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F I D O N E W S -- Vol.11 No.29 (18-Jul-1994)
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| A newsletter of the | ISSN 1198-4589 |
| FidoNet BBS community | Published by: |
| _ | |
| / \ | "FidoNews" BBS |
| /|oo \ | +1-519-570-4176 1:1/23 |
| (_| /_) | |
| _`@/_ \ _ | Editors: |
| | | \ \\ | Sylvia Maxwell 1:221/194 |
| | (*) | \ )) | Donald Tees 1:221/192 |
| |__U__| / \// | Tim Pozar 1:125/555 |
| _//|| _\ / | |
| (_/(_|(____/ | |
| (jm) | Newspapers should have no friends. |
| | -- JOSEPH PULITZER |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Submission address: editors 1:1/23 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Internet addresses: |
| |
| Sylvia -- max@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca |
| Tim -- pozar@kumr.lns.com |
| (submission address) |
| editor@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| For information, copyrights, article submissions, |
| obtaining copies and other boring but important details, |
| please refer to the end of this file. |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
========================================================================
Table of Contents
========================================================================
1. Editorial..................................................... 2
2. Articles...................................................... 2
The Fido Phool Starts a New Echo............................ 3
Dear Madam Emilia........................................... 4
UN-Soldiers................................................. 4
Gr<47><72>e aus dem sch<63>nen Essen-Frohnhausen..................... 5
Roman Catholic Echo (R_CATHOLIC)............................ 5
The FIDO Crucifixion........................................ 6
The echo for ALL cyclists!.................................. 7
vote for comp.sys.amstrad.8bit, soon a fido echo ?.......... 7
The Mother of All Nodelist Articles......................... 8
3. Fidonews Information.......................................... 11
FidoNews 11-29 Page: 2 18 Jul 1994
========================================================================
Editorial
========================================================================
There is a mishmash of articles this week ... lots of echo
announcements, more nodelist stuff, and one article from Steve
Winter. We came close to cutting that one, as it condones both
breaking the law and attempting to crash boards.
We left it in for two reasons. We ran a spoof against him two
weeks ago, and figured he should get a kick at the can. As well,
the article is probably the best arguement we could possibly make
for moderation and decency. It is hard to take someone that
indulges in such irrational rants seriously.
The policy four editorial of a few weeks back has generated
more mail ... letters both for and against. Out of personal
curiousity, I did some research on just how policy four was
ratified. It seems that it was declared by the ZC of the time,
without a vote of even the RC's. According to my informant, the
reason it was never voted on is that the ZC of the moment knew
it would never be passed.
I spoke out a few weeks ago about the tremendous amount of
ill-will that the entire geonet idea has inficted upon the net.
The one letter that I revieved back (printed in last week's
snooze) that was in support of geonets claimed that the silver
lining of geonets was "it's advantage in preventing
troublemakers, or fascists, or Racialists from setting up their
own 'Elite' networks". I did not comment at the time, but it
has been bothering me.
Here in Canada, we have both French and English nets. I
cannot see it as wrong in any way. We also have bi-lingual nets
and echos. Again I cannot see anything wrong with that.
The example used was that geonets had allowed Mr.
Wassell (writer of the article and ZC of England) to prevent the
Catholics of Northern Ireland from setting up their own net. I
had mentally been nodding agreement up to that time.
I am still not convinced that the policy four document has
done any more good than it has harm. It's main use still seems
to be to inflict one persons standards onto another.
========================================================================
Articles
========================================================================
FidoNews 11-29 Page: 3 18 Jul 1994
The Fido Phool Starts a New Echo
EDITOR_TORTURE
by Rick Moen, The Fido Phool (1:125/27)
Hello, FIDOnutters! I want to announce a new echo that I am hoping
will get off the ground real quickly (among the luftmenschen, where it
clearly belongs) and make backbone status. I am counting on you to help
me meet this goal as soon as humanly possible, so that we can all surf
the cybertwit-wave on EDITOR_TORTURE....which is hosted from 125/27.
Yes, we aren't your run-of-the-mill "I hate Sylvia and Don"-type
people. No. We are the folks who love to send them megs of Policy
drafts...and then send them WhineMail<tm> about articles they publish
that we DON'T like. We are creative, caring, loving compassionate
people who just plain _won't grow up_.
We discuss such interesting topics as...
*- Yet more exciting ideas for shaving 0.2% off a 2.8Mb nodelist!
