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Why not play a real game?

Try http://angband.oook.cz/> Angband, http://www.nethack.org/> Nethack, http://www.adom.de/> ADOM, http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/> Crawl, or start looking at http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/> Roguebasin. Then you'll be really living. Briefly.

The Furytech mirror has a huge collection of Angband variants. There are also Angband web forums where you can ask or find answers to this and other important questions.

Why would anyone want to hack FAAngband ?

Personally, I love both Nethack and Angband. Why limit yourself to just one? ADOM deserves mention here, too, as do the *band variants (ToME, ZAngband & Enteroband are all personal *band variant favorites).

There's no reason you can't play them all. Some, like ADOM, are very well-developed. It has the most 'plot' of them all, IMHO. But I wouldn't want to be limited to playing just one of them!

So far, I've beaten everything except Angband (unless you count watching that Borg winner, but the Angband Borg is another story, and a very cool bit of AI!)

I linked all those variants up for you because I want to encourage people to play these games. And if you're stuck, I like to read spoilers. Some people help that, but they REALLY help you appreciate the depth of the games, IMHO. If you don't like that, though, don't read them. But there are lots of crazy things about what resistances you need, or what gear is important, or even what to wish for that are really hard to figure out. I mean, how many would notice that herbs grow in a pattern according to Conway's game of Life? That's important if you want to farm them (what did you think farmers were good at, other than polearms?).

Anyhow, these are rich & fun games that shouldn't be ignored just because you think text based interfaces are too retro. Good times, all around :)

For modern Angband variants (in addition to T-o-M-E), I'd recommend Sangband (aka Skills Angband) as best of breed out there, for someone looking to get back into things.

Then you could try a real game ...

Fun article that definitely made me a bit misty-eyed for ye olde days. However, its unfortunate that the article paints roguelikes as being firmly past-tense. In terms of pure dungeon crawl hack-n-slash, roguelikes have persisted, grown in interesting directions, and remain vibrant today.

The power of Beastie compels YOU!

Well, I was torn between modding this up and posting (as commented on somewhere else in this thread) and I gave in to posting.
I spent two years playing Moria on a VAX at University, two years playing Angband 2.4.frog_knows on a SGI Indigo (which nearly resulted ion my expulsion from University), *seven years pass*, six months playing about with the APWBorg for Angband 2.9.2 to see if I could get a win on my computer even if it was not down to me (never did because I was too eager to play it myself), two years playing T.o.M.E.
In fact I had just stopped my T.o.M.E Level 34 Thunderlord Geomancer (Imm Acid & Fire & Cold which is nice) after just coming back from 1850' Moria with two Artifacts, one RandArt (restore stats and life levels /200 turns) and a load of other ego armour because I need to see some daylight in the winter months, and I see this thread. Marvellous fun. I even spent ten minutes getting my Angband Code http://angband.oook.cz/code/ up to date:
To(2.3.2) CWS "Eowardodus" Th(Cl) Ge L:34 DL:2250' A+ R+ Sp+ w:"a Mage Staff of Mana (1d4) (+6,+6) (60%)" W H- !D c-- f- PV+ s d++ P++ M+ C+ S I+ !So !B ac? !GHB SQ? RQ++ V+

http://www.oook.cz/screenshots/takeittux2.png

Beastie stabs Tux in the heart, you insensitive clod!

I don't know about Nethack, but there are a couple of Angband-based ones. Well, there are trailers, at least. :)

N:302:Buckyball
G:E:D
I:115:92:3:10:192
W:6:8:0 :18
B:CRUSH:HURT:8d5
F:STUPID | EMPTY_MIND | RAND_50
D: A truncated icosahedron several meters high, it has 32 faces, of
D:which 20 are regular hexagons and 12 are regular pentagons. These
D:faces come together at 60 points, or vertices. A grossly oversized
D:carbon atom sits at each of the vertices. The entire assembly rolls
D:and bounces happily about the room.
D:Brought to you complements of Mr. Buckminster Fuller, Professor
D:Robert F. Curl, Jr. (Rice University), Professor Sir Harold W. Kroto
D:(University of Sussex), and Professor Richard E. Smalley, (Rice
D:University).

N:302:Buckyball
G:E:D
I:115:92:3:10:192
W:6:8:0 :18
B:CRUSH:HURT:8d5
F:STUPID | EMPTY_MIND | RAND_50
D: A truncated icosahedron several meters high, it has 32 faces, of
D:which 20 are regular hexagons and 12 are regular pentagons. These
D:faces come together at 60 points, or vertices. A grossly oversized
D:carbon atom sits at each of the vertices. The entire assembly rolls
D:and bounces happily about the room.
D:Brought to you complements of Mr. Buckminster Fuller, Professor
D:Robert F. Curl, Jr. (Rice University), Professor Sir Harold W. Kroto
D:(University of Sussex), and Professor Richard E. Smalley, (Rice
D:University).

N:302:Buckyball
G:E:D
I:115:92:3:10:192
W:6:8:0 :18
B:CRUSH:HURT:8d5
F:STUPID | EMPTY_MIND | RAND_50
D: A truncated icosahedron several meters high, it has 32 faces, of
D:which 20 are regular hexagons and 12 are regular pentagons. These
D:faces come together at 60 points, or vertices. A grossly oversized
D:carbon atom sits at each of the vertices. The entire assembly rolls
D:and bounces happily about the room.
D:Brought to you complements of Mr. Buckminster Fuller, Professor
D:Robert F. Curl, Jr. (Rice University), Professor Sir Harold W. Kroto
D:(University of Sussex), and Professor Richard E. Smalley, (Rice
D:University).

The Angband-page moved some time ago. The new URL ist www.thangorodrim.net. Another really good Angband-page is http://angband.oook.cz/.

That is not a simple question to answer since there are several factors that have to be taken into consideration in determining price. Different type services, e.g. dialin lines, colocation, dedicated bandwidth, etc, have different factors.

The primary thing to remember is that the ISP business model is based on setting prices for the "average user". They do not directly pass on the cost of each user to that user. For example, a dialin phone line costs $25. That is the cost of just the line. It doesn't include equipment, employess, or bandwidth. The reason ISPs charge $20 or less is that the average user doesn't tie up the line 24/7 so that they can 7 to 10 users per dialin line.

The same is true with bandwidth. An average customer who gets a dedicated T1 usually averages 50% or less of the lines capacity. So the ISP can sell T1 service to two or three customers for each outgoing T1.

Another factor is peak vs average load. The ISP has to provide facilities to handle the peak load. Yet, most prices are set according to average load. Check this site if you want a graphic example of the slashdot effect.

All this presents a problem for ISPs in pricing for users want fast speeds but have low averages, e.g. colocated web sites or DSL lines. They can't charge for the maximum possible load. If they did, DSL lines would run closer to $1000 per month instead of $50. If they stictly base it on average load, the low users are subsidizing the bandwidth of the high users.

To resolve it, they have come up with a price tier that gives an incentive to users to, accurately as possible, estimate their usage. They make it cheaper for the user to pay for the next tier above their average monthly usage rather then paying for the tier below their monthly usage.