The F I D O N E W S Volume 22, Number 30 25 Jul 2005 +--------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | |The newsletter of the | | | | | FidoNet community. | | Netmail attach to (POTS): | | | | | Editor @ 2:2/2 (+46-31-944907) | | | ____________| | | | | / __ | Netmail attach to (BinkP): | | | / / \ | Editor @ 2:203/0 | | | WOOF! ( /|oo \ | | | \_______\(_| /_) | Email attach to: | | _ @/_ \ _ | bfelten @ telia dot com | | | | \ \\ | | | | (*) | \ ))| | | |__U__| / \// | Editor: Bj”rn Felten | | ______ _//|| _\ / | | | / Fido \ (_/(_|(____/ | Newspapers should have no friends. | | (________) (jm) | -- JOSEPH PULITZER | +--------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ Copyright 2005 by Fidonews Editor for Fidonews Globally. Table of Contents 1. FOOD FOR THOUGHT ......................................... 1 2. EDITORIAL ................................................ 2 3. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR .................................... 3 Article/Information for FidoNews ......................... 3 4. TOP STORIES .............................................. 4 A request to publish an obituary ......................... 4 5. GENERAL ARTICLES ......................................... 6 Free DNS services. Yet another problem ................... 6 6. BEST OF FIDONET .......................................... 7 A parable ................................................ 7 7. FIDONET BY INTERNET ...................................... 9 Fidonet Related Websites ................................. 9 8. ROBERT COUTURE'S FIDONET SOFTWARE LISTING ................ 15 FIDONet Software References .............................. 15 9. SPECIAL INTEREST ......................................... 20 Nodelist Stats ........................................... 20 10. FIDONEWS INFORMATION .................................... 22 How to Submit an Article ................................. 22 Credits, Legal Infomation, Availability .................. 24 FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 1 25 Jul 2005 ================================================================= FOOD FOR THOUGHT ================================================================= Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die. -- Amelia Burr ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 2 25 Jul 2005 ================================================================= EDITORIAL ================================================================= Top news this week, is of course that yet another Fidonet sysop has passed away, Gordon Lewicky. Unfortunately the information about his demise has been scarce, all I have to offer is a request to publish an obituary, which hereby is done. Where ever you are, Gordon, I wish you the best of luck on your new hunting grounds. * * * * * * * * * * In a letter to the editor, we can read about an impressive project, about documenting the history of the dial-up BBS. From what I've seen in a Zone 3 echo, it seems this documentary has been sent on Australian television, please correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, I hope this program will eventually reach some European TV channels, it looks really interesting. * * * * * * * * * * Then we have an article about some more problems with the free DNS services. It seems like this is going to haunt us for as long as we (in Fidonet) does not do something to finally end the problems. I know many are offering something similar to the usual, free services available, but I get the distinct feeling that we still are at the mercy of other actors. * * * * * * * * * * A real gold nugget was re-posted in the ENET.SYSOP echo the other day. I thought it was a pity if this masterpiece would once again fall into oblivion, so it is hereby documented in the Best Of Fidonet section. * * * * * * * * * * A small side note. Yesterday (Sunday) was 24 July. This was the day to have your system up an running, if you wanted to claim that your system is up and running 24/7. Well, at least for those of you that are not writing dates in a backward manner. * * * * * * * * * * Finally, I'd like to inform all of you, that tried to guess the make of my wife's car (car.jpg at my site) and failed, that Ralph Mothes (2:2432/717) managed to spot not only the make, but also the model. It's a Nissan Sunny, or Nissan Sunny N14 1.6 1992 to be exact. Kudos, Ralph! ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 3 25 Jul 2005 ================================================================= LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ================================================================= Article/Information for FidoNews By: Jason Scott Hello! My name is Jason Scott, and for the last 4 years I've been working on a pretty involved project: creating a documentary about the history of the dial-up Bulletin Board System. I finished it this past May. It's called "BBS: The Documentary", and is a 3-DVD set I'm selling through my website (http://www.bbsdocumentary.com) It's got 5 and a half hours of documentary split into eight episodes. Each episode deals with a specific aspect of BBSes, including the early days of Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, ANSI art, the BBS "Industry" of the 1990s, and so one. What will be of interest to your readers is that there is an entire episode dedicated to Fidonet. It contains interviews with a number of figures from Fidonet's past, including: Tom Jennings, John Madill, Bob Hartman, Ben Baker, Ken Kaplan, Wynn Wagner III, Thom and Irene Henderson, Rick Siegel, That Old Frog Himself, Phil Becker, Mark Grennan, David Drexler, Frank Vest, and a host of others. I cover the beginning of Fidonet, the restructuring of the network, IFNA, the ups and downs of the network, and Fidonet's place in history. My site also contains a lot of information about BBSes of all types, including a massive BBS list, software listing, timeline, and photographs of the 205 interviews I conducted over the 4 years. The website, again, is http://www.bbsdocumentary.com. I hope you can stop by. - Jason Scott Director, BBS: The Documentary ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 4 25 Jul 2005 ================================================================= TOP STORIES ================================================================= A request to publish an obituary By: Joe Delahaye <1:249/303> Bjorn I would ask that you publish the following and attribute it to the person who actually wrote it. Patrick Vittori. I have been told that there would be no problem having this published in the snooze. Thanks Joe Gordon Lewincky May he rest in peace * Original message by: Patrick Vittori on 15-Jul-2005 to: All re: Gonna be missed in: Ezycom BBS Support for Sysop's I've tried to start this about 4 times, but... How -does- someone write a eulogy for a friend? I never met him face-to-face, but the info passed between us made that seem trivial. You ask Gordy a question and you'd *better* plan on an hour or two to read the reply. Thats one part that going to be missed on our team. I logged on his system for a while in the past and the atmosphere there was like being part of a big family. Nobody was sacred, heh.. least not Gordon. You'd better have your kevlar monitor hooked up cause if'n you poked one at Pdk, he'd sear one -back- at you. :-) Gordon came to my rescue in many ways, I lost a mail feed and he had me set up to link to his system within a couple of hours. I'd be having a prob with a piece of software, and the answer via email had the solution and a few things to watch for that I hadn't come across at the time. Knowledge and a helping hand like that comes close to you only a few times in your life. I don't know where else to go with this except to echo the comments posted elsewhere in FIDO land, Gordon, you were a crusty ol' fart, but we're going to miss you dearly. FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 5 25 Jul 2005 Patrick Ezycom Beta/Support Team ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 6 25 Jul 2005 ================================================================= GENERAL ARTICLES ================================================================= Free DNS services. Yet another problem. By Michiel van der Vlist 2:280/5555 Fidonet sysops that do not have a static IP number often make use of the services of a DNS provider. Many of these are free for non commercial use. The most popular seems to be dyndns, but there are others. Like fidosoft.de. Or was... Friday a week ago, fidosoft.de went belly up. Just like that, no warning, no tell tale signs, no nothing. What happened exactly is unclear. Rumour has it that it was hijacked by a bunch of spammers and that the owner pulled the plug. Whatever happened xxx.fidosoft.de now points to a site owned by Sedoparking. A mob specializing in grabbing domains and selling them. Luckily the damage to FidoNet is limited. Only eight nodelisted sysops made use of the free fidosoft.de DNS service. Half of them seem to have found an alternative by now. That includes me. But it has made me think. The use of FOIP has freed us from the dependence of mail distributors. But we seem the have traded that for a dependence on DNS providers. The impact on me is limited. I have a static IP and I can just as well use that for my entry in the nodelist. OTOH, I also have a web server running and I used fidosoft.de to let the world access it. I use the web server to share things with my friends and family and many of them go into panic mode when a url does not start with "www", let alone that they know what an IP address