F I D O N E W S --       Volume 15, Number 30          27 July 1998
     +----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
     |  The newsletter of the     |   ISSN 1198-4589 Published by:          |
     |    FidoNet community       |   "FidoNews"                            |
     |          _                 |        1-209-251-7529    [1:1/23]       |
     |         /  \               |                                         |
     |        /|oo \              |                                         |
     |       (_|  /_)             |                                         |
     |        _`@/_ \    _        |                                         |
     |       |     | \   \\       |   Editor:                               |
     |       | (*) |  \   ))      |        Zorch Frezberg  1:205/1701       |
     |       |__U__| /  \//       |                                         |
     |        _//|| _\   /        |                                         |
     |       (_/(_|(____/         |                                         |
     |             (jm)           |     Newspapers should have no friends.  |
     |                            |                    -- JOSEPH PULITZER   |
     +----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
     |               Submission address: FidoNews Editor 1:1/23             |
     +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
     |  MORE addresses:                                                     |
     |                                                                      |
     |    submissions=> editor@fidonews.org                                 |
     |                                                                      |
     +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
     |    For  information,   copyrights,   article   submissions,          |
     |    obtaining copies of FidoNews or the internet gateway FAQ          |
     |    please refer to the end of this file.                             |
     +----------------------------------------------------------------------+


             "This edition published under duress."

                        Table of Contents
     1. EDITORIAL  ................................................  1
     2. ARTICLES  .................................................  2
        FidoNet over IP, Part 1 of 4  .............................  2
        FidoNet over IP, Part 2: What do I need for it?  ..........  5
     3. COLUMNS  ..................................................  8
        Cosmology predestines yogurt  .............................  8
     4. NOTICES  .................................................. 10
        Future History  ........................................... 10
     5. FIDONEWS PUBLIC-KEY  ...................................... 11
        FidoNews PGP Public-Key Listing  .......................... 11
     6. FIDONET BY INTERNET  ...................................... 12
     7. FIDONEWS INFORMATION  ..................................... 15
     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 1                   27 Jul 1998


     =================================================================
                                 EDITORIAL
     =================================================================


     With all else going on, the eye surgery seems to have taken a turn
     for the worse, so this one will be mostly brief.

     Lothar Behet has submitted the start of a series of articles on the
     ideas and concepts of FidoNet over IP addressing that are worthy of
     review and merit.  The first two of a projected four parts are in
     this issue.

     I've also been advised of something forthcoming from one of the FTSC
     working groups, which has not yet arrived in the Editor's inbound.

     As to the vagaries of Zone 1, always keep in mind that not all sides
     have been heard from.

     -zf-

     ### 30 ###


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     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 2                   27 Jul 1998


     =================================================================
                                 ARTICLES
     =================================================================


     FidoNet over IP, Part 1 of 4
     Copyright by Lothar Behet

     Part 1:
     What is Fidonet over IP?

     Fidonet-over-IP (later called "FIP" in this article) tries to
     integrate another medium as carrier-service beside the conventional
     telephony connectivity.

     The most basic technical specification of Fidonet (FTS-1, version 15,
     dated Aug. 30 1990) describes the handshake procedure, as it can be
     used within conventional pstn environments.

     Foreseeing the technical development, Chapter H leaves room for
     future extensions:

     | H. Physical Layer : the Actual Connection of Two FidoNet Systems
     |
     | Will  one of the more hardware-oriented comm types give me some
     | idea of what's needed here?  Can we leave it open enough to allow
     | implementation over a non-dial net?  Thanks.

     The internet is just one more possible physical layer in place of a
     direct (sometimes quite expensive) connection between two nodes.

     It may be discussed, if FTS-1 handshake specification is required for
     a fidolike connection via the internet, but in any case the nodelist
     based data should be directly used for the dial attempt and the
     (possible) authentication of a direct session using another carrier.
     So the transfer of data via FTP (direct connection, but completely
     independant of any nodelist data) or Email based methods (just
     delivering something to a mailbox) are not fido-like in the direct
     sense of FIP.

