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F I D O N E W S -- Vol.10 No.20 (17-May-1993) +----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | A newsletter of the | | | FidoNet BBS community | Published by: | | _ | | | / \ | "FidoNews" BBS | | /|oo \ | +1-519-570-4176 1:1/23 | | (_| /_) | | | _`@/_ \ _ | Editors: | | | | \ \\ | Sylvia Maxwell 1:221/194 | | | (*) | \ )) | Donald Tees 1:221/192 | | |__U__| / \// | Tim Pozar 1:125/555 | | _//|| _\ / | | | (_/(_|(____/ | | | (jm) | Newspapers should have no friends. | | | -- JOSEPH PULITZER | +----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | Submission address: editors 1:1/23 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Internet addresses: | | | | Sylvia -- max@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca | | Donald -- donald@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca | | Tim -- pozar@kumr.lns.com | | Both Don & Sylvia (submission address) | | editor@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | For information, copyrights, article submissions, | | obtaining copies and other boring but important details, | | please refer to the end of this file. | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ ======================================================================== Table of Contents ======================================================================== 1. Editorial..................................................... 2 2. Articles...................................................... 2 The Cynic's Sandbox, v2 1/2................................. 2 Thoughts from the Fido Express.............................. 3 Bananas in wonderland....................................... 6 LasVegas Net................................................ 7 VoteFix v0.04b.............................................. 10 Deleted and ignored and annoyed............................. 10 NUDE_NET is now available!.................................. 12 Dark Fibre, Dumb Network.................................... 13 LuxCon/EuroCon '93 - UPDATE................................. 22 3. Fidonews Information.......................................... 28 FidoNews 10-20 Page: 2 17 May 1993 ======================================================================== Editorial ======================================================================== EDITORIAL ;Tom Jennings forwarded us a rather ;fascinating article this week. if Emma had a BBS ;Since it is quite long and in two thousand five ;very technical, we decided to a globular plant ;run it in two parts; half this would weave intricate ;week and half next. Mr. Gilder, delicate roots ;the author, makes an excellent dark fibrous tenderlings ;case that the switched telephone glowing everywhere ;network is obsolete. In it's casting broadly ;place, he envisions a dumb fibre nourishing ;network where sheer capacity makes our global planet ;up for switching capability. Emma says, ; NO don't cut or sell, ;The result, from a technical florists' shops ;standpoint, would resemble radio are not gardens ;or cable TV more than our current justly watch beauty ;telephone system. sprout longwise ; ;The result, for the BBS community emma's slogan: ;would be revolutionary. Picture, play in leaves ;among other things, all echos whole world an ;being real time world-wide arboreal brain ;chats; the global village in reality. ======================================================================== Articles ======================================================================== The Cynic's Sandbox, v2 1/2 R. Cynic It's blasphemy day here in the 'box, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to talk about something near and dear to my hearts.. God. GodNET, in fact, the latest TRUE CHRISTIAN NETWORK, dedicated to free expression. Anti-religious sorts should express themselves freely elsewhere. Thank you, and God Bless. What makes US different? WE'RE the ONLY TRUE Christians. All those nasty TV Preachers, all those annoying sidewalk brochure- handers, and the fun-lovin' guys handing out bibles across from schools? THEY aren't TRUE Christians. WE are. US. JUST US. Hey! Quit looking over there! US! Right here! Sigh. For feeds, consult your pineal gland. Fnord. And, hey, what about that Pablo - Can he flame or what? Heck, he even gets annoyed about the lack of FREE BEER at Fight-O-Con. I got just ONE thing to say to him - Forget the formal schtuff and hit the Bit Bucket suite. Last two times, they had a BATHTUB full of ice and cans o' beer. Everyone who's anything FidoNews 10-20 Page: 3 17 May 1993 in Fight-O-Net was there, and even hopeless newbies were welcome. The Cynic's movie pick of the month is My Neighbor Totoro, the animated film that opened last week in some few cities. Watch for it to come to a local theatre and check it out. Sorry, Pablo, no free beer there. Next week - More Flames from Fight-O-Net! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thoughts from the Fido Express by Jerry Schwartz 1:142/928 The blurred view from the fast train... Due to a momentary lull in echomail and some time spent off-work due to illness, I just blasted through about three months' worth of FidoNews. I usually try to keep current, but things have been hectic around here: I moderate a very large echo, I'm an NC, and due to an inability to get the phone company to fix a problem in their trunk network I've been forced to pick up my daily 8-12mb of archived mail on floppies. Tomorrow I'll be 1,000 messages behind again... Blasting through a big (if insubstantial) stack of FidoNews gives one a kaleidoscopic view of network doings, and inspired me to generate a series of observations on all and sundry: ---- Back a while ago, I worked on the ill-fated WorldPol project. When we were done, the only opinion that approached unanimity was that it was too long. Well, I haven't measured but I strongly believe that each of the recent proposals was longer; for certain, they had less white space. I've done my tilting at windmills and have retired from the lists; wake me up when the abridged version comes out. ---- Tyler Wunder was bemused by the idea that a televangelist would have a 900 number for those opposed to his position. If Tyler wishes to send me $1.95, I'll explain this to him; otherwise, he can send me $1.95 so I WON'T explain it to him. ---- CallerID is the rage of the age (again). I come down on the side of the angels, of course: in this case, the CallerID angels. Telling me I can't use it is like telling me I can't peek out my window to see who is knocking on my door. If I ask "Who is it?" and you say "None of your business" then I don't open up; furthermore, if you don't go away I call the cops. It's not like I called YOU to ask you what your phone number was. ---- The subject of reading e-mail touched a nerve. As an NC (and a hub before that), I forward a lot of e-mail in all directions. Do I read it? Not really. Do I skim it? YOU BET! FidoNews 10-20 Page: 4 17 May 1993 Does it pose an ethical quandary? Sometimes: ..... As a willing forwarder of outbound LPM, there are technical reasons for keeping an eye on things. I run MsgTrack to bounce routed echomail, but I still look to see who is doing it and who they think it's going to. This enables me to give technical advice as necessary. ..... I often wind up paying the LD tab for the next hop, and the guy upstream runs MsgTrack as well. If I don't fix it, I pay the tab for him to get it and bounce it right back to me. ..... And then there's the problem of circular routings. I don't bounce LPM, of course, I just send it on. If the node I send it to thinks it should route it through me, I come down in the morning to find out the two systems have been playing ping-pong all night. The last time I went away for the weekend I came back to over 1,000 copies of the same message in my netmail area. ..... Given that I do glance at the messages for technical reasons, what happens if my eye is caught by something in the body of the text? Like most of the people who responded to the postmaster survey (except that I am even less than 4% female), I try to pretend I never saw it. This can be easy or hard, depending upon what attracted my attention in the first place. ......... Messages in foreign languages are easy to ignore, since I can't read very many of those anyways. ......... Oddly enough, the messages that start "People around here would just DIE if they knew..." or "Thank God my husband doesn't know how to read my netmail..." are easier to ignore than you'd think; after all, I don't know most of these people so there's nobody to appreciate the dirt. (Thank God my wife doesn't know how to read MY netmail ;<) ......... So far, I've never seen anything that