F I D O N E W S Volume 16, Number 46 15 Nov 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. HEADLINES ................................................ 1 Big Edition .............................................. 1 2. EDITORIAL ................................................ 2 Cow in Berlin ............................................ 2 3. GUEST EDITORIAL .......................................... 3 News from the Black Helicopter ........................... 3 4. ARTICLES ................................................. 6 Mother Of All Elections .................................. 6 HMS PeenaFour ............................................ 11 Spooky Anagrams .......................................... 12 ITU-T Standards/Recommendations .......................... 13 NAB Echo Changes [Sept-Oct] .............................. 19 Z1B Echo Changes [Sept-Oct] .............................. 20 5. COLUMNS .................................................. 22 Fidonet-related sites .................................... 22 Ol'WDB: Hug-O-War ........................................ 25 6. NET HUMOR ................................................ 27 The Grand Emir Is Thirsty ................................ 27 Poetry Contest ........................................... 27 7. FIDONEWS INFORMATION ..................................... 29 Masthead ................................................. 29 FIDONEWS 16-46 Page 1 15 Nov 1999 ================================================================= HEADLINES ================================================================= Big Edition Many thanks to all the contributors for this edition of Fidonews. To tell the truth, I'm overwhelmed: it appears that the members of Fidonet are starting to assert their ownership of their weekly newsletter, a process I can only encourage. I'm not exactly sure why this particular edition is just about double the size of a regular edition. I'd like to think that I begged enough people for contributions that I achieved some kind of critical mass. But, to be honest, I don't think it had that much to do with my personal efforts. My theory is that it's had more to do with the performance of the small, but growing, Fidonews staff. Though there are only a few names listed in the masthead, these individuals have polished their sections into immaculate form. I think readers noticed the difference in the quality of Fidonews, and that fact is responsible for the surge of interest this week. Of course, everyone might have found themselves with free time this week... Echo Posting Those of you who carry the FIDONEWS echo are invited to look at this week's posting of the newsletter with a critical eye. I've revised the batch files here which split the newsletter and autopost it. Now the split is every five pages with the break at the printer page break rather than by line count. The form feed characters have been stripped to prevent interaction with some BBS readers. Hopefully, the appearance and ease of online viewing is improved. I'd like your feedback and suggestions on this, however. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-46 Page 2 15 Nov 1999 ================================================================= EDITORIAL ================================================================= (__) (__) (oo) (oo) ______________\/______ ____ /-------\/ __ /___/___/___/___/___/_/| /___/| / | || _/_/| |___|___|___|___|___|_|| |__||/|* //-----|||_|_|| |_|___|___|___|___|___|| |_|__|/|^^ ^/|___|| |___|___|___|___|___|_|/ |___|_|/ |___|_|/ Cow in Berlin before... ...and after 9-Nov-1989 It would seem that the Fall of the Wall should be celebrated by more than the ASCII cows on this, the tenth anniversary of the event. Yet it's largely gone unnoticed, getting only brief mention on talk radio and little or no attention by the press. It was probably the most unexpected event of my life. The Wall in Berlin had stood ever since I could remember, and I never imagined that it would someday come down. Though the nuclear danger was stressed in talk about monolithic Communism when I was younger, the more powerful symbol of human oppression was the Wall. Destroying the world fifty times over was, possibly, too terrible to be believable... but a place where people were brutally shot down time after time brought home the value of freedom. Perhaps the lack of celebration today is because the rest of the world was wiser than I, and realized that all oppression would ultimately fail. But I didn't know that nor even have hopes of it... until the Wall came down. Even Fido politics pales in comparison... Doug Myers ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-46 Page 3 15 Nov 1999 ================================================================= GUEST EDITORIAL ================================================================= News from the Black Helicopter Ruth Argust Although I wrote it, I could not have done without the help of many in the S-b echo with a very special thanks to Steve Asher of Zone 3 for his invaluable co-conspirator input :) Let's clear up a misconception here. I am fully convinced that Thom LaCosta is a real person. There are several reasons behind this which I am not going to publicly disclose at this time. Yes, the BBS list said that real names must be used but that is not always the case as we know. It is my opinion that Tom Knowles is the alias or handle that LaCosta uses and has used for several years. This is probably why some searches for the name Tom Knowles turned up empty. However, even =if= Tom Knowles is a co-sysop, his grabbing the echoes, in my opinion, is proof that the ELIST has been compromised by the ELIST keeper since the co-sysop will have more access than the average user of the system. Additionally, there has never been any reports previously of a co-ELIST keeper and if Tom Knowles is the co-sysop, that is precisely what we have. But see more on that below. However, I strongly doubt that Tom Knowles exists other than as an alias for LaCosta. Have you all noticed how conveniently Tom Knowles has been elevated from a simple user on LaCosta's system (with no knowledge on how to operate the system to even quote a message by his OWN admission) to having had co-sysop status for the last several