... not me of course... are trying >to find a way of stopping it, so if anyone has had the threat of removal, and >has overcome it somehow, please tell us how!!!) This is dead easy. You get a large baseball bat and go to the sysadmins office and ask nicely and sweetly if they mind you running a mud on their machine, casually smashing their personal machine to bits in the process. Actually, this tends to work for most people. :-) Dylan. -- Matthew J Farwell: dylan@ibmpcug.co.uk || ...!uunet!ukc!ibmpcug!dylan But you're wrong Steve. You see, its only solitaire.
glenn@curie.ces.cwru.edu (Glenn Crocker) (06/07/91)
davis@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu (Palmer Davis) writes: A.G.Poole@newcastle.ac.uk (Ford (Alex Poole)) writes: > >I've also heard that American Uni's actually support MUDs.. or is this >folklore? Depends on what you mean by "support." We have one MUD up and going (well, it died a while ago of a database crash followed by a write over the only backup, but I hear rumors that it's back) due to its administrator's ability to scrounge a spare machine (half a spare machine, actually) to run it on. This is exactly true. I'm the person that runs TinyCWRU, and I've talked with other MUD admins about this exact issue. Most MUDs go through something like this: 1) JoeBob starts playing a MUD somewhere, and thinks "This is great, but I could do a much better one!" 2) JoeBob FTPs the source to one of the multitude of MUDs. 3) (optional) JoeBob sets it up on one of the workstations he's got access to, but neglects to tell the sysadmin about it. :-( 4) (optional) JoeBob's sysadmin finds out 5) JoeBob's sysadmin is conned (or bribed) into allowing JoeBobMUD to stay up. 6) JoeBob posts an announcement to rec.games.mud about JoeBobMUD, and millions of people come to play. A huge database results, which brings the VAXstation 2000 that JoeBobMUD was running on to its knees 7) JoeBob's sysadmin tells JoeBob to take the MUD down. 8) At this point, JoeBob can go ask another sysadmin with a bigger machine to let him run JoeBobMUD there (repeating the cycle), or can let it die. This is pretty much what has happened with TinyCWRU over the last couple of years. I think that most sysadmins are willing to allow a MUD on their machines, but not if the MUD will affect the real work going on on the machine. Clearly, if there are unused machines about, no real work will be affected. Unused machines are generally incapable of supporting a MUD, tho. The fundamental problem with MUDs is that most are badly coded, and eat more system resources than is necessary. One of the reasons TinyCWRU has stayed up is that I've continually rewritten it to make it less hungry. -- Glenn Crocker | Your milage may vary. glenn@ces.cwru.edu | Light bar not for occupant protection. CWRU, Cleveland, OH | Don't drive on frozen lakes. W (216)368-6133 H (216)754-1314 | Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (06/07/91)
A.G.Poole@newcastle.ac.uk (Ford (Alex Poole)) writes: > Hi... this isn't really like the sort of things > you seem to have been discussing so far, but it is > a matter of policy, so here goes... > What are other Uni's attutudes towards Multi-User > Domains (MUDs)? Multi-User Dungeons, I think. > I've been told (*8-) that there is one (or 3?) > here, but they are all being wiped for good in the > next week or so, and the ports we can currently > access to allow them to run will be locked. Is > this the same for other Uni's? > I've also heard that American Uni's actually > support MUDs.. or is this folklore? How are they > justified if this is so? > Any comments or arguements for MUDs appreciated, > comments against burnt *8-) > (only kidding... arguements both ways will be > welcome) > Thanks Alex > (PS... those people who program such things... not > me of course... are trying to find a way of > stopping it, so if anyone has had the threat of > removal, and has overcome it somehow, please tell > us how!!!) Well, it is a viewpoint kind of thing. Can't speak for the UK, but over here, the bulk of the populace is still scared silly of computers, so providing something fun to do with them is a great way to break down that initial barrier of fear. Second, MUDs are thinly disguised exercises in logical deduction and managing complexity and debugging failing pathways, all skills needing honing for the average CS student (or indeed, nearly any student). Third, at least for the user programmable MUDs (the only kind to run for just this reason), the MUD is also a very thinly disguised exercise in "programming in the large", where you have to make software you write interact reliably with software other people wrote. It tends to use more modern (actor or object oriented) programming paradigms, also A Good Thing. Some folks recognize that education disguised as fun and done on an informal basis is the best way to get the student up to speed, other folks are horrified at the very thought of any knowledge or skills being allowed to accrete to a student in anything but a stuffy classroom lecture mode. Mostly the second type don't belong in education as a career, have been in it for over thirty years without allowing a single new idea to penetrate their skulls, and are incurably insistant at remaining ignorant, so you have a job of work ahead of you. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>