F I D O N E W S Volume 16, Number 51 20 Dec 1999 +----------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | The newsletter of the | ISSN 1198-4589 Published by: | | FidoNet community | "FidoNews" | | _ | 1-717-732-6820 1:270/720 | | / \ | | | /|oo \ | | | (_| /_) | | | _`@/_ \ _ | | | | | \ \\ | Editor: Douglas Myers, 1:270/720 | | | (*) | \ )) | DougM@paonline.com | | |__U__| / \// | | | _//|| _\ / | | | (_/(_|(____/ | | | (jm) | Newspapers should have no friends. | | | -- JOSEPH PULITZER | +----------------------------+---------------------------------------+ Table of Contents 1. EDITORIAL ................................................ 1 Hot Dogs, Baseball, Apple Pie, and the GI ................ 1 2. ARTICLES ................................................. 2 Full Moon ................................................ 2 A New Fidonet Structure? ................................. 2 ECHO TALK - Y2K Information .............................. 3 3. COLUMNS .................................................. 7 Fidonet-related sites .................................... 7 Ol'WDB: Life from Domestic Viewpoint ..................... 10 4. NET HUMOR ................................................ 12 The good, the bad, & the ugly ............................ 12 Santa Statistics ......................................... 12 5. COMIX IN ASCII ........................................... 15 Santa Cow and his Rein Cows .............................. 15 6. FIDONEWS INFORMATION ..................................... 16 Masthead ................................................. 16 FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 1 20 Dec 1999 ================================================================= EDITORIAL ================================================================= Hot Dogs, Baseball, Apple Pie, and the GI Doug Myers It's strange what can border on contraversy. We've argued on Fido about our Coordinators, about our mail movers, about those who have turned internet technology to Fido's advangage, about those who haven't... But in the last week we've come dangerously close to tramping on icons - at least one particular icon held dear in the United States. Ol'WDB passed on a call from some writer to honer the American Soldier for his part in helping defend the country so we may all enjoy Christmas. The image this invokes in most of us here in the US - that of young men in the prime of their life being asked to interrupt their lives, leave their wives and children and family, to fight on foreign soil - has got to be confusing to those of another culture. The article prompted at least one confused response wondering if Jesus was American and what did the American Servicement - the GI - have to do with Christmas. Okay... it's tough to explain these days. During the two World Wars, the US entery into battle was delayed and reluctant... and wiedly approved by our allies. But our entry into the Korean War was not so widely regarded - and in Viet Nam we had our rear ends beat by what was supposed to be an inferior force. Though we didn't treat our returning veterans well as they returned from these unpopular war, and barely acknowledged those who didn't return, it was tough to ignore the sacrifice they'd made forever. I've heard all the stories about the atrocities committed by some who wore the GI's uniform, and even share the reservations of some who question our involvment in recent skirmishes... but if you don't mind, I'll still honer the icons. There's no greater pastime than a major league baseball game, no more perfect meal than a hot dog topped off by a piece of Mom's apple pie, no vehicle that can outperform the ol' 57 Chevy (once it's properly tuned, of course), and no greater hero than the American fighting man who has risked his life that the rest of us can take our freedom for granted. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 2 20 Dec 1999 ================================================================= ARTICLES ================================================================= Full Moon Ol'WDB This year will be the first full moon to occur on the winter solstice, Dec. 22, commonly called the first day of winter in, 133 years. Since a full moon on the winter solstice occurs in conjunction with a lunar perigee (point in the moon's orbit that is closest to Earth). The moon will appear about 14% larger than it does at apogee (the point in its elliptical orbit that is farthest from the Earth). Since the Earth is also several million miles closer to the sun at this time of the year than in the summer, sunlight striking the moon is about 7% stronger making it brighter. Also, this will be the closest perigee of the Moon for the year since the moon's orbit is constantly deforming. If the weather is clear and there is a snow cover where you live, it is believed that even car headlights will be superfluous. On December 21, 1866, the Lakota Sioux took advantage of this combination of occurrences and staged a devastating retaliatory ambush on soldiers in the Wyoming Territory. In laymen's terms it will be a super bright full moon, much more than the usual AND it hasn't happened this way for 133 years! Our ancestors 133 years ago (1866) saw this. Our descendants 100 or 200 or so years from now will see this again. I hope someone else might find this interesting! Remember this will happen December 22, 1999. ----------------------------------------------------------------- A Proposed new Structure for Fidonet by John H. Guillory (1:3807/1 john.guillory@mainline.nu) There has been a lot of talk recently over various changes to fidonet. Many sugest we should not be bound to zone mail hours, some have commented that with the majority of fidonet getting their netmail and echo mail via internet, the need to be grouped via region is not needed as badly. Granted, we can't just throw all nodes in 1 zone/region/network, because then the NC would have a nightmare keeping up with everything, and the RC and ZC wouldn't have anything to do. An option I have been thinking about lately would be to group BBS's via Common Intrest. Rather than break fidonet by a sudden change, I say create a few extra zones, eg. Zones 7-9, which would then be known as the Common Intrest Zones. Zone 7 could be defined as the Amature BBS's (I know, Fidonet is an amature Network, and as such all BBS's should be amature, but by amature here, I mean any BBS that does not fit into zones 8 or 9). FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 3 20 Dec 1999 Zone 8 would be defined as the Business/Support Zone. Groups in this zone would include the Binkley Term Support Board, IREX Support, FMail Support, Portal Support, etc. The Region would define the type of support, Network would define the product. Any additional support boards/distribution boards, etc. would be listed under the network for the product. Such that if I was looking for the latest version of Portal of Power, I could be guaranteed to find it by looking in Zone 8, in the Mailer Region, under the Portal Network on any of the BBS's within that network. (It should become clear here what the intentions of this are). Any product who's programmers offers support via Fidonet would be listed in Zone 8. Zone 9 could be for Non-Profiet Organizations, if there's any left in fidonet. Within Zone 7, we'd have Regions broken down by main Intrest with networks being a sub-intrest. Eg. Suppose I'm looking for some MIDI files, I could then go to Zone 7, Multi-Media Region, MIDI Network, and find a list of BBS's that specialize in MIDI files. The way I see it, we are loosing many Fidonet BBS's on a regular basis, and many have stated they will pull the plug on or before Dec. 31, 1999 due to lack of callers. We need to help the users find the BBS's they want in order to save whats left of fidonet, and change the direction back to a Growing Network. Imagine sysop's providing BBS listings to the users based on primary features of the BBS's. We could also have online doors that let the users browse the nodelist for other