F I D O N E W S Volume 16, Number 25 21 June 1999 +----------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | The newsletter of the | ISSN 1198-4589 Published by: | | FidoNet community | "FidoNews" | | _ | +27-41-581-5913 [5:5/23] | | / \ | June Publication: 1:270/720 | | /|oo \ | | | (_| /_) | | | _`@/_ \ _ | | | | | \ \\ | Editor: | | | (*) | \ )) | Henk Wolsink 5:7104/2 | | |__U__| / \// | Editor Pro Tem (June 99) | | _//|| _\ / | Douglas Myers 1:270/720 | | (_/(_|(____/ | | | (jm) | Newspapers should have no friends. | | | -- JOSEPH PULITZER | +----------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | Submission address: Douglas Myers 1:270/720 | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | MORE addresses: | | | | submissions for June: doug@mdtnbbs.com | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | 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 Candidate Evaluations .................................... 1 2. GUEST EDITORIAL .......................................... 3 Moderator Rights - The Super-Bitches ..................... 3 3. ARTICLES ................................................. 5 Small Article - Ray Brown, R14C .......................... 5 Zone 1 Coordinator, Election Information ................. 5 4. NET HUMOR ................................................ 7 God Speaks in one-liners ................................. 7 5. COMIX IN ASCII ........................................... 8 Cows in the Election ..................................... 8 6. ADVERTISE YOUR FREE SERVICE/EVENT ........................ 9 Editor Pro Tem Special ................................... 9 7. NOTICES .................................................. 10 Future History ........................................... 10 Change in FILE_ID.DIZ .................................... 10 8. FIDONEWS INFORMATION ..................................... 11 FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 1 21 Jun 1999 ================================================================= EDITORIAL ================================================================= Z1C Candidate Evaluations Douglas Myers This is an attempt at an objective evaluation of the candidates for Zone 1 Coordinator in the election currently in progress. Readers may question the objectivity of one of the candidates offering evaluations of himself and others. Offhand, I'd say this is a healthy suspicion... you be the judge. Candidates are discussed in the order the Election Coordinator processed their nomination. Douglas Myers - Doug was initially nominated by a group discontent with the closed elections by the RCs in the past. This issue, however, has become less prominent because of the willingness of the RCs to conduct this election in an open format. He is the only candidate who is not currently an NC or RC with Fidonet, but offers ZC experience with a small FTSC network. Doug's suitability was questioned early in the campaign by suspicions that he was directing a mudslinging campaign employing some contraversial supporters, the SUPER-BITCHES. At this point, however, those suspicions seem to be discredited and there is no noticable effect on his candidacy. The theme of Doug's campaign is to open the zone political process to all sysops. Dallas Hinton - Dallas is the candidate most identified as an insider in political circles, and suffered early criticism based on this perception. However, he has handled such criticism with grace and charm, and has been responsive to questions asked of the candidates. His campaign is helped considerably by the fading of RC resentment over closed elections, and it appears that his insider image will not be the detriment some had predicted. Dallas campaign emphasizes his experience as RC. David Moufarrege - David, though a sitting RC, seems to have avoided the insider image. In fact, David's campaign is characterized by a lack of contraversy. He has been personable and eloquent in his interaction with sysops throughout the zone. David emphasizes his accomplishments in integrating Internet nodes with the more traditional Fido nodes, and points to the tranquilly of his region as a harbinger of a non-contraversial term as Z1C. Todd Cochrane - As much as David repels contraversy like a duck's back repels water, Todd seems to attract it. He came out of the nomination gate promising a fight, and immediatly drew attacks from several quarters. However, the contraversy seems to have died down. Todd's campaign emphasizes strong, authorative leadership with an agressive approach to technology growth in Fido. Bobby Queen - Bobby was the last candidate to be nominated, and is still establishing his campaign. He has been responsive to all questions and appears to be a credible candidate. His campaign emphasizes his personal time available to serve as Z1C. FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 2 21 Jun 1999 It's difficult to rank the candidates at this point due to the representative nature of the voting. Probably, there will be no definitive perception of the front runners until all the regions have reported in. It's clear that no one candidate has established himself as front runner, and no candidate is definately out of the race. Another difficulty in ranking the candidates is a lack of distinguishing issues. So far, all candidates have favored further integration of Internet nodes into Fidonet, and all candidates have indicated a need for Policy 4 revisions. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 3 21 Jun 1999 ================================================================= GUEST EDITORIAL ================================================================= MODERATOR RIGHTS, SUPER-BITCHES AND THE ZONE ONE ELECTION Lesley-Dee Dylan, Lynn Gipson, and Ruth Argust Last week, Joe Jared published an article in Fidonews which described what he feels is a political conspiracy in the SUPER-BITCH echo. As moderator of the Z1_POLITICAL echo, he further issued warnings to all the participants of SUPER-BITCH and requested a zone level feed cut of Ruth Argust based on posts in SUPER-BITCH. The SUPER-BITCH echo is moderated by the Super-Bitches (Lynn Gipson, Ruth Argust and Lesley-Dee Dylan). Any attempt to moderate this message echo, by moderators of other echoes in their echoes, is an infringement of our rights and unacceptable to us. From some of the comments in other areas about us, it would seem that the lurkers/visiting moderators have not read back far enough in the echo to get a true picture of our activities. If they had, they would have seen that we started off the election campaign with speculating about how interesting it could be if Tom Cole were nominated. Then Todd Cochrane stuck his foot in it - again and again and again. As for any "conspiracy" of "henchmen" working to support the Douglas Myers campaign by attacking Todd Cochrane - Todd Cochrane is NOT Douglas's main competition. If you were reading this echo, you would know that we do not even consider Todd to have a viable campaign. Douglas's competition is from David Moufarrege and Dallas Hinton. There is very little interest in harrassing Dallas, and absolutely none in harrassing David. Despite Joe Jared's claim that we "intended" to disrupt the Official Election Echo, there is not a single post where one person tells another to say anything in the Election Echo. There are discussions in the nature of "look at what idiocy Todd posted this time - what a dolt." Our actions have taken place in the open. We are not "backroom" conspirators. Our echotag description tells everyone what we are up to. Our echo is backboned and available to anyone except Net 163, whose NEC refuses to carry it. Joe has also placed all participants in the SUPER-BITCH echo on notice just because they associated with the so-called "guilty" parties. Super-Bitch is a fun echo. We play in there. PLAY, not plot. Playing leads to a bonding, a friendship, a caring for each other, and an understanding of each other. We are not trying to overpower the democratic process. We do support Douglas Myer in his candidacy, because we have grown to like and understand him, despite his blue balls. If we were plotting and conspiring to do something FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 4 21 Jun 1999 unethical, we would have been doing so by mailing lists or crashed netmail. Also, there is one other problem with the goings on in this election. Actions have been taken and warnings given, and one suspension, based on an anonymous accusation. It is a basic principle of British justice (on which the American justice system is based) that defendants have a right to face their accuser(s). We have not seen the accusation. We do not know, fully, what was in the accusation against us, or who accused us. We also know that the accusation was doctored up in such a way as to make it look like Jack Yates had said words that I had typed. The initials LD> were on the message Jack posted showing where he quoted me. These initials seem to have been deleted when these lines were put into the complaint. It also appears, from the small bits of the message that were cross-posted, that Jack's response to me was deleted, totally changing the perception of Jack's behaviour, and the perception of the nature of the entire echo. And Jack never said anything about Joe being Ross's puppet. I don't think anyone did, except the accuser. I think Joe is looking in the wrong place for the conspiracies and dirty politics. He should be looking at whoever doctored up Jack's message and sent in the complaint. He should be looking at whoever it was who lied to him about Jack saying that Joe was Ross Cassell's puppet. The rules allowing moderators unfettered rights to toss someone from their echos should be different for moderators of echos used for official FidoNet business, whether at the level of a net, region, or zone. Perhaps now is the time to start discussions of placing limits on the moderatorship of these official FidoNet echos. Feed cuts on these official echos should never be issued unless the offender refuses to cooperate on read-only status. Even when a feed cut is issued, there should be no objection to a volunteer forwarding all posts in the echo to netmail so the offender can still read the echo. When there are objections to the actions against an offender in an official echo, then there should be a review. Perhaps all moderators of backboned echos who are active participants in the echo could be asked to consult and make a decision on the validity of the action. This would be a one-warm-body, one vote review, rather than weighted by number of conferences moderated - i.e. Bob Moravsik would not get 350 votes to my one-third vote. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 5 21 Jun 1999 ================================================================= ARTICLES ================================================================= Small Article Ray Brown, 1:286/1701 A brief introduction... Greetings and salutations! This is Ray Brown, 1:286/1701. I have been a member (SysOp) of FidoNet for almost 10 years, starting out as a node in Florida, then for a year in Oklahoma, and for the past 5 years, here in Missouri. For the past year, I have been NC / NEC of Net 286, and just last week I was elected Regional Coordinator for Region 14. (Condolences graciously accepted. :-) I would like to go on record as saying, and I believe my Region will agree, my vote for the next Z1C will be for somebody that will start taking a proactive roll in revitalizing FidoNet, including but not limited to work on a new Policy to replace our 10-year-old Policy4. Members of Region 14, get involved NOW. Make your opinions known NOW. We're already in Phase 2 of the Z1C Election, and I hate debating in a vacumn. If you don't participate in 14_REC, then NetMail me and I'll see what we can do. Thank you! _Ray_ R14C ----------------------------------------------------------------- ELECTION INFORMATION Zone 1 Coordinator The