Web Fed News Yearbooks - February 2000

THE MONTH IN BRIEF

Technical problems took the game out for a day - ouch! Later in the month, the whole Internet was hit by problems, caused by hackers - see the article below.

A new rule set out when it was and was not OK to take jobs off the board and void them. See the details below.

Valentine's Day saw a puzzle planet, which was solved by Pixi.

Applications flooded in for the newly advertised writing jobs on the Chronicle, and you can see articles by some of the new newsdroids in this Yearbook, including Olias, Cressida and Bsacarl. And Alsatian took up the mantle left carelessly in a heap by Icedrake, and commenced reviewing planets.

Bella held a meeting in Fed to introduce Phiddie and Chelsia as the first Fed Evangelists, whose job it is to promote Federation on the Internet.

Plans were hatched for the new league system for events, due to start in March.

CYBER VANDALISM

Hacking continues to have an aura of glamour about it. It's considered cool and trendy, and many people feel that it doesn't really hurt anybody - except those that deserve it. After all, the reasoning goes, if someone is silly enough to leave security holes on a computer, they are just asking for people to worm their way in and take a look around.

It's very tempting to snigger when you hear that some government department's computers were hacked, or an official web site infiltrated and subverted with some amusing messages. Even when big businesses get hit, it is still funny and still somehow feels like the little freedom fighter cocking a snook at big brother.

Well, now things have changed. Hacking has entered a new era, and has become cyber vandalism in a big way. And it no longer just affects the government and big business - it affects you!

It started last year when some programs designed to take over Internet servers and use them to launch coordinated attacks on other servers were posted on various Internet sites. Since then there have been a number of these attacks which flood servers with bogus requests so that legitimate requests can't get through. Recently several of the large, high-profile e-commerce sites such as Amazon, ebay and etrade were hit by these Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Denial of Service means exactly what it sounds like - a campaign to stop people from being able to access a site. So people weren't able to buy books from Amazon, bid in the auctions on ebay, or trade shares on etrade.

And then earlier this week, it came even closer to home. One of our ISP's clients was the target of a DDoS attack, and it brought a large part of the network to a halt. Result: for about three hours, you couldn't get to Fed to play it, even though the game was still there and running. Cyber vandalism affected you directly by stopping you from playing Federation when you wanted to.

But that's not all - a new version of the DDoS software has recently been posted. The old version could only target Unix servers permanently connected to the Internet. The new version can take over Windows machines and use them to launch attacks as well! How often have you walked away from the computer and left it connected to the Internet? And the new broadband connections - ISDN, DSL, and cable - provide real bandwidth to launch these attacks.

The lawyers are already gathering. You see, they believe that if your computer is taken over and used as part of a DDoS attack then you should be personally liable because you should have secured your computer. This hasn't been tested in court yet, but who knows what the courts will say, and who wants to have to pay to defend themselves?

So there you have it - hacking isn't glamorous any more.

Or cool, hip and trendy.

It's a huge inconvenience, to us and to you, and it could cost you real money!

WORKTHING HOLIDAY

While no-one could get into Fed, the game was still running - it was just very, very empty. Consequently, all the workthings had an unexpected but welcome day off. The question, when we could all get back into Fed DataSpace again, was what lasting effect this vacation would have on their performance?

There were two schools of thought: the optimists and the pessimists. Optimists felt sure the workthings would have benefited from the break, and would return to their factories refreshed and ready to work twice as hard as ever.

Pessimists thought the day of idleness would allow the workthings to develop bad habits; they would get out of the routine of working and when they returned, they would slack off and produce substandard work, the lazy things.

Funnily enough, it turns out that neither party was right; the workthings are in fact behaving exactly as they did before their break. I guess the fact that they are genetically programmed before birth to make ideal workers holds even when they take holidays.

SOMEONE STOLE MY PLANET NAME!

