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FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:01:49 Page 1 Volume 2, Number 29 2 September 1985 +----------------------------------------------------------+ | _ | | / \ | | - FidoNews - /|oo \ | | (_| /_) | | Fido and FidoNet _`@/_ \ _ | | Users Group | | \ \\ | | Newsletter | (*) | \ )) | | ______ |__U__| / \// | | / FIDO \ _//|| _\ / | | (________) (_/(_|(____/ | | (jm) | +----------------------------------------------------------+ Publisher: Fido 107/7 Chief Procrastinator: Thom Henderson Fidonews is published weekly by SEAboard, Fido 107/7. You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in Fidonews. Article submission standards are contained in the file FIDONEWS.DOC, available from Fido 107/7. Disclaimer or don't-blame-us: The contents of the articles contained here are not our responsibility, nor do we necessarily agree with them; everything here is subject to debate. We publish EVERYTHING received. This week's guest editorial is by Tom Jennings. There is much legislation going around to restrict the use of computers connected to the phone system. Much of it is very 1984 type stuff, tramps on First Amendment rights in the name of law and order, is deadly serious, and will be deadly to BBSing as we know it. A very few bills are actually good things. PLEASE try to stay aware of what's happening. Some form of control is going to happen. Just what it consists of depends on whether we get a say in it or not. The crooks in DC don't announce to the world when they are about to do something to someone; the less who know, the fewer complaints. If you read something related in the newspaper, please spread the word! Don't assume that "everyone else knows this already". Many of these things are sneaked through quietly, so make noise! Submit them to FidoNews, upload to your local BBS, tell other BBSers. At some point in the future some actions groups will coalesce; please be prepared to support them. Write FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:01:52 Page 2 letters, mail money. This applies to everyone; when the Tom Tcimpidis case in LA happened, in 1984, a lot of sysops took the "head in the sand" approach. This is guarenteed to lose us our boards. There are a lot of us, sysops, users and all. If we all do something, I think we'd all be suprised at how many there are of us. No one is going to be shot, so stand up for your rights! FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:01:53 Page 3 ============================================================ NEWS ============================================================ From: Brian Sietz 107/17 Subject: National Fidonet User Directory I believe that the concept of the fidonet national user directory is a terriffic idea, but it has a few problems: - It takes up too much disk space for sysops. - It is much too big for users to download. - The information is quickly outdated. - The cost of publishing in hardcopy is not worth the expense. One solution that would solve the above problems and make the user directory a bit more useful would be to shorten the number of users listed. The criterion for being listed in the directory should be any user who called more than 20 times, any user who has a fidonet credit, users with uploads, and users with privs above NORMAL. I picked 20 as the number of calls without too much thought - it just seemed that 20 showed enough interest to be considered a "frequent caller". Part of the problem with including all users is that you get your one time callers. I do not mean to imply that non-frequent callers are not desirable, it just means that it is too soon to know if users from other states would be interested in sending mail. If we keep the list short and concise, the information would be more useful to both sysops and users. Comments anyone? ------------------------------------------------------------ FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:01:54 Page 4 THE CONTINUING STORY OF LINKING FIRE DEPARTMENT OPERATIONS EVERYWHERE INTO ONE COHESIVE MASS (What a Dream!) By Christopher Baker, Sysop, Metro-Fire Fido, 18/14 ============================== Our primary function, in the beginning, will be to assemble as many depts as possible into a sub-net or a number of sub-nets to establish a base for communication between depts across the country that would not otherwise be aware of each other. While that is being accomplished and once it is in force, our function will be to provide net coordination and a central locus for collection and dissemination of information of interest to all. As you may or may not know, fire department operations bear little resemblance to any other form of endeavor. This uniqueness begs (it seems to me) for a common mode of communication to share ideas and experiences as well as computer programs specific to fire dept ops. For