BBS's. Another benefit to this is that the BBS's who share a common intrest tend to communicate with each other more frequently. By sharing the same Net number, many BBS's would require the users to only enter the Node number of the BBS. It'd be that much quicker and easier for the users to communicate with other users via netmail in common intrest networks. It's just something I've been thinking about, and wanted to post in fidonews for others to ponder and post their opinions. ----------------------------------------------------------------- . -- -- -- -- -- ECHO TALK -- -- -- -- -- . | Food for thought from Fido's echomail. | | Purloined without permission by D Myers | ` -- -- -- -- -- -- - -- -- -- -- -- -- ' Rumor has it that in less than two weeks, the Internet will fall from the sky and it will be the end of civilization as we know it. And it's all because computers can't count past 2000, I'm told. Like many sysops, I've known all along that I should be preparing for these momentous events by buying a new computer, upgrading all my software, and adjusting my attitude. Somewhere along the way, the system fell apart for me... I never knew quite what to do. I learned a few simple tests I could run on my system to tell if it would work in the year 2000... and then heard that it may not work even if the tests work. I've learned FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 4 20 Dec 1999 that much of the software designed for Fidonet won't work in the year 2000, but then I learned that the software I was going to replace it with wouldn't work either. The information has been so bad that I've simply taken a fatalistic attitude... I'll wait until after Y2K and see what's busted. It's not a bad approace: rumor has it that I won't be able to use my hardware or software, so anything I can actually use is a bonus. I'm not due for any disappointment using this approach. But in his regional echoes and in the Z1C echo, Darrell Salter has taken a more ambitious approach and is actually discussing operating systems and software. I don't know how accurate all of it is, but if you're not content to stick your head in the sand and wait for what Y2K brings, here's some information. ----- fidoy2k.txt begins ----- Y2K INFORMATION FOR FIDONET SYSOPS ================================== Note: As this database fills out we should come up with a pretty good idea of what is, and isn't Y2K compliant. Please notify me of any errors or additions to the following list. If you are unsure about a piece of software you are running, notify me and it will be added to the list, and perhaps someone can notify us of it's Y2K compliancy. By all means, please contact the software's author to verify. Sysops may download Fidonet related Y2K programs, updates, and patches from my BBS or by surfing to my web site at http://sparkys.dyndns.org and going to the Y2K section of the File Archives. ftp://sparkys.dyndns.org also works. OPERATING SYSTEMS ================= DOS: -!- MSDOS ------ NO! Several problems, no fixes planned. DR-DOS ------ YES PC-DOS 2000 - YES CALDERA DOS - YES WINDOWS: ------- WINDOWS 3.1 ---------------- NO! Problems. Some patches. WINDOWS 95 ----------------- Patches required WINDOWS 98 ----------------- Patches required WINDOWS 98 SECOND EDITION -- Patches required WINDOWS NT ----------------- YES (Service Pack 4 required) WINDOWS 2000 --------------- Beta, should be ok OS/2: ---- FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 5 20 Dec 1999 OS/2 V.3 -------- YES (FixPak 40 required) OS/2 V.4 -------- YES (FixPak 10 or higher required) Note: TCP/IP and MPTS must be upgraded seperately. LINUX: ----- All Versions - YES FIDONET SOFTWARE ================ NODELIST COMPILERS: ------------------ FASTLIST - YES QNODE ---- YES XLAX ----- UNKNOWN FRONT END MAILERS: ----------------- FRONTDOOR ------ YES (version 2.26 required) BINKLEYTERM ---- NO (Cosmetic problems) BINKLEYTERM XE - YES ARGUS ---------- YES (Versions 3.1 and above) BBS: -!