response 100 of 196:

Jul 18 16:20 UTC 1996

Yes!!

response 102 of 196:

Jul 18 19:16 UTC 1996

   I think the whole concept of "fairness" is being misapplied here. 
Fairness is being rewarded relative to the amount of effort you put into 
something.  If one is willing to take the time to telnet into here several 
times a minute should they not be rewarded with a higher lottery number 
than someone who is only willing to try every ten or fifteen minutes?

Not everyone has the same computing habits.  Not everyone is like nephi 
and scg, who might spend sixteen hours a day i front of their computers 
multi-tasking.  Since they always have several windows open, they dont 
care a bout waiting, and dont want to be bothered with having to open a 
window again and again.  Some people believe it or not turn on their 
computers solely to do one thing, grex, and if they are willing to pay 
attention to their connections and put in thee effort to connect in as 
fast as possible time, they should be allowed to do so.
\
This idea that a lottery is unfair is flawed because it assumes that 
everyone has the same telnetting patterns and the same level of desire to 
get an immeidate connection.  If someone is only trying to connect go 
grex every fifteen minutes, they clearly do not want to get on as bad as 
someone who is willing to try connecting several times a minute.

This is like running a marathon, where there is no point to runing and 
trying to getyour best time, because everyone is going to reach the 
finish line in order of where they started.

There is no reason to keep EVERYONE in the que who connects...if the 
object is to disocourage attack telnetting, put in a max que of five or 
10, just enough to make it requiroe more effort to attack telnet.

The only people the que setup really benefits are those like scg and 
nephi who keep several windows open at all times, and are so lazy that 
they dont want to be bothered of having to open a telnet window to grex 
mroe than once.  That isnt a good enough reason to have this.

response 104 of 196:

Jul 18 19:43 UTC 1996

rob, I suspect that ifyou had a response to what I said you'd have made 
it.  All I did was point out the logcal reasoning why some might not 
think the que setup is fair.  Not everyone telnets with the same 
frequency or in the same manner, so lets not act as if they do.  A 
lottery system rewards people who put in the effort to getg higher 
lottery numbers.  I just dont think thereis anything wrong with that.  If 
I work fifty hours a week and the guy next to me only works forty, I 
should get paid more.  The que setup dictates that everyone gets paid the 
same, that users cannot influence their ability to use grex.  How would 
you feel if atyour job, you were not allowed to influence how you DO your 
job and the manener4 in which you do it?

response 106 of 196:

Jul 18 21:10 UTC 1996

you know, kerouac's right, and I'm glad that he's standing up for us,
the people who work 16-hour days and don't have time for some half-
baked queuing process to let us in. damn it, we're _important_, and
_we_ should be first. 

I've got to admire kerouac, because he's obviously a busy person. I
wouldn't be surprised if he's running his own multi-million company
and has three secretaries to handle his scheduling. in fact, I bet
he doesn't really log into Grex; he just has one of his secretaries 
do it for him, because he's a busy man, and time is just too valuable
a commodity for him to spend waiting in line.

everybody knows that important people shouldn't have to wait for anything,
simply because if they had to wait, they wouldn't be any more important
than the next guy, and that wouldn't be fair, especially after putting
so much time into being important. 

in fact, it's _insulting_ to be put at the same level as scg and nephi,
those welfare recipients. they shouldn't even be using Grex; they should
be out getting a job shining shoes at the airport or something. only lazy
people have time to wait. kerouac's an important person, and he doesn't
have time to wait, especially when it means being put on the same level as
_them_. 

I don't even know why there's queuing in the first place. it seems to me 
that Grex has more than enough telnet ports to go around. in fact, 
keroauc should have his own personal port. why? because he's _important_. 
you're not going to get any money from him, either. that's the problem 
with you gutter dwellers anyway. you're always looking for a free handout 
from someone who has obviously put more time into being _important_ than 
you have. what you should do is pay proper respect by doing everything 
the important people tell you to do.

it's obvious that you're discriminating against important people, because 
_important_ people don't live anywhere near Grex. you don't really expect 
important people to dial-in if it isn't tax-deductible, do you? since you 
have to move Grex anyway, you should move it out to DC so that kerouac 
doesn't have to telnet in. in fact, you should give keroauc his own 
personal line to  dial into Grex. it should be an 800 number, too, 
because you can't expect kerouac to pay; he's an _important_ person.

you can't say that kerouac doesn't really care about Grex, either. why, 
he assigns one of his secretaries to take dictation for him so that he 
can log in and post on Grex. he obviously doesn't type in his own 
replies, because he's an _important_ person, and important people don't 
make mistakes when they can pay someone else too.

maybe after you start showing the proper respect to important people like 
kerouac (who is always right, too, because he's _important_), he'll let 
you in on how he got to be so _important_.  

response 108 of 196:

Jul 18 21:26 UTC 1996

Re 106 - That would explain why kerouac keeps changing his
opinions every day or two - he has different secretaries
entering his responses!  Of course!  It all makes sense!

Re 104 - Oh, I most certainly *did* have a response, kerouac.
I almost typed it in anyway, but I realized that I have more
important things to do with my life.  You're not even worth
the trouble of arguing any more.

I will throw this out to the crowd, however:

Last night my father and I went to the Mongolian Barbecue.
It's a fairly busy restaurant in Ann Arbor.  We were lucky,
we only had a ten minute wait.  By the time we left, the
waiting list was over an hour, and people were crowded on
the street outside, actually willing to wait that long to
get in.

As we left, I asked myself:  What if there was no waiting list?
What if the restaurant let the public wander around the restaurant,
and whenever a group of patrons paid their bill and left, whoever
got to the table first would be served next?  How quickly would
rioting break out?  How often would the ambulance have to be called?

