793 lines
25 KiB
Plaintext
793 lines
25 KiB
Plaintext
FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:01:49 Page 1
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Volume 2, Number 29 2 September 1985
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| / \ |
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| - FidoNews - /|oo \ |
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| Fido and FidoNet _`@/_ \ _ |
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| Users Group | | \ \\ |
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| Newsletter | (*) | \ )) |
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| ______ |__U__| / \// |
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| / FIDO \ _//|| _\ / |
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| (________) (_/(_|(____/ |
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| (jm) |
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Publisher: Fido 107/7
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Chief Procrastinator: Thom Henderson
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Fidonews is published weekly by SEAboard, Fido 107/7. You
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are encouraged to submit articles for publication in
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Fidonews. Article submission standards are contained in the
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file FIDONEWS.DOC, available from Fido 107/7.
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Disclaimer or don't-blame-us:
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The contents of the articles contained here are not our
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responsibility, nor do we necessarily agree with them;
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everything here is subject to debate. We publish EVERYTHING
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received.
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This week's guest editorial is by Tom Jennings.
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There is much legislation going around to restrict the use
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of computers connected to the phone system. Much of it is
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very 1984 type stuff, tramps on First Amendment rights in
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the name of law and order, is deadly serious, and will be
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deadly to BBSing as we know it. A very few bills are
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actually good things. PLEASE try to stay aware of what's
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happening. Some form of control is going to happen. Just
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what it consists of depends on whether we get a say in it or
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not.
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The crooks in DC don't announce to the world when
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they are about to do something to someone; the less who
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know, the fewer complaints. If you read something related
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in the newspaper, please spread the word! Don't assume that
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"everyone else knows this already". Many of these things
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are sneaked through quietly, so make noise! Submit them to
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FidoNews, upload to your local BBS, tell other BBSers.
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At some point in the future some actions groups will
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coalesce; please be prepared to support them. Write
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FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:01:52 Page 2
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letters, mail money. This applies to everyone; when the Tom
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Tcimpidis case in LA happened, in 1984, a lot of sysops took
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the "head in the sand" approach. This is guarenteed to lose
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us our boards. There are a lot of us, sysops, users and
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all. If we all do something, I think we'd all be suprised
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at how many there are of us. No one is going to be shot, so
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stand up for your rights!
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FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:01:53 Page 3
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============================================================
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NEWS
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============================================================
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From: Brian Sietz 107/17
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Subject: National Fidonet User Directory
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I believe that the concept of the fidonet national user directory
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is a terriffic idea, but it has a few problems:
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- It takes up too much disk space for sysops.
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- It is much too big for users to download.
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- The information is quickly outdated.
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- The cost of publishing in hardcopy is not worth the expense.
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One solution that would solve the above problems and make the
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user directory a bit more useful would be to shorten the number
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of users listed. The criterion for being listed in the directory
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should be any user who called more than 20 times, any user who
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has a fidonet credit, users with uploads, and users with privs
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above NORMAL. I picked 20 as the number of calls without too
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much thought - it just seemed that 20 showed enough interest to
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be considered a "frequent caller". Part of the problem with
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including all users is that you get your one time callers. I
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do not mean to imply that non-frequent callers are not desirable,
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it just means that it is too soon to know if users from other
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states would be interested in sending mail.
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If we keep the list short and concise, the information would
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be more useful to both sysops and users.
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Comments anyone?
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FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:01:54 Page 4
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THE CONTINUING STORY OF
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LINKING FIRE DEPARTMENT
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OPERATIONS EVERYWHERE
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INTO ONE COHESIVE
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MASS
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(What a Dream!)
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By Christopher Baker, Sysop,
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Metro-Fire Fido, 18/14
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==============================
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Our primary function, in the beginning, will be to assemble
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as many depts as possible into a sub-net or a number of
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sub-nets to establish a base for communication between
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depts across the country that would not otherwise be aware
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of each other. While that is being accomplished and once it
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is in force, our function will be to provide net
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coordination and a central locus for collection and
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dissemination of information of interest to all.
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As you may or may not know, fire department operations bear
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little resemblance to any other form of endeavor. This
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uniqueness begs (it seems to me) for a common mode of
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communication to share ideas and experiences as well as
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computer programs specific to fire dept ops. For example,
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we have a dept of 1200+ members. We are writing a specific
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program to automate the calling of overtime, which is now
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done manually, that will automatically sort, file, compare
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qualifications and produce an updated listing of who is
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next eligible and qualified for overtime. With this many
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people and with all the different levels and types of
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qualifications, calling overtime is a genuine pain!