Two similar pleas found their way into my mailbox in the last few weeks. Both were from Explorers who were desparately looking forward to buying their planets. Both wannabe-POs had spent a long time designing their planets, and had themed them around the planet name they wanted to use. Both had sensibly checked to see if their chosen name was in use by another player before they started their grand designs. Then both had been horrified to find that when they came to link their planet, the name had been taken.

Both checked again and saw that new Commanders were using the name they had wanted for themselves. Both wrote to Feedback asking what could be done to release the name for their use.

Fortunately I was able to help both of them because it was clear the Commanders were disposable characters that weren't going to be used again, so they were able to use their chosen names for their planets.

It is not possible to reserve a name for your own use. When designing your planet, it might be an idea to online it and grab the name before you spend weeks in the workbench perfecting the themed design. Or while designing, come up with a choice of names that will give the same effect - find an alternative word that means the same thing, or an alternative spelling.

Of course, you could always set up a Commander of your own to make sure no-one else can take the name until you are ready to officially name your planet.

The strange thing in these particular cases is, both claimed that the Commanders had been set up deliberately to stop them using that name. Paranoia? Who knows - if true, it seems a rather silly way to harass someone.

VOIDING JOBS: NEW POLICY

Things people do to annoy each other, part 1,452.

Seems there are a number of macro programs going around which accept jobs from the board, and then void them. Since this incurs a fine you would think there'd be no demand for something like this, but obviously the desire to annoy other people is far greater than the worry about losing a few groats.

I have been told that some people use this technique, whether macroed or not, to defend against dumping. Sounds more like revenge, than defence, but I have taken that into account when considering what to do about this. So here are the new rules that apply as from today. They apply whether a macro is used, or it is done manually.

General game disruption
Accepting and then voiding all of the jobs that are posted onto the board is considered general game disruption, because it leaves no jobs at all available for the lower ranks.

On a related note, low-rankers who themselves use a macro to grab every job that is posted so fast that nobody else gets a look in, are also guilty of game disruption. It helps nobody if new players cannot get enough jobs. If there is more than one person trying to do jobs, don't use a macro to freeze out the others completely.

Harassment
Accepting and then voiding all of the jobs that are posted to the board by one particular person, or group of people, is harassment. Targeting individuals in this way is not allowed.

Defense
Accepting and voiding all jobs that are destined for your planet or duchy IS allowed. Planet-owners have the right to close commerce to their planet if they really want to, and can use it as a legitimate defense.

If it so happens that this means they are voiding all jobs posted by a particular individual - because that person is only sending jobs to the one planet - then it is still not counted as an offence, because the job-poster is at liberty to direct jobs to a different destination.

THE EMPEROR IS DEAD...

Rumors have been flying around Fed DataSpace in recent months. Well, that's nothing unusual because they are the only thing known to exceed the speed of light. But these particular rumors have been about the sudden absence of Ming the Merciless, Emperor of the Galaxy. What happened to the Emperor? Why is he no longer warming the throne? Is the Commander Ming who occasionally appears any relation?

The Galactic Administration would make no comment, only releasing a short statement that simply said that the Galaxy would continue to be run by the GA's bureaucrats as it always had been. They would neither confirm nor deny any of the rumors about the fate of the evil Ming.

So we had no choice but to send one of our intrepid investigative Newsdroids in to find out the truth behind the sudden power vacuum at the top of the Fed food chain. It was a difficult task, and it took time, but our brave little toaste... erm... droid risked its life (or the mechanical equivalent) and finally got to the bottom of these Galaxy-shaking events - and here's what it found out.

Ming, who reigned as Emperor for so long that nobody remembers when he didn't rule, and who had altered all records so as to make it appear that there was never a time when he didn't rule, took no active part in the running of the Galaxy. He left all the work to the bureaucrats of the Galactic Administration, and spent his time engaged in all manner of unpleasant debaucheries, the result of which was that he was hated and feared throughout the Galaxy.

