F I D O N E W S -- | Vol. 10 No. 4 (25 January 1993) A newsletter of the | FidoNet BBS community | Published by: _ | / \ | "FidoNews" BBS /|oo \ | +1-415-863-2739 (_| /_) | NEW!--> 1:1/23@FidoNet _`@/_ \ _ | editor@fidonews.fidonet.org | | \ \\ | | (*) | \ )) | Editors: |__U__| / \// | Tom Jennings _//|| _\ / | Tim Pozar (_/(_|(____/ | (jm) | Newspapers should have no friends. | -- JOSEPH PULITZER ----------------------------+--------------------------------------- /********************************************************************* * IMPORTANT NOTE: The FidoNet address for FidoNews has been changed. * * The new address is: * * * * FidoNews = 1:1/23 * * * * Starting January 1993 email sent to the old address will not be * * forwarded! You were warned! * *********************************************************************/ For information, copyrights, article submissions, obtaining copies and other boring but important details, please refer to the end of this file. Table of Contents 1. EDITORIAL ..................................................... 1 Editorial: none of the above .................................. 1 2. ARTICLES ...................................................... 2 BBS in India .................................................. 2 Sample bulletin explaining Netmail & Fidonet/Internet ......... 4 The Third Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy ........ 9 Announcing CONNECT -- a new telecommunications magazine ....... 11 Z1C applicants ................................................ 12 The truth about ZEC ........................................... 12 Response to "FidoNet, Elections, and Agreements" .............. 18 Z1C Wanted: Sysops can apply, but they can't vote ............. 21 The Policy 4.1 debate ......................................... 22 The AIRGUN Echo Is Backboned! ................................. 23 Doing it full-duplex .......................................... 25 3. FIDONEWS INFORMATION .......................................... 27 FidoNews 10-04 Page 1 25 Jan 1993 ====================================================================== EDITORIAL ====================================================================== Editorial: None of the above by Tom Jennings (1:1/23) This week, I'm really going to beg off this week's scratchings. The Z1C process is unfolding in our usual glorious manner. We've got some pretty interesting articles outside local politics too. I talked my head off last week, enough for this week too. The process of searching for a new FidoNews editor continues. If you missed last week's editorial, I'm quitting and looking for a replacement. I laid out the process (such as it is...) in last week's news. I have started what I promised last week, which is a public file of all correspondence on this subject. In it so far you'll find the messages and resume's received so far. This week I will start contacting applicants, and all of my responses (and theirs, etc) will go into this file. The file is called NEW-ED, and is filerequestable and downloadable to first-time callers on the FidoNews BBS, 1:1/23, +1-415-863-2739. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 10-04 Page 2 25 Jan 1993 ====================================================================== ARTICLES ====================================================================== BBS in India Copyright (c) 1992 Suchit Nanda Suchit.Nanda@f1.n606.z6.fidonet.org This article appeared in Volume 2 Number 11, (November 1992) of Matrix News, the monthly newsletter of Matrix Information and Directory Services, Inc. (MIDS). It is copyright by its author. For further information, please contact the author or MIDS: Matrix News Matrix Information & Directory Services, Inc. (MIDS) mids@tic.com +1-512-451-7602 fax: +1-512-450-1436 1106 Clayton Lane, Suite 500W Austin, TX 78723 U.S.A. Reprinted with permission. India is a beautiful country in many ways. With a population of over 800 million people and with a long heritage and strong bond between its people, electronic communications has been a rather neglected area until recently. While paper & voice are the predominant modes of communication amongst the masses, the business community relies very heavily on FAXes and modems are almost non-existent. The computing population here is largely confined to the metropolitan cities and is growing very rapidly every day. I'm located in Bombay - the commercial & economic capital of the country with a long & scenic shoreline to the Arabic Sea. It is well connected with roads, rail & sea routes and headquarters the telecommunications network of the country. I had been toying with the idea of starting a BBS but could never get down to it as the required critical mass for sustaining one was never around and a failure at the start of something beautiful such as this could really bury