Volume 5, Number 41 10 October 1988 +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | _ | | / \ | | /|oo \ | | - FidoNews - (_| /_) | | _`@/_ \ _ | | International | | \ \\ | | FidoNet Association | (*) | \ )) | | Newsletter ______ |__U__| / \// | | / FIDO \ _//|| _\ / | | (________) (_/(_|(____/ | | (jm) | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Editor in Chief Dale Lovell Editor Emeritus: Thom Henderson Chief Procrastinator Emeritus: Tom Jennings Contributing Editors: Al Arango FidoNews is published weekly by the International FidoNet Association as its official newsletter. You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in FidoNews. Article submission standards are contained in the file ARTSPEC.DOC, available from node 1:1/1. Copyright 1988 by the International FidoNet Association. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use in other circumstances, please contact IFNA at (314) 576-4067. IFNA may also be contacted at PO Box 41143, St. Louis, MO 63141. Fido and FidoNet are registered trademarks of Tom Jennings of Fido Software, 164 Shipley Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94107 and are used with permission. The contents of the articles contained here are not our responsibility, nor do we necessarily agree with them. Everything here is subject to debate. We publish EVERYTHING received. Table of Contents 1. ARTICLES ................................................. 1 AHA Conference Dates Announced ........................... 1 Hasson's Bowling League Secretary ........................ 2 Dentist, Anyone? ......................................... 3 An Echo Conference Rules Repository ...................... 4 On Nuclear Power and Viruses ............................. 6 SYSOP LIABILITY FOR DISCLOSING PRIVATE MESSAGES .......... 9 2. FOR SALE ................................................. 11 Make money distributing software ......................... 11 3. NOTICES .................................................. 13 The Interrupt Stack ...................................... 13 "Butt Don't Rebutt that Butt" ............................ 13 Latest Software Versions ................................. 14 FidoNews 5-41 Page 1 10 Oct 1988 ================================================================= ARTICLES ================================================================= FLASH !!! - - AHA Conference is Kentucky Bound in 1989! For the first time in it's history, the American Homebrewers Association's national homebrew convention will be held outside of Colorado. The 11th Annual Conference on Quality Beer and Brewing will take place June 7-10, 1989, at Oldenburg Microbrewery, Beerhall and Drawbridge Inn in Fort Mitchell, Ky. (the Cincinnati, Ohio, metropolitan area and site of FidoCon '88). Highlights of the conference will be homebrew, beers from regional breweries, the National Homebrew Competition, exhibits, a homebrew club night, presentations and seminars, beer personalities and the world's largest brewerania collection. For more information write: American Homebrewers Association P.O. Box 287 Boulder, Colorado 80306 or call: (303) 447-0816. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-41 Page 2 10 Oct 1988 The Hillbilly BBS 1:264/555 Sysop - Keith Hasson Fellow Bowlers, I have been bowling for 3 years now and have seen many bowling league secretary programs used, some commercial & some Public Domain. I have been working on one of my own because I feel that I can develop a program much better than those available. I have put onto my bbs the first version of my program. I have named it Hasson's Bowling League Secretary. I wanted to let people try-out what I've done so far and give me some feedback on what they think of it. If the responce is favorable, I will proceed in its development. The program name is BOWLEXE.EXE and is available for Filereq or you can sign onto my bbs under First & Last Name: BOWLER Password: PIN Thank You ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-41 Page 3 10 Oct 1988 DENTIST, ANYONE? I've just set up a node at my dentist's office in Wheaton, Maryland, and I'd like to start a DENTAL echo conference. If any of you have an interest in this echo, dentistry, or are dentists yourselves, please drop me a note in netmail. Our system will also be participating in AIDS/ARC, GRAND_ROUNDS (if we get permission from the coordinator), RECOVERY, MENSA, MENSANS_ONLY, and INTERTEL. George Falcon, Sysop, "Doctor Dave's Distinguished Dentistry Den" Opus 1:109/763 PCPursuit DCWAS (301) 933-9519 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-41 Page 4 10 Oct 1988 Mike Fuchs 1:1/201 EchoList - The EchoMail Conference List And the New Rules Repository