*- Quick! Let's get a nodelist flag for V.FC, now that the ITU
has just made it obsolete.
*- Ten innovative new ways to demand censorship in the name of liberty.
*- My NC is alcoholic, antisocial, and just plain unsanitary. Let
me tell you _all about it_!
*- Help wipe out racism, by talking solely to other people who like
to discuss wiping out racism.
AND MORE!
*- Steve Winter: rogue AI program from MIT -- and how to make more
of them.
*- By ignoring my wishes, the Z1 echo backbone operators are being
MEAN to me, and I demand a vote to force them to pay attention.
*- The new HOLEY_BIBLE echo -- the Bible echo that has gaps in its
memory! (Echo title is copyrighted by Auld Nick, Himself.)
*- Crude, feeble parodies, and how to get them into _FidoNews_.
I would appreciate a response, ASAP, from all of the editor-hating
sysops out there, so that we can get this thing moving. We need to get
on the backbone, so that we can share our tips and hints with all of the
other Sylvia-and-Don-o-phobes, and start making this a great nation,
um... continent... um... world-thingie, as it was intended. People
point their fingers at _real issues_, but I happen to know that it is
those darned editors. fnord
flames=>1:1/23 (for publication, of course!)
FidoNews 11-29 Page: 4 18 Jul 1994
Dear Madam Emilia
Q: Since we don't want the gov't, the evil "they" who are supposed
to but can never represent "us" since "we" are a random
conglommoration of totally individual beings, to "crack down"
["their" nasty lingo] on BBSs, since cracking down really means
censorship: why are we letting the "community standards" loophole
in pornography laws restrict Fidonet, which is a community in and
of itself and as such is entitled to set its own standards like
any other community?
A: The geographical basis for nets was a good idea because it
prevented people from being ostracised from nets for stupid
reasons, or creating monopolies, and pre-cellular phone bills
were relevent to geographical boundaries.
Q: STOP preaching at me. I HATE it when you preach at me. And why
does the U.S. government think cryptography is a munition susceptible
to trade restrictions ?
A: Cryptography is a "munition"??? oh. Well, I'm all for the
disappearance of all vegetable, mineral or other matter which could
imagineably be employed as a weapon. Shovels could be munitions, if
they are used for head-bopping. Grapefruits could be munitions if
they are thrown. Therefore grapefruits and shovels are EVIL! I think
cyber-citizens who happen to be in the U.S. should all complain to as
many government officials as possible that grapefruit and shovels are
being freely exported with the possible effect of world chaos.
Q: Why are you trying to tell everyone what to do, again! Is
someone paying you to bother? Telling others what to do is a whole
lot of work for nothing. Maybe you are a c o n t r o l phreak
like the rest of them !
----------------------------------------------------------------------
UN-Soldiers
I am looking for people who have been in the service of the UN
either as Soldiers, observers or other services. I would like to
exchange Info, Gossip and experiences. I was in Macedonia from
Oct-93 to Mar-94 as a Battalion Signal Technisian for the Nordic
Battalion with the rank of (2/Lt). I'm currently employed as an
officer in the Swedish Army's Signaltroops. If you feel
compelled to reply please do so by netmail.(2:205/603.44)
Friendly yours/Stefan
Boden, Sweden
FidoNews 11-29 Page: 5 18 Jul 1994
Gr<EFBFBD><EFBFBD>e aus dem sch<63>nen Essen-Frohnhausen
From: bk@nub.fido.de
Bernd Kehren on 2:243/3001.9
Germany
Nodelist shorter
There is one point I did not understand since I read my first
time in the nodelist: Why are sometimes four bytes used, where
one bit would be enough?
For example: We have the flag "V42B" with four byte.
What about a code of - say - eight Byte where every bit (64) ist
used for one of the present used flags? I think it is not too
hard to write a program which can translate that code for
human readers.
