Subj : Facts or Fiction To : Dennis Haddox From : Scott Adams Date : Mon Jun 23 2003 10:47 pm Dennis Dennis...(shaking head) First let me start this by saying me and you dpearted the ways relatively easy going and straight forward. I even as far as a couple months ago ICQed you to say hi and such and you were cordial. I enjoyed your stay In AdventureNet as a poster above all else. I was saddened to see you leave. But now i see this tirade and have to speak up. But keep in mind anything i say in this post is not a personal attack or a slam/flame. Its just facts and opinions i have to set in defense of things said. I'd have not said anything if it was not stated and started her first. I don't know paul or bob(?) or their leagues directly so I can't speak for them or comment on them. I have heard rumors about them for years but that's it just rumors and heresay. But when I see Mark and in a indirect way me and my network (and his) slammed I must speak up. Not to cover up things but to speak up in defense only. Where to start.... Up to this point I actually had some thought deep in the back of my head that you may be right on the cheating before but then I see your posts attacking 3 or 4 leagues here. That's a pattern I've seen before for ages. Its a pattern that tells me theres more involved overall than just one league's problem. I've been doing bbsing and sysoping for over 18 years. I've seen it all and heard it all folks just like you come and go all the time. Its not even funny anymore. I've run EWOG II now for 10 years (6/1/03 was year 10) and ran AdventureNet for 10 years (this coming september). I ran EWOG I for some 6-7 years before that with other leagues in those very early days of bbsdom. I know what I'm doing and being a programmer also believe I am qualified enough to know the technics of problems with cheating and such. I can examine patterns and analyze situations. You may not think so but i have the experience to back up my statements, do you? Yes your a sysop for many years but where is your game league? You say you have better things to do? Fine. You have time to yell at folks though. I contend before you accuse folks of things you run your OWN network and your OWN game league. I directly challenge you to do so. Its the only way you will EVER know how it truly is and what is involved. Running a bbs is commendable and all that but its nothing like running a network tht stretches over several contients and organize something as complicated as a game league. Will you do it? I doubt it. Simply cause you know you may be proven wrong. Yes you may find yourself even accussed by folks as well of cheating in your leagues. I grant you some will do it out of spite but I bet there would be some honst others who say otherwise. All the stuff that happened to you has been covered ad nauseum so I bring to the echo and to you something to think about. Michael Frater was a good member just like you. He claimed the same thing eventually as one might predict. Me and Mark spent THREE weeks doing nothing but going over logs, investigating boards and sysops and users alike of the situation. Day in and day out when we could. I even wrote 3 small utils to divide up the logs for the info i needed since a network can create logs like irex logs of easilly over 12 megs of information fo a single month. We presented the findings in the echo and found no standing for cheating. What does he do? He ignores the evidence and even admits to it. Yet how does it look to us. He accusses but when we try to work with him he ignores us and the evidence at hand. How does it look when his son adn others from his own board seem to oddly have the same period of plays and attacks and even in some cases same "style" of messages. Hmmm...is this multiple accounts from the same person. I personally think there might have been. Could I prove it? Not really. So to the question of proving cheating.... Tell me how does one prove cheating? To our eyes you only acuse as so many others have tried in leagues world wide. But wheres the proof. A LC can only do so much to investigate and so much to prove this or that. Its YOUR burden of proof to prove the cheating. Did you? Not to our eyes frankly. So lets break it apart a bit: * Settings: Unlike most leagues we allow our players to vote on the league settings. Yet they come later to claim its unfair when they suffer and it shouldn't be this or that. We give them the chance. Is this fair? Yes. Does it change the environment so cheating is less tempting? Yes in some degrees it does. Can this create cheating? Not really it just changes tactics on how they might do things. * Polls: We set a rule that each board should poll often for mail pickup. But how can one honestly enforce such a policy? Unless he physically spot checks boards and their logs its impossible. is this fair for us? No it still gives them the free choice we have no control over. Is it fiar to them? For them yes. Can this create cheating? Yes through packet holding (see below) * Turnaround: We require that as soon as a packet comes into a board they must process that packet. Again how cna one enforce? Phsycially enter a house on boards world wide and watch the screen? This is a honor system that has to be used. Fair? Yes but unfournate at times. Can this create cheating? Yes but holding packets (see later) * Travel Times: This is one of the LC's best tools to figure out what a board is doing. But even then its only a measuring stick. Some demand X TT hours and that's a bit restrictive since "stuff happens" boards go up and down (see below). But in fact I've been around for over 15 years with the problem of TTs. They are NOT accurate and even both authors have admited to this at one point or another. The software only estimates based on packets that may hit the system and not accuately demark times and time zones and date lines for example (though on that is a low problem). The formula used to generate such only tries to determine the BEST TT they can find. It is not the true time. Can this promote cheting? Well obviously a TT of days may need to be investigated over a TT of 2 hours. * Boards going up and down: I saw you complain to Mark about boards that went up and down. Guess what that happens ALL the time. You can't tell me whereever you get fido or other connections over the years you've never had ONE day of one of those connections being down? Be honest here. There are few that can even admit to say a record like mine being down for a total of only 8 days out of 10 years. Internet problems occur all the time. Can you force people to stay up all the time just to satisfy you? No. Stuff happens. Should you unfairly kick a board out for valid problems? No. I definitely disagree with your belief there. If you have a perfect board and never downtime that's great. But others do not. I can see your point that a board may 'fake' down time. I've seen that once or twice over the years. But bring me the proof. How? Show me the board is indeed up and players are in bre and can login but can't say send mail. Then we'll deal with that board as a possible cheater. Till then hard to prove. * Packiet Holding: Probaly the top #1 problems of so called cheater boards. This is the main story told for almost 2 decades. So a board holds packets nd processes them when he can to