years? This happened ONLY after the information contained in the USBBS List was made public. LaCosta had AMPLE time in advance to say that Knowles was a co-sysop on the system and never did so. In fact, if you all recall, the first post made by Knowles anywhere was in the Moderator echo and it was not even from LaCosta's BBS. Additionally, LaCosta said something very different indeed (below). This all shows that LaCosta has been hiding something and possibly continues to do so. Now, let's do a bit of echo digging on the subject of Tom Knowles which is from Thom LaCosta's own post which clearly states that Tom was never a user of the BBS until recently: ============================================ Area : MODERATOR Date : Sun Aug 22, 14:10 >From : Thom LaCosta 1:1/21 To : Bob Kohl FIDONEWS 16-46 Page 4 15 Nov 1999 Subj : Echolist reply -------------------------------------------- @MSGID: 1:1/21.0 7c03e2a0 @PID: timEd 1.10+ @TID: GE 1.11+ @CHRS: IBMPC 2 Bob Kohl wrote in a message to Thom LaCosta: BK> You know Thom, I do find it interesting that you've got someone BK> working off your board to grab the expired echoes... right after BK> you purge them. ;) Well, it would seem that the person first logged into a system that wasn't mine...I think if you look at the posts, you'll see that he logged on from another system in net261...it's the one that belongs to the NEC and is also available via telnet. All of the update messages from the user were submitted from an internet address....not a Fido address....and all were a good period of time before he ever became a user of this board. So, until someone who uses my board actually submits an update message from the board to the echolist, I'd say, like so many of your posts, you're all wet. Thom LaCosta hon@baltimoremd.com http://www.baltimoremd.com/ -!- ! Origin: Home of The Other Robot (1:1/21) ============================================ All of this "a good period of time before he ever became a user of this board", but apparently a good deal of time after he became the sysop of the same board... five years later, in fact. :) Remember that the name Tom Knowles appeared 3/1/94 in the US BBSLists. And don't miss this part: "So, until someone who uses my board actually submits an update message from the board to the echolist, I'd say, like so many of your posts, you're all wet." Isn't that what supposedly happened when the BBS had crashed and Tom Knowles was the =only= person who was able to update and grab three echoes from the board to the echolist just at the precise time they were burned? According to Carol Shenkenberger he was able to do this because he had logged onto the BBS to update expiring listings. Does this mean that in this case, Bob Kohl is NOT all wet? But I don't believe that LaCosta is the only one trying to hide something. I am of the opinion that SOME of the ranking members of FidoNet are aware of the alias and were fully aware of "the plan" that was used. I think further that LaCosta is calling on his "buddies" to assist him =try= to prove his credibility and get FIDONEWS 16-46 Page 5 15 Nov 1999 himself out of the hole he has dug himself into. I think you will see this in action so be advised. I have seen an admission by someone who has known LaCosta for many years to the point of face to face contact and he stated that he had never heard of a Tom Knowles. This person has run a BBS in the same general area for many years. What we have here is certainly overwhelming cause for concern. We have a very suspect ELIST where underhanded tactics appear to have been used and then more lies upon more lies to try to cover up the situation. This should be of deep concern to all of you and I am hoping that we can indeed have some persons step forward to set up a new ELIST. Many of us will support a new forthright and honest system. >From the Secret Squadron Brigade of the Black Helicopter Patrol Guarding all FidoNet Zones ============================================= Ruth -- Ruth Argust DDS - DoorWare Distribution System http://www.doorgames.org/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-46 Page 6 15 Nov 1999 ================================================================= ARTICLES ================================================================= The Mother Of All Elections Steve Fredette, 1:163/551 Well, the annual Region 12 election/flamefest is over, and what a hoot! I haven't had this much fun since the Maylaysian Node Policy Complaint. It started on Sep 16th with the non-election call by the incomp^H^H^Humbent RC, Mike O'Connor. He appointed his brother Shawn as returning officer, but neglected to mention this to the region. The first message we saw from Shawn was a test message, followed by the election rules and an inaccurate timetable. Andrew Dominas and Darrell Salter were nominated, along with Creepin' Moses. Shawn rejected Creepin's nomination (correcly), because his system was non-CM, and the election guidelines called for only CM systems to be elligible. He later decided to ignore the guidelines and allow Creepin' to run, provided that he switched his system to CM if he won. (???) By this time, Creepin' was at the cottage, and didn't even know he was in the election. I nominated myself via crash netmail just before the deadline. Shawn didn't seem to be the most competent RO we've had, and I wanted to see if he could deal with a last-minute nomination as advertised in the guidelines. The first round of voting was fraught with mistakes and other difficulties. On the first day of voting, after campaigning was over, Shawn accidentally reposted a previous message announcing that "We will be entering campaign phase tomorrow." An innocent enough mistake, but Shawn refused to believe it. He first claimed that it was a dupe. (It wasn't -- the second message had a different subject, date and MSGID). Then when the dupe theory didn't hold up, he descended into the twilight zone and decided that there must be a forger in our midst. A rather clever forger indeed, who was able to remove the original message from Shawn's own system. Several flamewars later, Brian Hillis' routed netmail vote arrived on Shawn's system. The message had Brian's name, but *Shawn's* address as the originating system. Well. Mike and Shawn exploded, ac