F I D O N E W S -- Vol.13 No.13 (25-Mar-1996)
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| A newsletter of the | ISSN 1198-4589 Published by: |
| FidoNet BBS community | "FidoNews" BBS |
| _ | +1-519-570-4176 |
| / \ | |
| /|oo \ | |
| (_| /_) | |
| _`@/_ \ _ | |
| | | \ \\ | Editors: |
| | (*) | \ )) | Donald Tees 1:221/192 |
| |__U__| / \// | |
| _//|| _\ / | |
| (_/(_|(____/ | |
| (jm) | Newspapers should have no friends. |
| | -- JOSEPH PULITZER |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Submission address: editors 1:1/23 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| MORE addresses: |
| |
| submissions=> editor@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca |
| Don -- don@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| For information, copyrights, article submissions, |
| obtaining copies of fidonews or the internet gateway faq |
| please refer to the end of this file. |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
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Table of Contents
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1. Editorial..................................................... 1
2. Articles...................................................... 2
Open Up..................................................... 2
Death of Fido?.............................................. 3
Does FIDONET Need a Tune-Up? - Proposed Policy Change....... 4
Fido & Politics............................................. 6
Another damn article! :-).................................. 8
FidoCon revisited?.......................................... 8
Upgrading FIDONet........................................... 9
3. Fidonews Information.......................................... 10
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Editorial
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FidoNews 13-13 Page: 2 25 Mar 1996
I received a rather irate letter a few days back from a user
that though I was using my position as editor to smother an
article. It was a simple matter to clear up the difficulty ...
they did not realize that the snooze is hatched out on sunday
evening. Officially, by midnight. In fact, it has been as
early as 6 when I wanted to go out, and as late as 2:00 in the
morning when I got home late one sunday. I had received the
articles after the snooze had left, and they were still in the
inbound for the following week.
Articles are uploaded occasionally into an obscured area
on the BBS and no note left. They also get sent netmail with
the name wrong, and I miss them. We do, howver, print what
articles we get.
Here is the snooze.
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Articles
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Open Up
by Bill Whitehouse
Local wags are fond of saying, "Never write it down if you
can say it, never say it if you can nod."
We nod a lot here in Rhode Island. The nation's smallest
state, political theater is our only spectator blood sport, the
only franchise we can field. The more prosaic of us add,
"Spoken, a word to the wind. Written, a political sin."
I was a newspaper reporter when I fell down fido's rabbit
hole in search of a news story 8 years ago. The story never
happened.
I defected instead.
Compared to the U.S. working press, NOTHING is ever
private, or off-the-record in fidonet. Echomail is public by
definition. For all practical purposes, so is netmail.
People here always know when you're screwing them.
Every year or so I glance into our system's encryption
software directory and breathe another sigh of relief. Truth is,
I'd rather not think about the day we might actually need it.
Fidonet will no longer exist.
Restricted access network administration has no place in a
world where there's always an audit trail, a seen-by, a log
entry and disenfranchised discontent.
It's debilitating, it's counter productive; mostly it's
just stupid. The node list shrank another 100 nodes last week.
It'll lose another hundred this week.
FidoNews 13-13 Page: 3 25 Mar 1996
Fidonet has a bright future if it loses this archaic
nonsense. It is doomed if it doesn't.
Everyone's got something to contribute. Don't exclude
anyone. If you run private administrative conferences, don't be
too easily annoyed and open them up now. Before it's too late.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Death of Fido?
By Louie Gonsalves, 1:3604/43
louie.gonsalves@phosphor.datasync.com
Is Fido Dying?
From reading the recent Snoozes, the answer has to be 'yes.' But is
it really?
The computer world in general has gone ga-ga over the Internet.
There's not ONE single magazine that I have read in the past year or
so that doesn't write about the 'net. Even non-computing magazines
are cashing in on the Internet craze.
There's precious few BBS magazines... and Board Watch doesn't count.
There are over 15 Internet-related rags in the local newsstand... is
there a message there?
Did BBSs and Fido *ever* get this kind of attention? No. And it's
our fault.