example, we have a dept of 1200+ members. We are writing a specific program to automate the calling of overtime, which is now done manually, that will automatically sort, file, compare qualifications and produce an updated listing of who is next eligible and qualified for overtime. With this many people and with all the different levels and types of qualifications, calling overtime is a genuine pain! Programs of this type could be shared with other depts via the sub-net we are proposing. I also hope to get a tie-in to the F.E.M.A. and National Fire Academy systems for bulletins and other info. Metro-Dade Fire & Rescue is in the process of setting up an administrative data network consisting of this 3270 set-up and a number of IBM ATs. This network will handle the daily, routine paperwork and allow for individual site E- mail and program development. This network will operate outside of the Dade County Data Processing system and be exclusively for the use of our Dept. The program development will be managed by a central office but the programming efforts will come largely from volunteers from within the Dept who work at it in their spare time or time alloted from their normal duties for this purpose. The in-house AT network should develop some interesting applications for this Dept that may be of use or interest to other depts, regardless of size. These developments would be available to other depts through the Fido sub-net I propose. This is, generally, what I have in mind at present for the Fire Net. I hope this information will be of assistance to FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:01:56 Page 5 those of you trying to convince your departments that computers and data links are the future and are beneficial for all concerned. I appreciate the many responses to my article. If I can be of further assistance to you,please do not hesitate to ask. FidoMail sent on Mondays & Tuesdays is not processed until Wednesday(Mon-Tue=my days off), otherwise any mail will be replied to on the next FidoMail day. If you would like access to our board, please send the name you wish to sign on under and the password you would like to use by PRIVATE FidoMail. Please include the name of your department, your city and state, and a data or voice phone number you can be reached at. Your access will be granted upon receipt. Send all requests marked PRIVATE to Sysop, 18/14. If you wish to call the board and fill out a verification questionaire, please fell free to do so but be advised that this method may slow down your access considerably. Our data number is 305-596-8611. If you have a question that needs a direct or immediate answer, our voice line is 305-596-8576. Voice contact is only possible from 1430-2230, Wednesday through Sunday. (I'm off on Monday and Tuesday.) Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------ FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:00 Page 6 New Fido Message Renumbering Utility Available Because my USENET message base areas usually get upwards of 250 messages per week, I needed to create a utility to be run from an external event to renumber Fido message bases. Since the old RENUM utility does not fix the USER.BBS file after renumbering the messages, I made my own renumbering program. This program consists of the Sysop only 2 and 8 commands taken from ROVER, and able to be run with command line arguments. It allows killing messages by date, and received messages (sysop 2 command), and also renumbering message bases, and the user list (sysop 8 command). The program is being distributed as RENUM.ARC, and has been sent to all HOST nodes (or at least is being sent to all host nodes). Since FidoNet only runs for 1 hour each night it is being sent to about 8 hosts per night. If your host does not have it, and you are interested, it can be downloaded from Fido 101/101 - The UN*X Gateway any time. Bob Hartman Sysop 101/101 The UN*X Gateway and Home of Rover ------------------------------------------------------------ FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:01 Page 7 Make your PC Faster for $20.95!!! A little known fact in the PC world is that there are Intel 8088 and 8086 compatible chips that simply run faster than the originals! The whiz chips are known as the NEC V20 (Intel 8088 compatible - NEC part UPD70108), and the NEC V30 (Intel 8086 compatible - NEC part ???). I recently installed the NEC V20 in my IBM PC, crossed my fingers and turned on the machine. Since I didn't smell any smoke, I turned on the monitor. After what seemed like an eternity, the familiar whirring of the disk started, and my PC was alive. I tried doing a bunch of things like changing directories, using 1-2-3, etc, and it all worked. The next step was to run some random timing tests with the new chip. Since I had run them just before replacing the chip, I was interested in what the timing differences would be. Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find that every program that I tried ran between 5% and 25% faster with the NEC chip, than with the Intel chip. I think that programs could be optimized to generate even better results, but since I don't have the spec sheet for the chip yet, that will have to wait. I don't know why NEC isn't trying to beat up the market with this chip (actually, I do know - Intel is taking them to court in April), but my advice is that if you want to upgrade your PC (Rainbows could probably use the V30), for only $20.95, call JDR Microdevices at (800) 538-5000, and order the chip. It was easily the cheapest upgrade to my PC yet, and produced a lot more benefit than some of the other upgrades. Bob Hartman Sysop Fido 101/101 The UN*X Gateway and Home of Rover ------------------------------------------------------------ FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:02 Page 8 On our way to a WorldFidoNet ============================ From : Henk Wevers Fido 101/3101 To : All involved Fido has crossed the borders of the USA now, and international contacts are possible. This adds a special flavour to Fido and no doubt will increase it importance as a way to exchange ideas and thoughts about all kind of things, including computers. The FidoNet organisation as it is today is well suited for one (big) country, but has several drawbacks from the international point of view. As Fido is on its feet here in europe and is growing fast, the situation will become uncontrollable within a few month if fido isn't changed again. This documents purpose is to start a discussion on how to change Fido to make it fit for international use without loosing the somewhat informal way it is organised. Hopefully the way to go will emerge from the discussion and Tom Jennings will change Fido again, no doubt he will become famous in the rest of the world also. As I will point out hereafter, the changes needed are not that much. First of all, as fido is used by all kinds of persons, the dog must be teached to speak different languages. Not everybody in the wotld speaks english, especially kids do have problems with the language. Clearly we can patch Fido, all the messages are grouped together in memory, but that is a very hard way to do it and must be done again for a new version. Also english is the most compact language I have seen, most european languages use more letters to say the same. So the first thing we are asking Tom Jennings is to include some kind of ascii textfile, that at initialisation time (if present) will overlay the english messages. This must include the Y/N characters and the currency sign. We can also write a little program to change the privilege files so menu's can be changed. (The small menu for replying a message and the one after you have typed in a message must also be put into a file). Now for the netorganisation. ============================ FidoNet is a somewhat loose organisation and I think we must maintain that in our international contacts. The best way to go is that if two countries want to exchage fidomail, 2 fidonodes, one in each country team up. Both will act as a host for the country and forward the received mail in that country. There is money involved here, because forwarding mail in a country is not cheap. Both sysops are going to know each other very well, and accounting can be organised. FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:05 Page 9 (Fido has to change a little for that as I will show lateron). To make things more flexible, lets also allow more than one of this kind of teams for a countrypair. When Fido grows, there is no point in having all nodes in the world on line. The file will be too big anyway so here it is: we must have country codes in the nodeidentification code. (Listgen has gone this way already) A nodelist for every country a certain fido will allow his users to exchange mail with can be put on line then. I suggest it will look like this from the user point of view: ------------------------------------------------------- Mail Command: E This will be message #xx From: me on Fido 31/101/3101 Active COUNTRY: 1 , active NET: 101 ?=Help, !=List COUNTRIES /=List NETs, #=Lists NODES Pick COUNTRY, NET and/or NODE:! Countries available to mail to from this node: 1 - USA, CANADA 31 - HOLLAND 44 - UNITED KINGDOM 46 - SWEDEN Pick a COUNTRY: 31 Getting the nodebook for that country, wait .... Active COUNTRY: 31, active NET: 1 ?=Help, !