obviously involved criminal activity, so I've never had to cross that bridge. ......... That leaves the third major category, the one which is harder to ignore: the plea for assistance, often of a technical nature. Sometimes I know the answer when the two correspondents do not; do I but in with a solution, or bite my tongue until the blood runs down my chin? Out of respect for the privacy of the people involved, and so I don't get a reputation as an eavesdropper, I keep quiet. This is tough, but I don't see any other way. (All right, I cheat a little if it's somebody I know well.) Weird, isn't it: the situation which is generally the least personal poses the biggest temptation and hence the biggest quandary. ---- Young sysops? I nodelisted a 13-year-old who's been programming for 7 years. The only problem he poses is that his FidoNews 10-20 Page: 5 17 May 1993 system gets unreliable during school vacations. It never occurred to me that I should "test" him in any way beyond what I would do for any other node; I was rather startled when it was suggested that I should. Compared to the fully-adult sysops who can't seem to remember their session passwords, I think he stacks up pretty well. ---- Right-justification through blank insertion: yucko. I'm glad the editors (be they mail or e-mail) dropped it from the editorials, notwithstanding the political implications. ---- Sending money to somebody's personal account for the conference in Luxembourg: I know enough about international banking to believe that it is a pain to set up a special account; and processing checks on a dozen currencies would likely cost so much extra that it increase the price enormously. On the other hand, the hotel probably takes Visa in its various international incarnations. In my family, we always send two people to pick up the pizza; one to carry the pizza, and the other to count the change. ---- The quote from Ghandi: nobody has a lock on barbarism. If Kashmir were magically transported to the middle of Bosnia, I doubt that the fighting would die down. Western Civilization, or civilization of any kind, is a lot more like dieting than like being thin: it's a matter of cutting back to only HALF a pound of flesh. I vote for randomly selected bits of inspirational material, the more cryptic the better. "Every cliff leads in two directions: up, and down." ---- Gays in the military? This wasn't covered in FidoNews, but I figured it needed to be dragged in here on general principles. Heck, what makes anybody think that having HETEROsexuals in the military is a good idea? We need armies, and we need good, professional ones; that's a sad fact of life. And I guess if you want people to be able to kill other people on orders, you have to instill a strong sense of "them versus us." But as a short, fat, Jewish guy with glasses who uses too many semicolons, I'm never quite sure which side of the line I'll wind up on. If by some miracle we could replace the military with an enormous corps de ballet, I think we'd be better off; and homosexuals seem to mix in there pretty well despite the close quarters, shared lockers, long trips together, etc. So, what's my point? Hey, this is FidoNews! The point is to see my own words circle the globe, and provoke a firestorm of thoughtful (or at least outrageous) argument. It was either this, or my own draft of a new Policy document which would include the best features of all previous proposals, the Confessions of St. Augustine, the FODOR guide to Yugoslavia, and the third verse of "Louie, Louie." Can you spell "Grundlichkeit"? FidoNews 10-20 Page: 6 17 May 1993 Bananas in wonderland by JoHo von Loco, 2:270/17@fidonet La la la laa laa la laaa LLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAA <sigh>.. look, real slow this time. Go east, when you hit the coast, get out of your raft, hop on a train, tell them you want to go to Luxembourg (probably via Belgium).. when you hit Luxembourg, go up the stairs, exchange your yen, pesetas, or whatever it is you're carrying and hop on the bus to Remich (they leave once every hour or so until 2000.. I mean 8:00 PM). When you see the network television vans, Microsoft hot-air simulated CD-ROM mimicking window-based Jolt Cola containers, IBM's big-foot trucks, and a mountain of used mouse pads, you've arrived. Ask the guys in the CNN van where the party is, or wait until you hear Flaschke's heavy metal roar for more beer or Radar's pinging.. Or better yet, stay wherever the blasphemy you are and let us have our EuroCon in this pathetic little part of the world with our pathetic travel directions, currency exchange information, no- program, no-sponsors, no-participants, twelve-sandwich-eating-beer- drinking-socializing people.. Get your superior organizing skills together and call the people you want to see and hear and have your own awesome get-together-event. There seems to be sufficient interest in this year's EuroCon to fill the Hotel, which is all we could hope for, and a few generous sponsors seems to be willing to donate prices even you might find worthy (including a USR HST/DS 16.8K modem, some V.Fast upgrades, both from US Robotics France, as well as free licence keys/software packages for FidoNet software). If your problems with EuroCon '93 have their roots with me, I'm inviting you to an all-out spectator event called BRUCE which we have recently started (in fact, just this last New Years'). We'll charge a few bucks per ticket that we'll donate to some charity and the loser pays the beer tab. Fair enough? In case you run out of aggression or hot-air, go buy yourself a copy of Use Your Illusion I, crank the volume and put on track number nine.. really, it's for you. FidoNews 10-20 Page: 7 17 May 1993 LasVegas Net by Nick Hard 05/13/93 New FTN NetWork! LasVegas Net. Something NEW has hit the phone lines of the country. LasVegas Network. After my annoucment over 2 years ago, of LV_GAMBLER here in FidoNews, I have found it nessacery to branch this populer area on the FidoNet Back- Bone to its own network. The diverse topics needed more attention, and need to be broken down into seperate areas, with the only way doing so was either to announce several other areas into FidoNet, or begin its own Network. I opted for the network. Response has been good, with Las Vegas holding its own as the number 1 city in America in growth, with its swing towards family style entertainment. LasVegas Net was first announced April 30, 1993, but has attained the following sites in its short exsistence. If you would like to become a part of this exciting information packed network, contact one of the systems below! LASVEGAS Nodelist for Friday, May 21, 1993 -- Day number 141 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ System Name Baud/Flag Telephone Number Location ======================= ========= ================== ========== # Las Vegas GAMING COMMIS V32B/V42B 1702-565-5271..... Las Vegas ~ RealPix................ 9600/V42B 1702-566-6840..... Henderson ~ Maine-Frame S-H-&-B.... 9600/HST 1702-564-9735..... Henderson ~ Real Pro BBS........... V32B/None 1702-453-6442..... Las Vegas ~ The Root Cellar BBS.... V32B/HST 1702-253-1904..... Las Vegas Big Joe's BBS.......... V32 /V42 1702-459-3824..... Las Vegas @ The AmyAdviser BOXMAN.. V32B/V42B 1602-582-5174..... Phoenix ~ Strike Eagle II........ V32B/V42B 1602-486-1737..... Glendale Investor$ Edge PITBOSS. V32B/V42B 1713-438-1219..... Houston ~ Club Elite............. 2400/None 1713-558-6217..... Houston ~ The Paper Man.......... 2400/None 1713-869-5310..... Houston @ Smoke Signals BOXMAN... V32B/V42B 1512-576-3990..... Victoria @ Betcha $port$ BOXMAN... 9600/None 1214-254-3115..... Irving Searchlight City PITBOS 9600/None 1319-391-0658..... Davenport Ia @ Files R Us BOXMAN...... V32B/V42B 1319-377-3824..... Cedar Rapids IA The iCE Department PITB V32B/V42B 1517-423-3378..... Adrian MI Western MO PITBOSS..... V32 /HST 1816-356-0901..... Raytown MO The B-Line PITBOSS..... V32B/HST 1805-634-0701..... Bakersfield CA The Daze Inn PITBOSS... V32B/V42B 1708-437-8387..... Mount Prospect FidoNews 10-20 Page: 8 17 May 1993 The Wizard of OZ PITBOS V32B/V42B 1414-375-2088..... Grafton WI NORTHERN ALBERTA MAPLE V32B/V42B 1403-474-0147..... EDMONTON ALBER ~ SATELLITE RBBS-MPL..... 9600/HST 1403-474-5262..... EDMONTON ALBERTA ~ Deafy's First Post Offi 9600/V42B 1403-963-0918..... Stony Plain Albe ~ The Trading Post....... 9600/HST 1403-789-4076..... Thorsby Alberta Zones ............ 001 Nodes ........... 0026 Regions .......... 009 Pvt .............. 000 Hosts ............ 013 Down .............. 00 Hubs ............. 009 Hold .............. 00 Mail Only ........ 000 Crash ............ 