And the funniest thing, kerouac, is that you're opposing .yeswrite
and .nowrite because "that's not how you should deal with people in
real life."  And your opposing the telnet queue, although it IS
just how restaurants and amusement parks deal with people in real
life.  So which is it?

If you'd just admit that you personally don't like these things, instead
of trying to justify it on behalf of others, I might respect you.

response 110 of 196:

Jul 18 21:38 UTC 1996

Hm.  So we ought to encourage persistency.  Ok, how about this: you get
asked trivial pursuit questions, and the more you answer right, the
higher your assigned priority.  Your priority then gets aged, as a
disincentive to slackers.  The person with the highest resulting
priority gets the next port that's freed up.  The person with the lowest
resulting priority gets booted.

response 112 of 196:

Jul 19 02:27 UTC 1996

Perhaps the sarcasm was a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that you called a
bunch of staffers lazy. It's just a thought. It raised a hackle here.

response 114 of 196:

Jul 19 04:52 UTC 1996

Let me clarify that last response of mine before kerouac
starts going off on one of his tangents.  The main reason I
wouldn't support a Board vote on this is because it has
already been discussed on Co-op, and anyone who wanted to
raise an objection had ample time to do so.  I also don't
think that the Board should have to vote on every single
change to the system that the staff makes, otherwise nothing
will ever get done around here.

kerouac seems to think that we should reward the users who "want
it more" and are willing to attack telnet.  I couldn't disagree
more strongly on that point.  We're supposed to be an equal-access
system, and allowing attack telnetting only gives the computer-
savvy users an unfair advantage, i.e. the ones who write "expect"
scripts of macros to attack telnet for them.  I want to give
everyone an EQUAL ability to connect here.

response 116 of 196:

Jul 19 06:36 UTC 1996

Why is *anyone* rooting for attack telnetting, lottery style? 
THAT was what got  the twominute delay in the first place.
People DON'T learn, at least not some of them.
As to all of Kerouac's blatherings, well, Richard:
I stopped reading your responses.  I don't read responses that 
exceed one screen without good reason.

response 118 of 196:

Jul 19 15:48 UTC 1996

rcurl's exactly right...all i was upset about is that the legitimate questions 
are being ignored.  There seems to be the attitude that if the technical
reasons  for something are sound, then nothing else should matter.  I know this
was  discussed before, but it was before this trial run, if that is what it is,
 started and many of hte other problems became more apparent.

I think that while not all software/coding changes need be subjected to a board
 vote, they should if they affect directly large numbers of users and users are
 upset about it.  As I've repeatedly said, there was no hue and cry to change
the  old setup.  There were technical reasons for considering the change, but
no  outright demand.  I dont think therefore that it is wrong to have a
discussion at  a board meeting followed on a vote on whether to go with this
permanently.

The Que prog is an impressive bit of coding, but if the questions I and otheres
 have raised cannot be answered, it is not apparent that its advantages
outweigh  its disadvantages.      The reluctance of staff members to put this
before the  board shows what is easy to suspect, that it is staff's opinions
that really  count, that they are the only users of this system whose views
really matter.

(and I apologize for the lazy comment, it wasnt meant to be personal, and I was
 only using scg and nephi as an analogy because theyve been outspoken about
this  topic)

response 120 of 196:

Jul 19 16:16 UTC 1996

but scott, the software is as important if not more so to grex than the
hardware or the physical location.  How can you say that voting on location
or hardware or any other aspect of grex is a board responsibility, but voting
on  software isnt? That seems like a double standard.  Software shouldnt be 
off-limits to board actions...the board has the same right to vote on  whether
to implement this as it did to vote on whether to move or whether to upgrade to
the SUN03.

I am not talking about voting on upgrades of exsisting software, which is a 
different argument, but voting on the implementaiton of entirely new
programming  (such as this que setup).  I think the board is within its rights
to do this.

response 122 of 196:

Jul 19 19:42 UTC 1996

My concern with attack telnetting has nothing to do with any technical
advantage it might or might not give users.  My concern with attack telnetting
is that it slows down the system for everyone, and is not an efficient use
of our resources.

So far as a board vote goes, no, I don't think this should be decided by
a board vote, but not because I'm afraid of what they might decide.
I know most of the board members quite well, and I know a number of
board members in fact wish the queuing system could have happened sooner.
Based on that, and what ever board member has said here online, I have no doubt
but that they would certainly vote to continue "the experiment", and that if
the result works and they *had* to decide, they would certainly decide for the
queuing.  But I also have no doubt that the board shares my belief that it's
the wishes of the users and membership that is most important.  In this case,
it's clear there are people who feel strongly both ways, and so it may end up
that the only fair way to decide is to put the result to a membership vote. 
However, my suspicion is also that if there is a strong vocal minority that
hates the queuing system, there is an even larger group who like the queuing,
and that the result is therefore likely to pass. That all depends on the
queuing system working properly, of course, and so my major interest has been
in terms of finding problems in the queuing system, and fixing them.

So far as queuing vs. time limits or connect charges, I have no answer.
I do doubt that getting rid of queues would help any;  it sounds like
one reason it's now harder to get on is the temporary disappearance of m-net;
and that probably would have made matters nearly impossible in any case. I do
hope things will get easier in the long run; hopefully we'll eventually be able
to add extra pty's & actually suport more users; the idle killer does seem to
be having an effect, and hopefuly m-net will be back up soon enough. It's hard
to say what effect human nature will have on all this, however, that's one
reason to try the experiment, & after that, of course, it's all a matter of
taste.

response 124 of 196:

Jul 19 22:30 UTC 1996

(Moving up to the Sun 4 was not a Board issue.  *Paying* for new hardware
*was* a Board issue.  Marcus didn't ask for any money to write the telnet
queue)