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Programs of this type could be shared with other
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depts via the sub-net we are proposing. I also hope to get
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a tie-in to the F.E.M.A. and National Fire Academy systems
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for bulletins and other info.
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Metro-Dade Fire & Rescue is in the process of setting up an
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administrative data network consisting of this 3270 set-up
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and a number of IBM ATs. This network will handle the
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daily, routine paperwork and allow for individual site E-
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mail and program development. This network will operate
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outside of the Dade County Data Processing system and be
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exclusively for the use of our Dept. The program
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development will be managed by a central office but the
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programming efforts will come largely from volunteers from
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within the Dept who work at it in their spare time or time
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alloted from their normal duties for this purpose.
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The in-house AT network should develop some interesting
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applications for this Dept that may be of use or interest
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to other depts, regardless of size. These developments
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would be available to other depts through the Fido sub-net
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I propose.
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This is, generally, what I have in mind at present for the
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Fire Net. I hope this information will be of assistance to
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FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:01:56 Page 5
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those of you trying to convince your departments that
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computers and data links are the future and are beneficial
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for all concerned.
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I appreciate the many responses to my article. If I can
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be of further assistance to you,please do not hesitate to
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ask. FidoMail sent on Mondays & Tuesdays is not processed
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until Wednesday(Mon-Tue=my days off), otherwise any mail
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will be replied to on the next FidoMail day.
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If you would like access to our board, please send the name
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you wish to sign on under and the password you would like
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to use by PRIVATE FidoMail. Please include the name of your
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department, your city and state, and a data or voice phone
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number you can be reached at. Your access will be granted
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upon receipt. Send all requests marked PRIVATE to Sysop,
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18/14. If you wish to call the board and fill out a
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verification questionaire, please fell free to do so but be
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advised that this method may slow down your access
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considerably. Our data number is 305-596-8611. If you have
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a question that needs a direct or immediate answer, our
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voice line is 305-596-8576. Voice contact is only possible
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from 1430-2230, Wednesday through Sunday. (I'm off on
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Monday and Tuesday.)
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Thanks.
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FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:00 Page 6
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New Fido Message Renumbering Utility Available
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Because my USENET message base areas usually get
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upwards of 250 messages per week, I needed to create a
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utility to be run from an external event to renumber Fido
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message bases. Since the old RENUM utility does not fix
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the USER.BBS file after renumbering the messages, I made
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my own renumbering program. This program consists of the
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Sysop only 2 and 8 commands taken from ROVER, and able to
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be run with command line arguments. It allows killing
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messages by date, and received messages (sysop 2 command),
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and also renumbering message bases, and the user list
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(sysop 8 command). The program is being distributed as
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RENUM.ARC, and has been sent to all HOST nodes (or at least
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is being sent to all host nodes). Since FidoNet only runs
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for 1 hour each night it is being sent to about 8 hosts
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per night. If your host does not have it, and you are
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interested, it can be downloaded from Fido 101/101 - The
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UN*X Gateway any time.
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Bob Hartman
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Sysop 101/101
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The UN*X Gateway
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and Home of Rover
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FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:01 Page 7
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Make your PC Faster for $20.95!!!
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A little known fact in the PC world is that there
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are Intel 8088 and 8086 compatible chips that simply run
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faster than the originals! The whiz chips are known as the
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NEC V20 (Intel 8088 compatible - NEC part UPD70108), and
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the NEC V30 (Intel 8086 compatible - NEC part ???). I
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recently installed the NEC V20 in my IBM PC, crossed my
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fingers and turned on the machine. Since I didn't smell
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any smoke, I turned on the monitor. After what seemed like
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an eternity, the familiar whirring of the disk started, and
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my PC was alive. I tried doing a bunch of things like
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changing directories, using 1-2-3, etc, and it all worked.
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The next step was to run some random timing tests with the
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new chip. Since I had run them just before replacing the
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chip, I was interested in what the timing differences
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would be. Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find that
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every program that I tried ran between 5% and 25% faster
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with the NEC chip, than with the Intel chip. I think that
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programs could be optimized to generate even better results,
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but since I don't have the spec sheet for the chip yet, that
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will have to wait.
