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Ele Goes Legal...
News of Ele swiftly spread, despite attempts to keep it low key. Up until 1995,
when we appeared on the Mud Connector and on various mudlists, we never advertised
Ele at all; all our players found us via word of mouth and even now we play down
advertising somewhat. Back then we could not afford to be big - all it would take
would be for Liam Madden, the sysop in Elec Eng to look at the wrong time, and
twenty or more network connections to the same port on the same machine would
have stuck out like a sore thumb. Moreover the thing was already swelling to the
point that it was getting hard to disguise. Eldrytch and I had to get creative
to overcome our disk quotas too, by running the mud driver in one account and
having the files, all with open group access, but carefully hidden, in the other!
For several weeks we thus hid, with only a 'select'
few being told of it, but it became rapidly clear that if we wanted to survive
for any length of time, we would have to get permission. Having a legal
mud would have been a dream in some ways. So many others were springing up only
to be discovered and closed down, and we didn't want that to happen. Rather
we decided to take a risk and approach Liam. This was risky, for an unfavourable
reaction would have killed us there and then and we had no way of knowing what
sort of reaction we'd get. But we deemed it better to try and fail, than hide
for a few months at best before getting deleted.
So it was that I, armed with arguments as to
why a mud in Elec Eng would be a good thing and how it could be of great academic
value, went to see Liam. It went brilliantly. Liam didn't know a huge amount
about muds, and thus lacked some of the negative preconceptions prevalent in
the academic establishment. Not only did he OK it but he created a whole new
account for the thing on a machine that was fairly unused! Our disk quota became
effectively 'whatever you need' and the machine was set up to reboot the mud
if for any reason it or the machine crashed. Rather stunned but cackling manically
with glee I ran off to tell everyone.
Ele had moved for the first time. Now, legally
and with the backing of the machine's sysop, we were running on:
chips.ee.ic.ac.uk 4444
In the beginning |
The pre-Ele days | A pachyderm is born! |
Ele goes legal | Disaster strikes |
Middlesex Uni | Back to IC |
IC politics | Elephant today
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