information below has been summarized from the official posts in Z1_ELECTION by Ross Cassell, Election Coordinator. Z1C Candidate Node Number Region *C Position If Any ============= =========== ====== ================== Douglas Myers 1:270/720 13 Dallas Hinton 1:153/715 17 RC David Moufarrege 1:2313/404 13 RC Todd Cochrane 1:345/2 10 NC Bobby Queen 1:3667/5 18 NC Official Election Echoes ======================== Z1_ELECTION - discussion with candidates Z1_POLITICAL - side chatter Election Timetable FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 6 21 Jun 1999 ================== Phase 1: Nomination - completed Phase 2: Discussion - in progress until 6/26 Sysops discuss issues with the candidates in Z1_ELECTION. Phase 3: Regional Discussions - 6/27 to 7/3 Sysops vote with their NC who will vote based on their input with the RC. Phase 4: Voting By RCC - 7/4 to 7/10 The RCs will vote for the candidates based on input from their NCs. A candidate is elected with 50% + 1 vote; if no candidate achieves sufficient votes, a runoff election will be conducted between the two candidates with the most votes. Phase 5: Installation of new ZC1 - after orientation ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 7 21 Jun 1999 ================================================================= NET HUMOR ================================================================= God Speaks in one-liners An advertising agency in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida launced this unique advertising and billboard campaign that even splashed the insides and outsides of buses, and the bus stop shelters, and which included a total of 17 different messages from the Big Guy himself, God. This non-denominational campaign was sponsored by an anonymous client who forked out literally thousands of dollars. 1. Let's Meet At My House Sunday Before the Game - God 2. C'mon Over And Bring The Kids - God 3. What Part of "Thou Shalt Not..." Didn't You Understand? - God 4. We Need To Talk - God 5. Keep Using My Name in Vain And I'll Make Rush Hour Longer - God 6. Loved The Wedding, Invite Me To The Marriage - God 7. That "Love Thy Neighbor" Thing, I Meant It. - God 8. I Love You...I Love You...I Love You... - God 9. Will The Road You're On Get You To My Place? - God 10. Follow Me. - God 11. Big Bang Theory, You've Got To Be Kidding. - God 12. My Way Is The Highway. - God 13. Need Directions? - God 14. You Think It's Hot Here? - God 15. Tell The Kids I Love Them. - God 16. Need a Marriage Counselor? I'm Available. - God 17. Have You Read My #1 Best Seller? There Will Be A Test. - God ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 8 21 Jun 1999 ================================================================= COMIX IN ASCII ================================================================= Cows in the Election \\ \\ \\ \\ / \ / \ / \ / \ \ \ \ \ \ \(__) \ \(__) *--> (oo) *--> (oo) / / \/ o / / \/ / / / / \ / o \ / \ / \ / // // // o // Stealth Bomber cow Stealth cow on bombing run ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 9 21 Jun 1999 ================================================================= ADVERTISE YOUR FREE SERVICE/EVENT ================================================================= Editor Pro Tem Special Maybe you've wanted to publish your own Fidonews article, but weren't sure how to go about it. Or perhaps you found the instructions in ARTSPEC.DOC, but they were daunting. Well, it's time to speak up! During the month of June, I'm running an "Editor Pro Tem" special. Concentrate on what you have to say and get it to me in some kind of readable ASCII, and I'll do the necessary formatting for publication. You can send articles netmail to Douglas Myers at 1:379/720, or email to doug@mdtnbbs.com. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 10 21 Jun 1999 ================================================================= NOTICES ================================================================= Future History 24 Jul 1999 XIII Pan American Games [through 8 Aug 99]. 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- NOTICE: The FILE_ID.DIZ included with this issue now includes a brief summary of the contents of Fidonews. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 11 21 Jun 1999 ================================================================= FIDONEWS INFORMATION ================================================================= ------- FIDONEWS MASTHEAD AND CONTACT INFORMATION ------- During the month of June, 1999, the Fidonews Editor is on vacation. Editor Pro Tem during this period is Douglas Myers, 1:270/720, doug@mdtnbbs.com. Please address correspondence, article submissions, etc to the above addresses during this time. Editor: Henk Wolsink Editors Emeriti: 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 +27-41-581-5913, 2400/9600/V34 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 (C) 1999 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 FidoNet and the 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 [FNEWSGnn.ZIP] for a FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 12 21 Jun 1999 particular Issue. Monthly Volumes are available as FNWSmmmy.ZIP where mmm = three letter month [JAN - DEC] and y = last digit of the current year [9], i.e., FNWSJAN9.ZIP for all the Issues from Jan 99. Annual volumes are available as FNEWSn.ZIP where n = the Volume number 1 - 16 for 1984 - 1999, 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) ** LINK HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED *=*=* 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 FIDONEWS 16-25 Page 13 21 Jun 1999 and http://www.fidonet.dynip.com/public/fidonews/default.htm and in the FIDONEWS echo. 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 for that year's issues. The total set is currently about 13 Megs. =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= 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 should 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------