Bernd Kehren
--
HDS_NetworX: Bernd Kehren 254:2000/0
Internet: Bernd.Kehren@nub.fido.de
Fidonet: 2:2/254
HDS Computer Technik / 47169 Duisburg /
FAX:0203-408799 / VOICE: 0203-405895
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Roman Catholic Echo (R_CATHOLIC)
Jonathan Guidry (1:3803/11)
Hello all... I hope with all the stuff about CAT_TORTURE, and
KID_TORTURE, you have room for a nice echo. :)
I've just finished attending one year in a Seminary College in
Indiana. While there, I picked up FIDO as a point in Louisiana
(there were no close BBSes at all in Indiana to be a node off of -
in fact, the closest cities with FIDO were one hour west and one
hour east of me..). I started up a R_CATHOLIC echo for my net to
ask each other general questions and answer each other on different
aspects of Roman Catholicism. The echo did good for a while, but
it's gradually dying down. I'm now announcing that the R_CATHOLIC
echo can be available directly from me, as I want to get enough
traffic and people on it to where I can backbone it. It will be
slow starting up, but we'll hopefully get there. The echo is
intended to be a place where general discussion, questions and
answers about the Roman Catholic Faith can be asked. It is not
meant to be an argument base for those not agreeing with principles
of the Roman Catholic Faith. So, if you want to bash the Roman
Catholic religion, please go find the FLAME echo. :-) I will be
leaving for college again late this August. Thus, I want to try to
get enough traffic to backbone it before then. If you wish to pick
up the echo, just netmail me with a mailer password, and poll at
FidoNews 11-29 Page: 6 18 Jul 1994
least once a week.
Thanks!
Jonathan D. Guidry
... Multitasking: Hanging up more than one program.
Via DLGMail @ 1:3803/11.0
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The FIDO Crucifixion
by Steve Winter (1:18/98)
Some of you out there have been giving me a lot of bad press
lately. I don't really care because the bible tells me that false
christian scum will try to deter me from my mission to correct the
lies and Satan-influenced false teachings of deviant so-called
pastors. I don't care. They can flay my skin, draw and quarter me
and even take steps to censor me in FIDO, but I will carry on.
Recently, I became aware of a new threat to the true church of
Jesus,that being these people who call themselves "Pagans". They
should more properly call themselves Heathens or even Satanists.
Yes, I have investigated many of these new age BBSs and I have only
one thing to say. THEY MUST GO!!
The devil will not be allowed to exert domain where Jesus rules
King. We shall persue these godless satanic groups until the last
one has been exorcised or given over to the Lord for disposal. We
must seek them out and destroy their places of depravity and
destroy their rings of stone and their alters where babies are
sacrificed to appease their lord and master Satan himself. Good
Christians everywhere must join together to eradicate this
unwholesome threat to the very fibre and existance of mankind, and
we must do it NOW!
I am asking the following of every Christian FIDO reader that
can see this message to disrupt, destroy and do away with every
pagan BBS in their area. Crash their their boards, and upload
viruses, what ever you need to do. These are scum of the earth
and if I had MY way these idiots would be swinging from lamp posts
like Mussolini did after World War II. Let the dogs eat their flesh
and the bones be crushed under the feet of the legions of God's
people.
If we all can get together on this ONE thing, we can eradicate
this threat to mankind within 6 months. Call your local police and
report these deviants. Report their crimes against children and if
possible, infiltrate them so that we can accumulate a listing of
these disgusting pawns of Satan. We must act now or surrender FIDO
to the Satan controlled minions of the dark side of man. Crush them
like the vermin they are. THIS IS WAR!
FidoNews 11-29 Page: 7 18 Jul 1994
The echo for ALL cyclists!
by Tony Antoniou - 3:712/417
Well I've stressed this many times in various Fidonet echoes but
I get the feeling that I'll get better coverage with Fidonews...
I am the moderator of an echo called CYCLING and my main aim is
to get the echo reaching far and wide. There isn't a single
cycling-related echo here in zone 3 and I know that there are more
cyclists out there than just those on my echo!
The CYCLING echo was developed for cyclists of all sorts be it
competitive or leisure driven.
Cycling is beginning to be recognised as a very much respected sport
as well as a favourite past-time and as such we need to exchange
ideas, and information on venues, equipment etc.
Let's all get behind one another and form a strong allegiance for
the cyclists of this planet! We need the numbers if this is to get
to the fido backbone and once it does, it too can be a worldwide
success of an echo - the way it ought to be for us cyclists...so
join in!
If you are part of zone 3, ask your friendly sysop who can get
it off his friendly hub...otherwise, if you are interested in
bringing it into any other zone ask someone from zone 3 who is
already an O/S feed for your zone.