048 [#]Zone [*]Region [@]Host [&]Hub [$]Pvt [-]MO [~]CM [!]Down [%]Hold FREQ LASVEGAS from 1:209/777@fidonet.org or Contact any of the above Exclusive Areas From LasVegas Net LV_GAMBLER2 rec.gambler.com Gated via my UUCP site has demanded so much attention, this area has LV_GAMBLER from FidoNet, rec.gambler.com from my uucp site, and intervention from my new Zone 777: users. This is a general discussion area, and one of the most active areas to be found in LasVegas Net. LV_HORSE_RACING The Sport Of Kings! Horse racing has become a favorite of computer users. Much time is taken by many, entering data and trying diff formulas to try and beat one of the hottest National Pastimes in America today. LV_SPORTS_BETTING Sports wagering, and Sports lines are on all Americans minds. Even though, its only in Las Vegas are you allowed to bet on sporting events, the entire country always wants to know who the favorite is! LV_SWEEPSTAKES Lotteries and Sweepstakes are popular all over the country. Catch the numbers from Cal, Tex, AZ and other states that will become involved and share their databases with us! LV_BINGO If you can spell it, you can play it! BINGO isn't just for old ladies any more! With new BINGO casinos opening up, major cash prizes are being offered. LV_KENO KENO a game of Chance? Many say NO! Follow the stradegy of this fast lottery game. If you like to bet numbers, then KENO is your game. LV_BLACKJACK Card counters meet here. They say this is the ONLY game that CAN BE BEATEN. Find out from a FidoNews 10-20 Page: 9 17 May 1993 few experts that I have aquired as Moderators! LV_ROULETTE Whats the best system? Does Double 0 matter? Can this game be beat? What are the systems the experts use? If you like to bet the little ball then you will want to pick our brains here. LV_SLOT_MACHINES Slots, Video Poker and even craps! If you can put a coin in it, then its going to be discussed here! Talk to a Slot Mechanic! A FloorMan! Professional Slot Players! LV_BACCARAT Only for the rich? Not any longer! With $5 tables opening up like BJ tables, maybe you can make a money like the Big Boys do! LV_CASINOS Where to go, and whats going on! Misc info on all the casinos discussed here. Whats new, and whats old. Who has the best buffet and the worse. Prices, shows, cocktail waitresses, all you need to do is ask! LV_CRAPS Come or Dont Come? Whats the differance? Think its too hard to learn to play. I DONT think so! This is my area of expertise, and I love the game. Sure, you can loose, but you can WIN too if you use your head! LV_POKER_LIVE Live Poker, and the rooms they play in. Can you make a living from playing cards? Many do! LV_LOCALS Locals meet here for local gossip. Wonder if Stupek has tried to buy another election? Just how did Little Stevie Wynn loose his little finger? Is Rich Little still sleeping with Melinda the first lady of magic? LV_REAL_ESTATE RealPix can help you find a house! The FIRST and ONLY BBS/echo that features HI-QUALITY FULL COLOR listings of properties! ALL picture files are file requestable! Join the FIRST national Multiple Listing service that features FULL COLOR pictures. Request the latest info on our exclusive RealTour(tm) Home Touring disks. Amiga and IBM versions available. We hope that other areas will be added in the future as needed, but as we stand now, we tried to cover every aspect of the LasVegas LifeStyle! Can't come to Vega$ as much as you would like? Then Join LASVEGAS Network, a Fido Technology Network (ftn) today, and visit as often as you wish. More info desired? Need to speak to the Gaming Conmish? Contact me FidoNews 10-20 Page: 10 17 May 1993 personally at any of the below addresses- * * * 777:777/0@lasvegas.ftn * * * 1:209/777@Fidonet.org - 86:8685/0@toadnet.org - 90:300/1016@nest.ftn * * * 51:2/4.0@Atarinet.ftn - hard@toadnet.org - n.hard@genie.geis.com * * * Join LasVegas Network FREQ 'LasVegas' ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Area Netmail, Msg#49, May-13-93 07:06:10 From: Steve Mulligan (1:163/307.30) To: Donald Tees (1:221/192) VoteFix v0.04b Well, I've got VoteFix v0.004b finished. It's a lot better than v0.03b because it supports valid voters lists, valid candidates lists and a slew of other new things. VoteFix is a program that allows you to vote through Net/Echo mail. The 'Election Coordinator' is the person who runs VoteFix on their machine. Right now, they can only run one election at a time but that will be changed in v0.05b People send NetMail or EchoMail to VoteFix. The subject line is a user chosen password so when reports are posted you remain confidential. In the message, you include your election tag that you want to vote on and your actual vote. When all is said and done, VoteFix will tally results and post them to the message base you specify. If this sounds just like what you need, then look around on some SDS type BBS's because it's been hatched into SDS as VFX004WB.LZH. Or, you can FREQ it from 1:163/307 @ 9600 baud as VFX004WB.LZH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Deleted and ignored and annoyed From: Doug Mclean (1:255/9) To: Editors (1:1/23) Area Netmail, Msg#22, May-11-93 21:15:00 CC: FidoNews (1:1/23) Derek Balling (formerly 1:272/69) Janis Kracht (1:272/0) I was shocked when I read the atricle "Deleted and ignored and annoyed" by Derek Balling in FidoNews 1019. Having read the article, I cannot believe that his NC could act in a manner that is so dictatorial and counterproductive to the smooth operation of FidoNet. FidoNews 10-20 Page: 11 17 May 1993 First, Derek was found to be running a non-legal version of FrontDoor. While I do not condone piracy in any form, this case appears to have been an honest mistake. The software was downloaded from another BBS, and, according the article, it was downloaded in good faith. Derek seems to have had no intention of pirating software, and immediately switched to legal software when informed of the error by the authors. The point is, did Derek's NC further investigate the problem and try to find out the whole story? No, according to Derek, the NC immediately issued some threats without bothering to get Derek's side of the story. Everyone makes an occasional mistake, and honest mistakes shouldn't be summarily threatened or punished. Second was the discussion of cost recovery. How can the discussion of alternatives for cost recovery be considered "excessively annoying"? What are sysops supposed to discuss with other sysops in the echos if they can't discuss the things that affect their BBSs? Isn't that the purpose of sysop only echos? Or are sysops in Net 272 limited to "safe" topics like the weather? This sounds like it was another dictatorial move by Derek's NC. Finally, the nodediffs. What right does a NC have to tell a sysop how many nodediffs they can keep online? Isn't Derek providing a service to others by providing these older nodediffs rather than making other sysops (and points that keep nodelists) download a whole new nodelist every time the latest diff gets lost? What business is it of the NC's how far back Derek's nodediffs go? Are sysops in net 272 also limited to only the latest FidoNews? Does the net 272 NC dictate what other freely distributable files net 272 sysops may and may not have on their BBSs? Finally, when Derek complained about this new policy, the node number was revoked without warning. Don't sysops in 1:272/* have any rights at all to their opinions? Is having an opinion in net 272 now considered "excessively annoying"? I'm not an expert on Fido policy, but I don't remember ever reading anything anywhere that gives an NC the right to revoke a node number without warning, especially when the sysop in question doesn't appear to have violated Fido policy. What good are rules and policies if they don't protect those that they were designed to protect? The world has too many dictators as it is, do we need them in FidoNet too? I hope that Derek's situation is unique. One occasionally hears horror stories about what has happened to other sysop's in their battles with the powers that be, but since the net I am in (1:255) always runs smoothly, such stories always come as a shock and are somewhat hard to believe. I guess I am lucky to live in a net where the NC wants to work WITH the sysops to improve everyones BBS and provide better service for the users on all BBSs. If Janis Kracht isn't willing to do this, then perhaps 1:272 needs a new NC. I too look forward to hearing Janis Kracht's reply to Derek's letter. There are two sides to every story, and I would be interested in hearing the other side. FidoNews 10-20 Page: 12 17 May 1993 NUDE_NET is now available! submitted by Greg Jansen Fido 1:123/44 written by John Kanash Greetings ALL, I must Tell you about the next low-key, completely Truthful and beleivable, Official