- CONCORD ------ YES (Version 0.01g5 and above) MAJORBBS ----- NO! MAXIMUS ------ YES (Y2K Patch required) SEARCHLIGHT -- YES (Version 5.02 and above) WILDCAT! ----- YES (Version 4 and above) WORLDGROUP --- YES (Version 3.1 and above) REMOTEACCESS - UNKNOWN SPITFIRE BBS - YES (Version 3.6 and above) MAIL PROCESSORS: --------------- FASTECHO -- YES (Version 1.46 and above) SQUISH ---- YES (Y2K Patch required) WATERGATE - YES (beta) GECHO ----- YES (non-shareware) FILE ECHO PROCESSORS: -------------------- ALLFIX - YES (Versions 5 and above) NETMAIL MANAGERS: ---------------- NETMGR - YES (Y2K Patch required) NETMAIL UTILITIES: ----------------- CFROUTE - YES MSC. UTILITIES FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 6 20 Dec 1999 -------------- MSGTRACK --- UNKNOWN EDITORS: ------- TIMED ------- YES (Y2K Patch required) MSGED ------- YES (TE Versions) GOLDED ------ UNKNOWN FLEETSTREET - YES Contact Information: ------------------- Fidonet: 1:229/2 BinkD: sparkys.dyndns.org Email: r12c@sprk.com Web: http://sparkys.dyndns.org Ftp: ftp://sparkys.dyndns.org Links: ----- www.microsoft.com/Year2000 www.software.ibm.com/year2000 www.novell.com/y2k www.intel.com/Year2000 www.amd.com/support/y2k/y2k.html www.cyrix.com www.award.com www.phoenix.com ----- fidoy2k.txt ends ----- ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 7 20 Dec 1999 ================================================================= COLUMNS ================================================================= ! = New entries this week ? = not responding ?? = unknown content, doesn't look like fidonet . -- -- -- -- --- -- -- -- -- . | FIDONET-RELATED SITES | ` -- -- -- -- --- -- -- -- -- ' Last update: Dec 18, 1999 FidoNet Homepage: http://www.fidonet.org FidoNews: http://www.fidonews.org [HTML] ftp://ftp.nwstar.com/fidonet/fidonews/ ftp://ftp.sstar.com/fidonet/fnews/ !Echomail links: http://www.osirusoft.com/fidoip.html SDS Files: http://fidobbs.dk/download (Web Access to SDS) FTSC page: http://www.ftsc.org/ General: http://owls.com/~jerrys/fidonet.html List server: http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/fidonet-discussion Zone 1: http://www.z1.fidonet.org Region 10: http://www.psnw.com/~net205/region10.html http://www.tnl-online.com/andy/rgn10.htm Net 103: http://www.webworldinc.com/club103/ Net 203: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8687/net203index.html Region 11: http://oeonline.com/~garyg/region11/ Net 2410: http://oeonline.com/~garyg/net2410/ Region 13: http://www.net264.org/r13.htm Net 264: http://www.net264.org/ Region 14: Net 282: http://www.rxn.com/~net282/ Region 17: http://www.nwstar.com/~region17/ Region 18: http://techshop.pdn.net/fido/ Region 19: http://members.home.net/hbh3/r19 Net 124: http://www.startext.net/np/net124 http://texoma.net/~flv Net 130: http://www.startext.net/homes/net130 Net 393: http://www.chatter.com/~wb/ Zone 1 Elist http://members.xoom.com/echolist/ Zone 2: http://www.z2.fidonet.org ftp://ftp.sstar.com/fidonet/zone2 (Z2 nodelists etc) Region 20: http://www.fidonet.pp.se (in Swedish) Region 23: http://www.fido.dk (in Danish) Region 24: http://www.swb.de/personal/flop/gatebau.html (German) Fido-IP: http://home.nrh.de/fido/ (English/German) Region 25: http://www.literary.freeserve.co.uk/net2502/ Region 26: http://www.nemesis.ie REC 26: http://www.nrgsys.com/orb FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 8 20 Dec 1999 Region 27: http://telematique.org/ft/r27.htm Region 29: http://www.rtfm.be/fidonet/ (French) Region 30: http://www.fidonet.ch (German) ? Region 33: http://www.fidoitalia.net (Italian) Region 34: http://www.pobox.com/cnb/r34.htm (Spanish) REC34: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/4552/ Region 36: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/7207/ Region 38: http://public.st.carnet.hr/~blagi/bbs/adriam.html Region 41: http://www.fidonet.gr (Greek/English) Region 42: http://www.fido.cz Region 50: http://www.fido7.com/ (Russian) Net 5010: http://fido.tu-chel.ac.ru/ (Russian) Net 5015: http://www.fido.nnov.ru/ (Russian) Net 5030: http://kenga.ru/fido/ (Russian & English) Net 5049: http://www.n5049.z2.fidonet.org (English/Russian) ?? Net 5085: http://www.fidonet.uz/ (Russian) Zone 3: http://www.z3.fidonet.org Zone 4: Region 80: http://fidobrasil.8m.com (Portuguese) Region 90: Net 904: http://members.tripod.com/~net904 (Spanish) Zone 5: http://www.eastcape.co.za/fidonet/ Zone 6: http://www.z6.fidonet.org Region 65: http://www.cfido.com/fidonet/cfidochina.html (Chinese) Fidonet Via Internet Hubs See also: http://www.osirusoft.com/fidoip.html a @ preceding an individual's name implies a virtual email address. The email is translated as follows firstlast@osirusoft.com will automatically route to the appropriate individual's email. Anyone in this list will also receive routed notice of this feature. In my case, it would still be joejared@osirusoft.com, but you get the idea. Also, as information is provided to me, I will be adding a latency field to each node, which is defined as the maximum time between when the message is received, and when it is sent on to other nodes, or available to be sent onward, defined in minutes. A latency of ! implies that there is an immediate response, and an attempt to deliver immediately after processing, or a "MinuteMail System", as it were. v-email flag firstnamelastname@osirusoft.com | email address or Node# | Operator | Facilities (*) | Speed,| Basic Rate | | |latency| -----------+-------------------+----------------+-------+------------ Zone 1 | | | | FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 9 20 Dec 1999 10/3 @ Brenda Donovan | FTP,UUE,BinkP | 384K,30| $??/$10 10/345 @ Todd Cochrane | FTP | T1,! | n/c 12/12 @ Ken Wilson | FTP | T1 | $24mo. 13/25 @ Jim Balcom | FTP | 56k | $20mo. 103/5 @ Mark Luetger | BinkP | 384k,!| n/c 103/153 @ Michael Box | BinkP | aDSL,!| n/c 103/301 @ Joe Jared | BinkP,FTP | aDSL,!| n/c 105/8 | Russ Johnson | FTP,BinkP,VMoT | 384k | n/c 105/72 @ Larry James | FTP | aDSL | $5/$15 mo 106/1 @ Matt Bedynek | BinkP, FTP | DS-3,5| $5/$15 mo 106/6018 | Lawrence Garvin | FTP, VMoT | aDSL,60| n/c 107/453 @ Jeffrey Estevez| FTP,BinkP,VMoT,UUE| 56k,60| $10 mo. 140/1 @ Bob Seaborn | FTP | T3,30 | $5/$16 167/133 | Stephen Monteith | BinkP | 128k+ | n/c 211/417 @ Korombos | BinkP,UUE,FTP | T1 | n/c 218/109 | Matt Munson | BinkP,UUE | 33.6k | n/c 246/160 @ Mason Vye | FTP, UUE | 56K | n/c 271/140 @ Tom Barstow | UUE,FTP | T1 | n/c 280/169 | Brian Greenstreet | FTP | 33.6 | $2mo. 342/3 @ Richard Dodsworth | BinkP,FTP | 128K+ | n/c 395/670 | Arthur Stark | BinkD,FTP | 128k | n/c 396/1 @ John Souvestre | FTP,VMoT | T1 | $10/mo 396/45 | Marc Lewis | UUE | 33.6 | $26/yr 2401/305 @ Peter Rocca | FTP,UUE | T1 | unkn 2424/101 | Kari Suomela | FTP,VMoT,BinkP,UUE| T1,! | $25.00/mo 2604/104 | Jim Mclaughlin | FTP,VMoT,UUE | 33.6 | $1mo 3613/2 @ jyates@bsdi.ldl.net | UUE | 28.8 | n/c 2613/404 @ David Moufarrege | BinkP,FTP,VMoT | 128k+,!| n/c 2624/306 @ D. Calafrancesco | VMoT | 33.6 | n/c 3632/84 | Robert Todd |FTP,VMoT,UUE,BinkP | 57.6k | n/c 3639/93 @ Ross Cassell | FTP, BinkP |128K+,!| n/c 3651/9 @ Jerry Gause | FTP,VMoT | 33.6 | $3/$6 -------------------------------------------------------------- Zone 2 | 20/11 | Henrik Lindhe | BinkP | ??? | n/c 31/1 | Gabriel Plutzar | BinkP | T1+ | n/c 203/600 | Mikael Karlsson | UUE | 64k | n/c 221/360 @ Tommi Koivula | BinkP,UUE | ??? | n/c 236/205 @ Michael Kaaber | BinkP | ??? | n/c 246/2098 | Volker Imre | BinkP | ??? | n/c 284/800 | Jeroen VanDeLeur | FTP,UUE | 64k | n/c 292/626 | Filip Ruymen | Binkp, UUE | 128K+ | n/c 292/2003 | Eric Vaneberck | BinkP | 768k | n/c 301/1 | Peter Witschi | BinkP | 768k | n/c 332/807 | Roberto Mascolo | BinkP | ??? | n/c 335/535 @ Mario Mure | BinkP,VMot,UUE | 64k | n/c 335/610 | Gino Lucrezi | UUE | 33.6 | n/c 344/201 | Julio Garcia | BinkP | ??? | n/c 346/3 @ Carlos Navarro | UUE | ??? | n/c 382/100 | Sinisa Burina | BinkP | ??? | n/c 406/555 | Ofir Michaeli & | BinkP | ??? | n/c 406/555 | Marius Kaizerman | BinkP | ??? | n/c 423/81 | Milos Bajer | BinkP | ??? | n/c 464/4077 | Serguei