Did we promote the BBS? Did we promote Fido? Sure, every sysop
advertises in their own little way... but if you ask your average
Internet or AOL or Prodigy user if they know what a BBS or Fido is...
you get a blank stare as an answer. I have a question in my new-user
survey that reads: 'Do you know what FidoNet is?' About 85% of
respondents say 'NO.' I try to educate my new users on Fido... I have
a textfile for download and on-line read... 14 downloads in 6 months.
Fido IS dying, slowly but surely. It's being eaten away by a horrible
cancer, and WE are the carcinogen! It's a damn shame! This net of
hobbyists, running in some cases with shoestring budgets and machines
that were obsolete half a decade ago, has more guts, more character
and more personality than the largest Internet servers running
$20,000+ hardware and T1 lines.
What can WE do to fix this? PROGRESS. We are stagnant, like the
mid-latitude summer doldrums. Sailing ships couldn't move during
the doldrums... and similarly, Fido and BBSs are stuck. I have
several ideas to remedy this situation. I'm sure most of you have
read these before, as they are not my ideas, but a collection of
countless other sysops that want to preserve Fido and the BBS concept.
1: Give Fido an IDENTITY. A ASCII/ANSI logo, if you will. Something
FidoNews 13-13 Page: 4 25 Mar 1996
that the average joe might see in a magazine and say 'WOW! I
gotta try that!!' Plaster Fido propaganda all over the WWW... WWW
surfers will do ANYTHING the Web beckons them to... let's use it
to our own advantage!
2: Modernize and de-centralize the distribution methods. Planet
Connect was a God-send some years ago, but now is basically
obsolete, except in remote rural areas, and places with no Internet
wires. Imagine this: A network so big, so powerful, so fast,
that a message can get from Rome, Italy to Rome, Wisconsin (I'm a
Picket Fences fan) in less than 5 minutes. Psst. Such a beast
already exists! It was built by the US government and academia,
and can move our stuff far better than the Bird can. Let's use
the Internet for our OWN good, or be forever silenced!
3: Promote, Promote, PROMOTE! (the following is NOT an ad!!) There
is a comm program called Baby Banana ,it's a terminal that dials
one number, and one number only... YOURS. It is self-installing,
much like the AOL client... the newbie sticks the disk in their
floppy, types a:\install, and boom! A new user, ready to be shown
the wonders of Fido, BEFORE they fall prey to the Big Services.
The license is around 70 bucks, and that's an unlimited license...
make a bunch, and give them to stores so they can hand them out
with new 'puters and modems... Baby Banana installs itself,
fishes for the modem and port, and dials on its own. Goto
http://www.banana.com, or call the Montana Banana BBS at
1-406-543-8234. Look for BABYB.ZIP. I'd put it up for Freq but
my system is down till June.
4: Make a new Policy. P4 is woefully inadequate.
5: Promote, Promote, PROMOTE!
If Fido is dying, only we can revive it. We can do it. Let's get off
our collective duffs and expose Fido and BBSs to the world!
<soapbox mode -- OFF>
Flames to \ra\garbage\bitbuckt\
... If you promote it, they will come...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Does FIDONET Need a Tune-Up? - Proposed Policy Change
by Chris Reiter, 1:280/205 - Hark@Clubmet.Metrobbs.Com
Does FIDONET Need a Tune-Up? - Proposed Policy Change
I was reading the SYSOP echo today, and along came a posting by Kurt
Weiske, 1:161/418 regarding the need for a new standard for netmail
routing in FIDONET. Here is his post. I have jammed it together for
brevity and to save space:
"I've heard quite a few people complaining about the lack of consis-
FidoNews 13-13 Page: 5 25 Mar 1996
tency with routed netmail in Fidonet. Where's the problem? I've heard
some people say there are whole regions that you can't route netmail
into, including Net125 in San Francisco. SF is a strange net, with
several different echomail schemes, and a co-op collective - the group
paid for the net box out of their funds, and subsidize the box and the
echomail costs. According to P4, it's the NC's duty to route inbound
routed netmail to the hub or leaf node, isn't it? Once it gets to your
NC, does it route along the same backbone as echomail in Zone 1? IMO,
I think routed netmail should be fixed - it could make a nice selling
point to users. Nowadays, the overriding sentiment seems to be to
crash it if you want it to get there. My testing seems to show some-
thing more than half of the mails I route getting to their destin-
ation. Offering routed netmail that works (to users) could be a nice
selling point for Fidonet in general."