NUDE NET 2/1000ths of a Century Sunfest Get together. Since some people did not make it for our incredible get together on May 1st 1993 A.D. Where we all partied, and had fun and tightlipped egomaniac homosexuals were not to be found, who told us what to laugh at, what to think, what to say, and what to read, and how to play. In their absence, we managed to get together and have a really good time, we also managed to solve world peace, come up with workable solutions to national health care, sexual and racial discrimination, prison overcrowding, the Bosnian "Ethnic" cleansing, Bob Johnstones annoying mouth odor, what to do with all the old disco clothes from the 70's, the abortion issue, and a unilateral tax code change which not only simplifys the process, but offers signigifigant tax breaks to corporations and individuals of all income levels. We managed to come up with a plan to enact all of those solutions by the year 1995. And drink a lot of Tequila and party down all night long. When we awoke, it seems all of us, had forgotten what we said, it seems out of the millions who attended the Official NUDE_NET 1/1000th of a Century Gala Get together, no one had bothered to bring pen and paper, and record our monumental plans. What a pity, even Al Gore could not remember, but after we found him naked, laying in a puddle of Chocalate Jell-o Pudding with Sinead O'Connor, we knew better than to ask him what he thought. So to find out more about the NUDE_NET's next get together, call the Dragons Lair BBS (901) 854-6870, a member of the amazingly pervasive and enigmatic FOCALNET. This time we plan on renting the luxury liner SS Norway, having amongst the many entertainers present Ben Vereen, 2 live Crew, Maddona, Norman Fell, Oingo Boingo, The Dead Kennedys, Ted Kennedy, Alice Cooper, AC/DC, Paula Abdul, Queen with even newer front man Bob, the head from those ridiculous Krystal Commercials, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Very Cool Bell Peppers (a local band), U2 with bono giving some artsy speech on some free the prisoners of some country or some non-sense, Aerosmith (with out Steve Tyler getting naked), Whitney Houston, Moterhead, the Beatles will make a surprise appearence, with the guy who played Jack the Ripper in the movie about time travel and H.G. Wells as John Lennon, he can't sing, but he sure looks like John. Micheal Jackson will be playing a ukelele made of his rat Bens intestines, and Tim Curry will get together the old RHPS cast and do a few numbers from the movie. We will be having a delicicous amount of food drop shipped into the FidoNews 10-20 Page: 13 17 May 1993 Norway including bald eagle eggs, elephant ears (fried), croccodile tail, monkey brains, spotted owl eyes, left-overs from the Barbara Streisand cookout (sure its tough and stringy, what did you expect), and we will have a whole buffet of delicous and near extinct animals. Fur Coats and lizard skin boots will be given away as well as feathered ladys hats. For additional entertainment, the comedians Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, George Carlin, BobCat Goldthwait, and Soupy Sales will all do shows. (soupy may have a prior engagement, but everyone else is free). For fun we will also have booths, were for a buck you can cram Oatmeal down Wilford Brimleys throat or other bodily orifice and tell him its "The right thing to do". You will also be able to spend a buck and shove a handful of Joan Rivers cheap costume jewelry she hawks on the Home Shopping Club down her throat. We will also have the "Do Claudia Shiffer for a buck" booth. The money will be donated to "Lou's Kids" a subdivision of "Jerrys Kids" where the money is actually donated to Iraqi War efforts. There will be hundreds of beautiful, naked, virgin, nymphomaniac, wealthy, mostly blonde and big chested women on board who will do whatever you wish, as well as lots of young boys for people who like that sort of thing. This will cost you nothing, merely check out the NUDE_NET, and make reservations, in fact the first 10,000 people to make reservations get 20,000 dollars in cash and Cindy Crawford. The cruise will begin on May 10th and end on May 11th 1993 A.D, and the entire cast of the Love Boat will be our offical hosts, as we sail to a recreation of "Fantasy Island", we will spare no expense in fulfilling each persons fantasy, and the warden has even agreed to allow Jerve' Villachez time off from prison to come and help out at the NUDE_NET Gala 2/1000th sunfest cruise. Be there or be square. Homosexual, Oppresive, Know it alls are not welcome. Swinging Dick Sodomizer-general NUDE-NET Call Dragons Lair for more info on NUDE_NET (901) 854-6870 Fidonet Address 1:123/5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dark Fibre, Dumb Network George Gilder / MCI ID: 409-1174 The following article, INTO THE FIBERSPHERE, was first published in slightly different and shorter form in Forbes ASAP, December 7, 1993. It is a portion of my book, Telecosm, which will be published next year by Simon & Schuster, as a sequel to Microcosm, published in 1989 and Life After Television published by Norton in 1992. Subsequent chapters of Telecosm will be serialized in Forbes ASAP beginning with the March issue containing a theory of wireless communications. FidoNews 10-20 Page: 14 17 May 1993 PLEASE POST FIBERSPHERE TO ANY USENET NEWSGROUPS THAT MAY BE DEEMED SUITABLE. THE COMING OF THE FIBERSPHERE In a world of dumb terminals and telephones, networks had to be smart. But in a world of smart terminals, networks have to be dumb. BY GEORGE GILDER Philip Hope, divisional vice president for engineering systems of EDS, has an IQ problem. His chief client and owner, General Motors, wants to interconnect thousands of 3-D graphics and computer aided engineering (CAE) workstations with mainframes and supercomputers at Headquarters, with automated assembly equipment at factories in Lordstown, Indiana, and Detroit, with other powerful processors at their technical center in Warren, Michigan, with their Opel plant in Ruesselheim, Germany, and with their design center outside San Diego. On behalf of another client, Hope wants to link multimedia stations for remote diagnostics, X-ray analysis, and pharmaceutical modeling in hospitals and universities across the country. Any function involving 3-D graphics, CAE, supercomputer visualization, lossless diagnostic imaging, and advanced medical simulations demands large bandwidth or communications power. Graphics workstations often operate screens with a million picture elements (pixels), and use progressive scanning at 60 frames or images a second. Each pixel may entail 24 bits of color. That adds up fast to billions of bits (gigabits) a second. And that's for last year's technology in a computer industry that is doubling its powers and cost effectiveness every year. What Hope needs is bandwidth and connections. The leading bandwidth and connections people have always been the telephone companies. But when Hope goes to the telephone companies, they want to tell him about intelligence: their Advanced Intelligent Network which will be coming on line over the next decade or so and will solve all his problems. For now, they have what they call DS-3 services available in many areas, operating T-3 lines at 45 megabits (million bits) a second. These facilities are ample for most computer uses and working together with several different Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), Hope should be able to acquire these services in time for a General Motors takeover by Toyota. Hope has been through this before. In the early 1980s, he actually wanted D-3 services. Then he was interconnecting facilities in Southeast, Michigan, with plants in Indiana and Ohio. But Michigan Bell could not supply the lines in time. EDS had to build a network of microwave towers to bear the 45 megabit traffic. Later in the decade, the phone companies have even offered him higher capacity FidoNews 10-20 Page: 15 17 May 1993 fiber optic lines, with the requirement that the optical bits be slowed down and run periodically through an electronic interface so the telco could count the number of equivalent channels being used. What Hope and others in the systems integration business need is not intelligent networks tomorrow but dumb bandwidth that they can deliver to their customers flexibly, cheaply, and now. To prepare for future demand, they want the network to use fiber optics. It so happens that America's telephone companies have some two million miles of mostly unused fiber lines in the ground today, kept as redundant capacity for future needs. Hope would like to be able to tap into this dark fiber for his own customers. As a leader in the