is. What annoys me most is that with fidosoft.de all the pointers in the Google database are gone too. I scored pretty high on some keywords. "Fido gallery of fame" f.e. directly led you to a picture of David Rance and me. It is gone and I have not yet seen the Google crawler bot come by. Maybe I should just pay for my DNS service. In the meantime here is where I found shelter: http://www.vlist.nodelist.org/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 7 25 Jul 2005 ================================================================= BEST OF FIDONET ================================================================= A parable By: David Rance <2:252/110.1> * Forwarded from ENET.SYSOP by David Rance * Original message from David Rance to Steven Leeman * Date: 25 May 99 08:59 You don't see my point, do you? All you folks can talk about is the technical specifications of all that we are doing. A parable: Fred Fidonet is interested in cars. He has a car. He talks about the car. He knows the technical specification of the car. He spends all his spare time tinkering with the car and tuning the car. Fred loves his car and would be completely lost if he had to sell his car. However he never goes out in the car. Fred has two sons who are every bit as enthusiatic about the car as Fred is. The trouble is that they are always arguing about how to make the car work better. In fact their conversation is always about the technical side of the car, and sometimes their arguments get quite bitter. Sometimes they can't even talk to one another because of the bad feeling when they can't get their own way. While they are all busy arguing, Fred's wife, Angela, would love to go out touring, to see some of the countryside and visit friends. After all, she thought, that's what they got the car for. It should improve the quality of their lives by enabling them to visit people they wouldn't otherwise be able to visit. Fred doesn't want to do that. Fred's world revolves around making the car work better and better. Yes, he sometimes goes out to visit a car mechanic who will help him with the car, but he's forgotten all about what his poor wife wants. After a while, Angela gets SO bored that she decides to accept an invitation from her neighbour, Ian Internet, to go for a trip in his car. Ian isn't so much interested in HOW the car works, but loves to travel and meet people. And Angela enjoys her trip so much that she accepts further invitations. In the end, Angela (you've guessed it) decides to leave Fred and go to live with Ian, because he, like Angela, is so much more interested in meeting people and finds Ian's attitude to the car so much more sensible. It's not an end in itself, it helps people to get to where they want to go. And, do you know, Fred didn't even understand why Angela had left him! Fred asked his sons how to get Angela to come back. He came to the conclusion that she would come back if he got a bigger, flashy, car. So he did. But Angela didn't come back. So Fred thought that an even bigger, flashier car, would attract Angela back, but he couldn't agree with his sons as to which car to get. FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 8 25 Jul 2005 And all this time Angela is getting more and more hooked on Ian's lifestyle and is now planning to divorce Fred and marry Ian. And Fred is STILL wondering what to do to make his car more attractive to Angela!!! Of course, Fred is quite right to take an interest in how the car works. But he has missed the point that, however big and flashy his car is, Angela is interested only it what it can DO to help her get out and meet people. Poor Fred! Do you think he will ever get Angela back? * Any resemblance between the characters above and the readers of this echo is purely intentional! Best wishes, David ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 9 25 Jul 2005 ================================================================= FIDONET BY INTERNET ================================================================= Fidonet Related Websites Thom LaCosta 1:261/1352 One approach to tracking and viewing Fidonet related websites is to visit webrings that specialize in Fidonet. A webring is a method where sites having a common theme advertise other websites with simailar themes. The advantage to the webring concept is that in theory, the sites have an interest in maintaining an accuate listing and can modify their own listings on a site by site basis. It appears that there are two fidonet webrings....the long-running system at http://b.webring.com/hub?ring=fidonet and another at http://www.fidonet.us/fidoring/ The ring at webring.com is larger, but forces the viewer to look at google ads panels. The smaller ring at fidonet.us does not depend on adverstising revenue from ads. Sysops with Fidonet related