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From: dpassage@tornado.Berkeley.EDU (David G. Paschich)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Multi-User Domains
Message-ID: <1991Jun6.014216.24500@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 6 Jun 91 01:42:16 GMT
References: <1991Jun5.182009.26836@newcastle.ac.uk>
Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator)
Organization: UC Berkeley's Open Computing Facility
Lines: 38

In article <1991Jun5.182009.26836@newcastle.ac.uk> A.G.Poole@newcastle.ac.uk (Ford (Alex Poole)) writes:
>Hi... this isn't really like the sort of things you seem to have been
>discussing so far, but it is a matter of policy, so here goes...
>
>What are other Uni's attutudes towards Multi-User Domains (MUDs)?

I've heard them referred to as Multi-User Dungeons, but hey, what's in
a name? (c.f. misc.activism.general)

>I've been told (*8-) that there is one (or 3?) here, but they are all being
>wiped for good in the next week or so, and the ports we can currently access to
>allow them to run will be locked. Is this the same for other Uni's?
>
>I've also heard that American Uni's actually support MUDs.. or is this
>folklore? How are they justified if this is so?
>
>Any comments or arguements for MUDs appreciated, comments against burnt *8-)

I don't have problems with users playing MUDs running on other systems,
since most MUD clients have a system load comparable to telnet, but starting
one up without permission is asking to be squished.  One of our users
started a MUD without permission on one of our machines; we were tipped off
by another user who saw an announcement about it in rec.games.mud.

There are MUDs running on university machines all over the place; the one
here at Berkeley (sequent.berkeley.edu, port 4000) runs on the same machine
as the campus Xtrek server (another game which wastes a lot of MIPS).
Basically, the machine is unused after hours, so it doesn't cost the
university anything to let folks run games off of it.  I don't think it's
supported as an official university project, but it's there.

I mostly view MUDs as harmless, unless some random user tries to start one
up on my system without permission.

David G. Paschich    Open Computing Facility    UC Berkeley
dpassage@ocf.berkeley.edu    
"They might be brain / They might be washed / 
	They might be Dr. Spock's back-up band"