rapidly expanding field of computer services, EDS epitomizes the needs of an information economy. With a backlog of 22 billion dollars in already contracted business, EDS is currently a seven billion dollar company growing revenues at an annual rate of 15 percent, some three times as fast as the phone companies. EDS will add a billion dollars or so in new sales in 1992 alone. If the company is to continue to supply leading edge services to its customers, it must command leading edge communications. To EDS, that means dumb and dark networks. THE DARK FIBER CASE That need has driven EDS into an active role as an ex parte pleader in Federal Case 911416, currently bogging down in the District of Columbia Federal Court of Appeals as the so-called dark fiber case. On the surface, the case, known as Southwestern Bell et al versus the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Justice Department, pits four Regional Bell telephone companies against the FCC. But the legal maneuvers actually reflect a rising conflict between the Bells and several large corporate clients over the future of communications. Beyond all the legal posturing, the question at issue is whether fiber networks should be dumb and dark, and cheap, the way EDS and other customers like them. Or whether they should be bright and smart, and strategically priced, the way the telephone companies want them. On the side of intelligence and light are the phone companies; Southwestern Bell, U.S. West, Bell South, and Bell Atlantic. The forces of darkness include key officials at the FCC and such companies as Shell Oil, the information services arm of McDonald Douglas, long distance network provider Wiltel, as well as EDS. For most of the four year course of the struggle, it has passed unnoticed by the media. In summary, the issue may not seem portentous. The large corporate customers want dark fiber; the FCC mandates that it be supplied; the Bells want out of the business. But for all their obscurity, the proceedings raise what for the next twenty years will be the central issue in communications law and technology. The issue, if not the possible trial itself, will shape the future of both the computer and telephone industries during a FidoNews 10-20 Page: 16 17 May 1993 period when they are merging to form the spearhead of a new information economy. Dark fiber is simply a glass fiber optic thread with nothing attached to it, (ie. no light being sent through it). In this unlit condition, it is available for use without the intermediation of phone company electronics or intelligent services. In the mid-1980s, the Bells leased some of their dark fiber lines to several large corporations on an individual case basis. These companies learned to love dark fiber. But when they tried to renew their leases with the Bells, the Bells clanged no! Why don't you leave the interconnections and protocols to us? Why don't you use our marvellous smart network with all the acronyms and intelligent services? Why don't you let us meter your use of the fiber and send you a convenient monthly bill for each packet of bits you send? EDS and the other firms rejected the offer; they preferred that dumb fiber to the intelligent network. When the Bells persisted in an effort to deny new leases, the companies went to the FCC to require the Bells, as regulated common carrier telephone companies, to continue supplying dark fiber. In the fall of 1990, the FCC ruled that the phone companies would have to offer dark fiber to all comers under the rules of common carriage. Rather than accept this new burden, the phone companies petitioned to withdraw from the business entirely under what is called a rule 214 application. Since the FCC has not acted on this petition, the Bells are preparing to go to court to force the issue. Their corporate customers are ready to litigate as well. It is safe to say that none of the participants fully comprehend the significance of their courthouse confrontation. To the Bells, after all is said and done, the key problem is probably the price. Under the existing tariff, they are required to offer this service to anyone who wants it for an average price of approximately $150 per strand of fiber per month. As an offering that competes with their T-3 45 megabit (millions of bits) a second lines and other forthcoming marvels, dark fiber threatens to gobble up their future as vendors of broadband communications to offices, even as cable TV preempts them as broadband providers to homes. Since the Bells' profits on data are growing some 10 times as fast as their profits on voice telephony, they see dark fiber as a menace to their most promising markets. The technological portents, however, are far more significant even than the legal and business issues. The coming triumph of dark fiber will mean not only the end of the telephone industry as we know it but also the end of the telephone industry as they plan it: a vast intelligent fabric of sophisticated information services. It also could mean a thoroughgoing restructuring of a computer industry increasingly dedicated to supplying smart networks. Indeed, for most of the world's communications companies, professors of communications theory, and designers of new computer networks, the triumph of dark FidoNews 10-20 Page: 17 17 May 1993 and dumb means back to the drawing board, if not back to the dark ages. But the new dark ages cannot be held back. Springing out the depths of IBM's huge Watson Laboratories is a powerful new invention: the all optical network, that will soon relegate all bright and smart executives to the Troglodyte file and make dumb and dark the winning rule in communications. THE WRINGER EFFECT From time to time, the structure of nations and economies goes through a technological wringer. A new invention radically reduces the price of a key factor of production and precipitates an industrial revolution. Before long, every competitive business in the economy must wring out the residue of the old costs and customs from all its products and practices. The steam engine, for example, drastically reduced the price of physical force. Power once wreaked at great expense from human and animal muscle pulsed cheaply and tirelessly from machines burning coal and oil. Throughout the world, dominance inexorably shifted to businesses and nations that reorganized themselves to exploit the suddenly cheap resource. Eventually every human industry and activity, from agriculture and sea transport to printing and war, had to centralize and capitalize itself to take advantage of the new technology. Putting the world through the technological wringer over the last three decades has been the integrated circuit, the IC. Invented by Robert Noyce of Intel and Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments in 1959, the IC put entire systems of tiny transistor switches, capacitors, resistors, diodes, and other once costly electronic devices on one tiny microchip. Made chiefly of silicon, aluminum, and oxygen, three of the most common substances on earth, the microchip eventually reduced the price of electronic circuitry by a factor of a million. As industry guru Andrew Rappaport has pointed out, electronic designers now treat transistors as virtually free. Indeed, on memory chips, they cost some 400 millionths of a cent. To waste time or battery power or radio frequencies may be culpable acts, but to waste transistors is the essence of thrift. Today you use millions of them slightly to enhance your TV picture or to play a game of solitaire or to fax Doonsbury to Grandma. If you do not use transistors in your cars, your offices, your telephone systems, your design centers, your factories, your farm gear, or your missiles, you go out of business. If you don't waste transistors, your cost structure will cripple you. Your product will be either too expensive, too slow, too late, or too low in quality. Endowing every information age engineer or PC hacker with the creative potential of a factory owner of the industrial age, the microchip reversed the centralizing thrust of the previous era. All nations and businesses had to adapt to the centrifugal law of the FidoNews 10-20 Page: 18 17 May 1993 microcosm, flattening hierarchies, outsourcing services, liberating engineers, shedding middle management. If you did not adapt your business systems to the new regime, you would no longer be a factor in the world balance of economic and military power. During the next decade or so, industry will go through a new technology wringer and submit to a new law: the law of the telecosm. The new wringer, the new integrated circuit, is called the all optical network. It is a communications system that runs entirely in glass. Unlike