F I D O N E W S Volume 15, Number 48 30 November 1998 +----------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | The newsletter of the | ISSN 1198-4589 Published by: | | FidoNet community | "FidoNews" | | _ | +27-41-515-913 [5:5/23] | | / \ | | | /|oo \ | | | (_| /_) | | | _`@/_ \ _ | | | | | \ \\ | Editor: | | | (*) | \ )) | Henk Wolsink 5:7104/2 | | |__U__| / \// | | | _//|| _\ / | | | (_/(_|(____/ | | | (jm) | Newspapers should have no friends. | | | -- JOSEPH PULITZER | +----------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | Submission address: FidoNews Editor 5:5/23 | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | MORE addresses: | | | | submissions=> editor@fidonews.org | | hwolsink@catpe.alt.za | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | For information, copyrights, article submissions, | | obtaining copies of FidoNews or the internet gateway FAQ | | please refer to the end of this file. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ Table of Contents 1. EDITORIAL ................................................ 1 2. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR .................................... 2 Password Change - Right or Wrong? ........................ 2 IP addressing ............................................ 2 3. NOTICES .................................................. 5 4. FIDONET BY INTERNET ...................................... 6 5. FIDONEWS INFORMATION ..................................... 9 FIDONEWS 15-48 Page 1 30 Nov 1998 ================================================================= EDITORIAL ================================================================= Greetings, And now for the last issue for November 1998. In 31 days, we have 1999 and the start of a new year. Has 1998 gone past without you knowing what you did? Or was it a year in which you knew what was going on, but you ignored it anyway? Well whichever way, you have 31 days to correct it. :-) Happy reading, ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 15-48 Page 2 30 Nov 1998 ================================================================= LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ================================================================= Password Change - Right or Wrong? Kent Anderson 1:382/92/kand@onr.com Your letter in Fidonews F47 points out, line by line, your sysopsis of what happened in the recent password change incident. In actuality, it's the best proof I have seen of the correctness of Thom Lacosta's action in revealing the password to Rob Ferrera. Here's why I feel this is true: Those who move the mail MUST know to whom they look for initiating action within the conference. They have no way whatever of knowing that some puppetmaster behind the scences is making a dummy dance. Their looking to the LISTED Moderator(s) is the only logical approach. It even makes sense to consider the first listed Moderator as in charge in the event of a dispute. The commonly accepted practice through all the time I have participated in Fidonet activities has been to consider the listed Moderator as in charge of a conference, and the one with authority there, when authority must be wielded. That authority includes with it the right to delegate to another such tasks as the Moderator deems fitting. Delegating those duties does not mean that the person in charge delegates the responsibility for the delegated task to performed properly. Revealing a password to the proven Moderator of an echo is not something new. Under proper circumstances, it was most certainly done when Adrian Walker kept the echo list, and so far as I know during his predecessors' regimes. As a Fidonet Moderator, I have not the slightest compunction about letting the security of my echo's password rest with Thom. I personally feel that we owe him a vote of thanks for preventing an echo from being orchestrated from behind the scenes by someone unknown to the users of that echo. [ED Interesting comment, the question remains, is the elist worth it, as commented in my Editorial of last week? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Finally something I can get up on the soap box about. Now listen up it's time for a lesson. Stepping up to my Soap Box I Proclaim: Is there room in Fidonet Nodelist for IP's. In this Authors opinion Damn right. There should have been some adaptation officially about 7 years ago. There was a time where Fidonet system operators were on the cutting edge. Today some of you are finally waking up and getting on the band wagon... But most FIDONEWS 15-48 Page 3 30 Nov 1998 of you want to cry that your user base has dried up and moved on. Get a grip and start showing the world we have what it takes to put Fidonet back on the map. If not put it back on the map but at least move the technology into the 90's instead of staying in the 80's It's kinda funny in a sense I was laughed at back in 1992 for setting up one of the very first Internet e-mail capable BBS systems. Sysops laughed and said, what do you need that for. Well who is laughing now. I was pushing for IP integration back in 95 and for the most part it was like talking to a brick wall. Well I am very very happy that the new innovators in Zone 2 are actually pushing the boundaries so that they can force the rest of you into actually implementing something useful. What is comical is that I hear many of you crying that your BBS systems are not getting callers anymore. No Shit sherlock they are all connecting to the 1000 or less BBS systems that are fully connected to the Internet. I never had 7000 logins in one day when we had 16 dial in lines going. Move your systems to the Net and take away some of my volume. Connectivity is getting cheaper and with services like www.dynip.com who update your dns records on the fly when you don't own a static IP the cost to put your BBS on the Net is no more than a upgraded Internet account and a dedicated phone line. But so far as what the real wizards over in Zone 2 are doing I would hope that those of you spending your days squabbling about who is the biggest and baddest and who has power and who doesn't will wake up and take notice and move this hobby forward once again. I get mad like everyone else when people try to push there personal agendas and not help one another and move this network forward. But it will be like the past a few early adopters will move on Zone 2's innovation and then the rest of you will wake up one morning and play catch up.. If your crying that your poor old 286 single line dial up system is gonna break because they modified the nodelist well I guess we will have to come up with 2 Nodelist after all it isn't that BIG and I am sure it would not be real difficult rig a conversion program. It is time for some real new Fidonet leadership and I mean real new leadership most of the so called leaders are either burned out or they still are listening to Disco. Lastly I want to tell you the real reason Zone 1 has not adapted Fidonet over IP it is because it would put a few subscription echomail feeds out of business. BTW I have already set about 25 of you up for free feeds an am re-feeding you. I have plenty FIDONEWS 15-48 Page 4 30 Nov 1998 of bandwidth for about a 1000 more so If any of you need a free full Fidonet echomail/filebone and netmail feed drop me a line at the contact at the bottom and I will be happy to save you some of you hard earned cash each month that you can put towards putting your BBS on the Internet Todd Cochrane BBS Networks & Hafa Adai Exchange 1:345/0 www.bbsnets.com cochrane@bbsnets.com BBS Networks & Hafa Adai Exchange http://www.bbsnets.com/ World's Largest Interactive BBS Todd Cochrane Honolulu Hi cochrane@bbsnets.