     The Nodelist:

     For this connection one data is required in any case:
     The replacement for the phone-number is the ip-nummber,
     i.e. 194.231.142.17. Furthermore the internet utilizes the DNS
     (Domain Name Service) for a more mnemonic presentation (FQDN,
     Fully Qualified Domain Name) of the same system, i.e. fido.nrh.de.
     The use of DNS gives additional advantages:
     - load balancing between several computers for the same service
     - backup against system failure

     But DNS has one real shortcoming:
     It does not fit in any way in the nowadays used nodelist format,
     based on FTS-5 (released 5. February 1989).

     This so called St.Louis-format has only one entry for a
     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 3                   27 Jul 1998


     "connection point", which is basically defined as sequence
     of numbers, seperated by dashes. Other characters may not be
     used in this field, as several (older) programs can not handle
     other contents.

     The ip-number normally contains points in place of dashes, but
     that conversion would only be a small problem for actual suppor-
     ted software.

     Older programs cannot see the difference between a phone number
     and an ip-number in this field, so they have to examine the flag
     field for this differentiation.

     This leaves room for any twit-sysop, to dial an ip-number with
     his modem, which is at least annoying for the opponent side of
     the connection and may cost some bucks of dollar for the
     unexperienced sysop.

     But there is a solution:
     Not one system using the nodelist can dial a number without
     a dial translation table, as the data in the nodelist is
     normally undiable by itself. So the utilization of an unused
     country code gives room for suppression of dial attempts on
     ip-numbers by conventional pstn users.

     The selection of the country code "000" in Z2 was taken after
     some discussion, as this prefix is an emergency code in some
     countries. But any other prefix is or may be used for legal
     country codes at a given time and only under very rare circum-
     stances (the sysop twit with a dial translation enabling this
     number) a call would by made by a modem.

     Another solution is defining another field for the ip-address,
     which is possible by itself, as older software would in no case
     use it for a connection.

     - Flag field: any content may be possible here, but some programs
       only take care of the first 32-64 characters of it (and we need
       this room later, as you will see :).

     - Location field: it normaly gives information about the geo-
       graphical position of the individual node, which is redundant
       to the phone number. But ip-numbers are not geographically
       oriented and and the fqdn may be any sequence of characters.

     - System name field: it serves sometimes as an additional
       "human readable flag extension" and sometimes shows the
       "hidden ego" of the sysop.

     The usage of any of these three fields leaves room for
     another intention:

     Definition of a "combined entry", which includes one ip
     connectivity and one conventional in a single entry in
     the nodelist. Furthermore all may carry either characters
     or numbers, so ip numbers or FQDN may be used to the actual
     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 4                   27 Jul 1998


     sysops intention. Just the locally used nodelist compiler
     has to know, which field to use for the preparation of ip
     connections.

     As shown above, the system name field would be the logical
     decision under technical aspects, as it serves the least
     significant part of information of these three, while on
     the other hand the FQDN may be defined in a wide range
     (something like "mybbs.mydomain.org").

     There surely are other solutions for the nodelist problem:

     1. Define a completely new nodelist structure, which contains
        any valuable information about all connectivity variants of a
        given node.

        This might be a future project, but when will this future
        become reality?

     2. utilize pure internet techniques for ip-connectivity, i.e.
        fidonet.net in eastern europe. This method is nearly completely
        independant from nodelist data, except that the address presen-
        tation f3000.n2.z2.fidonet.net looks like the addressing
        schedule for gateways in the fidonet.org domain.

     After 5 months of discussion in IP_CONNECT several proposals were
     defined (part 3).

     The next part will contain an exerpt about actual used protocols
     for FIP.

     The author:
     Netmail  : 2:2446/301 aka 2:2/3000
     Email    : lbehet@nrh.de

     Apr. 1991: gets member of FidoNet
     May  1993: Hub for the area of Kleve, Germany (near the dutch border)
     Jan. 1997: Host for Net 2:2446
     Jun. 1997: utilization of ip-connections for Fidonet
     Sep. 1997: First ip-node 2:2/3000 in Z2
     Jul. 1998: FIP-site:  http://home.nrh.de/~lbehet/fido/ ,
                includes ip-nodelist, information, software

     Legal information:
     Copyright 1998 by Lothar Behet
     This series of articles may be distributed freely within the
     fidonet community.

