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Domain: apocalypse.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to apocalypse.org.
Comments · 17
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How Software Companies Die
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Re:Manbearpig
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How Software Companies Die
This short essay by Orson Scott Card (of Ender's Game fame) I think describes the development of the Microsoft Vista disaster pretty well.
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Gothic/Industrial Fashion
That's why I like Gothic/Industrial music.
No, that's not right. I like the music in and of itself. But anyway, here are a couple of excerpts from You Might Be A Goth If....
# You are happy when no one has ever heard of your favorite band
# When someone else "discovers" your favorite band, you find another favorite band
# You refer to others as "The Normals"
(Yes, it is elitest, but I at least have a sense of humor about it. The trick is to have humor about the elitism and not take it seriously.)
And I think it was in a different "list" that was something like, you might be in an industrial band if....
# No one wants to play lead guitar, and everyone is fighting over the neumatic drill.
(But personally, I think most of the Vampire stuff is silly. (But then I do like Buffy.) (But I resisted watching Buffy for years.)) -
Its just a bill?Maybye I didn't read the article right, but with lines such as:
30-year robot project pitched and researchers in robot technology are advocating a grand project. This does not seem like its really going to happen. There are hundreds of these plans in congress at any one time, and most are thrown out. Reminds me of the Schoolhouse Rock song, I'm Just a Bill
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Re:Sharing....
Kid: It's not easy to beome a law, is it?
Bill: Nope.
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Re:I remember saturday mornings
"Schoolhouse Rock" was saturday morning greatness! Here's a link with the lyrics and some
Schoolhouse Rock
Does anyone else remember the saturday morning newsbyte series, with Christopher Glen, called "In the News" ?
In The News
Time was you might actually get edu-ma-cated on saturday morning, or at the very least, entertained. Now all the cartoons are just 30 minute blipverts for whatever toy they're hawking. -
Re:you missed a few things
All I know is I saw some kid outside sitting outside talking to it.
I heard it say that it's just a bill, yes it's only a bill, and as I stated before it's sitting on Capitol Hill. It went on to describe a long, long journey followed by a long, long wait and I believe it summarized its feeling by saying that it hoped and prayed that it will, but today it is still just a bill.
My assumption is that it wants to become a law, undoubtedly motivated by their fancier ribbons.
The full story can be found here.
Michael. -
About the timelineNever expected to get slashdotted.
Please feel free to mail me corrections and additions to the timeline. The vast majority of it was not written by me, it was written by others who submitted material.
Some blanket replies to clarify the intent of the timeline:
Tolkien is listed because he was very influential on the people making those early games (annd still is to this day). To take another example, Lord Dunsany is comparably important in the development of fantasy as a genre, but has not had very discernable influence on online worlds specifically.
The Sega channel probably does deserve to be listed. Please feel free to send details. Note, however, that this timeline is specifically about online worlds (aka muds, MMORPGs, virtual realities, what have you), not about peer to peer gaming except insofar as instances of peer to peer gaming serve as bridges towards online worlds. Hence the absence of things like Case's Ladder or Kali. Heck, Quake is only in there because it brought greater awareness to online worlds in the process of being a big hit.
Lastly, concerning the title... AFAIK, there are only four significant timelines on the history of online worlds on the Net. There's George Reese's, there's The MUDDex's, there's Jessica Mulligan's on Biting the Hand, and there's mine. Of these, George's is centered on LPMuds, The MUDDex centered on MOOs and MUSHes, Jessica's on commercial games, and then there's mine which tries to cover all the above. Plus, George and Jess both contributed to mine. As of right now, there is no more comprehensive source on the Internet--at least, not that's indexed by any search engines. Believe me, I've looked. For a preliminary links list of resources for online world design, I refer you to my list.
The genesis of the timeline was actually as some research to help out Dr Amy Bruckman (MediaMOO, MOOse Crossing) for a Game Developer's Conference panel we were both on. It has been posted regularly to rec.games.mud.* newsgroups and the MUD-Dev mailing list as well. It's very much a community effort, and not based on my personal preferences save for the criteria by which I determine whether or not something is an actually an online world.
I see a lot of posts here in the replies which I intend to scarf up and add to the timeline, though. So thanks to those posters.
-Raph Koster
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Yes, die! In committee!
Bah, all you need is Saturday morning television to know how a bill becomes a law.
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Bothered by Spam? Blame Tolkien.At least, according to this timeline, we might need thank Tolkien for more than lembas. Intrigued by Google's USENET archive, I tried to hunt down the origin of the word "spam".
EFF and Wired both give the party-line answer: the word derives from MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) of the late 80s to describe "unwanted stuff", and came from the Monty Python spam sketch.
The USENET posts I found, though, flesh out the story a little. The origin seems tied specifically to TinyMUD, written by Jim Aspnes, inspired partly by Zork and earlier PDP-10/11 MUDs. TinyMUD was launched in August of 1989. TinyMUD's advantage over other MUDs was that visitors could not only wander around a dungeon (think "maze of twisty passages, all alike"), but they could also add new rooms and monsters on the fly.
Searching USENET, it seems there were two meanings of the term "spam". One definition was based on people abusing the ability to add new objects to the TinyMUD world:
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April 17, 1990, posted
by Jon Blow:
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June 27, 1990, posted by Vintage Mutant Ganja Technerd:
For example, a delay of 5 to 10 seconds between object creations and logging in, will all do the trick of 'limiting' spamming without the juggling of quotas, login times, keeping track of hosts, et al. -
October 4, 1990, posted by A Molitor:
However, the second meaning of the word, and the one that seemed to appear earlier in USENET, is the one that more closely resembles the meaning we use today:
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From: Jon Blow (blojo@tornado.Berkeley.EDU)
Subject: Re: Word wrap
Newsgroups: alt.mud
Date: 1990-01-22 23:18:55 PST
Right now my entire adventure is formatted to be easy-readable in 80 columns. This is also a pain, since 1) It takes much longer for me to write it, and I constantly feel a loss of artistic quality when I am forced to reword so that a line will fit; 2) People with wordwrap must turn it OFF, or the adventure will look like Spam. Bummer.