websites should consider joining one or both rings. Ring News 12/27/2004 Welcome to The Thunderbolt -- A Weather Wonder(Arkansas, US) Sysop: Daryl Stout 12/5/2004 It's a pleasure to welcome two new BBS systems to the fidonet.us webring: Pucela BBS (Valladolid, Spain) Sysop: Komunero The Realm of Darkness BBS Sysop: Ken Bowley The most current version of the list below can be viewed at http://www.fidonet.us/fidoring/sitelist.html WWW.FIDONET.US - WEBRING PARTICIPANTS BBBS Charlotte and N4RPS.net Home Page Web Page of N4RPS, Rob Sargeant, and Web portal for BBBS Charlotte, a Fidonet BBS located in Charlotte, North Carolina USA (1:379/2). http://www.n4rps.net - 6-November-2003 Fidonet - Net261 - Maryland Fidonet in Maryland - Net261 http://www.fidonet.us/net261/ - 2-March-2003 Rocasa BBS Rocasa BBS is a system accessible as both a traditional Bulletin FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 10 25 Jul 2005 Board System, via landline or telnet, as well as via the Web for message and file access. It is also the home of the BBBS FDN. http://bbs.rocasa.org - 16-June-2003 < E-Mail/News Gateway | | Program. Meltdown-BBS |UI |http://meltdown-bbs.sourceforge.net/ | | meltdown-bbs.project.petkan | | @spamgourmet.com | | Fido: 2:350/5 | | Meltdown-BBS is an FTN <-> | | Web/PHP/MySQL BBS forum system. MakeNL |U | http://hub2000.darktech.org/makenl | | fidonet.hub2000 [at] gmail [dot] com | | Fido: 1:229/2000 | | FidoNet Nodelist Processor FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 19 25 Jul 2005 +- - - - - - - - - - -+- - -+- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -+ National BBS List |? | http://www.usbbs.org Hispanic FIDO/BBS's |? | http://www.conecta2.org/pucela_bbs/ (in Spanish only) | | (Extensive software & BBS Listings) +- - - - - - - - - - -+- - -+- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -+ File Archives: http://archives.thebbs.org http://www.filegate.net http://sysopscorner.thebbs.org http://www.juge.com http://www.dmine.com/bbscorner/ http://garbo.uwasa.fi http://www.simtel.net http://wuarchive.wustl.edu http://maximus.midnightshour.org http://hobbes.nmsu.edu Note: most also provide FTP access (use ftp:// instead of http:// above) *=-=*=.=*=-=*=.=*=-=*=.=*=-=*=.=*=-=*=.=*=-=*=.=*=-=*=.=*=-=*=.=*=-=* Please send corrections & additions to: Robert Couture, 1:229/2000 E-Mail: rpa4email (at) rogers (dot) com Telnet: runekeep.darktech.org (Leave Feedback as Guest or create an account) Emeritus: Ben Ritchey, Todd Cochrane, Frank Vest, Peter Popovich ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 20 25 Jul 2005 ================================================================= SPECIAL INTEREST ================================================================= Nodelist Stats Input nodelist nodelist.203 size 778.3kb date 2005-07-22 The nodelist has 6298 nodes in it and a total of 8877 non-comment entries including 6 zones 47 regions 372 hosts 466 hubs admin overhead 891 ( 14.15 %) and 1094 private nodes 273 nodes down 321 nodes on hold off line overhead 1688 ( 26.80 %) Speed summary: >9600 = 578 ( 9.18 %) 9600 = 5343 ( 84.84 %) (HST = 108 or 2.02 %) (CSP = 0 or 0.00 %) (PEP = 1 or 0.02 %) (MAX = 0 or 0.00 %) (HAY = 1 or 0.02 %) (V32 = 2751 or 51.49 %) (V32B = 210 or 3.93 %) (V34 = 3674 or 68.76 %) (V42 = 3094 or 57.91 %) (V42B = 208 or 3.89 %) 2400 = 51 ( 0.81 %) 1200 = 6 ( 0.10 %) 300 = 320 ( 5.08 %) ISDN = 484 ( 7.68 %) ---------------------------------------------------------- File Req Flag Applicable software Number of systems ---------------------------------------------------------- XA Frontdoor <1.99b 2066 Frontdoor 2.02+ Dutchie 2.90c Binkleyterm >2.1 D'Bridge <1.3 TIMS Xenia -------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 21 25 Jul 2005 XB Binkleyterm 2.0 8 Dutchie 2.90b -------------------------------------- XC Opus 1.1 5 -------------------------------------- XP Seadog 6 -------------------------------------- XR Opus 1.03 36 -------------------------------------- XW Fido >12M 268 Tabby KittenMail -------------------------------------- XX D'Bridge 1.30 2771 Frontdoor 1.99b Intermail 2.01 T-Mail -------------------------------------- None QMM 1138 -------------------------------------- CrashMail capable = 1981 ( 31.45 %) MailOnly nodes = 3516 ( 55.83 %) Listed-only nodes = 497 ( 7.89 %) Other = 304 ( 4.83 %) [Report produced by NETSTATS - A PD pgm available from 1:106/100] [ Revised by B Felten, 2:203/208] ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 22 25 Jul 2005 ================================================================= FIDONEWS INFORMATION ================================================================= How to Submit an Article If you wish to submit an article for inclusion in the Fidonews, here are some guidelines, if you send it as an attached file; the preferred