a good concept. So I waited in anticipation till it was early March of this year when I decided to take the plunge. Late last year I had assembled my own 386 machine with a 130MB HDD & SVGA and had a 1200bps modem to start with. Being the Chief Editor of Microcomputer Users' Club which is a non-profit organization with a number of international affiliations, I had developed a lot of friends. Mr. Woody Khoman of Bangkok User Group was kind enough to send me WildCat BBS software using which I setup "Live Wire! BBS" at my residence which alternated between voice and data calls (boy was that tough!). WildCat was a very simple software but unfortunately was very limited in what it could do (no flames pls - I had an old version of it and knew what a good BBS software was capable of). Before long I was looking elsewhere. Dr. Raj Mehta, a friend of mine had an access to an Ernet account using which I sent a shot-in-the-dark mail asking FidoNews 10-04 Page 3 25 Jan 1993 for more information regarding BBS software. Within no time we got a reply from Keith Dickinson (1:3603/75 - Psycho.FidoNet.Org) who not only offered to help but also send the software down! Wow, that's what I call a friendly soul. You bet we took up that offer and very soon after an exchange of few e-mails we had the software zipping across the continents. To cut a long story short, Keith went way out of his way to help us right up to hand-holding us with installing Maximus CBCS. The next big step was joining FidoNet as we were already aware of it thru FidoNews. But that meant setting up BNU, FrontDoor, Squish and the link to Maximus. Getting help from 10,000 miles away is not exactly cheap no matter how helpful the guy at the other end. Finally things fell into place but not knowing whom to contact, we called Honlin Lue, Samson Luk & Wing Lee who were all most co-operative. Very soon, in the first week of August we had our own node number and e-mail - the life & blood of FidoNet started flowing in. What makes FidoNet even more interesting is EchoMail and that is the next thing that we started getting. But very soon I realized that the volumes of mail generated would soon make me bankrupt with my measly 2,400bps modem so with a heavy heart I had to limit my EchoMail participation. Recently I read in the FidoNews about DataNETLink and started a dialogue with Kuah Woon Hua of The Calling Center (6:600/76) Singapore which resulted in my becoming the India Co-ordinator. Looking into my crystal ball I see a lot of latent potential for the Indian region. No matter what, it still amazes me why we took so long to plug in. But now that we are here, I'm sure BBSs will come up faster than mushrooms can sprout up. As for me, our BBS is going to go 24 hrs in a month's time and we should be upgrading to 14.4K any day now. If I can be of assistance to anyone out there all you need to do is ATDT me. :-) Live Wire! BBS Suchit Nanda, SysOp 6:606/1 BBS: (91-22) 5781132 Timings: 10:30 p.m. - 7:00 a.m. C-503, Eden-4, Hiranandani Gardens, Powai, Bombay - 400 076. INDIA -- uucp: uunet!m2xenix!puddle!6!606!1!Suchit.Nanda,.Live.Wire!.(6:606/1) Internet: Suchit.Nanda,.Live.Wire!.(6:606/1)@f1.n606.z6.fidonet.org Suchit Nanda is the Chief Editor of Microcomputer Users' Club, a registered nonprofit organization which is India's first and largest user group, with many chapters and international affliations, and about 1,000 members from all walks of life. For the club, he has co-authored a book *War On Virus* which is currently in its second edition. The also club has a monthly 40+ page newsmagazine which is circulated to all members. FidoNews 10-04 Page 4 25 Jan 1993 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By Dave Appel, Indianapolis Computer Society. A dumb ascii-user on 1:231/30 SAMPLE BULLETIN EXPLAINING NETMAIL AND FIDONET/INTERNET Here's an article that I wrote that appeared in the INDY PC NEWS the magazine of the Indianapolis Computer Society. I thought it would make a nice bulletin for Fidonet sysops who get tired of explaining netmail and gated Internet mail to new users. I've tried to replace the specifics of state/city/net etc with keywords that you can search-and-replace with your text editor to make it applicable to you. Also, place a prettily formatted version of your local nodelist at the end of this article. If you aren't the NC, get his permission to reprint it. You don't have to use the baud and flag fields, but at least node number, bbs name, city, sysop name, and phone number. There is also a place to list the nets in your state. Permission is hereby granted to reprint this article in not-for- profit user-group newsletters as long as I am notified, and my name stays on as author, and "Originally printed in the INDY PC NEWS" stays in. Permission is hereby granted to post this article as a bulletin on Fidonet bulletin