Other posts (and various MUD histories on the net) discuss the problem of MUD visitors who used various commands (most often the 'say' command) to fill other people's screens with unwanted text, thus scrolling more important things off the screen. The first place I found the word "spam" being applied to USENET posts themselves was here, related to a bot that accidentally regurgitated other posts in the news.admin.policy newsgroup.
Since most MUD Histories attribute their rise to the fantasy genre of Tolkien (and to a lesser extent Dungeons and Dragons), don't forget to thank Middle-Earth (and 25-line CRTs) for 'spam' when you see the movie next week. There are doubtless other etymologies; I'm just basing this on the only evidence I found.
As a side note, to Google employees the term "spam" refers not to unwanted email but rather to the underhanded tricks folks try to boost their search-engine rankings. -
April 17, 1990, posted
by Jon Blow:
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Bothered by Spam? Blame Tolkien.At least, according to this timeline, we might need thank Tolkien for more than lembas. Intrigued by Google's USENET archive, I tried to hunt down the origin of the word "spam".
EFF and Wired both give the party-line answer: the word derives from MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) of the late 80s to describe "unwanted stuff", and came from the Monty Python spam sketch.
The USENET posts I found, though, flesh out the story a little. The origin seems tied specifically to TinyMUD, written by Jim Aspnes, inspired partly by Zork and earlier PDP-10/11 MUDs. TinyMUD was launched in August of 1989. TinyMUD's advantage over other MUDs was that visitors could not only wander around a dungeon (think "maze of twisty passages, all alike"), but they could also add new rooms and monsters on the fly.
Searching USENET, it seems there were two meanings of the term "spam". One definition was based on people abusing the ability to add new objects to the TinyMUD world:
-
April 17, 1990, posted
by Jon Blow:
-
June 27, 1990, posted by Vintage Mutant Ganja Technerd:
For example, a delay of 5 to 10 seconds between object creations and logging in, will all do the trick of 'limiting' spamming without the juggling of quotas, login times, keeping track of hosts, et al. -
October 4, 1990, posted by A Molitor:
However, the second meaning of the word, and the one that seemed to appear earlier in USENET, is the one that more closely resembles the meaning we use today:
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From: Jon Blow (blojo@tornado.Berkeley.EDU)
Subject: Re: Word wrap
Newsgroups: alt.mud
Date: 1990-01-22 23:18:55 PST
Right now my entire adventure is formatted to be easy-readable in 80 columns. This is also a pain, since 1) It takes much longer for me to write it, and I constantly feel a loss of artistic quality when I am forced to reword so that a line will fit; 2) People with wordwrap must turn it OFF, or the adventure will look like Spam. Bummer.
Other posts (and various MUD histories on the net) discuss the problem of MUD visitors who used various commands (most often the 'say' command) to fill other people's screens with unwanted text, thus scrolling more important things off the screen. The first place I found the word "spam" being applied to USENET posts themselves was here, related to a bot that accidentally regurgitated other posts in the news.admin.policy newsgroup.
Since most MUD Histories attribute their rise to the fantasy genre of Tolkien (and to a lesser extent Dungeons and Dragons), don't forget to thank Middle-Earth (and 25-line CRTs) for 'spam' when you see the movie next week. There are doubtless other etymologies; I'm just basing this on the only evidence I found.
As a side note, to Google employees the term "spam" refers not to unwanted email but rather to the underhanded tricks folks try to boost their search-engine rankings. -
April 17, 1990, posted
by Jon Blow:
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Gaming Addiction:Let the link say it all:
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Hey, slashdot trolls ...
... go and have a peek at apocalypse.org. Apparently you can cause havoc there.
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Re:In a word... yes...
Thus spoke the mgmt.
Read Orson Scott Card's
How Software Companies Die -
Doesn't predate MUD either....The politics, the gossip, and the flames predate IRC, MUDs [...]
Quoting Richard Bartle, from Early MUD History:
The very first MUD was written by Roy Trubshaw in MACRO-10 (the machine code for DECsystem-10's). Date-wise, it was Spring 1979. The game was originally little more than a series of inter-connected locations where you could move and chat. I don't think it was called MUD at that stage, but I'd have to ask Roy to be sure. Roy rewrote it almost immediately, and the next version, also in MACRO-10, was much more sophisticated. This one was definitely called MUD (I still have a printout of it). [...]
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Multi User Dungeon Bots (has been done)Taken from this URL. Scroll down to Bots, or The Triumph of Mass Neotek, and you'll find this text followed with a few links:
Bots are external programs that connect to a mud server as if they were characters. Bots can pass messages and give interactive help. Some of them were so slick as to fool the unwary into believing they were talking to a real person. Most of the bot documents are logs from the bot point of view, and are therefore difficult to read.
They have a few hosted logs from the famous MUD bot 'Julia' and the older 'Gloria'. I think they were quite clever when they're made, but then again... MUDs aren't that complicated. Those are MUDs not MUSHs (which are more RPG like). Basically, the bots was able to answer simple questions and greetings, fighting monster, mapping areas and remember everything that was said to them.
Now, something that would be cool: An ICQ bot =) Adding people at random at asking them silly questions, hehe
