F I D O N E W S -- Vol.10 No.22 (31-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..................................................... 1 2. Articles...................................................... 2 The Cynic's Sandbox, v2.666................................. 2 "The Free BBS".............................................. 4 FIDONEWS? WHAT'S IT?........................................ 5 Solving the Modem Init Problem.............................. 5 3. Fidonews Information.......................................... 7 ======================================================================== Editorial ======================================================================== FidoNews 10-22 Page: 2 31 May 1993 It's that time of week again, and we have a fairly sparce issue. There is one article, however, that brings up a sore point. We are the *editors* of Fidonews. We are not the writers, nor are we the censors. By and large, we print the articles that we receive. An article this week complains that we do not print enough articles from Europe. If no-one in Europe submits an article, then we do not print anything from Europe ... it is that simple. We are quite willing to revise and re-write articles if the writer feels that their english is not good enough. We can also take a run at translating them, if time permits. Even a rough translation would be a big help as we do not get a lot of practice. Between us, we can read english, spanish, german, and french. Just give permission in a covering letter. The same thing goes for various subjects. About once per week, we get a complaint reading "why do you not have articles on ...". The answer is always the same ... "because no one wrote one. Would you like to write such an article?" Invariably, the letter writers never do. ======================================================================== Articles ======================================================================== The Cynic's Sandbox, v2.666 R. Cynic Hey, kids! Been kicked out of Fight-O-Net? Got a sadistic NC? Ego-crazed moderators ruining your favorite echo? Join the club. Join the club and CLEAR YOUR NAME with the handy On-Line-Distributable Fight-O-Snooze Super Innocence Legal kit! The OLD FOSSIL (No relation to Ray Gwinn) consists of three must-have items. 1) Sample Letter templates! Before the OLD FOSSIL, you were forced to come up with original insults, obvious examples of power abuse, and so many other difficult things. With the OLD FOSSIL, all you provide is a name and position! Insults are taken from a large database, and can be customized should you so desire! The output is a perfectly done statement of your innocence. Here's a sample! Dear Fight-O-Snooze readers: My _NC_, _Phil Cayton_ is a psychotic power-hungry dictator who has kicked me out of Fight-O-Net for no reason at all. FidoNews 10-22 Page: 3 31 May 1993 I know that you all, as fair and right-thinking people will . . . Thank you for reading this note, and I hope that you'll join me in stringing my _NC_ up by the earlobes. Sincerly, The Good Guy See? A masterpiece of modern prose. And that's just ONE of the sample templates! Let's try another. Dear Fight-O-Snooze readers: The _moderator_, _Paul Stevens_, of my favorite echo, _PETCARE_, has kicked me out for no reason other than me occasionally posting about how I like to keep dead cats in plastic bags. I know that you all, as fair and right-thinking people will . . . Thank you for reading this note, and I hope that you'll join me in stringing the _moderator_ up by the kneecaps. Sincerly, The Good Guy But that's not all! The OLD FOSSIL also comes with: 2) The R. Cynic FLAME DICTIONARY! Learn to POST IN ALL CAPS AND CALL PEOPLE SHEEP-MOLESTING NAZIS! Great for those ECHOMAIL chats! Imagine how much more powerful your posts can be! The R. Cynic FLAME DICTIONARY! also includes a section on how to claim that someone else was using your account to post insults! The invaluable accessory for today's Fight-O- Net junkie! 3) The R. Cynic kit of BBS-crashin' ZIP files and VIRUSES! Does that nasty sheep-molestin' nazi NC automatically unzip and virus-scan ALL uploads? Just upload one of our special ZIP files which expands from under 100K to over 300 megs! They've filled your life with annoyance, so you fill their disk with ascii 0x07! For even more fun, just file-attach one of over TWENTY trojan horses and logic bombs! Featuring such classics as "RUNMENOW.COM" and the "Floppy-Dice-O-Matic" disk mangler, it's a package that's sure to be fun for the whole family! Remember - you're the GOOD GUY! You can take REVENGE! You can DENY EVERYTHING! FidoNews 10-22 Page: 4 31 May 1993 Look for the OLD FOSSIL on a BBS near you! Next week: Dark Glasses, Dumb Ideas: The Cyberpunk Craze. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Free BBS" Brian McGroarty 1:2210/7956 I am starting a committee which will be developing and maintaining platform independent BBS software whose source-code and executables will belong to all members of the FidoNet community. Currently experienced sysops, programmers on all platforms and multi- lingual document writers who are willing to contribute services to such a project are asked to contact me with information on how they are willing to help or questions about the project. Volunteer programmers and consultants will be divided into groups covering C-based mailer and BBS orchestration, mailer communication protocol, file transfer protocols, database management (message bases, user records, node-list management, et cetera.), platform-specific communications and display routines, single-platform testing and everything else that makes a system work. The global portions of the system will be written in C or C++, while the platform-specific portions may be written in whatever language the programmers deem best. Platform-specific routines are planned for MS-DOS, MS-Windows/Windows NT, OS/2, the Amiga, the MacIntosh and Unix, although additional platforms would be entertained. By making the bulk of the system platform independant while creating powerful, high-performance system-specific support routines for as many platforms as possible we will be providing a powerful, new package which will make and keep FidoNet and the latest and greatest BBS features affordable and available to *everyone!