If you have any further queries, my line is open to you 24 hours a
day. The fido address is 3:712/417
----------------------------------------------------------------------
vote for comp.sys.amstrad.8bit, soon a fido echo ?
vote for comp.sys.amstrad.8bit, soon a fido echo ?
by Emmanuel Roussin, 2:320/220
compuserve 100346,2536 or roussin@frmug.fr.net
You can contribute to the creation of the newsgroup
comp.sys.amstrad.8bit wich will be about the Amstrad computers (CPC/PcW)
If this newsgroup should be created, it will be at least on Aspects
2:250/107, and Genesis : the 8bit generation 2:320/220 (still in
configuration, open in mid-august)
Email before 21th july 23:59:59 to voting@qualcomm.com with the message
I vote YES on comp.sys.amstrad.8bit
FidoNews 11-29 Page: 8 18 Jul 1994
The Mother of All Nodelist Articles
The Mother of All Nodelist Articles
by Josh Parsons, 3:771/340
I toyed with the idea of calling this article "Yet another Nodelist
Article" as a joking reference to the endless tide of articles that've
been seen in the snooze, some demanding that their authors' connectivity
needs be met by new nodelist flags, others advocating removal of
spurious flags and entries from the nodelist. On second thoughts,
however, I changed the title, because this is not yet another argument
for either trimming or embellishing the nodelist - for one thing, I'd
like to produce a synthesis of the views of "those who want more" and
"those who want less" (in the words of Bob Swift), but primarily, I want
to point out what I think both sides of the argument are missing:
********************************************************************
* *
* The nodelist is big because it contains a lot of information! *
* *
********************************************************************
I can't emphasize this enough! Even the most radical schemes for
cutting down on nodelist size don't achieve above 15-20% reduction, a
reduction which will disappear in months as new nodes join Fidonet. The
reason, and the only reason, that the nodelist is so big is that it
contains a listing of every node!
OK, so that's my starting point. Where does this leave us though?
Well, for the "want less flags" camp:
1) Although sysops and NCs who are responsible for undocumented or
redundant flags, and unnecessary or incorrect Pvt, Down, and
Hold listings are annoying, they aren't responsible for our
bloated nodelist, and certainly don't deserve to be burned at
the stake the way some have stopped just short of suggesting
they should.
2) Compressing flags that often occur in combination, or
redundancies like _BBS in BBS names, isn't going to do the trick
either. Even compressed by our best general compression
algorithms (ie. the glorious ARC) the nodelist is still a
substantive file, and encoding the flags in this way will be
less effective, while still producing incompatibilities with
most existing software.
Conclusion: if you're interested in a smaller, more efficient
nodelist, you should be interested in addressing more significant
factors in nodelist size: namely the number of nodes listed in it.
And as for the more flags advocates:
3) Modem capability flags are of help only when contacting a
distant node directly, and irregularly - a node whose
FidoNews 11-29 Page: 9 18 Jul 1994
capabilities you have to look up in a complete nodelist. Local
nodes you can contect easily and quickly by routed mail, or by a
local call to establish their capabilities; nodes that you call
on a regular basis, you already know their capabilities.
As the nodelist grows, as doomsayers notwithstanding, it will,
it's going to become more and more difficult to maintain a
complete nodelist, and sysops are going to become less and less
bothered about their details in a world nodelist that few nodes
keep anyway. In short, a growing nodelist means less
connectivity, even with more informative modem capability flags.
Conclusion: if you're interested in a more informative nodelist, and
greater connectivity, you should be interested in addressing the
significant factor in nodelist size: namely the number of nodes
listed in it.
And that's my synthesis: The only way that will work to have what either
side in the nodelist argument wants is to tackle the fact that there
are, and will continue to be tens of thousands of entries in the
nodelist; unless we take some action to change it.
The kinds of action we might take are varied - here presented in order
of seriousness:
1) (Extremely silly)
We can all inundate the snooze with letters demanding that the
FTSC *do* something about it all. Now, contrary to some people's
assumptions, the FTSC isn't a team of boffins working furiously
away in a back room somewhere inventing new and wonderous
standards to foist off on unfortunate Fido software developers.
So:
If we want new nodelist technology someone's got to come up with
it.
2) (Silly)
We can throw away the world nodelist, FTS-5, Policy4, the existing
nodediff distribution scheme, in favour of something different,
say, seperate zone or region wide nodelists. This simply isn't
going to be acceptable - it's just overkill to change virtually
everything about what Fidonet is over this relatively minor
technical issue.
Whatever new nodelist technology we come up with will have to
perform pretty much the same task as the old nodelists did, within
Fidonet.
3) (Sensible, but flawed)
Robert Heller's "FTN Domain Name Service" proposal (FSC-69),
provides a very sophisticated way to make the nodelist more
distributed, changing our very way of addressing other systems.
