He's got a force field and a flexible plan RushServ was originally written in 1991 by Glen Reed as RushBot version 1.0. It all actually started as a joke, with Glen masquerading as a bot, then real commands were gradually added. In late 1992, Glen teamed up with John Santore, and together they re-wrote the entire robot over several months as RushServ version 3.0. Several revisions have taken place since then, including one complete rewrite, and one major restructuring edit, putting RushServ at version 5.0-alpha as of April, 1995. What is RushServ? Basically, RushServ is what is known on IRC as a bot. A bot (short for robot) interacts with the users online, responding to various public and private commands. Bots can be written in just about any language, or can interface directly with the client's protocol language (assuming the client you're running has one). RushServ is written in a conglomeration of ircII (a client language) and C. A lot of bots on IRC are real annoying! In fact, one might say say all bots on IRC are annoying. RushServ, however, is simply a benign monitor bot for the amusement and entertainment of the #p/g! crew. What does RushServ do? Quite a bit, actually. Its most asked-about function seems to be that it greets #p/g!-ers when they enter the channel with some quirky and often amusing phrase. Another feature of the bot is its ability to queue a message for any #p/g!-er. There are also many other commands available. Over the years, servers have gotten less and less tolerant of bots, since they can hog up a lot of bandwidth. For this reason, the bot changed its name to PATSTER. Perhaps with an inside contact, or a bribe, it'll change back to RushServ someday, but for now, PATSTER remains. There have been plans in the works to write a version 6.0 of the bot, but I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you. |