     The distribution (partially or complete) on digital or printed
     media without explicit authorization of the author is prohibited.

     ### 30 ###


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     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 5                   27 Jul 1998


     FidoNet over IP, Part 2: What do I need for it?
     Copyright 1998 by Lothar Behet


     FidoNet over IP - What's that?

     Beside the direct transfer of any data via FTP (File Transfer
     Protocol) or Email, the internet supports the tunneling of
     protocol data, based on other structures, in ip-packets.
     This is used by FIP to establish a direct, password-secured
     connection between any two nodes with the internet as alter-
     native carrier. Only for the time of this connection both nodes
     need to be hooked up to the internet.

     Depending on the actual implementation, the data may be transfered
     by a normal mailer or an especially for ip-transfer designed program,
     whereas (in future) nodelist contents will be used directly for
     dialing and authentication purposes.

     Available Programs

     1. BinkD
     BinkD is a pure ip-mailer, which uses the known Binkley style out-
     bound and expands conventional systems by an internet based access.
     BinkP is the publicly available protocol specification (default
     port 24554), which is implemented in other programs (i.e. Argus,
     BBBS) in the meantime.

     BinkD is at this moment of writing available for FreeBSD, Linux,
     OS/2, Windows 95 and Windows NT as well as sourcecode.

     2. Vmodem and other device drivers
     Vmodem is a "Virtual MODEM" (comparable to cfos for ISDN cards),
     which emulates a comport for conventional programs. It is part of
     Ray Gwinn's SIO device driver package for OS/2. Beside its own
     Vmodem protocol (default port 3141), telnet sessions (default
     port 23) are possible.

     RL-Fossil represents a similar implementation for DOS or single
     DOS-tasks running in another multi-tasking environment.

     3. ifcico
     ifcico is a fidonet mailer for *nix operating systems (default
     port 60179).

     Beside modem connectivity it naturally supports data transfer via
     ip. The default port is 60179, but with an additional TX-patch it
     may utilize Telnet sessions (default port 60177).

     4. Telnet
     Telnet is originally a terminal program, as it may be used for
     internet based access to a mailbox. Via the default port 23,
     FTN-compatible sessions may be handled.

     5. Other possibilities
     FTP and Email-based proceedings are not FIP in direct sense, but
     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 6                   27 Jul 1998


     they can save some money on long distance transfers in any way.


     Features and advantages of FIP

     Basically anybody can utilize FIP, as long as he has any kind of
     access to the internet. The only condition is, that both opponents :)
     are actually hooked up (even as dial-in) to the internet, as long as
     the connection exists. A frequently called system may think of an
     steady connection to the internet.

     The available bandwidth for data transfer can normally not be
     calculated, as it relies on the smallest one in any given part
     of the actual connection.

     With nowadays used multitasking operating systems, FIP may the
     used in parallel to any other utilization of the internet (surfing,
     chatting, ...), without requiring another dial attempt in opposit
     to conventional usage.


     (In-)Compatibilities within FidoNet-over-IP

     - BinkD as pure mailer conforming to the BinkP-specification can
       only connect to opponets with the same protocol. It's main
       usage is as additional task for IP to existing other mailers,
       as it uses the widely spread binkley style outbound structure.

     - Vmodem is unhappily only available as device driver for OS/2,
       but has there the advantage of easy implementation for nearly
       any communication program, including a wide range of conven-
       tional mailers. The installation just requires the selection
       of an appropriate (virtual) comport.

     - ifcico is only available for unix-style operating systems, but
       with the additional TX-patch may connect to any other system
       via the telnet-protocol.

     - Telnet is supported on nearly any platform (including rlfossil
       for DOS), but may raise some problems depending on the individual
       installation.

     - All of these rely on an existing TCP/IP-stack, which is sometimes
       integral part of the operating system (*nix, OS/2 since Warp3
       Connect, Windows 95, Windows NT). For DOS and Windwos 3.x addi-
       tional drivers are available.