boards as long as such bulletin board remains in the official Fidonet nodelist. To make this article apply to your city/node, replace: YOUR_NET with your net number. YOUR_NET_NAME with your net's name. YOUR_STATE with your state's name. YOUR_CITY with your city's name. YOUR_GATEWAY with the net/node of the Fido UUCP gateway serving your network or region. YOUR_NC_BBS with the BBS name of your Net Coordinator. YOUR_CITY_ECHO with the mnemonic name of your city-wide echo YOUR_STATE_ECHO with the mnemonic name of your state-wide echo ---------------------------- cut here ---------------------------- Bulletin ## Fidonet Netmail and Internet mail. By Dave Appel, Indianapolis, IN. 1:231/30 Adapted from an article originally appearing in the INDY PC NEWS C:\INTRO> This article describes a low cost amateur email network that is available to YOUR_CITY area bulletin board users. FidoNews 10-04 Page 5 25 Jan 1993 I am using the term "email" to mean electronic mail messages that you enter on one bulletin board and then get sent automatically to one or more bulletin boards around town, around the state, around the country, and around the world. This article will deal with an international amateur network called FIDONET. Just a couple quick definitions. BBS stands for Bulletin Board System. A BBS is a computer and modem that someone has dedicated to a phone line so people like you can call it with a computer and modem. Sysop is short for SYStem OPerator. The sysop is the owner/operator of a bulletin board. Fidonet currently has over 19,000 separate member bulletin boards worldwide. It is by far the largest of the amateur networks. There is a list at the end of this article that contains the bulletin boards in the YOUR_NET_NAME. This list is updated weekly, so call your favorite BBS (or YOUR_NC_BBS, the local net coordinator) to get an up-to-date list. First, I'll give you the basics of email, and then go on to the fancy stuff like gateways that allow you to send mail to other networks like Internet, Compuserve, America Online, MCImail, ATTmail, and others. C:\NETMAIL> There are two categories of email that one can send on Fidonet. These are in addition to the "local only" messages that stay on the bulletin board on which you enter them. The first is a person- to-person message that is transmitted from the BBS you are using to the BBS of the recipient. There may be several BBS's in between that pass the message on, but there is a defined "origin" BBS and a "destination" BBS. This is also called "point to point" or "one to one." This kind of email is called "netmail" on a Fidonet BBS. To enter a netmail message, you must enter the section of the BBS that is specifically called NETMAIL. You must also know two things about the person with whom you are corresponding. You must know the exact spelling of their user name on their bbs. For instance, to send netmail to me, you must send it to "Dave Appel" and not to "David Appel". The second thing you must know is the "node number" of the bbs. The node number is the address of the BBS in terms that the BBS software can understand. For instance, the YOUR_NC_BBS is known as 1:YOUR_NET/0. The "1" is the zone. Zone 1 is North America. The "YOUR_NET" is the network, or just plain "net." Net YOUR_NET is the YOUR_NET_NAME. And the "0" is the individual bulletin board, which is called a "node" within the YOUR_NET network. Node "0" always indicates the local net coordinator. By knowing that I am "Dave Appel" of 1:231/30, anyone on any of the 19,000 Fidonet BBS's in the world can send me netmail. If you are a member of Rob Haverly's Paladen BBS, your netmail address would be 1:231/20. FidoNews 10-04 Page 6 25 Jan 1993 C:\ECHOMAIL> The second kind of email is that which is entered in an "echo conference." This email is called "echo mail." This is where a message you enter on the BBS gets transmitted to several BBS's around town, around state, around the country or around the world. This is a "one to many" relationship. After you enter your message, eventhough it may be addressed to one person, it is sent to ALL BBS's that are "participating" in that echo conference. "Participating" in this context means that the BBS has this conference "turned on" and is receiving messages for this conference from the local "Echo Coordinator." The Echo Coordinator is the local BBS that makes the long distance phone calls on a regional or national level. The Echo Coordinator then distributes the echo mail conference messages to the local bulletin boards for efficiency and cost sharing. If the preceeding paragraph confused you, let me give you a real life example that might clear it up. There is a national echo conference for skydiving. The conference name is SKYDIVE. Southside BBS, 1:231/30 has the SKYDIVE conference "turned on" and a conference message area set up. I call Sou