Volume 4, Number 14 13 April 1987 +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | _ | | / \ | | /|oo \ | | - FidoNews - (_| /_) | | _`@/_ \ _ | | International | | \ \\ | | FidoNet Association | (*) | \ )) | | Newsletter ______ |__U__| / \// | | / FIDO \ _//|| _\ / | | (________) (_/(_|(____/ | | (jm) | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Editor in Chief: Thom Henderson Chief Procrastinator Emeritus: Tom Jennings 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. Copyright (C) 1987, 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. Table of Contents 1. EDITORIAL What is this thing called IFNA? 2. ARTICLES Letting 9 to 5 Go By the Board by Alice Kahn Medical Bulletin Boards SEAdog node list problem Pointless Nodelist Hassles Electronic Mail--Plague or Panacea? 3. COLUMNS Tandy User Group Newsletter (MARCH, 87) 4. FOR SALE UNDER-C(tm) PFS2TXT Program 5. NOTICES The Interrupt Stack Fidonews Page 2 13 Apr 1987 ================================================================= EDITORIAL ================================================================= What is this thing called IFNA? What the heck is IFNA anyway? And what can it do for ME? This is a valid and important question. We've created this outfit called IFNA, and even voted on bylaws for it, but just what does it all mean, anyway? First and foremost, IFNA is a legal entity, a not for profit corporation in and of the State of Missouri. So what does that buy us? Well, it turns out that there are certain advantages to having a corporation around. One that's been highly touted by a lawyer who was involved in the bylaws committee is the "corporate shield". I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard that phrase. The general theory is that if the business of IFNA is running bulletin boards, then if any member of IFNA is sued for something he did while running a board his own personal assets will not be on the line. All the plaintiff will be able to go for is the assets of IFNA itself. I'm less than incredibly impressed with that argument. It sounds to me like, if push ever really comes to shove, the so-called corporate shield of IFNA will be just one of many points the lawyers will bandy about, much to the expense of the parties involved. But that's not to say that there's no point in having IFNA around. I can see some advantages to it. The thing is that we seem to have two separate entities here. On the one hand we have IFNA, which is this legal entity which may or may not mean anything. On the other hand we have FidoNet, which is a coalition of sysops each doing his or her own thing. IFNA is governed by a Board of Directors elected by its members, while FidoNet is governed by a loose hierarchy of coordinators on several levels. The two are quite different, so how do they connect? "The Net" we all know and love is FidoNet, of course. We don't need IFNA to govern the net. FidoNet has its own policies and procedures to handle all of that quite nicely, thank you. So why bother with all of this corporation nonsense? There are a few reasons: 1) Tax reasons; This is really why IFNA was formed in the first place. Ken Kaplan, the International Coordinator, was incurring some heavy expenses, so he asked for some help to defray the costs. People responded (thank you!), but the IRS saw those donations as income for Ken Kaplan, and did NOT see his expenses as legitimate tax deductions. Incorporation Fidonews Page 3 13 Apr 1987 solves that. 2) There are some advantages to copyrighting the node list and FidoNews. Mainly, by copyrighting them we can enforce our policy that no one may sell them for a profit. But someone has to hold the copyrights. Saying that each is a collective work of 1200+ people doesn't help much. By forming a corporation we create a legal entity to hold the copyrights on our collective property. 3) We're attracting some attention. Various people in the media and in business are interested in what we're doing. Having a recognized business entity for outsiders to deal with makes public relations a lot easier. And it sure doesn't hurt the average sysop for bulletin boards to get a little positive press for a change! 4) While we're at it (and since, once you get right down to it, we're a pretty potent market force) it'd be nice if we could coerce manufacturers into giving us some deals on hardware and software. But companies aren't used to dealing with loose aggregations of individuals. If I call a modem manufacturer, for example, and say "Hi! I'm a sysop, and I have a lot of friends who are sysops -- what can you do for us?" it isn't going to cut much ice. But if I call and say "I represent the International FidoNet Association, a coalition of over twelve hundred sysops worldwide" it carries some weight. A good example of this is the current situation with 9600 baud modems. We're in a pretty good position to establish the de facto standard for 9600 baud. It behooves us to (a) figure out which modems will do what we want, and (b) get the best deal we can from anybody making modems that are good enough. But we can't do that unless we have some sort of cohesive organization for the manufacturers to deal with. So what is IFNA? Three things, mainly. It's our PR department, our legal department, and our public face. That's all, but that's enough. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Fidonews Page 4 13 Apr 1987 ================================================================= ARTICLES ================================================================= LETTING 9 TO 5 GO BY THE BOARD by Alice Kahn (c) San Francisco Chronicle, 1987. Reprinted by permission. So I'm sitting in Hamburger Mary's talking to a guy with orange hair and a skateboard. Big deal. There are plenty of fish with Technicolor hair skating in the SoMa sea. But Tom Jennings is different. He's fresh and rad beneath the surface, a nonconformist trying to create his own life in a world that stomps on nonconformists. He seems determined to go where no man has gone before. Jennings recently went "high profile" as a genuine character when, at 31, he retired from his job at Apple Computer to live by his wits and his skateboard. WHY'D HE DO IT? For me, the only fun in being a journalist is having the license to call up