     Sources and availability:
     For an actual compilation of sources, downloads and other
     information, just take a look on

                http://home.nrh.de/~lbehet/fido/

     (The site is bi-lingual (english/german) at this moment,
     but volunteer translators are already busy :)

     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 7                   27 Jul 1998


     Testing FIP all around the world:
     Beside connections to the authors system (fido.nrh.de at
     194.231.142.17) with BinkP:24554, Telnet:23 and Vmodem:3141,
     the above mentioned website offers an ip nodelist, which is
     continuously growing :)

     Legal information:
     Copyright 1998 by Lothar Behet
     This series of articles may be distributed freely within the
     fidonet community.

     The distribution (partially or complete) on digital or printed media
     without explicit authorization of the author is prohibited.

     ### 30 ###


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     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 8                   27 Jul 1998


     =================================================================
                                  COLUMNS
     =================================================================


     Dear Editorbeing,

     This article is submitted by Doc Logger(163/110) who has
     spent the week remembering why he hates programming. The
     cause of this renewed realization was an attempt to simulate
     the collapse of a galactic cluster.


     Roll da flic, Zorch...

     Dear Reverend Visage,

     This has been a relatively slow week in Fidoland. Bob Kohl
     remained true to type and made his exit as RC10 into a
     singularly petulant and ugly event. In his last gasps, he
     offered to post an archive of messages with Satti to
     demonstrate god knows what. What is amusing about Kohl's
     threat is that he seems to be one of the few labouring under
     the delusion that Satti's incompetence would be a revelation
     or a surprise.

     The discussions in the ZIC echo have been interesting. Just
     when we thought we'd smoked most of the skunks out of the
     woodpile, we were treated to a series of messages from
     Darryl Gregorash who first asserted that he "owned" his
     net's nodesegment, and then heard him exclaim that he would
     cast a vote against the expressed wishes of his net if he
     thought they were wrong. What makes Gregorash even more
     remarkable is that while espousing his totalist vision, he
     took time to make some jingoistic comments about Ward
     Dossche. It is a pity that the threat of democracy causes
     these cretins to mischaracterize Dossche. If Gregorash was
     keen to find a fascist prototype, he need look no further
     than some of his own posts concerning the Divine Right of
     *Cs.

     In North America, we were treated to the spectacle of a
     deranged gunman barging into the U.S. capital building and
     killing a couple of police officers. What amazed me was that
     while five channels of live coverage were devoted to the
     incident, a raft of talking heads were asking the question:
     "Why does such a thing happen?" It seems none of them
     guessed that such things happen exactly because the insane
     and the deranged know that their acts will get five channels
     of live coverage.  Unfortunately, the next person with a few
     screws loose will have to outdo the previous attempts.
     Perhaps as a public service, the cable companies could offer
     a special "psycho" channel where the exploits of the insane
     are regularly featured. I know, I know, it can be argued
     that the Golf channel already fulfills this mandate.

     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 9                   27 Jul 1998


     My reading list this week was prompted by a suggestion by
     Don Cox (Canada's finest eccentric) who thought that I would
     be enthralled by a book on cosmology making a case for
     anthropic destiny. (For Dallas, "cosmology" is the study of
     the formation of the universe, and "anthropic" is that which
     involves the study of life.) Since the book that Cox
     suggested was full of absurdities, I read several others to
     ascertain whether physicists hadn't gotten any smarter since
     the last time I was tortured by their tedious lectures. The
     major flaw that I can see in most of the writings was one of
     causation. They suggest that if the original universe had
     been a tiny bit more dense, if there hadn't been a slight
     granularity to the initial primordial soup, and if magnetic
     monopoles hadn't been consumed; that life as we know it
     couldn't have existed. This form of argument is akin to
     saying that 100% of the people who ride school buses will
     eventually die. There is no causal link(in general) between
     death and riding school buses, but experimentally it can be
     ascertained that one event will follow the other with
     scientific certitude.

     Where the physics weenies leave me behind is where they
     assert that since the Big Bang required such narrow
     parameters in which to eventually express a world that would
     involve humans, then there *had* to be a Plan of Divine
     nature. Anyone who turns up an ace and a king during a game
     of Blackjack could make the claim to Divine intervention but
     really, they are simply the beneficiary of random
     probability. If cosmology was so Divinely determined, why
     was a world created where you couldn't x-ray an elephant?