Over the years, there were many conspiracies set up to rebel against the Emperor, as well as attempts to assassinate him. All of them failed, because the top echelons of society, the court functionaries, the Galactic Administration ministers, all the people who did all the real work, were happy with things as they were. They didn't care that Ming's favorite hobby was torturing and murdering people, because there were plenty of people in the Galaxy and a few here and there wouldn't be missed. And of course Ming's personal guards were more than happy with their well-paid and privileged positions, so protected him fiercely.

But then something happened to shake them out of their complacency: Ming changed his modus operandi.

His usual source of flesh to torture, maim and kill was the Galaxy's slums. He'd sent his guards out to find people who wouldn't be missed, or at least not by those that could do anything about it. But then for some reason - no-one knows what - Ming started to search for his victims closer to home, selecting the young members of his court as his playthings. This shocked and outraged those who had previously let him get away with his gross excesses. Where would it end, they wondered? Would they be next?

Finally, he went too far. He took the daughter of the head of the palace guard. That was the last straw. A conspiracy was launched, a plot was hatched, and this time the conspirators were some of the most powerful and influential people in the Galaxy, and they had the resources to succeed. With the guard on their side, they were able to remove Ming from power and stop his reign of terror.

And so the evil Ming the Merciless is Emperor no more.

...Long Live the Empress!

Following the palace revolution, the top echelons of the Galactic Administration felt the Galaxy had had enough of royalty interfering in the smooth process of government. They appointed a committee of 12 of the conspirators, who represented all the major power groups who had been involved, and started to rule the Galaxy much as it had been ruled all along.

But it didn't take them long to realize that an Emperor could actually be quite useful. A ceremonial figurehead served as the focus for resentment and keep those with the real power out of the limelight, allowing them to continue the business of government without having to put on a show of any kind. An Emperor also made a handy target for assassins, since none of the 12 liked the idea of being in the way of an angry laser beam!

At first they thought that they should find some ineffectual outsider and make that person Emperor. But they were worried about the idea of someone outside of their group being given the position - the Emperor's power may be nominal, they thought, but it would be too big a risk. So it had to be one of the 12. They argued for days about which one it would be, without coming to a conclusion. So in the end they drew straws. They agreed that whoever became the new Emperor would have to give up their existing power - including any planet they might own - before ascending the throne.

The winner - or the loser, depending on how you look at it - was selected, and crowned. It was Catty, the Baroness of History, one of the very oldest planets in Fed, and the center of the large History system. Catty was rumored to be the richest person in Fed, with a personal fortune which one exceeded 100 billion groats, hence her involvement in the conspiracy - she bankrolled it. Somewhat reluctantly, Catty handed the keys to her planet over to a caretaker, Mothernature, and took up her new position.

The Galaxy will no doubt go on much as it did before, although with any luck not so many people will be tortured and murdered.

All Hail Empress Catty!

The Fate of Ming

So what happened to Ming after he was overthrown? The new rulers planned to imprison him on his Deathstar, having changed all the locks of course. Why they didn't just kill him, we will never know. By now, they probably wish they had!

Because Ming managed to escape. Disguising himself as a lowly hauler, he hijacked a ship and vanished. There have been reported sightings on planets all over the Galaxy, and he has even been recorded talking briefly on the comms, but so far the best efforts of the Imperial Navy have failed to recapture him.

Those in power are understandably worried that Ming could put together enough support to retake the throne, and are arresting and interrogating anyone they suspect of harboring sympathies for the fallen Emperor. So the dungeons of the Imperial palace remain full. Nothing really changes!

GENDER CONFUSION AT THE TOP

As you will know from last week's Fed Chronicle, we now have a new top dog, or rather top cat - Empress Catty now rules the Galaxy. But denizens of Fed DataSpace have been puzzled to see that the new incumbent is known as His Imperial Highness, Empress Catty.

This apparent gender confusion is simply a reflection of the way bureaucracies move very slowly. It's a left-over trapping from Ming's reign. Traditions are often kept going even when they no longer make any sense! So Catty, despite being female, despite with an Empress, will continue to be known as His Imperial Highness.