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I don't know why NEC isn't trying to beat up the
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market with this chip (actually, I do know - Intel is
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taking them to court in April), but my advice is that if you
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want to upgrade your PC (Rainbows could probably use the
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V30), for only $20.95, call JDR Microdevices at
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(800) 538-5000, and order the chip. It was easily the
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cheapest upgrade to my PC yet, and produced a lot more
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benefit than some of the other upgrades.
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Bob Hartman
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Sysop Fido 101/101
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The UN*X Gateway
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and Home of Rover
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FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:02 Page 8
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On our way to a WorldFidoNet
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============================
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From : Henk Wevers Fido 101/3101
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To : All involved
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Fido has crossed the borders of the USA now, and
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international contacts are possible. This adds a special
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flavour to Fido and no doubt will increase it importance as
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a way to exchange ideas and thoughts about all kind of
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things, including computers.
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The FidoNet organisation as it is today is well suited for
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one (big) country, but has several drawbacks from the
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international point of view. As Fido is on its feet here in
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europe and is growing fast, the situation will become
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uncontrollable within a few month if fido isn't changed
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again. This documents purpose is to start a discussion on
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how to change Fido to make it fit for international use
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without loosing the somewhat informal way it is organised.
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Hopefully the way to go will emerge from the discussion and
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Tom Jennings will change Fido again, no doubt he will become
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famous in the rest of the world also. As I will point out
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hereafter, the changes needed are not that much.
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First of all, as fido is used by all kinds of persons, the
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dog must be teached to speak different languages. Not
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everybody in the wotld speaks english, especially kids do
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have problems with the language. Clearly we can patch Fido,
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all the messages are grouped together in memory, but that is
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a very hard way to do it and must be done again for a new
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version. Also english is the most compact language I have
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seen, most european languages use more letters to say the
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same. So the first thing we are asking Tom Jennings is to
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include some kind of ascii textfile, that at initialisation
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time (if present) will overlay the english messages. This
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must include the Y/N characters and the currency sign. We
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can also write a little program to change the privilege
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files so menu's can be changed. (The small menu for replying
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a message and the one after you have typed in a message must
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also be put into a file).
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Now for the netorganisation.
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============================
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FidoNet is a somewhat loose organisation and I think we must
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maintain that in our international contacts. The best way to
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go is that if two countries want to exchage fidomail, 2
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fidonodes, one in each country team up. Both will act as a
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host for the country and forward the received mail in that
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country. There is money involved here, because forwarding
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mail in a country is not cheap. Both sysops are going to
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know each other very well, and accounting can be organised.
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FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:05 Page 9
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(Fido has to change a little for that as I will show
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lateron). To make things more flexible, lets also allow more
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than one of this kind of teams for a countrypair.
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When Fido grows, there is no point in having all nodes in
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the world on line. The file will be too big anyway so here
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it is: we must have country codes in the nodeidentification
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code. (Listgen has gone this way already)
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A nodelist for every country a certain fido will allow his
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users to exchange mail with can be put on line then. I
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suggest it will look like this from the user point of view:
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-------------------------------------------------------
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Mail Command: E
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This will be message #xx
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From: me on Fido 31/101/3101
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Active COUNTRY: 1 , active NET: 101
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?=Help, !=List COUNTRIES
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/=List NETs, #=Lists NODES
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Pick COUNTRY, NET and/or NODE:!
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Countries available to mail to from this node:
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1 - USA, CANADA
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31 - HOLLAND
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44 - UNITED KINGDOM
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46 - SWEDEN
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Pick a COUNTRY: 31
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Getting the nodebook for that country, wait ....
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Active COUNTRY: 31, active NET: 1
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?=Help, !=List COUNTRIES
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/=List NETs, #=Lists NODES
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Pick COUNTRY, NET and/or NODE:
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----------------------------------------------------------
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Well I think the meaning is clear to you, xx/xx chooses
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net/node in the active country. For mailing in the same
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country almost nothing is changed.
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In this way we can have Nodelists for a country made up
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by a countrycoordinator and make them available on Fido
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of the international coordinator (fido 51 ?). Countrycoordi-
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nators can then (after a little editing) make them available
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for their local fido's. A local Fido has complete control
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over what countries he will allow his users to mail to by
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putting the nodelists (1.nds, 31.nds etc ?) from the selec-
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ted countries on line.