First, I wanted to spread the fact that the EchoList Moderator Update Instructions (ELISTMOD.ARC) have been rewritten. My intent was to make them clearer and easier to understand. Unfortunately, I "simplified" it into twice as many pages! Sorry about that, but I do get long winded. And I put more explanatory detail into them, which tends to make the entire process of sending me a simple message look much more complex than it is. I'm open to critique. Second, I wanted to point out the one major change documented in those instructions: The addition of a repository for conference rules in text files. I have to credit John Tarbox from 150/3 for giving me the idea. Basically, many conferences have developed a specific set of rules and procedures for their participants. Generally these get published within the conference itself as a message from time to time. What John suggested was that people might like to know the rules before linking-in, and it would be a good idea to have all those rules available in a central place so that Sysops didn't have to run down several moderators to assemble the information. The EchoList provides a pretty generous amount of space for describing a conference, but I think it's necessary to keep things under control so that there's not too much detail given there (as opposed to my moderator instructions...). I've had people submit lengthy, detailed policy and instructions for their conferences in that description field, only to have me edit it down to the basic "advertising" to balance it out with other entries. The EchoList also has flags for certain general restrictions. I'm always glad to add more, but I can't cover every term and condition with binary flags. Enter: The Rules Repository. It's very simple, really. A new moderator submission message format has been added that provides for submitting an attached file. That file must be named xxxxxxxx.RUL, where xxxxxxxx is a unique abbreviation (if necessary) of the symbolic Area Name. The file should be a raw text file (not a word processor file, and not ARC'd). What's in it? Anything the moderator wants! Formatted any way he/she wants. There are no restrictions on size or content. When my EchoList update processor finds such a message it will: 1) note the file name in the EchoList database for reference, and 2) ARC the .RUL file into the ELISTRUL.ARC file with all the other rule files. Deleting the EchoList entry will automatically delete any rule file associated with that conference. The ELISTRUL file will be distributed along with the ELISTnnn and ELISTMOD files, as well as being available for file-request or FidoNews 5-41 Page 5 10 Oct 1988 first-time user download here at 1/201. The only thing I don't like about this procedure is that there is no way for people to selectively request the rules for a specific conference. You get them all. But, it was much simpler to implement this way (you don't need a key to the file names to get the rules for a conference with a long name). And, you always have to get the entire EchoList when you request it, not selected entries. So, it doesn't seem too unreasonable. As of this writing (10/1/88) the rules file has just been implemented, and there is no ELISTRUL.ARC file to request! So don't waste your nickel on trying to pick it up just yet. But I hope this will eventually be helpful. If you are a conference moderator and would like to submit an entry or rules file to the EchoList, please get a copy of the new Conference Listing Update Instructions dated 10/1/88, and have at it! As a reminder, the following "magic" file names (use without a period or file extension) are always file-requestable at 1:1/201. ECHOLIST The latest Echolist, plus cross-references. ECHORULE The collection of Conference Rules Files. ECHOMOD The latest Moderator Update Instructions. ECHOPOL The latest draft EchoMail Policy document. (This is a document being assembled by FidoNet *C's and *EC's for EchoMail in general, NOT just EchoLIST policies. If you have ANY interest in where EchoMail is going, please read it and contribute.) Enjoy, And have fun with it! - Mike Fuchs - 1:1/201 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-41 Page 6 10 Oct 1988 ON NUCLEAR POWER AND VIRUSES By Milo Tsukroff, former FidoNet Sysop. Contact through Willi-Board, 1:320/216.0. US Mail: 84 Ash St., Apt. 32, Willimantic, CT 06226-2943 May God protect us from 'experts'. Whether they are 'experts' on nuclear power plants, or on computer viruses, they make our lives miserable by knowing _almost_ everything, but not enough. Then they try to run our lives accordingly. Fredrick L. Rice's article "To Disassemble The Machine", in FidoNews 5-36 (5 Sep 1988) was an interesting