A Network Coordinator has the following responsibilities:
1) To receive incoming mail for nodes in the network, and arrange
delivery to its recipients.
etc...
It doesn't say that there is anyone that is supposed to route even
one piece of outgoing mail. I am very lucky to have Roy Timberman,
the Western Star, in my net, who routes mail in and out of the net
for us, and he has been very generous in doing that. However, I have
noticed that only about half of the pieces of mail that I send out
are received.
I won't pretend to know everything about mail-routing or even *much*
about it, but I do know that the mail doesn't get delivered as
accurately as I would like. I am pretty sure this isn't Roy's fault,
because (being the Western Star) I would just assume that he and his
system are designed and set up to carry mail more efficiently and acc-
urately than most other normal systems. I just think that maybe not
every net has someone designated to route inbound and outbound mail.
I would like to see either the NC or NEC in every net also route any
outbound mail to at least one person up in the mail hierarchy. I don't
believe this is a lot to ask, and I know that many sysops and mail
runners pay long distance charges out of their own pocket. However, I
think that if someone in each net accepts the responsibility of taking
the NC or NEC position, then they should route inbound and outbound
netmail also. Maybe I'm just spoiled, having someone in my net that is
willing to do that, for *FREE*, but I would even be willing to
contribute a little to the person who does it.
What I am proposing to whoever out there that approves changes to the
policies of FIDOnet, is that there needs to be one person in every
single net that is designated as the mailperson (to be politically
correct). This person would route inbound mail to the participants
of his net, or at least place it on hold for pickup. He would also
accept routed netmail through his system, from nodes in his network,
to the person who is one up in the FIDOnet hierarchy. So the
policy4.txt would read...
FidoNews 13-13 Page: 6 25 Mar 1996
A Network/Network Echo Coordinator has the following responsibilities:
1) To receive incoming mail for nodes in the network, and arrange
delivery to its recipients.
2) To send outgoing routed netmail from all nodes in the network to
the appropriate designated uplink.
The problems that normally occur with nodes giving problems... mailing
lists, mass mailings, etc, would be dealt with in the same manner as
it is normally dealt with, with the ultimate penalty just being loss of
netmail routing by the network mailperson as opposed to loss of your
node in the nodelist.
We need to adopt a written policy regarding the flow of netmail if we
want FIDONET to keep up with...dare I say the "I" word? FIDONET netmail
policy should be more than just "If you want something done right, do
it yourself."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fido & Politics
Part 3 of 3
By Patrick Driscoll (1:372/19)
If you haven't read parts 1 and 2 of this article, I suggest you do
to get this in context. Part 1 is in fnews9 and part 2 is in fnews10.
Having had a problem putting this in words that don't sound too
negitive, it has been a couple of issues since I submitted the last
part of this article. The first part concerned the excessive politics
involved in Fido and the second part concerned the technological limits
of our standards. This part is the conclusion to both of these issues.
It seems that many other sysops see the same thing I do with fido. I
have had over 1100 replies to my series of articles so far, with most
of them agreeing in general with my observations. The points I tried to
make, that there is way too much politics involved in Fido and that we
are falling behind in technology as compared to the Internet and Usenet,
have sparked many more articles to the Snooze. I believe the purpose I
have in writing these articles, that people need to take another look at
how Fido does business, has gotten across to many other sysops. I hope
that all who have read these articles have at least thought about how
Fido works and it's advantages and disadvantages.
Ok, back to my rantings. I have done some surveying of systems to
see what features sysops allow their users in relation to Fido. I have
found systems that only allow paying users to access netmail features.
This in itself makes sense. It is too expensive for a small system to
crash netmail to wherever, mostly due to the limitations of our
software standards. I also found an interesting situation in one net
where a system has to pay another system to route mail through the
second system. Again, this is too expensive for a small system. I
found a lot of systems that will post netmail to their users to the
FidoNews 13-13 Page: 7 25 Mar 1996
bbs, but do not allow replies. That is pretty much a waste of time,
both the users and the sysops. One might as well send it to the user as
a text file, as it'll do as much good to him as a no-respond message.
