F I D O N E W S Volume 18, Number 10 05 Mar 2001 +----------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | The newsletter of the | ISSN 1198-4589 Published by: | | FidoNet community | "FidoNews" | | _ | 1-714-639-0377 1:1/23 | | / \ | 1-714-532-1586 1:103/301 | | /|oo \ | BinkD supported both above | | (_| /_) | | | _`@/_ \ _ | | | | | \ \\ | Editor: Warren Bonner | | | (*) | \ )) | editor@fidonews.org | | |__U__| / \// | wdbonner@pacbell.net | | _//|| _\ / | | | (_/(_|(____/ | | | (jm) | Newspapers should have no friends. | | | -- JOSEPH PULITZER | +----------------------------+---------------------------------------+ Table of Contents 1. HEADLINE ................................................. 1 [ Header ] ............................................... 1 2. CHAT WITH THE EDITOR ..................................... 2 <><>* CHAT with EDITOR *<><> ............................. 2 3. CORRECTIONS .............................................. 4 *ENGLISH CORRECTIONS* .................................... 4 4. LETTERS ACROSS THE EDITOR'S DESK ......................... 5 //+ Letters +\\ .......................................... 5 5. ARTICLES ................................................. 7 //\+ ARTICLES +/\\ ....................................... 7 6. FRANK'S COLUMN ........................................... 9 //\* FRANK'S COLUMN */\\ ................................. 9 7. NASCAR STORIES ........................................... 17 ((((( NASCAR STORIES ))))) ............................... 17 8. FACTS IN HISTORY ......................................... 19 9. RECIPES .................................................. 21 10. FIDONET FICTION ......................................... 22 PLEASE RESCUE FIDO ....................................... 22 11. GETTING TECHNICAL ....................................... 25 >>> TECHNOFACTS <<< ...................................... 25 12. POET'S CORNER ........................................... 27 <<< Poetry Korner >>> .................................... 27 13. HUMOR ................................................... 29 <>< HUMOROUS ECHOS ><> ................................... 29 14. QUESTION OF THE WEEK .................................... 30 //\+ QUESTION +/\\ ....................................... 30 15. NOTICES ................................................. 31 16. FIDONET BY INTERNET ..................................... 32 17. FIDONEWS INFORMATION .................................... 37 FIDONEWS 18-10 Page 1 5 Mar 2001 ================================================================= HEADLINE ================================================================= The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it - once you can honestly say, "I don't know," then it becomes possible to get at the truth. Robert A. Heinlein ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 18-10 Page 2 5 Mar 2001 ================================================================= CHAT WITH THE EDITOR ================================================================= Carol Shenkenberger: Steve, I have several more (ideas) and rather than flood the echo with it all, seems the region 13 sysops think it's generally harmless, possibly helpful, to have some extra ZIN helpdesk sites. Steve Querrella: Appreciate your help on that. Looks to me like only 13 and 19 have an opinion on this, unfortunately, and even then, I've gotten one nibble from my own people regarding 1:19/255's appearance in the next nodelist. Carol: The only 'worries' were that some critical help might end up going all netmail and echos may suffer. Steve: Recall that the idea is to have one Help System per Region. You'll see 1:19/255 in this week's nodelist, in fact. The ultimate idea is to have a point of contact, per Region, for getting people nodelisted as IP nodes. We can either go the route of having separate help nodes for stuff like Vmodem or Com/IP or Netmodem, or we can simply delegate the tasks among the Zone 1 Help Systems, like the FTSC delegates things. OK, you're the OS/2 guy, you're going to take the Vmodem stuff. You're the Com/IP person, you take care of that. Realistically, this person's primary focus should be helping potential IP nodes to get into the nodelist, and with that comes some responsibility to be familiar with the software (or know where to look to find information on it). Regarding critical help's going to netmail, I would hope that the person doing the pointing in the right direction would encourage the person needing help to check out the appropriate forum. "Oh, your software doesn't work right now, and you need to get it working in order to READ the forum? OK, let's work here." It's like having people who can't get an OLR working being told "Check out the OFFLINE conference." OK, fine, but now you're reading online, often a frustrating experience for some. :-) Origin: Elflords in Black (1:393/9005.13) Editor's response: This is as good an idea as Tom Jennings had in starting Fidonet POTS. It can not only save Fido from gradual demise as the Internet grows with every household eventually becoming an IP. This is the leading edge to what the questionnaire was about in the Fidonews sometime back. Problem there was only the POTs people raised their hand in protest. As I understand the proposal that the IPs would have a help center to go to for assistance in remaining a node, or becoming a node in a regular and IP nodelist. Combined? If I understand it correctly, that is the birth of the future fido in my opinion. Obviously the vast majority of folks go IP these days and have ignored the old slow way. Time for Fido to stop crawling and FIDONEWS 18-10 Page 3 5 Mar 2001 learn to walk, run and fly! Thanks to Steve Q. for his work on this with Region 19. JMHO, Ol'wdb ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 18-10 Page 4 5 Mar 2001 ================================================================= CORRECTIONS ================================================================= by: "R. B. Crowninshield" SUGGESTED Changes to the English Language... (Tongue in cheek...) The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English". In the first year, 