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This allows us also to put in a routing for that country in
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the countrynodelist.
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So we come to the fourth change required to make Fido an
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suitable for international exchange. A few new keywords in
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the nodelist.
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FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:06 Page 10
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1: COUNTRY xx @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
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defines the country and tyhe name of this country.
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2: CHOST net/node
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Mail to nodes listed below this host must be send to
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CHOST instead.
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Thats all, this scheme allows for nodes in a country that
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must be mailed directly, not through a CHOST, and multiple
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CHOSTS.
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Lets have a look how this will look like for a hypothetical
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big country:
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COUNTRY 224 WONDERLAND
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AREA 1 ...................
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(list of nodes)
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AREA 2 ..............
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(list of nodes)
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HOST 3 ..........
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(list of nodes)
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CHOST 4/22
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AREA 4
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(list of nodes)
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HOST 5
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(list of nodes)
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CHOST 8/22
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etc
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--------------------------------------------------
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The routing is obvious, either direct, or via CHOST and/or
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HOST. The nodelist for a country lists the CHOSTs in that
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very same country of course. The CHOST itself has only to
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edit the nodelist, by replacing his own CHOST entry with
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that of his teammate.
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That leaves us to the last change we need to make it all
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work, cost accounting and a change in the ACCEPT FROM
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function. The costaccounting between hosts and/or CHOSTS and
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the local nodes must be much better, otherwise the task of a
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(C)HOST may become to timeconsuming for a hobbyist. Luckely,
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the changes needed are not dramatical...
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First the forwarding node must enter his country/net/node
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number into each messageheader of the message forwarded.
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Now, if the receiving host sends out some of the message
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received, fido knows the last node the message came from and
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who to charge. An antry in the maillog should be made like:
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FORWARDED FOR xx/xx/xx message to xx/xx/xx $ xx.xx
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(The amount of money comes from the current nodelist !)
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Because Tom has implemented a kill after send function, this
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is not a big change I guess.
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Almost there, The ACCEPT FROM function as I understand looks
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FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:08 Page 11
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at the originating node of the message and marks it orphan
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if that node is not in the accept-from list. Now we have the
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cost accounting done, it should be changed so, that accept
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from means : accept messages from this country/net/node
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don't care where the message came originally from. This way
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total control is possible.
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Thats it folks, just give you a last example of how this all
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may work out from the cost accounting way. I may have seen
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things wrong, or left something out. Thats where you come
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in. Lets discuss it. And Tom, will you please change Fido
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again ??. I think we have about a couple of month before all
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this is really needed. Until then, we are in net 101 here in
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europe ! See you ... (or should it be 'Fido you ...').
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Henk
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------------------------------------------------------------
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a last example of routing and cost accounting
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-----------------------------------------------------------
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Local --> Host --> CHOST --> CHOST --> Host ---> Local
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1 2 3 4 5 6
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Accounting can be done from the maillog (perhaps a dream
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analysingprogram like sysrept can be made 'mailrept')
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The only difficulty is in how 1 could possible know the
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the costs of a message to 6. Thats easy enough, CHOST 3
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takes the country nodelist from CHOST 4 and adds its costs
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for routing link 3->4. Host 2 takes this nodelist from CHOST
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3 and adds its cost for link 2->3 to the nodelist. Local 1
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does the same and puts yhe list on line. Presto !
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-----------------------------------------------------------
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FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:10 Page 12
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============================================================
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NOTICES
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============================================================
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New version of ARC
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The latest version of ARC is version 4.30. The main
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differences between this version and earlier versions are:
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1) You can now use path names when adding files to an
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archive.
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2) Adding files to an archive is approximately 30% faster in
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most cases.
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------------------------------------------------------------
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The Interrupt Stack
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27 Nov 1985
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Halley's Comet passes closest to Earth before perihelion.
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24 Jan 1986
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Voyager 2 passes Uranus.
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9 Feb 1986
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Halley's Comet reaches perihelion.
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11 Apr 1986
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Halley's Comet reaches perigee.
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19 May 1986
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Steve Lemke's next birthday.
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24 Aug 1989
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Voyager 2 passes Neptune.
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If you have something which you would like to see on this
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calendar, please send a message to Fido 107/7.
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