<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: THE DARKWHOLE TESTS --> <!--X-From-R13: X Q Znjerapr <pynjNhaqre.rate.ftv.pbz> --> <!--X-Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 23:44:06 +0000 --> <!--X-Message-Id: 199803122344.PAA02064#under,engr.sgi.com --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, THE DARKWHOLE TESTS</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg00690.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00692.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg00730.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00690.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#00691">Author</A> | <A HREF="#00691">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#00691">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>THE DARKWHOLE TESTS</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#null,net">mud-dev#null,net</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: THE DARKWHOLE TESTS </LI> <LI><em>From</em>: J C Lawrence <<A HREF="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 15:44:03 -0800</LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> Fcc: OutBox -------- Poster's note: I have inserted "--<log>--" tags to mark off text which was originally deliniated by font and face changes. Form the perspective of the recent logging rights threads, this is an absolutely fascinating experiment. Add time travel (as I have) and its very deep into (invasive?) social engineering. <A HREF="http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~smack/dark.html">http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~smack/dark.html</A> THE DARKWHOLE TESTS The DarkWhole has been called "a sinister little device", libelously described in LingaFranca as a guest-molester; but it exists in as an artistic sacrament, an unintentioned loss, a theoretical crap shoot. I had the idea of building a DarkWhole, a panoptical transmitter, in my very earliest days at PMC MOO. The MOO is an ethnographers dream, in that every interaction leaves textual trace evidence. Immersing myself in this environment quickly led to the desire to shape it in some way. As an attempt at environmental modeling, Palefist and I collaborated on a Korova Milk Bar (from the book by Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange), complete with Moloko dispensers laced delicately with various veshches, a custom robot of Alex that govoreets nadsat quite horrorshow and plenty of the flip ultra-violence. The final mediation of this environment was achieved by a close-circuit camera providing a live feed to my Geodesic lab. Reading the fine text on a movie poster for A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrik, transported users into this environment. Hanging the poster conspicuously in the Conversation Pit provided a steady stream of interactions for this monitor. I built the first DarkWhole shortly after TERRORISM, to protest, in no small way, the imposition of a vague and tyrannical "Code of Conduct". In retaliation for some supposed crimes of the Apocalypse PMC became regulated by the Principle of Radical Consent. Essentially, MOO users had a right to consent to activities they wished to participate in and a right to not consent to activities they did not with to participate in. Simple, straight forward, filling the void of authority, and the lack of clear guidelines that supposedly generated the frustration of the populace; this legislation was an illegitimate anathema on the popular will and did not apply to the Wizardry. Repeatedly the Wizardry has violated the Principal of Radical Consent, as witnessed most vividly by the imposition of $FAME in the Fall of 1994. In the particular case of the DarkWhole it was an experiment in "poetry" by a Wizard named Glinda that was contested. Glinda intended to use randomly sampled snippets of MOO conversation to create poetic works (pure genius). I used the technology from the old camera and monitor to make a device to automatically spy on any room in the MOO; mimicking the unobtrusive intrusion of the poetry experiment. I encased the device in a sinuous nest of blacker and black DarkWhole of holes. A fishbowl of simulacra controlled the connections which were opened by fleet footed rats. --<log>-- You choose the simulacrum of Guest and drop it on the floor. A large black rat runs out of a pile of burnt debris, grabs the tiny Guest and leaps down one of the DarkWhole of holes. The DarkWhole emits {Guest pulls you close inserting his hot hard rod in your tight wet crack The DarkWhole emits {Violet_Guest kisses lightly at the sides of your abs.. obiques.. and farther up to your chest her hot tongue plays with your nipples The DarkWhole emits {Guest pulls you to the ground, there's no going slow this time he wants you so bad, he begins to thrust his hips against yours faster and faster The DarkWhole emits {Violet_Guest feels the pain and wants it more... more, more The DarkWhole emits {Guest sucks hard on your nipples The DarkWhole emits {Violet_Guest scratches at your back and shoulders. She pulls you close to her mouth kisses your shoulder and bites it hard at an extreamly hard thrust The DarkWhole emits {Guest continues to pump, the sweat forms, and inside of you hot and wet combine --<log>-- This selection led to the misinterpretation of the DarkWhole as a guest-molester, but this naughty action is actually consensual. You can easily see why it might be maligned as a "sinister" device. I publicly announced it's creation and invited others to use it. It was an open challenge to the Wizardry. I knew that the object would be abused and generate plenty of complaints. I planned to use this opportunity to take issue with the unrighteous domination of the supposedly "Post Modern" hierarchy --<log>-- Dear Smack: We have received complaints about your listening device the DarkWhole. Please read news 1 and 2 and consider adjusting this object in accordance with PMC-MOOs anti-harassment policies. If necessary, the DarkWhole will be @recycled. -Glinda Dear Glinda, I have re-read news items 1 and 2 per your request and wanted to point out a few inconsistencies in policy. New PMC-MOO Policy Author: Barney (Arch-Wizard) Tuesday, January 4 1994 ================================================================== Obnoxious behavior is uniformly and universally discouraged here. If someone is being obnoxious, tell that person to stop. If someone tells you to stop, take your act somewhere else. Let's be clear about this: repeated nuisance behavior will cost you your player. ================================================================== I am only the author of the object... am I to be responsible for the obnoxious behavior of others, for their misreading of my text? I renounce my author(itative) privilege in the spirit of the Post Modern. Let's be clear about this: define behavior, define nuisance, define repeated. Nowhere in either news item was a policy regarding privacy presented. -Smack --<log>-- The fundamental problem lies in the Principle of Radical Consent itself. If a user is being spied on (and that's what the DarkWhole does, as it is in essence surreptitious) s/he can not consent unless they are aware of the invasion. The ultimate solution to this quandary was the installation of a security routine in ALL rooms. This routine checks for an entrance message each time an object enters a room, further, the entrance message must contain the object's name. If this does not occur within 5 seconds of the object's arrival, the security system announces the object's arrival in a quite accusatory tone. Panoptical Transmitter (#1095) seems to have made silent entry, 10 seconds ago. The real joke of this system is that it goes off arbitrarily bec ause of lag times, fails to recognize more elaborate entrance messages, and often displays obscenely long entrance times. Panoptical Transmitter (#1095) seems to have made a silent entry, 35,450 seconds ago. But it does what it is designed to do, discourage spying and render the DarkWhole useless. Of course there is no such thing as privacy on a MOO, everything is potentially loggable. It is our complacency about cyberspace that causes us to hold unchallenged assumptions. The spirit of Terrorism, a renounciation of the mundane, continued with repeated and passionate defenses of free programming. There has been particularly strong support for the legalization of spoofing, or false attribution, atleast within the interests of the community, (as opposed to the technocratic interests of the Wizardry). Though generally maligned by the institutionalists as a juvenile power trip, the environmental technology of attribution is necessary to construct textual virtual spaces. Actions occur in relation to objects, and without messages regarding these relationships, and the actions themselves, the space is no more than a chat area. A more lengthy consideration of this technology is contained in Technological Hierarchy in MOO. The more theoretical argument concerns the death of the subject and author. If one might misappropriate, or reappropriate, or recombine the works of others as their own, what are the possibility of attributing works to others. Governments do this all the time. Simple gossip is a similar form of word play. But the more affirmative Post Modern theory might challenge that there is no constructive use of abusing others virtual bodies (putting words or actions in their mouths). In fact this challenge was made and I resolved to use false attribution in some CONSTRUCTIVE way. The idea of the panopticon, the position from which it is possible to survey every minute detail of a reality, is commonly used by Post Modernists to describe the condition magnified and fragmented mediated reality in which we live. Using the DarkWhole I hoped to emmulate a panoptical singularity from the MOO environment. By naming the microphone object (panoptical transmitter) "that" for the brief moment as it enters a location, and then spoofing the entrance message "I don't understand that." the DarkWhole can fool the silent entry detection system, and hopefully the occupants of the room. The message "I don't understand that." is what users see when they mistype a command, or try to do something the MOO doesn't understand. I've never been quite sure who the voice of "I" is supposed to be; the computer, my virtual self, God. Which ever it is, a good 90% of the people who hear it; ignore that voice. After entering the room, the object turns almost entirely invisible, appearing as an extra space a room's contents. Any obtrusive scan of the object, causes it to self-destruct. Well, that's how it works. Here is an archive of several tests of the device: TEST ONE Actually the first test ended in disaster. Giddy with the successes of my early trials fooling the silent entry detection system, I hastily constructed the first model. I didn't back it up, and an