=List COUNTRIES /=List NETs, #=Lists NODES Pick COUNTRY, NET and/or NODE: ---------------------------------------------------------- Well I think the meaning is clear to you, xx/xx chooses net/node in the active country. For mailing in the same country almost nothing is changed. In this way we can have Nodelists for a country made up by a countrycoordinator and make them available on Fido of the international coordinator (fido 51 ?). Countrycoordi- nators can then (after a little editing) make them available for their local fido's. A local Fido has complete control over what countries he will allow his users to mail to by putting the nodelists (1.nds, 31.nds etc ?) from the selec- ted countries on line. This allows us also to put in a routing for that country in the countrynodelist. So we come to the fourth change required to make Fido an suitable for international exchange. A few new keywords in the nodelist. FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:06 Page 10 1: COUNTRY xx @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ defines the country and tyhe name of this country. 2: CHOST net/node Mail to nodes listed below this host must be send to CHOST instead. Thats all, this scheme allows for nodes in a country that must be mailed directly, not through a CHOST, and multiple CHOSTS. Lets have a look how this will look like for a hypothetical big country: ------------------------------------------------- COUNTRY 224 WONDERLAND AREA 1 ................... (list of nodes) AREA 2 .............. (list of nodes) HOST 3 .......... (list of nodes) CHOST 4/22 AREA 4 (list of nodes) HOST 5 (list of nodes) CHOST 8/22 etc -------------------------------------------------- The routing is obvious, either direct, or via CHOST and/or HOST. The nodelist for a country lists the CHOSTs in that very same country of course. The CHOST itself has only to edit the nodelist, by replacing his own CHOST entry with that of his teammate. That leaves us to the last change we need to make it all work, cost accounting and a change in the ACCEPT FROM function. The costaccounting between hosts and/or CHOSTS and the local nodes must be much better, otherwise the task of a (C)HOST may become to timeconsuming for a hobbyist. Luckely, the changes needed are not dramatical... First the forwarding node must enter his country/net/node number into each messageheader of the message forwarded. Now, if the receiving host sends out some of the message received, fido knows the last node the message came from and who to charge. An antry in the maillog should be made like: FORWARDED FOR xx/xx/xx message to xx/xx/xx $ xx.xx (The amount of money comes from the current nodelist !) Because Tom has implemented a kill after send function, this is not a big change I guess. Almost there, The ACCEPT FROM function as I understand looks FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:08 Page 11 at the originating node of the message and marks it orphan if that node is not in the accept-from list. Now we have the cost accounting done, it should be changed so, that accept from means : accept messages from this country/net/node don't care where the message came originally from. This way total control is possible. Thats it folks, just give you a last example of how this all may work out from the cost accounting way. I may have seen things wrong, or left something out. Thats where you come in. Lets discuss it. And Tom, will you please change Fido again ??. I think we have about a couple of month before all this is really needed. Until then, we are in net 101 here in europe ! See you ... (or should it be 'Fido you ...'). Henk ------------------------------------------------------------ a last example of routing and cost accounting ----------------------------------------------------------- Local --> Host --> CHOST --> CHOST --> Host ---> Local 1 2 3 4 5 6 Accounting can be done from the maillog (perhaps a dream analysingprogram like sysrept can be made 'mailrept') The only difficulty is in how 1 could possible know the the costs of a message to 6. Thats easy enough, CHOST 3 takes the country nodelist from CHOST 4 and adds its costs for routing link 3->4. Host 2 takes this nodelist from CHOST 3 and adds its cost for link 2->3 to the nodelist. Local 1 does the same and puts yhe list on line. Presto ! ----------------------------------------------------------- FIDONEWS -- 02 Sep 85 00:02:10 Page 12 ============================================================ NOTICES ============================================================ New version of ARC The latest version of ARC is version 4.30. The main differences between this version and earlier versions are: 1) You can now use path names when adding files to an archive. 2) Adding files to an archive is approximately 30% faster in most cases. ------------------------------------------------------------ The Interrupt Stack 27 Nov 1985 Halley's Comet passes closest to Earth before perihelion. 24 Jan 1986 Voyager 2 passes Uranus. 9 Feb 1986 Halley's Comet reaches perihelion. 11 Apr 1986 Halley's Comet reaches perigee. 19 May 1986 Steve Lemke's next birthday. 24 Aug 1989 Voyager 2 passes Neptune. If you have something which you would like to see on this calendar, please send a message to Fido 107/7.