existing fiber optic networks, which convert light signals to electronic form in order to amplify or switch them, the all optical network is entirely photonic. From the first conversion of the signal from your phone or computer to the final conversion to voice or data at the destination, your message flies through glass on wings of light. Just as the old integrated circuit put entire electronic systems on single slivers of silicon, the new IC will put entire communications systems on seamless webs of silica. Wrought in threads as thin as a human hair, this silica is so pure that you could see through a window of it seventy miles thick. But what makes the new wringer roll with all the force of the microchip revolution before it is not the purity but the price. Just as the old IC made transistor power virtually free, the new IC, the all optical network, will make communications power virtually free. Another word for communications power is bandwidth. Just as the entire world had to learn to waste transistors, the entire world will now have to learn how to waste bandwidth. In the 1990s and beyond, every industry and economy will go through the wringer again. The impact on the organization of companies and economies, however, has yet to become clear. What is the law of the telecosm? Will the new technology reverse the centrifugal force of the microchip revolution...or consummate it? To understand the message of the new regime, we must follow the rule of microcosmic prophet Carver Mead of Caltech: Listen to the technology...and find out what it is telling us. THE SHANNON-SHOCKLEY REGIME The father of the all-optical-network, the man who coined the phrase, built the first fully functional system, and wrote the definitive book on the subject, is Paul E. Green, Jr. of Watson Laboratory at IBM. Now standing directly in the path of Green's wringer is Robert Lucky, who some seven years ago at a conference at Cornell first gave Green the idea that an all optical network might be possible. The leading intellectual in telephony, Lucky recently shocked the industry by shifting from ATC Bell Labs, where he was executive director of research, to Bellcore, the laboratory of the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs). There he will soon have to confront the implications of Green's innovation. FidoNews 10-20 Page: 19 17 May 1993 Contemplating the new technology, Lucky recalls a course on data networks that he used to teach many years ago with Green. As a computer man, Green relished the contrast between the onrushing efficiencies in his technology and the relative dormancy in communications. Indeed, for some twenty five years, while computer powers rose a millionfold, network capacities increased about a thousandfold. It was not until the late 1980s that most long distance data networks much surpassed the Pentagon's ARPANET running at 50 kilobits (thousands of bits) per second since the mid sixties. This was the era dominated by the powerful mathematic visions and theories of Claude Shannon of MIT and Bell Labs. Shannon was the reclusive genius who invented Information Theory to ascertain the absolute carrying capacity of any communications channel. Whether wire or air, channels were assumed to be narrow and noisy, the way God made them (sometimes with help from AT&T). Typical were the copper phone lines that still link every household to the telephone network and the air waves that still bear radio and television signals and static. The all-purpose remedy for these narrow, noisy channels was powerful electronics. Invented at Bell Laboratories by a team headed by William Shockley and then developed by Robert Noyce and other Shockley proteges in Silicon Valley, silicon transistors and integrated circuits engendered a constant exponential upsurge of computing power. Throwing ever more millions of ever faster and cheaper transistors at every problem, engineers created fast computers, multiplexors, and switches that seemed to surmount and outsmart every limit of bandwidth or restriction of wire. This process continues today with heroic new compression tools that allow the creation of full video conferences over 64 kilobit telephone connections. Scientists at Bellcore are now even proposing new ways of using the Motion Picture Engineering Group (MPEG) compression standard to send full motion movies at 1.5 megabits a second over the 4 kilohertz twisted pair copper wires to the home. Using ever faster computers, the telephone company is saying it can give you pay-per- view movies without installing fiber, or even coaxial cable, to the home. In the Shannon-Shockley era, the communications might be noisy and error prone, but smart electronics could encode and decode messages in complex ways that allowed efficient identification and correction of all errors. The Shannon channel might be narrow, but fast multiplexors allowed it to be divided into time slots accommodating a large number of simultaneous users in a system called time division multiplexing. The channel might clog up when large numbers of users attempted to communicate with each other at once, but collision detectors or token passers could sort it all out in nanoseconds. Graphics and video might impose immense floods of bits on the system, but compression technology could reduce the floods to a manageable trickle with little or no loss of picture quality. If all else failed, powerful electronic switches could FidoNews 10-20 Page: 20 17 May 1993 compensate for almost any bandwidth limitations. Switching could make up for the inadequate bandwidth at the terminals by relieving the network of the need to broadcast all signals to every destination. Instead, the central switch could receive all signals and then route them to their appropriate addresses. To this day, this is the essential strategy of the telephone companies: compensate for narrow noisy bandwidth with ever more powerful and intelligent digital electronics. Their core competence, the Bells hasten to tell you, is switching. They make up for the shortcomings of copper wires by providing smart, powerful digital switches. Their vision for the future is to join the computer business all the way, making these switches the entering wedge for ever more elaborate information services. Switches will grow smarter and more sophisticated until they provide an ever growing cornucopia of intelligent voice and fax features, from caller ID and voice mail to personal communications systems that follow you and your number around the world from your car commute to your vacation beach hideaway. In the end, these intelligent networks could supply virtually all the world's information needs, from movies, games and traffic updates to data libraries, financial services, news programs, and weather reports, all climaxing with yellow pages that exfoliate into a gigantic global mall of full motion video where your fingers walk (or your voice commands echo) from Harrods, to Jardines, to Akihabara, to Century 21 without you leaving the couch. At the time when Green and Lucky taught their course, this strategy for the future was only a glimmer in the minds of telephone visionaries. But the essence of it was already in place. As Green pointed out, telephone companies' response to sluggishness in communications was to enter the computer industry, where progress was faster. The creativity of digital electronics would save the telephone industry from technical stagnation. Lucky, however, protested to Green that it was unjust to compare the two fields. Computers and telecom, as Lucky explained it, operate on entirely different scales. Computers work in the microscale world of the IC, putting ever more thousands of wires and switches on single slivers of silicon. By contrast, telecommunications functions in the macroworld, laying out wires and switches across mostly silicon landscapes and seabeds. It necessarily entails a continental, or even intercontinental stretch of cables, microwave towers, switches, and poles. How was it possible, Lucky asked, to make such a large scale system inexpensive? Inherent in the structure and even the physics of computers and telecommunications, so it seemed to Lucky two decades ago, was a communications bottleneck. As Lucky remembers it, Green was never satisfied with Lucky's point. Green believed that someday communications could achieve FidoNews 10-20 Page: 21 17 May 1993 miracles comparable to the integrated circuit in computing.... THE BANDWIDTH SCANDAL Today, as Lucky was the first to announce, fiber optics has utterly overthrown the previous relationship between fast computers and slow wires. Now it is computer technology that imposes the bottleneck on the vast vistas of dark fiber. A silicon transistor