     I must go Visage, Moravsik's Dr. Strangelove finger is
     twitching to type the word "budfoon" in characterization of
     this week's article and I wouldn't want to disappoint the
     lil' tater-tot. Since you weren't around, I let Walloonetta
     accompany my teenmonsters to the Warped Tour concert in
     Montreal last night. You'll be sooo pleased to know that the
     best song of the night was "Cook Your Father" by a band
     called "Dahmer's Diner."

     Regards,
     Doc Logger,
     Furlang Island,
     South Pacific


     -----------------------------------------------------------------

     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 10                  27 Jul 1998


     =================================================================
                                  NOTICES
     =================================================================

                                Future History

      5 Oct 1998
        29th Anniversary of "Monty Python's Flying Circus".

     14 Sep 1998
        Start of International BBS Week [thru 20 Sep 98].

     22 Sep 1998
        First anniversary of the FidoNews domain of www.fidonews.org.

     23 Nov 1998
        35th Anniversary of Doctor Who.

      1 Dec 1998
        Fifteenth Anniversary of release of Fido version 1 by
        Tom Jennings.

     16 Feb 1999
        13th Anniversary of the introduction of EchoMail by Jeff Rush.

     12 May 1999
        12th Anniversary of Fido Operations in Zone 4;
        10th Anniversary of the creation of FidoNet Zone 4.

     24 Jul 1999
        XIII Pan American Games [through 8 Aug 99].

      9 Jun 1999
        Tenth Anniversary of the adoption of FidoNet Policy 4.07.

     31 Dec 1999
        Hogmanay, Scotland. The New Year that can't be missed.

      1 Jan 2000
        The 20th Century, C.E., is still taking place thru 31 Dec.

      1 Jun 2000
        EXPO 2000 World Exposition in Hannover (Germany) opens.

     15 Sep 2000
        Sydney (Australia) Summer Olympiad opens.

      1 Jan 2001
        This is the actual start of the new millennium, C.E.

     -- If YOU have something which you would like to see in this
        Future History, please send a note to the FidoNews Editor.

     -----------------------------------------------------------------

     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 11                  27 Jul 1998


     =================================================================
                            FIDONEWS PUBLIC-KEY
     =================================================================


     FidoNews PGP Public-Key Listing

     [this must be copied out to a file starting at column 1 or
      it won't process under PGP as a valid public-key]

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     Comment: Democracy Requires A Free And Uncensored Press.

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     File-request FNEWSKEY from 1:1/23 [1:205/1701] or download it from
     IKVHFoT! BBS at 1-209-251-7529 anytime Zone 1 ZMH at 300-9600+ V34.
     The FidoNews key is also available on the FidoNews homepage listed
     in the Masthead information.



     -----------------------------------------------------------------

     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 12                  27 Jul 1998


     =================================================================
                            FIDONET BY INTERNET
     =================================================================


          This is a list of all FidoNet-related sites reported to the
          FidoNews Editor as of this issue; see the notice at the end.

     ============

     FidoNet:

      Homepage    http://www.fidonet.org
      FidoNews    http://www.fidonews.org             [HTML]
                  http://209.77.228.66/fidonews.html  [ASCII]
      WWW sources http://www.scms.rgu.ac.uk/students/cs_yr94/lk/fido.html
      FTSC page   http://www.goldware.dk/ftsc
      Echomail    [pending]
      WebRing     http://ddi.digital.net/~cbaker84/fnetring.html  [TFN]
      General     http://owls.com/~jerrys/fidonet.html
                  http://www.trak-one.co.uk/foti

     ============

     Zone 1:       http://www.z1.fidonet.org

       Region 10:  http://www.psnw.com/~net205/region10.html

       Region 11:  http://oeonline.com/~garyg/region11/

       Region 13:  none

       Region 14:  none

       Region 15:  none

       Region 16:  none

       Region 17:  none

       Region 18:  http://techshop.pdn.net/fido/

       Region 19:  http://www.compconn.net

     ============

     Zone 2:       http://www.z2.fidonet.org

     ZEC2:
     Zone 2 Elist: http://www.fbone.ch/z2_elist/

       Region 20:  http://www.fidonet.pp.se (in Swedish)