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- Announcing the newly backboned MP3 echo! A new echo has been established for discussion of the popular internet music distribution file format of MP3. It is an open-ended echo for discussion of just about anything related to the MP3, including the political aspects and the legal aspects of the file format. I, the moderator (Steve Steffler, 1:17/667.3) encourage all sysops reading to hook into this sure-to-be interesting echo from their nearest backbone feed. I'm not great at advertising, so below I'll include the ELIST entry, and you can come check it out for yourself. MP3 International MP3 Discussion Forum This echo is for news, discussion and information pertaining to the high quality digital music format that is sweeping the world, MPEG I Layer III (or MP3). This echo is gatewayed into e-mail mailing list format as well. Put "SUBSCRIBE MP3" in an email to listserv@gen.lcrnet.org to add yourself to the discussion. Status: Active Origin: 1:17/667.3 Group: Distribution: Gateways: mailing list, see description Language: # Nodes: N/A Volume: 433/mo Rules: Flags: Notes: /REA Moderators: steve steffler, 1:17/667.3, steve@gen.lcrnet.org Last changed: 9-Nov-98 by steve.steffler@gen.lcrnet.org, 1:261/1550, steve.steffler@gen.lcrnet.org (steve steffler) email: generica@antisocial.com web: http://listen.to/equatorial icq: 2690054 "I dress for success, but success is not impressed." - Poster Children FIDONEWS 15-48 Page 5 30 Nov 1998 ================================================================= NOTICES ================================================================= Future History 1 Dec 1998 Fifteenth Anniversary of release of Fido version 1 by Tom Jennings. 16 Feb 1999 13th Anniversary of the introduction of EchoMail by Jeff Rush. 12 May 1999 12th Anniversary of Fido Operations in Zone 4; 10th Anniversary of the creation of FidoNet Zone 4. 24 Jul 1999 XIII Pan American Games [through 8 Aug 99]. 9 Jun 1999 Tenth Anniversary of the adoption of FidoNet Policy 4.07. 10 Sep 1999 10th anniversary of Zone 5 operations. 26 Oct 1999 Thirty years from release Abbey Road album by the Beatles. 31 Dec 1999 Hogmanay, Scotland. The New Year that can't be missed. 1 Jan 2000 The 20th Century, C.E., is still taking place thru 31 Dec. 1 Jun 2000 EXPO 2000 World Exposition in Hannover (Germany) opens. 15 Sep 2000 Sydney (Australia) Summer Olympiad opens. 21 Sep 2000 10 years of FidoNet in +7 (xUSSR) 1 Jan 2001 This is the actual start of the new millennium, C.E. -- If YOU have something which you would like to see in this Future History, please send a note to the FidoNews Editor. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 15-48 Page 6 30 Nov 1998 ================================================================= FIDONET BY INTERNET ================================================================= This is a list of all FidoNet-related sites reported to the FidoNews Editor as of this issue; see the notice at the end. FidoNet: Homepage http://www.fidonet.org FidoNews http://www.fidonews.org [HTML] http://209.77.228.66/fidonews.html [ASCII] WWW sources http://travel.to/fidonet/ FTSC page http://www.goldware.dk/ftsc Echomail [pending] WebRing http://ddi.digital.net/~cbaker84/fnetring.html [TFN] General http://owls.com/~jerrys/fidonet.html http://www.trak-one.co.uk/foti List servers: http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/fidonet-discussion ============ Zone 1: http://www.z1.fidonet.org Region 10: http://www.psnw.com/~net205/region10.html Region 11: http://oeonline.com/~garyg/region11/ Region 13: Net 264: http://www.net264.org Region 17: http://www.nwstar.com/~region17/ Region 18: http://techshop.pdn.net/fido/ Region 19: http://www.compconn.net/r19 Zone 1 Elist http://www.baltimoremd.com/elist/ ============ Zone 2: http://www.z2.fidonet.org ZEC2: Zone 2 Elist: http://www.fbone.ch/echolist/ Region 20: http://www.fidonet.pp.se (in Swedish) Region 23: http://www.fido.dk (in Danish) Region 24: http://www.swb.de/personal/flop/gatebau.html (German) Fido-IP: http://home.nrh.de/~lbehet/fido (English/German) Region 25: http://www.bsnet.co.uk/net2502/net/ FIDONEWS 15-48 Page 7 30 Nov 1998 Region 26: http://www.nemesis.ie REC 26: http://www.nrgsys.com/orb Region 27: http://telematique.org/ft/r27.htm Region 29: http://www.rtfm.be/fidonet/ (French) Region 30: http://www.fidonet.ch (German) Region 33: http://www.fidoitalia.net (Italian) Region 34: http://www.pobox.com/cnb/r34.htm (Spanish) REC34: http://pobox.com/~chr Region 36: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/7207/ Region 38: http://public.st.carnet.hr/~blagi/bbs/adriam.html Region 41: http://www.fidonet.gr (Greek/English) Region 42: http://www.fido.cz Region 48: http://www.fidonet.org.pl Region 50: http://www.fido7.com/ (Russian) Net 5010: http://fido.tu-chel.ac.ru/ (Russian) Net 5015: http://www.fido.nnov.ru/ (Russian) Net 5030: http://kenga.ru/fido/ (Russian & English) Net 5073: http://people.weekend.ru/soa/ (Russian) ============ Zone 3: http://www.z3.fidonet.org ============ Zone 4: Region 90: http://visitweb.com/fidonet Net 903: http://www.playagrande.com/refugio Net 904: http://members.tripod.com/~net904 (Spanish) ============ Zone 5: http://www.eastcape.co.za/fidonet/index.htm ============ Zone 6: http://www.z6.fidonet.org Region 65: http://www.cfido.com/fidonet/cfidochina.html (Chinese) ============ Pages listed above are as submitted to the FidoNews Editor, and generally reflect Zone and Regional Web Page sites. If FIDONEWS 15-48 Page 8 30 Nov 1998 no Regional site is submitted, the first Network page from that Region is used in its place. Generally, Regional pages should list access points to all Networks within the Region. TCP/IP accessible node access information should be submitted to the FidoNews Editor for inclusion in their Region or Zone. -----------oOo------------- Fidonet Via Internet Hubs Node# | Operator | Facilities (*) | Speed | Basic Rate -----------+-------------------+----------------+-------+----------- 1:12/12 | Ken Wilson | FTP | T1 | $24mo. 1:13/25 | Jim Balcom | FTP | 56k | $20mo. 1:124/7008 | Ben Hamilton |FTP,VMoT,F2I,UUE| 64k | $10/$20mo. 1:140/12 | Bob Seaborn | FTP | T1 | $5/$20 1:270/101 | George Peace | FTP | T1 | $30mo. 1:271/140 | Tom Barstow | F2I | ??? | $2mo. 1:275/1 | Joshua Ecklund | UUE,F2I | 28.8 | $10/yr. 1:280/169 | Brian Greenstreet | FTP | 33.6 | $2mo. 1:2401/305 | Peter Rocca | FTP,UUE | T1 | unkn 1:2424/10 | Alec Grynspan | FTP,VMoT | T1 | $1mo. 1:2424/3121| Earl Clark | UUE | 33.6 | n/c 1:2604/104 | Jim Mclaughlin | FTP,VMoT,UUE | 33.6 | $1mo. 1:2624/306 | D. Calafrancesco | VFOS | 33.6 | $15yr. 1:345/0 | Todd Cochrane | FTP | T1 | n/c 1:346/250 | Aran Spence | FTP,UUE | T1 | $10mo. 1:342/1022 | Steve Steffler | UUE,F2I | 33.6 | n/c 1:3651/9 | Jerry Gause | FTP,VMoT | 33.6 | $3/$6 1:396/1 | John Souvestre | FTP,VMoT | T1 | $15mo. 2:2411/413 | Dennis Dittrich | UUE | 64k | n/c 2:33/505 | Mario Mure | VMoT,UUE | 64k | n/c 2:335/610 | Gino Lucrezi | UUE | 33.6 | n/c 2:469/84 | Max Masyutin | VMoT | 256k | n/c 2:2474/275 | Christian Emig | UUE | 64k | unkn 2:2490/5170| Lenny Murphy | F2I | ??? | n/c 5:7104/2 | Henk Wolsink | FTP | 28.8 | n/c -- + VMoT = Virtual Mailer over Telnet (various) + F2I = Fido2Int (W95) + UUE = uuencode<->email packet transfers compiled by C. Ingersoll, 1:2623/71, (609)814-1978, fbn@dandy.net Posted on the 1st of every month in FN_SYSOP, R13SYSOP and Fidonews. - ___ ! Origin: * Fly By Night * (609)814-1978 *(1:2623/71) ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 15-48 Page 9 30 Nov 1998 ================================================================= FIDONEWS INFORMATION ================================================================= ------- FIDONEWS MASTHEAD AND CONTACT INFORMATION ------- Editor: Henk Wolsink Editors Emeritii: Tom Jennings, Thom Henderson, Dale Lovell, Vince Perriello, Tim Pozar, Sylvia Maxwell, Donald Tees, Christopher Baker, Zorch Frezberg "FidoNews Editor" FidoNet 5:5/23 BBS +27-41-515-913, 2400/9600/V.34/V.90 more addresses: Henk Wolsink -- 5:7104/2, hwolsink@catpe.alt.za (Postal Service mailing address) FidoNews Editor P.O. Box 12325 Port Elizabeth, 6006 South Africa ------------------------------------------------------ FidoNews is published weekly by and for the members of the FIDONET INTERNATIONAL AMATEUR ELECTRONIC MAIL system. It is a compilation of individual articles contributed by their authors or their authorized agents. The contribution of articles to this compilation does not diminish the rights of the authors. OPINIONS EXPRESSED in these articles ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHORS and not necessarily those of FidoNews and/or the Editor. Authors retain copyright on individual works; otherwise FidoNews is Copyright 1998 Henk Wolsink. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use in other circumstances, please contact the original authors, or the Editor. =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= OBTAINING COPIES: The most recent issue of FidoNews in electronic form may be obtained from the FidoNews Editor via manual download or file-request, or from various sites in the FidoNet and Internet. PRINTED COPIES may be obtained by sending SASE to the above postal address. File-request FIDONEWS for the current Issue. File-request FNEWS for the current month in one archive. Or file-request specific back Issue filenames in distribution format [FNEWSFnn.ZIP] for a particular Issue. Monthly Volumes are available as FNWSmmmy.ZIP where mmm = three letter month [JAN - DEC] and y = last digit of the current year [8], i.e., FNWSJAN8.ZIP for all the Issues from Jan 98. FIDONEWS 15-48 Page 10 30 Nov 1998 Annual volumes are available as FNEWSn.ZIP where n = the Volume number 1 - 15 for 1984 - 1998, respectively. Annual Volume archives range in size from 48K to 1.4M. INTERNET USERS: FidoNews is available via: http://www.fidonews.org http://www.fidonet.org/fidonews.htm ftp://ftp.fidonet.org/pub/fidonet/fidonews/ ftp://ftp.irvbbs.com/fidonews/ ftp://ftp.nwstar.com/Fidonet/Fidonews And in non-English formats via: http://www.hvc.ee/pats/fidonews (Estonian) http://www.fidonet.pp.se/sfnews (Swedish) *=*=* You may obtain an email subscription to FidoNews by sending email to: jbarchuk@worldnet.att.net with a Subject line of: subscribe fnews-edist and no message in the message body. To remove your name from the email distribution use a Subject line of: unsubscribe fnews-edist with no message to the same address above. * You may retrieve current and previous Issues of FidoNews via FTPMail by sending email to: ftpmail@fidonews.org with a Subject line of: help and FTPMail will immediately send a reply containing details and instructions. When you actually make a file request, FTPMail will respond in three stages. You find a link for this process on www.fidonews.org. *=*=* You can read the current FidoNews Issue in HTML format at: http://www.fidonews.org STAR SOURCE for ALL Past Issues via FTP and file-request - Available for FReq from 1:396/1 or by anonymous FTP from: ftp://ftp.sstar.com/fidonet/fnews/ Each yearly archive also contains a listing of the Table-of-Contents FIDONEWS 15-48 Page 11 30 Nov 1998 for that year's issues. The total set is currently about 13 Megs. =*=*=*= The current week's FidoNews and the FidoNews public-key are now also available almost immediately after publication on the FidoNews Editor homepage on the World Wide Web at: http://209.77.228.66/fidonews.html There are also links there to jim barchuk's HTML FidoNews source and to John Souvestre's FTP site for the archives. There is also an email link for sending in an article as message text. Drop on over. =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= SUBMISSIONS: You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in FidoNews. Article submission requirements are contained in the file ARTSPEC.DOC, available from the FidoNews Editor, or file-requestable from 5:5/23 [5:7104/2] as file "ARTSPEC.DOC". ALL Zone Coordinators also have copies of ARTSPEC.DOC. Please read it. "Fido", "FidoNet" and the dog-with-diskette are U.S. registered trademarks of Tom Jennings, P.O. Box 410923, San Francisco, CA 94141, and are used with permission. "Disagreement is actually necessary, or we'd all have to get in fights or something to amuse ourselves and create the requisite chaos." -Tom Jennings -----------------------------------------------------------------