But a majority of the systems that reponded to my queries do not offer
netmail to their users at all. Some because of software limitations,
some because of the cost and some because their hub doesn't allow non
sysop netmail to pass through the system. This is a huge problem with
Fido. When I suggested that these systems complain on the grounds that
they should have access to routed netmail for there users, the reponse
from every one of them was "No, if I do I'll end up losing my node
number". Politics as usual. If sysops are in constant fear of losing
thier node number if they "step over the line", they will eventually
head somewhere else. Many systems have already dropped Fido in favor
of Usenet and other FTN style nets. Asked why they did this, the answer
was usually "Less politics and better service". Everytime a system drops
Fido, we get weaker as a net.
The point here is that we need to take a good hard look at our
method of moving mail and try to find a better, faster, less expensive
way to do it. We also need to remove the politics from the mail routing
systems. If we don't, we will continue to lose systems to the Usenet
and other nets that have already seen these problems and corrected them.
Personally, I beleive the above situations sum up the problems with FIDO
well. Many local segments of Fidonet do a very good job, but we never
here about them. The few bad apple segments take down the whole net.
How many articles have you read in the Snooze that concerned a sysop
who was excommunicated? A bunch. Everytime I read these articles, I try
to find out what really went on to get this system booted. 75% of the
systems I have seen booted were booted for not playing by the "rules of
the day" made up by their NC. These nets that have booted systems for
no real reason make up net rules as they go, or should I say, the NC
and his/her buddies make up the rules as they go. We need to stop this
soon. Every system we cut loose becomes a liability by the way they
will "advertise" Fido. We lose many potential nodes by this kind of
advertising. We, the systems that are not having these problems, need
to push to gain new systems to Fido, and doing whatever it takes to get
these "bad apples" out of Fidonet. If it requires an independent board
to determine what should be done, lets do it. If it requires the
removal of our ZC's and RC's, lets do it. If it requires a complete
rewrite of Policy4 (an ancient draft version of fidonet policy), lets
do it. If it requires a complete rework of our technical standards, lets
do it.
Lets not let Fidonet go the way of many other nets, over political
and behind in technology, to slowly disappear into obscurity.
Thanks for your time,
Pat
1:372/19
FidoNews 13-13 Page: 8 25 Mar 1996
Another damn article! :-)
Joe Klemmer
1:109/370
klemmerj@webtrek.com
Ok, why not...
To start with, idiots like CIA need to be shot. They serve
no useful purpose and are a waste of resources.
Klaus' note was quite eloquent, as was Fredrik's. If I ever
have to move out of Net-109 I hope it's to somewhere Zone 2.
The other "Fido/Internet" articles were, as always, good but
lacking in anything interesting. Anyone with 5 brain cells
knows that the "issue" of F. vs I. is a non sequitur, as Mark
and Lee point out.
I did quite enjoy the article from "The Closet Head". Can't
say that I follow his line of thought 100% but it was sure nice
to read something that was worth spending the time it took. Oh,
and Ron's call for Don to split? Hell, Don; take him up on it
and make him the new editor. Even so it was something different.
Heck, this is more of an editorial, isn't it. Well, I'd
compose a meaningful article but, as I told Sylvia once, I'm
about 85% crippled in my hands so if I'm going to endure this
kind of pain (damn voice recognition still sucks!) it might as
well be for something inane. The Fido world needs more inanity
to offset all the rest of the crap.
One last thing. I'm afraid that the end of Fidonet truly is
here... The "Terminator" thinks the idiots are, and I quote...
"so many reasonable people in FidoNet" and he wonders "Why won't
anyone listen to them?"
Gods of all creation help us!!!
Later,
Joe
----------------------------------------------------------------------
FidoCon revisited?
by Louie Gonsalves 1:3604/43
louie.gonsalves@phosphor.datasync.com
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A New FidoCon?
By now, some of you already know that Jack Rickard and Board Wretch
Magazine have killed off OneBBSCON by renaming it OneISPCON. Rumor
has it that many BBS vendors have pulled out of the show. I, for one,
FidoNews 13-13 Page: 9 25 Mar 1996
am glad the BBS vendors have abandoned Board Wretch's BBS (sorry, ISP)
CON.
It seems to me that now would be a great time to re-introduce FidoCon.
I envision a conference where the BBS and FidoNet will be the main
focus of attention, with the internet as an able transport medium.