       Region 23:  http://www.fido.dk (in Danish)

       Region 24:  http://www.swb.de/personal/flop/gatebau.html (German)
     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 13                  27 Jul 1998


         Fido-IP:  http://home.nrh.de/~lbehet/fido (English/German)

       Region 25:
                   http://www.bsnet.co.uk/net2502/net/

       Region 26: http://www.nemesis.ie
          REC 26: http://www.nrgsys.com/orb


       Region 27:  http://telematique.org/ft/r27.htm

       Region 29:  http://www.rtfm.be/fidonet/  (French)

       Region 30:  http://www.fidonet.ch  (Swiss?)

       Region 33:  http://www.fidoitalia.net (Italian)

       Region 34:  http://www.pobox.com/cnb/r34.htm  (Spanish)
           REC34:  http://pobox.com/~chr

       Region 36:  http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/7207/

       Region 38:  http://public.st.carnet.hr/~blagi/bbs/adriam.html

       Region 41:  http://www.fidonet.gr (Greek/English)

       Region 48:  http://www.fidonet.org.pl

     ============

     Zone 3:       http://www.z3.fidonet.org

     ============

     Zone 4:       http://www.altern.org/zone4

       Region 90:  http://visitweb.com/fidonet
         Net 903:  http://www.playagrande.com/refugio
         Net 904:  http://members.tripod.com/~net904 (Spanish)

     ============

     Zone 5:       http://w3.eastcape.co.za/fidonet/index.htm

     ============

     Zone 6:       http://www.z6.fidonet.org

       Region 65:  http://www.cfido.com/fidonet/cfidochina.html (Chinese)

     ============

          Pages listed above are as submitted to the FidoNews Editor,
          and generally reflect Zone and Regional Web Page sites.  If
          no Regional site is submitted, the first Network page from
          that Region is used in its place.  Generally, Regional pages
     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 14                  27 Jul 1998


          should list access points to all Networks within the Region.

          TCP/IP accessible node access information should be submitted
          to the FidoNews Editor for inclusion in their Region or Zone.


     -----------------------------------------------------------------

     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 15                  27 Jul 1998


     =================================================================
                           FIDONEWS INFORMATION
     =================================================================

     ------- FIDONEWS MASTHEAD AND CONTACT INFORMATION -------

     Editor: Zorch Frezberg

     Editors Emeritii: Tom Jennings, Thom Henderson, Dale Lovell,
                       Vince Perriello, Tim Pozar, Sylvia Maxwell,
                       Donald Tees, Christopher Baker

     "FidoNews Editor"
         FidoNet  1:1/23
         BBS  1-209-251-7529,  300/1200/2400/9600/V.34/V.90

      more addresses:
         Zorch Frezberg -- 1:205/1701, zorch@repairnet.com
                                       zorch@qnis.net
                                       zorch@kumr.lns.com

     (Postal Service mailing address)
         FidoNews Editor
         P.O. Box 642
         Fresno, CA 93709-0642
         U.S.A.


     voice:  1-209-446-9038 [voice mail = 'blind' numbers not returned]

     ------------------------------------------------------

     FidoNews is published weekly by and for the members of the FIDONET
     INTERNATIONAL AMATEUR ELECTRONIC MAIL system.  It is a compilation
     of individual articles contributed by their authors or their
     authorized agents.  The contribution of articles to this compilation
     does not diminish the rights of the authors.  OPINIONS EXPRESSED in
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     OBTAINING COPIES: The most recent issue of FidoNews in electronic
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     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 16                  27 Jul 1998


     where mmm = three letter month [JAN - DEC] and y = last digit of the
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     You can read the current FidoNews Issue in HTML format at:

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     FIDONEWS 15-30               Page 17                  27 Jul 1998


                          ftp://ftp.sstar.com/fidonet/fnews/

     Each yearly archive also contains a listing of the Table-of-Contents
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     The current week's FidoNews and the FidoNews public-key are now also
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                                *=*=*=*=*

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                                -Tom Jennings

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