F I D O N E W S -- Volume 13, Number 35 26 August 1996 +----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | The newsletter of the | ISSN 1198-4589 Published by: | | FidoNet community | "FidoNews" | | _ | 1-407-383-1372 [1:1/23] | | / \ | | | /|oo \ | | | (_| /_) | | | _`@/_ \ _ | | | | | \ \\ | Editor: | | | (*) | \ )) | Christopher Baker 1:374/14 | | |__U__| / \// | | | _//|| _\ / | | | (_/(_|(____/ | | | (jm) | Newspapers should have no friends. | | | -- JOSEPH PULITZER | +----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | Submission address: FidoNews Editor 1:1/23 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | MORE addresses: | | | | submissions=> cbaker84@digital.net | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | For information, copyrights, article submissions, | | obtaining copies of FidoNews or the internet gateway FAQ | | please refer to the end of this file. | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ DOES ANYBODY READ THESE HEADLINES? Table of Contents 1. EDITORIAL ................................................ 1 FidoNews is more accessible than ever, et al ............. 1 2. ARTICLES ................................................. 3 Does Fido have an Echomail problem? ...................... 3 The Internet as an extension of Fido ..................... 4 What's new in FidoNet Panama ............................. 4 Two Choices: UPGRADE or DIE .............................. 6 3. FIDONET HISTORY .......................................... 9 FidoNet's first formal Policy document ................... 9 4. REVIEWS .................................................. 23 Six Mail Processors Reviewed [II] ........................ 23 5. COORDINATORS CORNER ...................................... 26 Nodelist-statistics as seen from Zone-2 for day 236 ...... 26 6. ECHOING .................................................. 27 Candidates for the REC 17 election ....................... 27 7. NET HUMOR ................................................ 29 Ask Dr. Internet? ........................................ 29 8. COMIX IN ASCII ........................................... 32 Comic relief for FN_SYSOP? ............................... 32 9. QUESTION OF THE WEEK ..................................... 33 Old Nodelist sources? .................................... 33 10. NOTICES ................................................. 34 Future History ........................................... 34 11. FIDONET SOFTWARE LISTING ................................ 36 And more! FIDONEWS 13-35 Page 1 26 Aug 1996 ================================================================= EDITORIAL ================================================================= First, I'd like to say thanks to everyone who works for FidoNet and FidoNews by making their personal resources available to everyone at no charge and just for fun. Several people have contributed assistance to FidoNews this week and they should be lauded by one and all. jim barchuk's HTML FidoNews reading and archive page on the Internet is now operating 24 hours a day. If you'd like to wander over and read FidoNews in HTML format, go to: http://www.geocities.com/athens/6894 and you can sift through the weekly Issue by individual articles in the comfort of your web browser. Thanks, jim! Ross Cassell has produced a nifty little utility called STRIPFF that will remove the formfeeds from FidoNews [or any other text file] for those of you who want to put FidoNews up for online reading without having to manually edit out all those paging formfeeds inserted by the MAKENEWS program during FidoNews creation. His program is freeware and is available on his system, on this system, on the new FidoNews Homepage [more on that later], and was hatched into SDS area SOFTDIST. thanks, Ross! ALL of the FidoNews archives are always available on the Southern Star ftp site at: ftp://ftp.sstar.com/fidonet/fidonews if you're ever in need of an old issue. See the listing at the end of every FidoNews Issue in the Masthead. Thanks, John! Thanks, too, to ALL the FidoNet Coordinators who take their responsibilities seriously and get FidoNews out to all their Nodes every week without fail! It is appreciated. FLASHNOTE: FidoNews now has its own Official Homepage on the Internet. This site contains the latest Issue in .ZIP format for download and text format for online reading or ASCII download. I operate and maintain this site from my personal webpages. FidoNews will be available world-wide mere minutes after it is compiled here on this Homepage. Also available there is the FidoNews PGP public-key, the calendar of Future History, and the STRPFF10.ZIP archive containing Ross' formfeed stripper for FidoNews. To reach the new Official FidoNews Homepage, go to: http://ddi.digital.net/~cbaker/fidonews.html and check it out! This space is provided courtesy of my FIDONEWS 13-35 Page 2 26 Aug 1996 ISP, FLorida Online at Digital Decisions. Thanks, Jerry! FidoNews goes onto this site immediately after compilation and while FidoNews is being sent to ZC1 for distribution. It is the fastest source of the current FidoNews Issue in the world! [grin] Please be sure to sign the Guestbook so we'll know you were there. You can also leave suggestions in your comments for additions to the FidoNews Homepage. You'll be able to view the Guestbook and even send mail to the other signers. The Guestbook is provided courtesy of Lpage.com. Thanks, Lpage.com! That should do it for this week. The compilation is already behind due to these extra notes being added. [grin] C.B. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 13-35 Page 3 26 Aug 1996 ================================================================= ARTICLES ================================================================= Does Fido have an Echomail problem? I've been a member of FidoNet for many years. I can remember a time when there was no cost recovery. A time when there was less than twenty members in my net. (look at it now) I can remember when most people didn't have a clue what a BBS was. In the old days it wasn't unusual for mail polls to be infrequent. But modem speeds have improved dramatically, cost recovery plans enacted, satellite systems built and the Internet has been harnessed. It's not that expensive to have multiple polls a day. So why do I go for whole weekends with no new, non-local mail? And during the week I generally see one good mail bundle a day. Let me back up a minute and discuss my echomail situation. I have spent most of my FidoNet career in net280 in Kansas City, Missouri. Net280 also has one of the North American Backbone star systems. Recently I moved about 45 miles east to the little college town of Warrensburg and I became a PVT system. I pull my mail feed via the Internet from 1:280/169. Does that seem strange to anyone? I'm one hop off of one of the largest mail movers in North America and mail flow is inconsistent? I'm not pointing fingers, Roy (/1) has given a lot to this net in the past. Both as a previous NEC and as a star system. But I have had many conversations with Brian (/169) and he swears that there is just no mail waiting when he polls. This concerns me since it could indicate a problem in the future. So I wonder if we don't depend on Roy, John, and George just a little too much. We have allowed mail distribution duties to grow beyond the capabilities of the average Fido hobbyist. The last thing I would want to do is belittle what these guys have done for us in the past. But what happened to the FidoNet of old where things were done in the most efficient, cost effective manner? It seems we could tackle a couple problems at the same time, inter-zone communication and alternative, free mail distribution, by getting a few volunteers to start hubbing mail through Internet Telnet and FTP sessions. If you have an Internet account, the whole world is a local call. Comments anyone? You've got my addresses. Or better yet, write an article of your own. Lee Lefler 1:280/5 infinityll@juno.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 13-35 Page 4 26 Aug 1996 The Internet as an extension of Fido I know some of you will think that should be the other way around. Especially if you are aware of the fact that the Internet is really just a group of smaller networks. FidoNet has really been a part of the Internet for several years, we just choose to ignore it. There have been Fido echos distributed as part of Usenet. There are Fido nodes that you can Telnet into. We try so hard to stay away from the Internet that we ignore what it has to offer. An inexpensive means of bringing Fido's zones closer together. Many of you have heard me ramble about this before. As a matter of fact, there is even another article from me in this issue of FidoNews. But this time I want to make a proposal. I would like to find some volunteers to work with me to put together a free mailer that would establish FidoNet mail sessions across TCP/IP via Telnet. I'm looking for programmers from various platforms that would be willing to contribute code to the project. Once complete, the mailer would be released on several platforms with full source, similar to Binkley or GNU. Here's what I have to offer to the project. I am a programmer. But I'm just now getting around to learning C. And since C is probably the only language that would allow real portability, that seems like the ideal development environment. Possibly something along the lines of GCC, since it is readily available on numerous platforms and can be used for free. I have been a member of Fido for many years and know how a mailer functions. I also have a great deal of code that I put together over the years for things such as; EMSI sessions, MSG and PKT formats, as well as a healthy protocol library. Unfortunately, it's all in Pascal. I have also been picking up my mail over the Internet using my normal mailer and VModem. And that experience alone is enough to tell me that the project _could_ be scaled down a little by just supporting EMSI with FTP transfers and leaving the rest out. ZModem is just not real efficient over TCP. So, if you want more details or want to volunteer, you know how to get ahold of me. Lee Lefler 1:280/5 infinityll@juno.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- From Zone 4, Net 920, Node 65, Net Coordinator, Republic of Panama Hello from way down in Panama!! We are here! Really!! A current events brief of FidoNet in Panama: FIDONEWS 13-35 Page 5 26 Aug 1996 Hello FidoNet community! Long before I was a SYSOP of a FidoNet BBS, I was a user. I used to log onto FidoNet BBS's back in Dallas Texas in the mid to late '80's for programming conversations. I now work for the U.S. Navy and moved to Panama in '92. Living on a U.S. military base overseas really has it's drawbacks. One is that you give up what little you have of a life. In order to keep in touch with my family and friends, and have some intelligent conversation I began calling BBS's again. In '93 there were only a few FidoNet BBS's in Panama, and they could only afford to carry a couple of echos because they were pulling them via AT&T from Louis Oaken (Kudos Louis!) Florida!. I went ahead and built a BBS using Remote Access and Fmail and contributed my little bit to help out. Later I discovered there were other software packages out there and purchased a good one, bought a mail tosser and began the slow process of registering all (well... most of my shareware). The history of FidoNet in Panama (we call it PanamaNet) is pretty short -and really pretty sparse. We know that some guy started it back in the late '80's (I'd like to know who he was.. If you know please email me) and carried it over to Dave Dillard, who turned it over to Neil Armani, who turned it over to Jim Murphy and myself. The BBS users here in Panama are an unusual crowd. I mean - some don't read or write English - so building bilingual menus is very important, and difficult if you don't know another language. For the most part, the local users are either wealthy, students using school computers, or "gringos" (U.S. military). Many of the user questions are in Spanish, so I had to invest in a translator. Since there aren't many BBS's here, anything I did to better the BBS was viewed with awe. The users raved and cheered when I purchased Searchlight BBS and created RIP graphics! Pop up menus, etc. all in RIP. They thought that was the cat's meow. Now with graphical www in Panama, people aren't easily amused by lights, bells and whistles. Zone 4 has *not* *provided* *any* *support* to speak of since I've been here. Gamey recently resigned, however the *only* time we EVER heard from him was during the elections . If it weren't for Louis Oakin@sunshine.com we never would have been able to carry on FidoNet down here. This last year the Republic of Panama has allowed some ISP's to move in. This gave us a REAL opportuni