Trouchelle| UUE | 19.2 | n/c 465/204 | Va Milushnikov | BinkP | 33.6k | n/c 469/84 | Max Masyutin | VMoT | 256k | n/c FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 10 20 Dec 1999 480/112 | Adam Sarapata| FTP, VMoT, UUE,BinkP| 128k | n/c 2411/413 @ Dennis Dittrich | UUE,BinkP | 64k | n/c 2446/301 | Lothar Behet | BinkP,VMoT,UUE,FTP | 64K | n/c 2474/275 | Christian Emig | UUE | 64k | unkn 5030/115 | Andrey Podkolzin | BinkP | ??? | n/c 5100/8 | Egons Bush | BinkP | ??? | n/c 5020/1159 | Gennady Kudryashoff | UUE | 33.6 | n/c -------------------------------------------------------------- Zone 3 633/260 @ Malcolm Miles | FTP,BinkP | 64K | n/c 640/954 | Rick Van Ruth | FTP,VMot,UUE,BinkP| 56K| n/c 774/605 @ Barry Blackford|BinkP,VMoT:10023,ifcico,FTP |33.6| n/c -------------------------------------------------------------- Zone 4 905/100 | Fabian Gervan | VMoT,UUE,BinkP | 128k | n/c 902/18 | Javier Tejedor | UUE | 33,6 | n/c -- * FTP = Internet File Transfer Protocol * VMoT = Virtual Mailer over Telnet (various) * UUE = uuencode<->email type transfers * BinkP = front end mailer for TCPIP networks ---------------------------------------------- Fidonet oriented news servers news.osirusoft.com news.tardis.net Fidonet oriented chat rooms. room #fidonet 5PM (PDT 11AM GMT) Sundays irc.isonline.com irc.killaz-r-us.com irc.korombos.org ---------------------------------------------- Please send updates, corrections and suggestions to Joe Jared, 1:103/301, joejared@osirusoft.com, and complaints to jarhead@osirusoft.com . ----------------------------------------------------------------- +++++Life from a Female Domestic Engineer's Viewpoint+++++ as told to Ol'WDB There's another way of looking at life... Thank you, God, for dirty dishes For they mean we are well fed. Thank you for the mortgage payments and rent notices, For they mean we have a roof over our heads. Thank you for the seemingly endless pile of laundry, For it means FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 11 20 Dec 1999 we are clothed and warm. Thank you, for scuff marks, crayon marks and smelly tennis shoes, for they mean we are active. Thank you, God, for loud stereos and busy telephones. For they mean our teens are safe at home. Thank you for the notes from school, For they mean our children have teachers who care. Thank you, God, for speeding tickets, For they mean our police officers are protecting us. Thank you for morning traffic jams, For they mean we have jobs to go to. Thank you for doctor's waiting rooms and deductibles and co-pays, For they mean we have access to health care. Thank you, God, for his/her snoring, For it means he/she is safe beside me. Thank you for little disappointments, For they mean you are teaching us patience. And I would like to thank you, Lord, for those unmade beds. They are so warm and comfortable. I know that many have no bed. My thanks to you, Lord, for this bathroom, complete with all the splattered mirrors, soggy, grimy towels and dirty lavatory, they are so convenient. Thank you for this finger smudged refrigerator that needs defrosting so badly. It has serve us faithfully for many years. It is full of cold drinks and enough leftovers for two or three meals. Thank you, Lord for this oven that absolutely must be cleaned today. It has baked so many things over the years. The whole family is grateful for that tall grass that needs mowing, the lawn that needs raking; we all enjoy the yard. Thank you, Lord, even for that slamming screen door. That means my kids are healthy and able to run and play. Lord, the presence of all these chores awaiting me, say You have richly blessed my family. I shall do them cheerfully and I shall do them gratefully. Thank you, God, for just plain ordinary days- Education is the Apprenticeship of Life! Send comments to: wdbonner@pacbell.net ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 12 20 Dec 1999 ================================================================= NET HUMOR ================================================================= The