any unusual person you hear about and lunch him. So I ask Jennings why he has done something as weird as leaving a 9-to-5 office job to skateboard - to "shred" the streets. I'm not the first; many have asked why he left his "dream job" as a well-paid systems programmer at Apple, as if a young man who has worked a third of his life in the electronics bussiness has no basis for feeling bored with it. "I think it's the West Coast infatuation with Apple Computer," he says. "I don't mean to knock it. For some it may be the orgasm of a job. But it's still a big corporation. It is run by a guy from Pepsi." It's soon clear that I'm with an artist whose masterpiece is his own life. His delight in risk-taking also makes it fun to be around him. There's not a dead bone in his body. Jennings sees himself as a product of the tacky '70s and the punk anti-culture spawned by what he calls "the era of John Travolta, a time when the emperor's clothes were really off." Opportunities for men of his generation seem to range from service-sector yuppie to marginal bum. The real curiosity about Jennings is How can a smart punk live as a grown-up? Bright in math and science but somewhat of a "wise-off" in high-school, Jennings barely managed to graduate from what he calls "the cesspool of public education." Just out of the cesspool, he went to work in the electronice industry near his hometown of Woods Hole, Mass. In the late '70s, like other lone nuts with a catalog, he began mail-ordering components for his do-it-yourself personal computer. Eventullly, Jennings developed his own computer networking software, FidoNET, which allowed him to have electronic intercourse with people all over the world. Fidonews Page 5 13 Apr 1987 His software accomplishments resulted in Jennings' nomination for the Andrew Fluegelman Award, named after the late editor of PC World and MacWorld. He explains that Fluegelman was also a computer hobbyist who believed that computer software should be free. But, Jennings added, some say that Fluegelman ended up, at 41, jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. A year ago, Jennings began his late-night solitary glidings through the streets of San Francisco. This led to the decision to live by the board rather than die by the chip. He now works full-time with Shred of Dignity, a skateboarders' union formed to fight various ban-theboard crusaders. His politics are a strange mixture of reverence for organization and distrust of authority and bureaucracy. In his warehouse digs, just a wheelie away from Moscone Center, the walls are covered with punk graffiti and Shred of Dignity notices, yet it seems oddly neat and organized. The handwriting-on-the-wall philosophy ranges from "Skate Free or Die" to "Duke's a Dweeb" to "SFPD: Skate for Pedestrian Destruction" to "Drugs, Just Say No." The House of Jennings reminds me that being a grown-up needn't involve the surrender to drugery that most of us end up with. Of course, being a grown-up is a lot more laughs without a job and kids. In place of the traditional family, Jennings finds support from the electronic network and the skateboarding community. Like other urban explorers, he sees the skateboard and the computer as "guerrilla technology" in the battle to survive with dignity. He finds friends through skateboarding events and encourages use of the Shred of Dignity message phone (882-9973). The tape closes with the group's credo: "Skate until you puke." He proudly shows me the Shred of Dignity Ragazine (sic). "Our 'Zine," he calls it. It includes a map of the city highlighting places to skate and the risks involved (occupational hazards like getting busted and getting beat up). One skating site - "The Dish" - is described in the Ragazine as a concrete object that is "great for skating, but be prepared to get the hell out at the first hint of trouble. Macho bull---- is insane, be a wimp." Jennings seeks out other likeminded wimps for his brave new world. He describes his people as "straight-edge compatible." It's an attitude, he explains, not a lifestyle - whatever that means. The basic components are "don't pollute anything; drugs aren't revolutionary, they're nasty; we're not fighting the government, we're not participating in the government." Many in this pit of punk culture are also vegetarian and celibate -more evidence for the It's Hip to Be Square theory. "Some say straight-edge punks are just late-model Puritans," adds Jennings. LATE-MODEL PURITANS Among the favorite pastimes of these modern Puritans is "thrashing," a kink of dancing that Jennings gleefully describes as "violent." Participants are thrown into a pit packed with people. It could be a metaphor or just a weird thing to do. Standing 6-foot-4 and cachectically thin, Jennings throws so much energy into conversation that you can almost see the calories Fidonews Page 6 13 Apr 1987 burn off. But he becomes most animated when he talks about the animosity to skateboarders. For him, skateboarding is both ecologically sound transportaion and a physical way to enjoy "the three dimensions of the city, the textures of the world. We didn't grow up in the country with outhouses. The streets and the concrete are our natural environment." This theme of the lone pioneer finding kinesthetic beauty in the concrete jungle is echoed repeatedly by other rolling poets in the Shred of Dignety 'Zine. Writes one: "To the skater, CITY is a place with unlimited potential, speed, slides, bails, broken bones, walls, banks, curbs, even the grim feeling of swiftly moving pavement along your thigh." "I'm also into shooting guns," Jennings adds with a wide grin, relishing the shock value of his comment. "But I shoot them purely for fun - not to hurt anybody; not to protect myself; not to kill animals. Hunting is disgusting. I was once with someone when he shot a seagull. I was sick for the rest of the day." Tom Jennings can always make a buck if he has to. And he can give it away, which he has. This allows him the freedom to live his life for the hell of it. He's a socially responsible punk. He also gives great lunch, but I'm glad to be heading home. The burden of being the ordinary one is an incredible drag. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Fidonews Page 7 13 Apr 1987 Edwa