F I D O N E W S Volume 17, Number 24 12 Jun 2000 +----------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | 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 What's Not Happening - Policy 4 Abolished ................ 1 2. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR .................................... 3 Tom Davison .............................................. 3 3. COLUMNS .................................................. 4 Ol'WDB: Prayer sent by a Vet ............................. 4 This week's Web Page ..................................... 4 4. NET HUMOR ................................................ 6 Thin no more ............................................. 6 5. COMIX IN ASCII ........................................... 7 Famous Cows .............................................. 7 6. INTERNET INFO ............................................ 8 Fidonet-related sites .................................... 8 7. FIDONEWS INFO ............................................ 12 Masthead ................................................. 12 FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 1 12 Jun 2000 ================================================================= EDITORIAL ================================================================= .-- -- -- -- -- -- WHAT'S NOT HAPPENING -- -- -- -- -- --. | There isn't always something happening on Fidonet, but | | there's always something which isn't happening. This | | column is dedicated to the lost causes which make Fido | | what it isn't today. Published semi-occasionally... | `-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --' Policy 4 Abolished Doug Myers In a remarkable display of international harmony and cooperation earlier this week, sixty six of Fidonet's Regional Coordinators met in the super secret WW_REGCON echo to repeal Fidonet's decade old Policy 4.07. The unanimously adopted Policy 5.00 brings about sweeping changes to Fidonet, among them: - elections at all coordinator levels, except where it conflicts with local tradition. - equality for all individuals, except that sysops are more equal and elected or appointed individuals are even more equal than that. - geographic organization is abandoned in recognition of the improved interconnection patterns brought about by the internet. The new basic unit of organization will be known as a "fiefdom." - echomail is finally recognized as a matter of policy. Though it doesn't fall under the traditional coordinator structure, a multiple backbone structure is defined. Freedom of speech in all echoes is guaranteed except where it conflicts with moderator rulings. Though informal polls indicate that the policy change is supported by all 66 regional coordinators, it isn't official yet due to an untimely failure of the WW_REGCON echo. Though it isn't widely known, this super secret echo was actually the creation of Doc Logger who, though he couldn't post on the echo, found it convenient to establish clandestine connections to it so he could monitor the elflords as they plotted to keep Fido under their thumb. Ironically, all of the elflords accepted Doc's clandestine connection through his old XT computer and never bothered to connect amount themselves. This set up a situation where all traffic through this echo flowed through the XT in Doc's basement (somehow given an administrative node number). Those of you who remember Doc Logger know that he departed Fidonet some time back, headed for his retirement home in the South Seas. Though he remembered to take his advanced system (the 286), he completely forgot about his XT in the cellar. Fidonews has learned through discrete sources that the machine FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 2 12 Jun 2000 failed earlier this week because the local electric utility finally shout off electricity after two years of uncollected bills. Unfortunately, this failure occurred after the Policy Change Referendum had been posed, but before any votes were actually gathered. It is suspected that Doc's old place will ultimately be sold for back taxes and the machine is expected to gather votes when electric service is restored. In the meantime, this is what's not happening on Fidonet. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 3 12 Jun 2000 ================================================================= LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ================================================================= Tom Davison Netmail from Lesley-Dee Dylan 1:250/535 --------------- Dougie, this one looks like a good capture for an article. Dee * Original Area: Sysop.REG12 * Original From: Darrell Salter (1:250/201) * Original To : All (1:250/201) * Forwarded from NETMAIL by Darrell Salter (1:229/2). * Originally by: David Moufarrege (1:2613/404), 09 Jun 00 18:57. * Originally to: Darrell Salter (1:12/0). ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Hello Darrell, Ten days ago I flew from Chicago, IL to San Jose, CA. During the flight I started a conversation with my "neighbor", who turns out to be Tom Davison, a former node from Ottawa who recently moved to Colorado. We had a great chat comparing notes on Fidonet, a few good laughs about common acquaintances and generally a good time. Tom was interested in some of the new things we're into today, such as Fido via IP, etc. However, he asked me to pass along greetings to the region and to the Ottawa net. Done! :-) -=David=- TCP/IP Node kraut.dyndns.org IBN & ITN:60177 David@kraut.xg.