can change its state some 2.5 billion times a second in response to light pulses (bundles of photons) hitting a photo- detector. Since it would take a human being a thousand years or so of 10 hour workdays even to count to two billion, two billion cycles in a single second (two gigahertz) might seem a sprightly pace. But in the world of fiber optics running at the speed and frequencies of light, even a rate of two billion cycles a second is a humbling bow to the slothful pace of electronics. Since optical signals still have to be routed to their destinations through computer switches, communications now suffers from what is known as the electronic bottleneck. It is this electronic bottleneck, the entire Bell edifice of Shannon and Shockley, that Paul Green plans to blow away with his all optical networks. Green is targeting what is a secret scandal of modern telecommunications: the huge gap between the real capacity of fiber optics and the actual speed of telephone communications. In communications systems, the number of waves per second (or hertz) represents a rough measure of its potential bandwidth or ultimate carrying capacity. The bandwidth of a radio system, for example, is determined by the frequency of each station or channel and by the number of stations that can fit within the band. Your AM dial, for example, runs from around 535 thousand hertz (kilohertz) to 1705 kilohertz and each station uses some 10 kilohertz. With an ideal receiver, the AM passband might carry 117 stations. By contrast, the intrinsic bandwidth of one strand of dark fiber is some 25 thousand gigahertz in each of three groups of frequencies (three passbands) through which fiber can transmit light over long distances. At a gigahertz per terminal, this bandwidth might accommodate some 25,000 supercomputer stations (or 2.5 billion AM stations). Using what is called dispersion shifted fiber, it may be possible to use two of these passbands at once: a total of some 40 or 50 thousand gigahertz. For comparison, consider all the radio frequencies currently used in the air for radio, television, microwave, and satellite communications and multiply by two thousand. The bandwidth of one fiber thread could carry more than two thousand times as much information as all these radio and microwave frequencies that currently comprise the air. One fiber thread could bear twice the traffic on the phone network during the peak hour of Mothers' Day in the U.S. (the heaviest load currently managed by the phone system). Yet even for point-to-point long distance links, let alone connections to homes, telephone and computer network engineers now FidoNews 10-20 Page: 22 17 May 1993 turn their backs on this immense capacity and use perhaps one or two fifty thousandths it. Deferring to the electronic bottleneck, the telephone industry uses fiber merely as a superior replacement for the copper wires, coaxial cables, satellite links, and microwave towers that connected the local central office switches to one another for long distance calls. Over the last 15 years, the Bell Laboratory record for fiber optics communication has run from 10 megabits per second over a one kilometer span to some 10 gigabits per second over nearly one thousand kilometers. But all the heroic advances in point-to-point links between central offices continued to use essentially one frequency on a fiber thread, while ignoring its intrinsic power to accommodate thousands of useful frequencies. In a world of all optical networks, this strategy is bankrupt. No longer will it be possible to throw more transistors, however cheap and fast, at the switching problem. Electronic speeds have become an insuperable bottleneck obstructing the vast vistas of dark fiber beyond. So called gigabit networks planned by the telephone and computer companies will not do. What is needed is not a gigabit spread among many terminals, but a large network functioning at a gigabit per second per terminal. The demands of EDS offer a hint of the most urgent business needs. Added to them will be consumer demands. True high definition television, comparable to movies in resolution, requires close to gigabit-a-second bandwidth, particularly if the program is dispatched to the viewer in burst mode all at once in a few seconds down the fiber, or if the user is given a chance to shape the picture, choose a vantage point, window several images at once, or experience three dimensions. When true broadband channels become available, there will be a flood of new applications comparable to the thousands of new uses of the IC. No foreseeable progress in electronics can overcome the electronic bottleneck. To do that, we need an entirely new communications regime. In the form of the all optical network, this regime is now at hand. ....TO BE CONTINUED NEXT ISSUE ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LuxCon/EuroCon '93 - UPDATE by JoHo LUXEMBOURG --- MAY 14, 1993 We would hereby like to announce LuxCon/EuroCon '93 which will take place in Remich (just on the German border), Luxembourg between Friday the 2nd of July and Sunday the 4th of July 1993. FidoNews 10-20 Page: 23 17 May 1993 ORGANIZERS Joaquim Homrighausen, 2:270/17@fidonet (2:2/1993@fidonet) Andrew Milner, 2:270/18@fidonet Francois Thunus, 2:270/25@fidonet PLACE OF THE CONFERENCE The four-star Hotel, HOTEL SAINT NICOLAS, situated on the Mosel with a splendid view of the river and the many vineyards surrounding it. SAINT NICOLAS is a Best Western Hotel with every- thing that is to be expected of a four-star Hotel. LANGUAGE English. PRELIMINARY PROGRAM Friday 2/7/93 --------------- 1600-2000 Arrival and registration 2000-2200 Friday night welcoming dinner Saturday 3/7/93 --------------- 0800-1000 Breakfast 1000-1030 Opening of LuxCon/EuroCon '93 1030-1100 ISDN and FidoNet : Jan Ceuleers 1100-1130 The JAM message base format : Andrew Milner/Joaquim Homrighausen 1130-1230 Product presentations and other sessions. We intend to run political and technical tracks comprising 30 to 60 minute sessions. 1230-1400 Lunch 1400-1800 More political and technical sessions. 2000-2200 Saturday evening dinner and raffle ("lottery"). Sunday 4/7/93 --------------- 0800-1000 Breakfast 1000-1200 Checkout from the Hotel 1200-1400 The annual harddisk throwing contest SPEAKERS AND SPONSORS > We are currently looking for speakers (political and technical) > for the sessions and companies to sponsor the prices given away > during the Saturday evening raffle ("lottery") and the harddisk > throwing contest. FidoNews 10-20 Page: 24 17 May 1993 PRIZES The following items have been donated by the listed people/ companies. They will be given away as prizes for the Saturday night raffle and the harddisk throwing contest on Sunday. US Robotics France ------------------ 1 pc. US Robotics HST/DS 16.8K/FAX modem 2 pc. V.FAST modem upgrade 5 pc. PowerPort dual-port serial cards ComDas GmbH ----------- 1 pc. FrontDoor/Commercial 1 pc. RemoteAccess/Commercial 5 pc. FrontDoor APX Tobias Burchhardt ----------------- 5 pc. FastEcho keys Hans Siemons ------------ 2 pc. OnTour keys PROGRAM FOR ACCOMPANYING PERSONS Several activities are available to those who do not wish to take part in the sessions. These include a boat ride on the Mosel river, wine tasting along the Mosel, or simply lying out in the sun providing the weather is nice :-) TRAVEL DIRECTIONS Plane ----- Quite a few connections exist, those mostly used are Brussels, Frankfurt, and London. Most European airlines have agreements with LuxAir and are well represented in Luxembourg. In many cases, however, flying to Brussels or Frankfurt and then continue from there to Luxembourg by means of train will save quite a bit of money. A LuxAir shuttle from the airport to the center of the city leaves fairly frequently as does Bus #9. Once by the train station, on your left hand-size (with your back towards the train station) take the bus to Remich, leaving once every two hours (five past), until 2005. There's a currency exchange office in the train station, as well as several banks across the street from the station. Train FidoNews 10-20 Page: 25 17 May 1993 ----- These are some of the more common links to Luxembourg via train (Luxembourg is the implied destination but not listed). The starting location is listed to the left. Please inquire with your local train company or a travel agent for times. Some trains may not have suitable arrival times. Most trains via Germany pass through Koblenz and Trier. Trains via France pass through Metz, Thionville, and/or Arlon. Frankfurt-Mainz-Koblenz-Trier Oslo-Stockholm-Copenhagen-Hamburg-Bremen-Cologne Berlin-Hannover-Bielefeld-Dortmund-Essen-Cologne Salzburg-Munich-Ulm-Stuttgart-Heidelberg-Mannheim