For this reason, I think, it bites off too much to chew, in terms
of the changes it proposes - it will be a long time before
software that supports flat-text format addresses becomes
FidoNews 11-29 Page: 10 18 Jul 1994
prevalent.
There's got to be a clear migratory path to any new technology -
change will be gradual, and clear benefits need to hold along the
way, or the process will stagnate.
4) (Sensible, but flawed)
Another proposal might be based on Jan Derk Otter's article in
Fidonews 1126. He suggested that nodes might request nodelist
segments from their hosts (and their hosts, in turn, request them
from elsewhere), by means of a system analogous to the "AreaFix"
facility provided by many echomail processors. This has the nice
advantage that "NodeFix" (to coin a phrase) programs could operate
quite well, and usefully, under the present arrangement. So, with
NodeFix, there would be a migratory path towards distributed
nodelists.
Towards - but not all the way: the article in question speaks of
"big... systems where the whole of the complete world nodelist
resides". Ultimately, I'd like to do away with the need for any
one system to keep a universal nodelist - and to do that, we'll
need some clearer specification (like FSC-69) of how a system can
go about finding another node's nodelist entry without relying
on one centralised nodelist.
As long as there must be some node or nodes with a complete
nodelist, we aren't addressing the real problem (of too many nodes
in our nodelist), just shelving it off for other systems to deal
with.
5) (Sensible)
???
I'm not really sure what to put here. I don't know of any
published standards, or working software that do what I think is
needed without the drawbacks noted. Perhaps a good scheme would
be to start with something resembling a NodeFix scheme, but try
to aim it towards eventual compatibility with FSC-69. It's hard
to think of a middle ground between these two ideas - but that's
where I think the solution lies. I'll be continuing to think
about this one.
I'm sure not everyone will agree with what I've just said, and also, I
know some people will agree with me on some of the points I've raised,
but disagree as to my conclusions, or on the way they should be
implemented. All the same, if you have something to say, I'd like to
hear from you... Comments are solicited, either in netmail, or in the
snooze itself. If you're going to netmail me directly, check that your
nodelist contains my phone number as 64-4-801-6674. It's changed
recently and nodediff distribution isn't too hot in this part of the
world at the moment (change of ZC and all that)
Josh Parsons, gruntiest of grunt sysops,
Temple of Love BBS, Wellington, New Zealand
FidoNews 11-29 Page: 11 18 Jul 1994
========================================================================
Fidonews Information
========================================================================
------- FIDONEWS MASTHEAD AND CONTACT INFORMATION ----------------
Editors: Sylvia Maxwell, Donald Tees
Editors Emeritii: Thom Henderson, Dale Lovell,
Vince Perriello, Tim Pozar
Tom Jennings
"FidoNews" BBS
FidoNet 1:1/23
BBS +1-519-570-4176, 300/1200/2400/14400/V.32bis/HST(DS)
Internet addresses:
Sylvia -- max@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca
Tim -- pozar@kumr.lns.com
(Postal Service mailing address)
FidoNews
128 Church St.
Kitchener, Ontario
Canada
N2H 2S4
Voice: (519) 570-3137
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 1994 Sylvia Maxwell. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or
distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use in
other circumstances, please contact the original authors, or FidoNews
(we're easy).
OBTAINING COPIES: The-most-recent-issue-ONLY of FidoNews in electronic
form may be obtained from the FidoNews BBS via manual download or
Wazoo FileRequest, or from various sites in the FidoNet and Internet.
PRINTED COPIES may be obtained from Fido Software for $10.00US each
PostPaid First Class within North America, or $13.00US elsewhere,
mailed Air Mail. (US funds drawn upon a US bank only.)
INTERNET USERS: FidoNews is available via FTP from ftp.fidonet.org,
in directory ~ftp/pub/fidonet/fidonews. If you would like a FAQ, or
have questions regarding FidoNet, or UUCP<==>FidoNet gateways, please
direct them to David Deitch (1:133/411@fidonet) at
deitch@gisatl.fidonet.org.
SUBMISSIONS: You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in
FidoNews. Article submission requirements are contained in the file
FidoNews 11-29 Page: 12 18 Jul 1994
ARTSPEC.DOC, available from the FidoNews BBS, or Wazoo filerequestable
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.
Asked what he thought of Western civilization,
M.K. Gandhi said, "I think it would be an excellent idea".
-- END
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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