avoid attacks. We know it can be done to where a sysop can avoid 'attacks' by creting backup copies of bre nd selectiving 'losing' those packets. Yes in that case that is cleary cheating and there have been numerous examples dealt with with many leagues I've been in. Those are somewhat easy to track due to spies on those boards checking to see if such attacks are received and then that's EASY to prove by the game logs and events itself. But did you get online and show any captures of such discrepacies? No. unfournately not to my knowledge. Tehrefore again not much we can do. * Lost attacks: Something of a dark horse in the world of Bre. Attacks are lost through good or bad reasons and create lost attacks to come back and thus folks deem them to be cheating due to no results. Guess what? That's not always the case. Lost attacks have been shown for years to be hit and miss. During the early days of this very echo back around mid '90s it was proven that lost attacks are not accurate in that even if a packet gets through bre will sometimes miss a ack back ot the game thus replies are snet back the lost attack flags are sent. I wish I still had that capture info back then a decade ago to show you but i don't. I don't think John D was part of it then but i could be wrong it was over a decade ago. In a small league for example that i run just between 3 boards in this city I found lost attacks hit and miss based on oddities in the way packets are processed at times. Point is its not a perfect system. Now with the above can you prove with these items to us that a board either our league or pauls or bobs cheated? Please show us here so the evidence can be broken down. Not just words please. Please post logs, statements by users/players, screen captures and such. I hope you did do your homework. But being so long i'm sure that stuff is thrown out by now. Oh well. There is only two ways to really prove cheating in a legue. * Player stupidity: By having obvious multiple accounts. Yes that is a problem even our league had a times and we dealt with them quickly and deleted them. There are ways to monitor the game for this and check patterns. But sometimes it gets overlooked since its hard to prove since you don't know the user info on every board in your league. Also stupidity by them admiting to them cheating. That has occured. Is this a doable thing to find? Sure. * Endless investigation: What I mean by this is spending thousands of dollars to log into boards nd keep accounts on every board in your league you run. This means calling LD to countries you wouldn't ever call normally. This means loging every detail of every attack that you see. Ever ymessage to mark patterns in player msgs. Is this doable? Nope. Unless your rich and have no life and job. Now with these ideas in the open lets get back to cheating in our league. In my experience we have had cheaters we have caught and dealt with. No board besides yours has ever been thrown out (though I did not per se do it mark did). In my league 033 and now the merged 933 league we have mainly found the stupid multiple accounts. We've had one player admit to trying to cheat and that sysosp nuked him before we could. We tolerate no such activity nor do other respectable leagues. The main big period of cheating occured from around '92 to '94. During this period just about every single teen out there tried the multiple account thing. It was a battle. So I'm not saying it has NEVER occured I'm saying that it did not occur during Michael's and yours tour of duty with the league. Finaally before i leave here is example #2. When league 088 was big and hot in the early '90s there were rampant accusations of cheating. I was a member and eventually took the league from him when he was near closing down the bbs. Dale informed me how he was always winning their board (mostly winning). We setup a sub game just him and me and I ran through every trick and technique he told me about. By the 3rd week I was doing what he was doing in major buildups of military forces and doing the same things he was. WITHOUT cheating. Through skill alone (his not mine). I suck in bre and my board or marks has never been a major factor in the victory of the games. We have nothing to lose by wanting cheating since it would not benefit us. If I as a sucky bre player can do what dale, one of the biggest all time players I've seen, then there is moer to consider. I'm expert and top in Arrowbridge and a couple other games (none bbs) like Axis and Allies and Machievelli. I'm uncontended in many circles in thsoe games. But folks of course have to accuse me of cheating. Its simple skill that's it. Tactics and skill. Is this boasting? Maybe I'm good in those games I suck in most others like bre/fe. But the point is persepctive is the key to everything. As a sysop in a league you don't see every detail. Every problem. Every fact. You only see your side and your board losing battle after battle in a desperate fight for survival. You example what info you do have like scores and think "they must be cheating". That's not the case that's just your human mind trying to resolve a situation it can't deal with. It happens in everyday life when you see one person getting promoted in a job over another. They claim they sleep with the boss or cheated on forms. But it might just be plain talent. Now with all the above said the bottom line is that based on my experience as a old timer in this business is that based on what i have seen over the years that everyone who tends to claim cheating is a sore loser. That's my opinion and how it is. Michael left in disgust and took his ball home even though the facts were in his face. Your board did well. I seem to recall it makeing sometimes 3 or 4th place in the final victory. So maybe its not all about being a sore loser i dunno. But after seeing you attack not only our league but 3 or 4 others there is a pattern going here that to me tells ther emight be more behind the accusations than we can see. Does that make them true? Dunno. But as the saying goes. Those who protest or deny too much tend to have something to hide (metaphorically or for real). Something a therapist could probably dechipor. Now I know this is lengthby and boring but I wanted you to knwo where I'm coming from and try to show you perspective works in mysterious ways. Now you may call me names if you want I won't. I only am trying to reason with you and hope you think about it more than you are. But if you do I have a running bet with several in ICQ as to what you might call me. So far my bets for what folks call me in fn_sysop are 85% right :) Good day and good reading. I hope you consider the above in friendship (what little you may think we have left) and not a attack. You started the attacks I'm replying to them. Now back to your regulary scheduled flame fest... Before you reply it might be another 2 weeks before I can reply so take your time and calm down. Or just fly off and call me names. I'm used to it. :) My best was one guy in our local fido net that was NC till we got him bounced for firing me (that was fun) so we fired him. He sent 9 lines of text and about 300 words. Only about 12 words were non profanity. So don't worry I'm used to it :) .... By: Dean Cran --- Fringe BBS * Origin: EWOG II - The Fringe - 904-733-1721 (1:112/91) .