good, the bad, & the ugly Thanks to Ol'WDB Good: Your wife is pregnant. Bad: It's triplets Ugly: You had a vasectomy five years ago Good: Your wife's not talking to you Bad: She wants a divorce Ugly: She's a lawyer Good: Your son is finally maturing Bad: He's involved with the woman next door Ugly: So are you Good: Your son studies a lot in his room Bad: You find several porn movies hidden there. Ugly: You're in them Good: You have a date with Adonis Bad: You can't find your birth control pills Ugly: Your daughter borrowed them Good: Your husband understands fashion Bad: He's a cross-dresser Ugly: He looks better than you Good: You give the "birds and bees" talk to your 8 year old daughter Bad: She keeps interrupting Ugly: With corrections Good: The postman's early Bad: He's wearing fatigues and carrying a shotgun Ugly: You gave him nothing for Christmas Good: Your son is dating someone new Bad: It's another man Ugly: He's your best friend Good: Your daughter got a new job Bad: As a hooker Ugly: Your coworkers are her best clients Way Ugly: She makes more money than you ----------------------------------------------------------------- Santa Statistics Thanks to Roy Reed rcreedv@juno.com FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 13 20 Dec 1999 1. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa doesn't visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per house, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each. 2. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels from east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000 of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh, and get on to the next home. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the globe (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second -- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. 3. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500,000 tons, not counting Santa himself. on land, the conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even if we grant that the "flying" reindeer could pull 10 times the normal amount, the job couldn't be done with 8 or even 9 of them - Santa would need 360,000 of these mega-reindeer. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, by another 54,000 tons, or roughly 7 times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). 4. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintllion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 14 20 Dec 1999 flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the 5th house on the trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result from accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in .001 seconds would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. 5. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Merry Christmas! ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 15 20 Dec 1999 ================================================================= COMIX IN ASCII ================================================================= o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o ( ) o ( ) o ( ) o O ) ( ) ( ) ( o o (__) o (__) o (__) o o (__) (oo) (oo) (oo) o (oo) o /------$$$$ o /-------\/ /-------\/ /-------\/ / | $$$$ / | || / | || / | || * ||----|| * ||----|| * ||----|| * ||----|| o ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ Santa Cow and his Rein Cows ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-51 Page 16 20 Dec 1999 ================================================================= FIDONEWS INFORMATION ================================================================= Masthead + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- FIDONEWS STAFF - -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + | | | Editor: Douglas Myers, 1:270/720, DougM@paonline.com | | Webmaster: Jim Barchuk, jb@fidonews.org | | Columnist: Joe Jared, 1:103/0, jarhead@osirusoft.com | | (Fido Via Internet Hubs column) | | Columnist: Warren D. 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