I, however, have never constructed a conference of any kind. I just
plant the seed, and see what happens.
Anybody out there think bringing back FidoCon is a good idea? Lemme
know... Maybe it CAN be done. A FidoCon would give our network a
much-needed shot in the arm. Lord knows we need it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Upgrading FIDONet
by Mark Kobussen
This is Part II in my on going quest to come up with a great
echo mail system for FidoNet. At the moment I have yet to take into
account the internet, as I am at the moment working on upgrading our
current setup. What do I have now? Well, I feel I was being pretty
repetative on my first article, so now I will continue on the same
path<g>. As of today, the 19th of March, I have started work on an
external door program to be named (something to do with Fido<g>) which
handles a to be determined message base format, an all new echomail
format, designed to be very efficient and space saving (work has
already begun). Enlisting the help of several other FIDONet sysops, C
programmers senior to myself (I'm happy just doing the config and
reader program) to handle devising the actual message base format and
tosser. My goals are as follows:
- Develop external Mail door capable of reading this special message
format. High quality, perhaps MORE functionality than normal BBS
message area functions. Capability for external message editors such
as IceEdit. QWK capabilities would be a major bonus.
- Develop tosser to handle special message format. Must have capable
of reading and using assorted BBS message area configurations.
Message Area & Group Configuration program to be used in
co-ordination with the reader door. Support for InterMail,
FrontDoor, Binkley, PoP, etc. type Mailers.
Basically the purpose of this article is to see if anyone has any
suggestions on any thing, and also to see if there are any C or maybe
even, ack, Pascal programmers out there that would be willing to lend
a hand in developing this FREE WARE software packages. I have no doubt
that shortly I will be expanding this to be able to use the internet as
means of transportation, but I have no idea on how to do automated
internet sessions.
FidoNews 13-13 Page: 10 25 Mar 1996
========================================================================
Fidonews Information
========================================================================
------- FIDONEWS MASTHEAD AND CONTACT INFORMATION ----------------
Editor: Donald Tees
Editors Emeritii: Thom Henderson, Dale Lovell,
Vince Perriello, Tim Pozar
Tom Jennings, Sylvia Maxwell
"FidoNews" BBS
FidoNet 1:1/23
BBS +1-519-570-4176, 300/1200/2400/14400/V.32bis/HST(DS)
more addresses:
Don -- 1:221/192, don@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca
(Postal Service mailing address)
FidoNews
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voice: (519) 570-4899
Fidonews is published weekly by and for the members of the FIDONET
INTERNATIONAL AMATEUR ELECTRONIC MAIL system. It is a compilation
of individual articles contributed by their authors or their
authorized agents. The contribution of articles to this compilation
does not diminish the rights of the authors. Opinions expressed in
these articles are those of the authors and not necessarily those of
FidoNews.
Authors retain copyright on individual works; otherwise FidoNews is
Copyright 1996 Donald Tees. All rights reserved. Duplication
and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use
in other circumstances, please contact the original authors, or the eds.
OBTAINING COPIES: The most recent issue of FidoNews in electronic
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PRINTED COPIES may be obtained by sending SASE to the above paper-mail
address.
INTERNET USERS: FidoNews is available via FTP from ftp.fidonet.org,
in directory ~ftp/pub/fidonet/fidonews.
Anyone interested in getting a copy of the INTERNET GATEWAY FAQ may
freq GISFAQ.ZIP from 1:133/411.0, or send an internet message to
fidofaq@gisatl.fidonet.org. No message or text or subject is
necessary. The address is a keyword that will trigger the automated
response. People wishing to send inquiries directly to David Deitch
should now mail to fidonet@gisatl.fidonet.org rather than the
FidoNews 13-13 Page: 11 25 Mar 1996
previously listed address.
SUBMISSIONS: You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in
FidoNews. Article submission requirements are contained in the file
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from 1:1/23 as file "ARTSPEC.DOC". Please read it.
"Fido", "FidoNet" and the dog-with-diskette are U.S. registered
trademarks of Tom Jennings, and are used with permission.
' ' disgreement is actually necessary,
or we'd all have to get in fights
or semethin to amuse ourselves,,
and create the requisite chaos."
-Tom Jennings
-- END
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