work of fiction. I highly recommend it, as it has many good, sound technical points. However, I wish to point out a few inaccuracies, and then write something along the same lines that'll knock your socks off -- about computer viruses. The problem with article is that it tells a great deal about the nuclear industry, but it is totally wrong in a few minor details. They're the critical ones. What the article hypothesizes about a nuclear plant accident resulting from an unexpectedly strong California earthquake could probably happen, but never to the degree that it predicts. Even worse for the position stated in the article, no possibility of nuclear explosion exists. One major point that the article does not discuss is that nuclear piping and valves are not the kind of pipes and valves that we are all used to. An electron-beam welding company that I worked for occasionally welds nuclear valves. The piping for a nuclear plant is rather interesting -- the pipes that these valves control have an inner diameter of about 3 inches. Their outer diameter is about 9 inches. That's right -- the walls are 3 inches thick of pure stainless steel. I wonder if these pipes would even be affected by a ground-zero atomic blast, let alone a little 8.5-Richter earthquake. Even granting the possibility that these pipes _could_ break, as metals (especially a nuclear reactor's hydrogen-embrittled steels) do strange things under stress, the prospect of a nuclear explosion occurring in an atomic power plant is ludicrous. Let me state here that a worst-case scenario can indeed include hydrogen-oxygen gas explosions, core melt-down, and magnificently huge steam explosions. The article is technically correct on those points, and we avoided them by only a little bit at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident. The prospect of a radiation-laden steam cloud being forced out of nuclear plant is a very real but very low-probability threat, one which we should be prepared to deal with. But the possibility of a nuclear EXPLOSION occurring in a nuclear power plant does not exist. At all. First of all, uranium metal is never used in a commercial reactor. The Nuclear FidoNews 5-41 Page 7 10 Oct 1988 Regulatory Commission (NRC) does not allow it. Instead, the uranium is dispersed in ceramic. The ceramic is made into small pellets, each of which is so low in radioactivity that you could hold one in your hand with only a small amount of shielding and not receive any dangerous levels of radiation (not that I would want to, mind you!). Ceramic can melt, given high enough temperatures. I'll even grant that, in the article's scenario, the ceramic (not pure uranium, though!) could melt together, fuse, and heat up drastically, thus producing a killer cloud of atomically charged steam. But the differences between uranium isotopes does not seem to be understood. Uranium-238, which is non-radioactive, is the primary isotope of uranium. The fissionable isotope, uranium-235, appears in very small percentage in uranium. It is present in such small quantities that the nuclear-fuel manufacturers must 'enrich' the uranium that they sell with a little bit of uranium-235 so that the pellets will sustain a nuclear chain reaction. The process of separating out U-235 from U-238 is so difficult that it does not occur in nature. If a nuclear reactor is to explode in a run-away nuclear fission chain reaction, as some of the less-informed but more zealous anti-nuclear groups claim is possible, the reactor would have to be a fast-fission, pure-uranium fueled reactor. (It is possible that the reactors on nuclear-powered ships come under this label. I don't know, though.) Given a commercial nuclear reactor, with a sizeable amount of fuel, and under the worst of circumstances, an atomic-bomb type of explosion cannot possibly occur. You can check with the more reputable anti-nuclear groups on this. One more thing has been left out: The production of fissionable plutonium by alpha-absorbtion of U-238 atoms. (Sorry, I don't have a physics book on hand to look up the exact atomic number.) According to an engineer at the Northeast Utilities Millstone nuclear power plant, at the end of a fuel pellet's life, most of the U-235 is spent. Nearly 40 percent of the pellet's heating power comes from plutonium fission. These plutonium atoms are, again, contained in the ceramic matrix of the pellet. The possibility of spontaneous separation, refinement, and run-away nuclear fission ("atomic-bomb" explosion) does not exist. I commend the article for being a well-written piece. Problems with poorly-located nuclear plants have resulted both from the dollar greed of the power industy managements, and