* I hope that many of you will join me in this exciting venture, and I ask that you please pass this information along to other potential contributors. Hope to hear from you soon! FidoNews 10-22 Page: 5 31 May 1993 FIDONEWS? WHAT'S IT? For years I've been reading FIDONEWS and asking myself: what's this about? I've read articles about every remote corner of USA; about all the problems American SysOps deal with; about lots and lots of ridiculous things for us, European SysOps. Did you think, any time, that there are Fidonet nodes all around the world that are not interested in The American SysOps'problems? That don't think like you? That do not live in your cultural, social, economical, political universe? For years we haven't, for a single issue, read one line about European nodes' problems. Do you know where Europe is? Do you know the world is not only the USA? FIDONET is all around the world, not only in America. We can't understand what you are writing, because you write about you, not FIDONET. I know I can't write plain english, or even understand American SysOps' problems because I'm not American. But can you write Portuguese?... or French, or German, or... For years I've laughed every week with each new issue of Fidonews: I couldn't understand what you want with it. Now I know: you are not able to see through your borders! It seems that you think America is the center of world! But it is not! I am here and am indifferent towards Americans, the American way of life, American problems, humor, likes and dislikes. Your problems are nothing to me! I don't care about what you think. We have our own problems, not yours. Why are we forced to read all this junk? I will never read it again! At least untill you publish articles on Fidonet, not on America. Please put this into your heads: Fidonet is all around the world, not only in America. by Joao Ledo IELINE BBS 2:361/10 Portugal ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Solving the Modem Init Problem by Donald Tees 221/192 One of the most common problems that everyone seems to experience at one time or another, is getting a new modem and getting it set up correctly. Modem initialization strings not only have to be changed for the mailer and BBS, but for other various communications programs. With a new generation of high speed modems on its' way, the problem is about to start up again. Locally, a few of us have standardized on a methodology that I think deserves wider use. FidoNews 10-22 Page: 6 31 May 1993 If a large number of people begin to set things up this way, the problem can be trivialized. The process consists of two parts. First of all, every program that uses the modem is set up to initialize by setting to the battery backed up settings. Secondly, a standard file to set the correct parameters into memory is created, and *played into the modem as an ASCII upload*. The second portion of this is the crucial one. Those text files can be created using a standard text editor, and sent arround the country like any other bit of software. Let me use my dual standard as an example. I have a file that looks like the following: AT&F ;set to factory defaults ATM3 ATX7 AT&A3 AT&B1 AT&A3 AT&H1 AT&K3 AT&R2 AT&Y0 ATS2=255 ATS7=120 ATS10=30 ATS11=50 ATS13=4 ATS28=40 AT&W ;store that in the battery ATI4 ;confirm it on the screen When I switch to the dual-standard, I simply run Procomm, and upload that to the modem as an ASCII file. Nothing else changes. Within the Binkley configuration, my initialization is set to ATZ|ATM0|. My communiaction programs are all set as ATZ|. As a standard, I use the extension .MDM for modem files. I therefore have a HOST.MDM for my dual standard, a 2400.MDM for my backup modem, and a GANDALF.MDM for my spare 9600 baud gandalf modem. Switching between those is simple and fast. While I realize that most people use the "ATZ" trick for setting up their modems, having those files available is of real benefit. Not only can they be traded about, but they make life much easier if the modem setup is ever lost. As a closing thought, many of you probably rely on the batteries never going dead. You fiddled manually until you had the modem working, then left it. Well, the ATI4 command will usually display current settings. That display can be downloaded into a file, then edited into a file as shown above. Having your settings stored in a disk file can be a real life-saver if you ever get into a modem problem. FidoNews 10-22 Page: 7 31 May 1993 ======================================================================== 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) 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 FidoNews 10-22 Page: 8 31 May 1993 (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. "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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------