method if you want reasonable control over how the published article will appear in the Fidonews: a) Plain ASCII text. If you could type it on your keyboard, it's probably quite OK. No line may be longer than 70 characters. b) Put a title to the article. Put the title in two times. The first time, on the first line, with an * before it. The second time, on the second line, without the * and centered. This will help in the format since the title with the * is removed and used in the index, the second line will become the headline. On the third line, put your name and FidoNet address, present or former. If former, you may want to add some other address where you can be reached for personal comments. c) Deadline for article submission is Sunday, 12:00 UTC. Help the Editor by following the above guides. Below are some subjects and the file extension for the article as set in the configuration file for the making of the Fidonews. Please help by putting the file extension of the correct subject on the file name if known.. Ideas for Subject areas: Subject File | Subject File ----------------------------------|---------------------------------- From the *C's *.css | Rebuttals to articles *.reb Fidonet Regional News *.reg | Fidonet Net News *.net Retractions *.rtx | General Fidonet Articles *.art Guest Editorial *.gue | Fidonet Current Events *.cur Fidonet Interviews *.inv | Fidonet Software Reviews *.rev Fidonet Web Page Reviews *.web | Fidonet Notices *.not Getting Fidonet Technical *.ftc | Question Of The Week *.que Humor in a Fido Vein *.hfv | Comix in ASCII *.cmx Fidonet's Int. Kitchen *.rec | Poet's Corner *.poe Clean Humor & Jokes *.jok | Other Stuff *.oth Fidonet Classified Ads *.ads | Corrections *.cor Best of Fidonet *.bof | Letters to the Editor *.let If you don't know or are not sure, send the article anyway. Put a .TXT on it and I'll try to figure out where it should be in the Fidonews. If you follow these simple guidelines, there should be little problem in getting your article published. If your submission is too far out of specs for the Fidonews, it will be returned to you and/or a message sent informing you of the problem. This DOES NOT mean that your article is not accepted. It means that there is something in it that I can not fix and I need your help on it. FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 23 25 Jul 2005 Send articles via e-mail or netmail, file attach or message to: Bj”rn Felten Fidonet 2:2/2 E-Mail bfelten @ telia dot com IMPORTANT! If you send the article via e-mail, make sure you put the word "fidonews" somewhere in the subject line! That way it will always pass the spam filter, ending up in the proper folder. Please include a message, telling me that you have sent an article. That way I will know to look for it. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 22-30 Page 24 25 Jul 2005 Credits, Legal Infomation, Availability + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- FIDONEWS STAFF - -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + | | | Editor: Bj”rn Felten, 2:2/2 | | Crash mail attached: Editor@2:2/2 | | E-Mail attached: bfelten @ telia dot com | | Webmaster: Jim Barchuk, jb@fidonews.org | | Columnist: Frank Vest - Frank's Column | | | + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- - EDITORS EMERITI - -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + | | | Tom Jennings, Thom Henderson, Dale Lovell, Vince | | Perriello, Tim Pozar, Sylvia Maxwell, Donald Tees, | | Christopher Baker, Zorch Frezberg, Henk Wolsink, | | Doug Meyers, Warren D. Bonner, Frank L. Vest | | | + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + Fidonews is published weekly by and for the members of Fidonet. Fidonews is Copyright (C) 2005 by Bj”rn Felten, though authors retain rights to their contributed articles. Opinions expressed by the authors is strictly their own. Noncommercial duplication and distribution within Fidonet is encouraged. Authors are encouraged to send their articles in ASCII text to the Editor at one of the addresses above. The weekly edition of Fidonews is distributed through the file area FIDONEWS, and is published as echomail in the echo FIDONEWS. These sources are normally available through your Network Coordinator. The current and past issues are also available from the following sources: + -- -- -- -- -- -- - FIDONEWS AVAILABILITY - -- -- -- -- -- -- + | | | File request from 2:2/2: | | current issue FIDONEWS | | back issue, volume v, issue ii FNEWSvii.ZIP | | | | On the web: | | http://felten.yi.org/fidonews | | http://www.fidonet.ca/fidonews | | | | The Snooze *and* the FIDONEWS echo in your newsreader: | | news://felten.yi.org/FIDONEWS | | | + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + -----------------------------------------------------------------