from citizens' refusal to let power plants be built in safer places (the old "Not In My Back Yard" or NIMBY syndrome). While reading "To Disassemble the Machine", I had a happy thought: Why not do a 'worst case' scenario about problems with computer viruses? Why not even take a couple of _very_ minor liberties with the facts, and create a scenario to put fear into the heart of _every_ technically competent reader? . . . . . . FidoNews 5-41 Page 8 10 Oct 1988 Well, I don't have to. The editors of TIME Magazine have done it for me -- and on the front cover, no less! They feature Computer Viruses on the front cover of their September 26th edition. Their set of articles insinuates that viruses are here, they're spreading fast, and that no BBS or computer network is safe. This issue of Time will certainly make future business for FidoNet quite ... interesting, shall we say? It scares the dickens out of _me_, that's for sure! Sadly, I think that this is a great and terrible piece of irony. "To Disassemble the Machine" strikes another blow in the direction of anti-technological ignorance. It practically screams its message of "Down with the nukes!" Now FidoNet will receive the same bitter fruit of non-technical ignorance, hatred, fear, and loathing -- directed at its own Bulletin Board Systems. The very system that has been such a medium of communication, and therefore such a benefit to Mankind, is laid low by ignorant 'experts' who think that they'll make a buck scaring the daylights of the average computer user. I don't appreciate FidoNews carrying that article, and I don't appreciate Time for printing that issue on computer viruses. I that that it goes to show that if you tolerate, even foster, anti-technological attitudes, and try to act the 'expert' about what you are attacking, it'll get back to you eventually. Or, as it was better said by someone else: "What goes around, comes around." God save us from 'experts'! Anybody for a nice, little, radioactive virus? -------------------------- (I have expressed my own opinions here. In no way do I bear Mr. Rice or the editors and writers of TIME Magazine any personal ill will. My address is in this article. FLAMES > NUL.DEV, thank you.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-41 Page 9 10 Oct 1988 SYSOP LIABILITY FOR DISCLOSING PRIVATE MESSAGES In what appears to be the first case of its kind, an Indiana law student and BBS user has sued a local sysop, Bob Predaina, in federal court, claiming that he intentionally disclosed her private electronic mail to others without her permission. The lawsuit, which is in the early stages and has not reached trial, relies upon the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (the "ECPA"), which makes disclosure of private electronic mail without consent either of the sender or the recipient a federal crime. The ECPA does not obligate sysops to offer private mail on their systems. However, if a sysop promises private mail, that promise must be kept and the contents of private messages may not be disclosed without consent. The ECPA provides limited exceptions to the general rule of no disclosure. A sysop may voluntarily disclose to law enforcement authorities the contents of a message pertaining to the commission of a crime, if read inadvertently by him or if it is read pursuant to the exercise of his duties as a sysop. Until the courts clarify these rules, sysops who read private mail on their systems and disclose it may be playing with fire. Prior court cases involving telephone operators have established some useful guidelines: an operator may disclose information she overheard while checking the line at the user's request, but may not disclose information overheard while eavesdropping out of curiosity. Sysops, like phone operators, will not be considered to have a blanket authorization to intercept and disclose private messages. Systems such as Fido 11W which routinely make all private mail visible to the sysop are therefore problematic. BBS programmers should consider making private mail truly private-- while allowing sysops to turn the private mail option off if they do not want it. In the meantime, sysops should reconsider whether it is worth having private mail on their systems and should make clear to users in no uncertain terms, through bulletins and messages, the degree of privacy which can be expected, if any. Note: a copy of the complaint filed in the Thompson v. Predaina case is available on the LLM BBS, Fido 107/801 ((212)766-3788) in file area 5 under the name "Indiana". * * * JONATHAN D. WALLACE, ESQ. is an attorney in New York City specializing in computer law. With Rees Morrison, he is the author of the Sysop's Legal