's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard 'c' will be dropped in favor of the 'k'. This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome 'ph' will be replased with the 'f'. This will make words like 'fotograf' 20% shorter! In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double leters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent 'e' in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. By the 4th year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' wiz 'v'. During ze fifz year ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and similar changes vud of kurs be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After ze fifz yer ve vil hav a rali sensibl ritn styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evriun vil find it ezi tu undrstand ech ozer. Zen Z Drem Vil Finali Kum Tru !!! ~~~~~~~~~~end~~~~~~~~~~ ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 18-10 Page 5 5 Mar 2001 ================================================================= LETTERS ACROSS THE EDITOR'S DESK ================================================================= By: Todd Vierling To: All Re: IP nodelist violations ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * Crossposted from IP_CONNECT I haven't been reading FidoNews lately, so I actually just ran across the editorial from flv@texoma.net about the blatant abuses of Policy4 in the Nodelist. It's a good time right now to bring up possible ways to fix the problem. In that editorial: > P4 states that that a certain hour of each day be set aside for > transfer of Netmail only. This is known as ZMH (Zone Mail Hour) and > is coordinated to have each Node in Fidonet available for Netmail > transfer at the same hour each day dependent on time zones. This is > violated by Internet only Nodes since they aren't available for > dial-up connections. I plan to post some proposals to IP_CONNECT within the next month, hopefully to address some of these issues. Also in the editorial, > Maybe a new software that will allow direct connects to the Internet > for Netmail and, somehow, mesh the Fidonet Node addressing system to > the Internet addressing system so that any person that has access to > the Internet can get through to Fidonet Netmail. We already have the means by which to document netmail routing, taking into account Internet-connected nodes. It's the Nodelist that we've been using for years. There's no reason to keep violating Nodelist policy; we should clean up the Nodelist entries that are noncompliant. I have been working on a flexible nodelist postprocessor to create Internet routing lists for available IP-connected nodes (...so that POTS calls can be skipped where an Internet connection is otherwise available). Among other things, I'm setting it up to generate a binkp domain in the vein of fidonet.net, and host/routing lists for ifmail, ifcico, binkd, and fidogate, but using *only* information gleaned from the official Nodelist, not external sources. This postprocessor also has the ability to spew Nodelist format violation reports for all of the following, which the nodelist compiler is currently NOT checking: - Node with invalid phone number not listed as `Pvt' and/or `Hold' (often IP-only node using the improper 000-IP-AD-DR-ESS format) - IP-connected node flying Ixx flag with no destination (allowed formats: either attached to the flag with :hostname[:port], or as the BBS name; possibly also location field) FIDONEWS 18-10 Page 6 5 Mar 2001 - Internet e-mail connected node flying Ixx flag with no destination (allowed: attached to the flag with :email@address, or as the BBS name; possibly also location field) Note that the first of these three is a very serious violation of the Nodelist and Policy4; the fact that there are nodes with 000- "telephone numbers" is quite disturbing and *blatantly wrong*. After all, POTS *is* the lowest-common-denominator communications method for basic nodes, so the phone number field must be valid for non-`Pvt' nodes. How this should be handled for a "Host" address without POTS connectivity, I'm not quite sure yet. Stay tuned. I'll probably set up these violation reports to run each week and send the results to a particular echo (as yet undecided). If you'd like to share some insight on this topic, feel free to reply to this thread on IP_CONNECT, or send me a netmail (Todd Vierling @ 1:3613/44) or e-mail (tv@pobox.com). --- FIDOGATE 4.4.2 * Origin: DuhGate Internet<->Fido - mailfido@duh.org for info (1:3613/44.0) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 18-10 Page 7 5 Mar 2001 ================================================================= ARTICLES ================================================================= E-Mail "Freqs" By Frank Vest puppy6308@texoma.net Here's something that might be of interest to a few. Mind you, this is running out of Dos with QEMM and Desqview on a 486 with a 33600 modem, amazing as that may seem. :-) E-Mail Freqs?!? Yes, it can and is being done. If you're interested in getting a file from me and don't want to call my "Dial-up only" BBS long distance, you can "Freq" the file via the Internet. Yes, via the Internet. I run the Dos version of Internet Rex (Irex) and this allows me to let people File request (Freq) files from me via an E-Mail message. The requested file is returned via an E-Mail file attach message to the requester. Here's how it works; Note: This will NOT work via most Fidonet<>Internet gateways. Don't try it. Load your E-Mail program and create a new message. Address it to puppy6308@texoma.net (see the address above if needed). In the subject line, put the word FREQ In the text area (where you would normally write the message) put the word FREQ and the name of the file you wish to receive. IE: FREQ for each file you want, one per line. I have limits, so be gentle. :) The E-Mail will look something like this: To: puppy6308@texoma.net Subj: FREQ ---text area----------- FREQ files FREQ ----------------------- The word "Files" is the magic name for my list of all the files I have available. Get this first and then you can find out what file(s) I have that you might want. Remember, the machine that this runs on i