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 4 12 Jun 2000 ================================================================= COLUMNS ================================================================= Ol'WDB's Column A prayer sent to me from a Veteran & Pal wdbonner@pacbell.net TheLastStop@osirusoft.com Dear Lord, Every evening As I'm lying here in bed This tiny little prayer Keeps running through my head God bless my mom and dad And bless my little pup And look out for my sister When things aren't looking up And God, there's one more thing I wish that you could do Hope you don't mind me asking But please bless my computer too? Now I know that's not normal To bless a mother board But just listen a second While I explain to you 'My Lord' You see, that little metal box Holds more to me than odds & ends Inside those small compartments Rest a hundred of my 'BEST FRIENDS' I know for sure they like me By the kindness that they give And this little scrap of metal Is how I travel to where they live By faith is how I know them Much the same as you I share in what life brings them From that our friendship grew "PLEASE" Take an extra minute From your duties up above To bless this scrap of metal That's filled with so much love! ----------------------------------------------------------------- This weeks Web Page By Frank Vest This weeks page is "Tiny's" Web page. Where? http://members.home.com/t1ny/ FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 5 12 Jun 2000 What's it got? Lots of stuff here. Shawn Highfield (Tiny) is a programmer. You can tell this by his page. I found Tiny's page a long time back while looking for some doors for my BBS. He has a great "Hangman" game, "Wall of Babble" and some other BBS doors and utilities. There's even a L.O.R.D IGM that I run on my BBS called "Sommer's Shiny Things". :) I drop by this site on occasion to see what has been added. I noticed that there is a free Telnet client on the main page for download. Of course, I'm gonna try it. :) It seems that Tiny is into a lot of things from networking to programming and about anything else that deals with computers. I'd suggest that you visit this site and take a good look around. As far as the BBS and Fidonet areas go, I'll let Tiny tell you about his history in that area. ----- cut ----- My History with BBS's I've been running BBS's off and on since 1985 when I wrote BBS software for the Commodore 64. I still have a copy of the "Perfect: BBS" system on a floppy disk, though after over 10 years I doubt the disk as any good. After moving to the PC Platform in 1991, I again started running a BBS, this one was known as --==>Pern<==-- . As the system became popular and went multinode, I changed the name to Online Information Xchange. OIX expanded and became an Internet Service Provider. I ran that until April 1996, when I sold my shares to my partners. Shortly after I sold OIX, a good friend of mine who runs a local Echomail network called me up in a panic, His main HUB had went down and he was stuck. I threw a mailer up and became HUB 400 in powernet. Shortly after that I saw a copy of Telegard 3.0 on another system in town. I started setting it up so I could use my favorite offline mail reader instead of Front door's folders. One thing led to another and Tiny's BBS was born. ----cut---- That's the story from Tiny. Drop by and read the rest of the stuff on his page and check out some of the programs he's written as well as the products offered. Regards, Frank - flv@texoma.net ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 6 12 Jun 2000 ================================================================= NET HUMOR ================================================================= Thin No More... Thanks to Peggy Hollinger allica@juno.com There was a Scottish tradesman, a painter called Jock, who was very interested in making a pound where he could, so he often would thin down paint to make it go a wee bit further. As it happened, he got away with this for some time, but eventually the Presbyterian Church decided to do a big restoration job on the roof of one their biggest churches. Jock put in a bid, and because his price was so competitive, he got the job. And so he set to, with a right good will, erecting the trestles and setting up the planks, and buying the paint and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with the turpentine. Well, Jock was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly done, when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, and the sky opened the rain poured down, washing the thin paint from all over the church and knocking Jock fair off the scaffold to land on the lawn, among the gravestones, surrounded by telltale puddles of the thinned and useless paint. Jock was no fool. He knew this was a judgment from the Almighty, so he got on his knees and cried: "Oh, God! Forgive me! What should I do?" And from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke: "Repaint! Repaint and thin no more!" ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 7 12 Jun 2000 ================================================================= COMIX IN ASCII ================================================================= Famous Cows ________________ (__) ^__^ / \ >----(oo)----> (oo) ( Milk is logical. ) /-------\/ /-------\/ --'\________________/ / | || / | || * ||----|| * ||W---|| ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ Steve Martin's cow Mr Spock's cow () () ()() (oo) /------UU / | || * ||w---|| ^^ ^^ Eh, What's up Doc? ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 8 12 Jun 2000 ================================================================= INTERNET INFO ================================================================= ! = New entries this week ? = not responding ?? = unknown content, doesn't look like fidonet . -- -- -- -- --- -- -- -- -- . | FIDONET-RELATED SITES | ` -- -- -- -- --- -- -- -- -- ' Last update: June 10, 2000 FidoNet Homepage: http://www.fidonet.org FidoNews: http://www.fidonews.org [HTML] ftp://ftp.nwstar.com/fidonet/fidonews/ ftp://ftp.sstar.com/fidonet/fnews/ Echolist: http://www.baltimoremd.com/echolist/ Echomail links: http://www.osirusoft.com/fidonet/fidoip.html SDS Files: http://fidobbs.dk/download (Web Access to SDS) FTSC page: http://www.ftsc.org/ General: http://www.writebynight.com/fidonet.html 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 12: http://sparkys.dyndns.org Region 13: http://www.net264.org/r13.htm Net 264: http://www.net264.org/ Net 275: http://www.homershut.net/~mahoover/net275/ Region 14: http://www.ouijabrd.com/region14 Net 282: http://www.rxn.com/~net282/ Region 15: Region 16: Region 17: http://www.nwstar.com/~region17/ Net 140: http://www.nwstar.com/~net140 Region 18: http://techshop.pdn.net/fido/ Region 19: http://bise.tzo.com/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 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) FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 9 12 Jun 2000 http://www.was-ist-fido.de/ 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 Region 27: http://telematique.org/ft/r27.htm Region 29: http://www.rtfm.be/fidonet/ (French) http://Welcome.to/skynetbbs/ 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 ! Net422: http://www.fido.sk (Slovak/English) 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 5028: http://5028.yaroslavl.ru/ 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 FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 10 12 Jun 2000 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 | | | | 10/3 @ Brenda Donovan | FTP,UUE,BinkP | 384K,30| n/c 10/345 @ Todd Cochrane | FTP,BinkP,VMOT | 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,NFS | 384k,!| n/c 103/401 @ Warren Bonner | BinkP | aDSL,!| n/c 105/8 | Russ Johnson | FTP,BinkP,VMoT | 384k | n/c 105/72 @ Larry James | FTP, BinkP | aDSL | $50/yr 106/1 @ Matt Bedynek | BinkP, FTP | 128k | n/c 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,BinkP | 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 244/2 | Kari Suomela | FTP,VMoT,BinkP,UUE| T1,! | $25.00/mo 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 | $5/mo 396/45 | Marc Lewis | UUE | 33.6 | $26/yr 2604/104 @ Jim Mclaughlin | FTP,VMoT,UUE | 33.6 | $1mo 2613/404 @ David Moufarrege | BinkP,FTP,VMoT | 128k+,!| n/c 2624/306 @ David Calafrancesco | VMoT | 33.6 | n/c 3613/2 @ jyates@bsdi.ldl.net | UUE | 28.8 | 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 292/620 | Eddy Missoul | VMoT, UUE | 64k |N/C 292/624 | Steven Leeman | UUE | 64k | 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 FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 11 12 Jun 2000 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 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 * NFS = Linux Networking ---------------------------------------------- Fidonet oriented news servers news.osirusoft.com news.tardis.net Fidonet oriented chat rooms. room #fidonet 5PM (PDT 11AM GMT) Sundays irc.osirusoft.com (Peers wanted) ---------------------------------------------- Please send updates, corrections and suggestions to Joe Jared, 1:103/301, joejared@osirusoft.com. All email addresses here for purpose of corresponding with fidonet members about obtaining a feed. Improper use of the virtual email addresses, and most especially, email addressed to blockme@relays.osirusoft.com will be considered a request to be blocked by my open relay spam stopper at http://relays.osirusoft.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 12 12 Jun 2000 ================================================================= FIDONEWS INFO ================================================================= 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. Bonner, 1:103/401, wdbonner@pacbell.net | | (Warren uses the pen name "Ol'WDB") | | Humor: Roy Reed, rcreedv@juno.com | | Features: Frank Vest, 1:124/6308.1 | | | + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- - EDITORS EMERITI - -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + | | | Tom Jennings, Thom Henderson, Dale Lovell, Vince | | Perriello, Tim Pozar, Sylvia Maxwell, Donald Tees, | | Christopher Baker, Zorch Frezberg, Henk Wolsink | | | + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + "Fido", "FidoNet" and the dog-with-diskette are U.S. registered trademarks of Tom Jennings, P.O. Box 410923, San Francisco, CA 94141, and are used with permission. Fidonews is published weekly by and for the members of Fidonet. Fidonews is Copyright (C) 2000 by Douglas Myers, though authors retain rights to their contributed articles. Opinion expressed by the authors is strictly their own. Noncommercial duplication and distribution within Fidonet is encouraged. Authors are encouraged to send their articles in ASCII text to Douglas Myers at one of his addresses above. The weekly edition of Fidonews is distributed through the file area FIDONEWS, and is published as echomail in the echo FIDONEWS. These sources are normally available through your Network Coordinator. The current and past issues are also available from the following sources: + -- -- -- -- -- -- - FIDONEWS AVAILABILITY - -- -- -- -- -- -- + | | | Freq FIDONEWS @ 1:270/720, 1:140/1, or 1:396/1 | | ftp://ftp.sstar.com/fidonet/fnews/ | | ftp://ftp.nwstar.com/fidonet/fidonews/ | | http://www.fidonews.org | | email subscription: majordomo@fidonews.org | | (subject: help body: list) | | ftp mail: ftpmail@fidonews.org (subject: help) | | | + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + FIDONEWS 17-24 Page 13 12 Jun 2000 -----------------------------------------------------------------