Manual, published this year by LLM Press. He can be reached at (212) 766-3785 (voice) or at the LLM BBS, given above. FidoNews 5-41 Page 10 10 Oct 1988 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-41 Page 11 10 Oct 1988 ================================================================= FOR SALE ================================================================= If you are a system operator and wish to make money by distributing The Structured Programming Language, you can call a 2400 baud bbs in NY at 516 935 2027 and download file SPL.EXE which will take only 15 minutes. It is important to note that the self extracting archive file SPL.EXE has 2 files in it that are passsword locked and unless given the password will fail crc checks, but the files are good. These files are documentation that your users will contact me to get the passwords, which will insure that I get paid and thus you get paid. You will be paid $5 for every paid registration I get from users who tell me the filename that uniquely identifies your bbs as the distribution point for SPL. If you are not a sysop, you can make money after you register and pay for your copy of The Structured Programming Language. Call 516 694 5872 for details. Fill out the form below and mail with an SASE to: Dennis Baer 25 Miller Road Farmingdale,NY 11735 or you can call 516 694 5872. SYSOP name ______________________________ Street ______________________________ City,State ______________________________ Filename ______________________________ to rename SPL.EXE to The above information will be kept confidential. Leave filename field blank. I will fill that in for you to rename your file. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-41 Page 12 10 Oct 1988 CROSSTALK XVI V. 3.61 FOR SALE One copy, original disk, mint condition. Manual is complete, and not marked or dogeared. Best offer over $50. Reply via netmail to George Falcon at 1:109/648 24hrs./day, 7 days/wk. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-41 Page 13 10 Oct 1988 ================================================================= NOTICES ================================================================= The Interrupt Stack 23 Nov 1988 25th Anniversary of "Dr. Who" - and still going strong 24 Aug 1989 Voyager 2 passes Neptune. 5 Oct 1989 20th Anniversary of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" If you have something which you would like to see on this calendar, please send a message to FidoNet node 1:1/1. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Fredric L. Rice (103/503.3) Now wait a minute. There has been a flood of personal mail coming into this system offering support against a rebuttal which occurred in FidoNews pertaining to "To Disassemble The Machine" which apparently came out this last month. It seems that a rebuttal issued from the MENSA Hub was posted which was apparently concerned with my spelling and use of abbreviations which were misunderstood by the author. Though I haven't seen the rebuttal yet, the general consensus in my mail describes such things as the use of NRA rather than NRC to describe the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; perhaps thinking I meant the National Rifle Association? It seems the author doesn't know that NRA is the sister Nuclear Regulatory Association to the AEC, (that's Atomic Energy Commission, MENSA, not Automated Equipment Controller). As was suggested in some of my mail, I would ask that those of you who were offended by the rebuttal you read should _NOT_ post a counter rebuttal in FidoNews. You have to agree that regardless of the media used and the research performed to develop an informed article, there is always someone who is going to take intellectual offense and post a response that yields nothing but an increase of the noise-to-signal ratio in FidoNews; increasing distribution costs throughout the network. At any rate, thanks for your support and consideration. It will take quite a bit more than this ignorance to cause me to flame out of the net! - By the way: I am _Fredric_ Rice, NOT _David_. David is the Pagan with the tattoos and a pentagram on his shaven forehead. FidoNews 5-41 Page 14 10 Oct 1988 I'm the one with the Universal Mayhem ear rings and the white high heals. Fredric L. Rice, (103/503.3), Astro-Net, (714) 622-2294. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Latest Software Versions BBS Systems Node List Other & Mailers Version Utilities Version Utilities Version Dutchie 2.90b* EditNL 4.00 ARC 5.22* Fido 12h MakeNL 2.12 ARCmail 1.1 Opus 1.03b Prune 1.40 ConfMail 4.00* SEAdog 4.10 XlatList 2.86 EchoMail 1.31 TBBS 2.0M XlaxNode 2.10 MGM 1.1 BinkleyTerm 2.00* XlaxDiff 2.10 TPB Editor 1.21* QuickBBS 2.03* ParseList 1.20* TPBoard 4.2* * Recently changed Utility authors: Please help keep this list up to date by reporting new versions to 1:1/1. It is not our intent to list all utilities here, only those which verge on necessity. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-41 Page 15 10 Oct 1988 OFFICERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL FIDONET ASSOCIATION Hal DuPrie 101/106 Chairman of the Board Bob Rudolph 261/628 President Matt Whelan 3:3/1 Vice President Ray Gwinn 109/639 Vice President - Technical Coordinator David Garrett 103/501 Secretary Steve Bonine 115/777 Treasurer IFNA BOARD OF DIRECTORS DIVISION AT-LARGE 10 Courtney Harris 102/732? Don Daniels 107/210 11 Bill Allbritten 11/301 Hal DuPrie 101/106 12 Bill Bolton 3:54/61 Mark Grennan 147/1 13 Rick Siegel 107/27 Steve Bonine 115/777 14 Ken Kaplan 100/22 Ted Polczyinski 154/5 15 Larry Kayser 104/739? Matt Whelan 3:3/1 16 Vince Perriello 141/491 Robert Rudolph 261/628 17 Rob Barker 138/34 Steve Jordan 102/2871 18 Christopher Baker 135/14 Bob Swift 140/24 19 David Drexler 19/1 Larry Wall 15/18 2 Henk Wevers 2:500/1 David Melnik 107/233 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-41 Page 16 10 Oct 1988 __ The World's First / \ BBS Network /|oo \ * FidoNet * (_| /_) _`@/_ \ _ | | \ \\ | (*) | \ )) ______ |__U__| / \// / Fido \ _//|| _\ / (________) (_/(_|(____/ (tm) Membership for the International FidoNet Association Membership in IFNA is open to any individual or organization that pays a specified annual membership fee. IFNA serves the international FidoNet-compatible electronic mail community to increase worldwide communications. Member Name _______________________________ Date _______________ Address _________________________________________________________ City ____________________________________________________________ State ________________________________ Zip _____________________ Country _________________________________________________________ Home Phone (Voice) ______________________________________________ Work Phone (Voice) ______________________________________________ Zone:Net/Node Number ____________________________________________ BBS Name ________________________________________________________ BBS Phone Number ________________________________________________ Baud Rates Supported ____________________________________________ Board Restrictions ______________________________________________ Your Special Interests __________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ In what areas would you be willing to help in FidoNet? __________ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ Send this membership form and a check or money order for $25 in US Funds to: International FidoNet Association PO Box 41143 St Louis, Missouri 63141 USA Thank you for your membership! Your participation will help to insure the future of FidoNet. Please NOTE that IFNA is a general not-for-profit organization and Articles of Association and By-Laws were adopted by the membership in January 1987. The second elected Board of Directors was filled in August 1988. The IFNA Echomail Conference has been established on FidoNet to assist the Board. We welcome your input to this Conference. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 5-41 Page 17 10 Oct 1988 INTERNATIONAL FIDONET ASSOCIATION ORDER FORM Publications The IFNA publications can be obtained by downloading from Fido 1:1/10 or other FidoNet compatible systems, or by purchasing them directly from IFNA. We ask that all our IFNA Committee Chairmen provide us with the latest versions of each publication, but we can make no written guarantees. Hardcopy prices as of October 1, 1986 IFNA Fido BBS listing $15.00 _____ IFNA Administrative Policy DOCs $10.00 _____ IFNA FidoNet Standards Committee DOCs $10.00 _____ SUBTOTAL _____ IFNA Member ONLY Special Offers System Enhancement Associates SEAdog $60.00 _____ SEAdog price as of March 1, 1987 ONLY 1 copy SEAdog per IFNA Member Fido Software's Fido/FidoNet $100.00 _____ Fido/FidoNet price as of November 1, 1987 ONLY 1 copy Fido/FidoNet per IFNA Member International orders include $10.00 for surface shipping or $20.00 for air shipping _____ SUBTOTAL _____ MO. Residents add 5.725% Sales Tax _____ TOTAL _____ SEND CHECK OR MONEY ORDER IN US FUNDS: International FidoNet Association PO Box 41143 St Louis, Mo. 63141 USA Name________________________________ Zone:Net/Node____:____/____ Company_____________________________ Address_____________________________ City____________________ State____________ Zip_____ Voice Phone_________________________ Signature___________________________ -----------------------------------------------------------------