errant line of code caused it to recycle itself! It took me another 30 minutes to whip up a new version, still not as smooth as I would have liked it, but my premature announcements had the rabble clamoring for action. I did incorporate a panic button though. This first run is a simple slice of life at PMC-MOO. Only one person notices something odd has happened. TEST TWO A little later, I add the piece de resistance. To make the DarkWhole truly constructive, I use it to create a new virtual environment by erasing the virtual geography of the MOO. By turning the microphones into transmitters and using the DarkWhole as a relay, it connected every room in the MOO. An old school Wizard, Bleary sits in on the next two tests, abruptly aborting test two because a localized echo (dual transmitters) leads him to believe that it has created a recursive loop. TEST THREE After reassuring Bleary that all is well, we re-engaged the DarkWhole. This is probably the most interesting capture, but its also the spammiest. Because I used the initial DarkWhole structure, in which each microphone is responsible for itself, the new model spawned dozens of tasks. It only needed one task to keep track of all the microphones because they are not initiated individually. The multiple tasks cause lag (slow the server) and are ridiculed by better programmers. At some point another program is introduced to the mix, a generic puppet object that reacts to speech. It goes into recursive loop with the DarkWhole and spams the whole MOO. The resultant lag slows a proper shutdown. Defender, the defacto Head Wizard makes a special guest appearance at the end of the run. TEST FOUR Later that evening. The recursion problem and the multi-tasking are eliminated, but so is the relay. This test was for posterity. Similar to the first run, this one is a little more interesting, as people react directly to the device. TEST FIVE Over the next couple of days I try a "consent" based model. This model announces its arrival a presents the occupants a list of options to participate or refuse. The result is significantly less interesting, though there is genuine enthusiasm for the idea. IDENTITY CRISIS Bonus Track- Right as we are beginning the first test run, Defender launches a program that creates a completely anonymous communication environment, Identity Crisis. Participants must join the forum, but the results are equally as interesting. This capture is extrapolated from Visual Mark's log of the DarkWhole. He was monitoring the channel for it's first 2 hours with his buffers on. Its impossible to say how many voices are speaking... at times perhaps as many as 15, at others, only one. -- J C Lawrence Internet: claw#null,net (Contractor) Internet: coder#ibm,net ---------(*) Internet: claw#under,engr.sgi.com ...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith... </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00690.html">ANNOUNCE: DB</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00692.html">Magic as Metaphor</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00730.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Magic as Metaphor</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00690.html">ANNOUNCE: DB</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#00691"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#00691"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00692" HREF="msg00692.html">Magic as Metaphor</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Fri 13 Mar 1998, 00:05 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00706" HREF="msg00706.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Magic as Metaphor</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Fri 13 Mar 1998, 03:24 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00714" HREF="msg00714.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Magic as Metaphor</A></strong>, Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:Jon.A.Lambert#ix,netcom.com">Jon.A.Lambert#ix,netcom.com</a>, Sat 14 Mar 1998, 04:59 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00730" HREF="msg00730.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Magic as Metaphor</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Tue 17 Mar 1998, 01:57 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00691" HREF="msg00691.html">THE DARKWHOLE TESTS</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Thu 12 Mar 1998, 23:44 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="00690" HREF="msg00690.html">ANNOUNCE: DB</A></strong>, Robin Carey <a href="mailto:r.carey#dcs,napier.ac.uk">r.carey#dcs,napier.ac.uk</a>, Tue 10 Mar 1998, 20:29 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="00689" HREF="msg00689.html">Random Generation Tools</A></strong>, Ling <a href="mailto:K.L.Lo-94#student,lboro.ac.uk">K.L.Lo-94#student,lboro.ac.uk</a>, Sun 08 Mar 1998, 21:51 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="00688" HREF="msg00688.html">Re: MUD Ratings</A></strong>, jlsysinc.ix.netcom.com <a href="mailto:jlsysinc.ix.netcom.com#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc.ix.netcom.com#ix,netcom.com</a>, Fri 06 Mar 1998, 22:43 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="00687" HREF="msg00687.html">[MUD-Dev] For Ling's FAQ</A></strong>, Koster, Raph <a href="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</a>, Fri 06 Mar 1998, 15:14 GMT </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>