Budapest-Vienna-Linz-Passau-Regensburg-Nuernberg-Wuerzberg Heidelberg-Mannheim-Kaiserslauten-Homburg-Saarbruecken Oostende-Brugge-Gent-Brussels North-Arlon Liege-Angleur-Poulseur-Rivage-Aywaille-Coo-Gouvy Muenster-Oberhausen-Duisburg-Duesseldorf-Cologne-Bonn Paris-Bar le Duc-Metz-Thionville Nancy-Metz-Hagondange-Thionville Barcelona-Cerbere-Narbonne-Agde-Avignon-Metz Zurich-Basel-Metz Chiasso-Lugano-Bellizona-Luzern-Basel-Metz Bale-Mulhouse-Colmar-Strasbourg-Metz-Thionville St Maurice-Moutiers-Albertville-Chambery-Lyon-Dijon-Metz London Victoria-Dover-Oostende-Brussels North Amsterdam-Schiphol-Leiden-Haag-Rotterdam-Brussels North Brussels Midi-Ottignies-Namur-Jemelle-Libramont-Arlon Venice/Rome-Milano-Basel-Metz Car --- From Netherlands and Belgium: Take the best road to Luxembourg City. You will probably be taking the E25 motorway (LIEGE, ARLON). From France: take your choice of roads via METZ or THIONVILLE, and follow the signs to Luxembourg City. When in the city, follow the signs to GARE (main trainstation). When passing the station, follow signs to SAARBRUCKEN and REMICH for about 30 km until you have arrived. From Germany: Go to TRIER and continue into Luxembourg. You're adviced to stay on the motorway until you reach the airport exit, from there you will go around the airport until you reach the road to SAARBRUCKEN and REMICH mentioned above. An alternative route is via SAARBRUCKEN, from where you have about 70 km of road to Luxembourg (signposted). When you cross the border taking that road, you will instantly be in Remich. PARTICIPATION FEE FidoNews 10-20 Page: 26 17 May 1993 The participation fee is LUF 5500.-, wich covers the sessions, conference literature, all meals from Friday evening to Sunday morning (inclusive), an official LuxCon/EuroCon '93 t-shirt, two nights in a double room (double occupancy) at the Hotel. Payment can be made by transferring money to the bank or CCP (postal giro) account listed below. Please make sure that you transfer the correct amount (if your bank does not know what LUF is, tell them to transfer BEF, which is Belgian Francs). You are responsible for covering all transfer charges. Include your name, voice telephone number, and FidoNet network address. Transfers with an insufficient amount or information will not be honored as a valid registration. The rooms will be given on a first come, first serve basis (this is decided upon the arrival of the money transfer should it come to that). If there are no more rooms available, we will attempt to find a room in a Hotel nearby, but cannot guarantee this (in which case your money will, of course, be refunded). For those who wish to take the economy alternative, there is a camping ground in Remich (you must still register for the conference as indicated on the registration form below). The name of the responsible company is CAMPING EUROPE, telephone +352 698 018. EXCHANGE RATES The local currency is LUF (Luxembourg Franc) which is identical to BEF (Belgian Francs). The following is a list of approximate exchange rates. 1 AUST SCH = LUF 2.91 1 GB Pound = LUF 50.93 1 DAN Kr = LUF 5.35 1 GER Dm = LUF 20.56 1 NETH Fl = LUF 18.30 1 FINN MARKA = LUF 5.98 1 FR Fr = LUF 6.10 1 GK DRAC = LUF 0.15 1 IR Punt = LUF 50.10 1 NOR Kr = LUF 4.85 1 PORT Esc = LUF 0.22 1 SPAN PES = LUF 0.28 1 SWE Kr = LUF 4.42 1 SWI Fr = LUF 22.80 1 US $ = LUF 32.31 REGISTRATION Print and fill out the registration form and mail it to the below address BEFORE the 1st of June 1993 (or include it in a NetMail message to Joaquim Homrighausen on 2:270/17@fidonet). Payment will be expected to arrive shortly after the registration form has been FidoNews 10-20 Page: 27 17 May 1993 received. Joaquim Homrighausen 389, route d'Arlon L-8011 Strassen Luxembourg Late registration, between June 1st and July 1st 1993, is possible but carries an additional late-registration fee of LUF 750.- as indicated below. PAYMENT CCP (postal giro) ----------------- Cheque Postaux L-1090 Luxembourg Account #: CCP 108637-94 Joaquim Homrighausen Bank ---- Banque Generale du Luxembourg L-2951 Luxembourg SWIFT bgll lu ll Telex 3401 bgl lu Account #: BGL 30-511818-80-010 Joaquim Homrighausen EuroCheques ----------- Alternatively, you may use EuroCheques for your payment. The maximum accepted value is LUF 7000.- per cheque. Simply mail the cheque(s) to the above listed postal address. REGISTRATION FORM ---- cut here ---- cut here ---- cut here ---- Full name: ______________________________________________ Postal address: __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ Voice phone #: ___________________________ Nationality: ___________________________ eMail address: ___________________________ Accompanying: ______________________________________________ FidoNews 10-20 Page: 28 17 May 1993 ______________________________________________ OPTIONS (check all that apply) COST (LUF) +---------+--------------------------------------------------+ : : : : YES : Complete conference package + 5500.- : : : : +---------+--------------------------------------------------+ : : : : ___ : Sharing the room between 3 people - 500.- : : : : +---------+--------------------------------------------------+ : : : : ___ : Single occupancy of room + 1000.- : : : : +---------+--------------------------------------------------+ : : : : ___ : Conference but no meals or Hotel - 3500.- : : : (includes Saturday lunch) : : : : +---------+--------------------------------------------------+ : : : : ___ : Late registration + 750.- : : : (1/06/93 - 1/07/93) : : : : +---------+--------------------------------------------------+ : : : : TOTAL : LUF .- : : : : +---------+--------------------------------------------------+ REGISTRATION FORM ---- cut here ---- cut here ---- cut here ---- This file is also file requestable as LUXCON from 2:270/17@fidonet and 2:270/18@fidonet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ======================================================================== Fidonews Information ======================================================================== ------- FIDONEWS MASTHEAD AND CONTACT INFORMATION ---------------- Editors: Sylvia Maxwell, Donald Tees, Tim Pozar Editors Emeritii: Thom Henderson, Dale Lovell, Vince Perriello, Tom Jennings IMPORTANT NOTE: The FidoNet address of the FidoNews BBS has been changed!!! Please make a note of this. "FidoNews" BBS FidoNet 1:1/23 BBS +1-519-570-4176, 300/1200/2400/14200/V.32bis/HST(DS) FidoNews 10-20 Page: 29 17 May 1993 Internet addresses: Don & Sylvia (submission address) editor@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca Sylvia -- max@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca Donald -- donald@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca Tim -- pozar@kumr.lns.com (Postal Service mailing address) (have extreme patience) FidoNews 172 Duke St. E. Kitchener, Ontario Canada N2H 1A7 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. Authors retain copyright on individual works; otherwise FidoNews is copyright 1993 Sylvia Maxwell. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use in other circumstances, please contact the original authors, or FidoNews (we're easy). OBTAINING COPIES: The-most-recent-issue-ONLY of FidoNews in electronic form may be obtained from the FidoNews BBS via manual download or Wazoo FileRequest, or from various sites in the FidoNet and Internet. PRINTED COPIES may be obtained from Fido Software for $10.00US each PostPaid First Class within North America, or $13.00US elsewhere, mailed Air Mail. (US funds drawn upon a US bank only.) BACK ISSUES: Available from FidoNet nodes 1:102/138, 1:216/21, 1:125/1212, (and probably others), via filerequest or download (consult a recent nodelist for phone numbers). A very nice index to the Tables of Contents to all FidoNews volumes can be filerequested from 1:396/1 or 1:216/21. The name(s) to request are FNEWSxTC.ZIP, where 'x' is the volume number; 1=1984, 2=1985... through 8=1991. INTERNET USERS: FidoNews is available via FTP from ftp.ieee.org, in directory ~ftp/pub/fidonet/fidonews. If you have questions regarding FidoNet, please direct them to deitch@gisatl.fidonet.org, not the FidoNews BBS. (Be kind and patient; David Deitch is generously volunteering to handle FidoNet/Internet questions.) 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 BBS, or Wazoo filerequestable from 1:1/23 as file "ARTSPEC.DOC". Please read it. FidoNews 10-20 Page: 30 17 May 1993 "Fido", "FidoNet" and the dog-with-diskette are U.S. registered trademarks of Tom Jennings, and are used with permission. Asked what he thought of Western civilization, M.K. Gandhi said, "I think it would be an excellent idea". -- END ----------------------------------------------------------------------