Letters to the Editor

• Password Change - Right or Wrong?
• IP addressing
• MP3 Echo

Password Change -
Right or Wrong?
Kent Anderson 1:382/92/ kand@onr.com

Your letter in Fidonews F47 points out, line by line, your sysopsis of what happened in the recent password change incident. In actuality, it's the best proof I have seen of the correctness of Thom Lacosta's action in revealing the password to Rob Ferrera. Here's why I feel this is true:

Those who move the mail MUST know to whom they look for initiating action within the conference. They have no way whatever of knowing that some puppetmaster behind the scences is making a dummy dance. Their looking to the LISTED Moderator(s) is the only logical approach. It even makes sense to consider the first listed Moderator as in charge in the event of a dispute.

The commonly accepted practice through all the time I have participated in Fidonet activities has been to consider the listed Moderator as in charge of a conference, and the one with authority there, when authority must be wielded. That authority includes with it the right to delegate to another such tasks as the Moderator deems fitting. Delegating those duties does not mean that the person in charge delegates the responsibility for the delegated task to performed properly.

Revealing a password to the proven Moderator of an echo is not something new. Under proper circumstances, it was most certainly done when Adrian Walker kept the echo list, and so far as I know during his predecessors' regimes. As a Fidonet Moderator, I have not the slightest compunction about letting the security of my echo's password rest with Thom. I personally feel that we owe him a vote of thanks for preventing an echo from being orchestrated from behind the scenes by someone unknown to the users of that echo.

[ED Interesting comment, the question remains, is the elist worth it, as commented in my Editorial of last week?

IP Addressing

Finally something I can get up on the soap box about. Now listen up it's time for a lesson. Stepping up to my Soap Box I Proclaim:

Is there room in Fidonet Nodelist for IP's. In this Authors opinion Damn right. There should have been some adaptation officially about 7 years ago. There was a time where Fidonet system operators were on the cutting edge. Today some of you are finally waking up and getting on the band wagon... But most of you want to cry that your user base has dried up and moved on. Get a grip and start showing the world we have what it takes to put Fidonet back on the map. If not put it back on the map but at least move the technology into the 90's instead of staying in the 80's

It's kinda funny in a sense I was laughed at back in 1992 for setting up one of the very first Internet e-mail capable BBS systems. Sysops laughed and said, what do you need that for. Well who is laughing now.

I was pushing for IP integration back in 95 and for the most part it was like talking to a brick wall. Well I am very very happy that the new innovators in Zone 2 are actually pushing the boundaries so that they can force the rest of you into actually implementing something useful.

What is comical is that I hear many of you crying that your BBS systems are not getting callers anymore. No Shit sherlock they are all connecting to the 1000 or less BBS systems that are fully connected to the Internet. I never had 7000 logins in one day when we had 16 dial in lines going. Move your systems to the Net and take away some of my volume.

Connectivity is getting cheaper and with services like http://www.dynip.com who update your dns records on the fly when you don't own a static IP the cost to put your BBS on the Net is no more than a upgraded Internet account and a dedicated phone line.

But so far as what the real wizards over in Zone 2 are doing I would hope that those of you spending your days squabbling about who is the biggest and baddest and who has power and who doesn't will wake up and take notice and move this hobby forward once again.

I get mad like everyone else when people try to push there personal agendas and not help one another and move this network forward. But it will be like the past a few early adopters will move on Zone 2's innovation and then the rest of you will wake up one morning and play catch up..

If your crying that your poor old 286 single line dial up system is gonna break because they modified the nodelist well I guess we will have to come up with 2 Nodelist after all it isn't that BIG and I am sure it would not be real difficult rig a conversion program.

It is time for some real new Fidonet leadership and I mean real new leadership most of the so called leaders are either burned out or they still are listening to Disco.

Lastly I want to tell you the real reason Zone 1 has not adapted Fidonet over IP it is because it would put a few subscription echomail feeds out of business. BTW I have already set about 25 of you up for free feeds an am re-feeding you. I have plenty of bandwidth for about a 1000 more so If any of you need a free full Fidonet echomail/filebone and netmail feed drop me a line at the contact at the bottom and I will be happy to save you some of you hard earned cash each month that you can put towards putting your BBS on the Internet

Todd Cochrane
BBS Networks & Hafa Adai Exchange
1:345/0
http://www.bbsnets.com
cochrane@bbsnets.com

BBS Networks & Hafa Adai Exchange
http://www.bbsnets.com/ World's Largest Interactive BBS
Todd Cochrane Honolulu Hi cochrane@bbsnets.com

Announcing the newly backboned MP3 echo!

A new echo has been established for discussion of the popular internet music distribution file format of MP3. It is an open-ended echo for discussion of just about anything related to the MP3, including the political aspects and the legal aspects of the file format. I, the moderator (Steve Steffler, 1:17/667.3) encourage all sysops reading to hook into this sure-to-be interesting echo from their nearest backbone feed. I'm not great at advertising, so below I'll include the ELIST entry, and you can come check it out for yourself.

MP3
International MP3 Discussion Forum
This echo is for news, discussion and information pertaining to the high quality digital music format that is sweeping the world, MPEG I Layer III (or MP3). This echo is gatewayed into e-mail mailing list format as well. Put "SUBSCRIBE MP3" in an email to listserv@gen.lcrnet.orgto add yourself to the discussion.
Status: Active
Origin: 1:17/667.3 Group:
Distribution:
Gateways: mailing list, see description
Language:
# Nodes: N/A Volume: 433/mo Rules:
Flags: <Real Names Only>
Notes: /REA
Moderators: steve steffler, 1:17/667.3, steve@gen.lcrnet.org
Last changed: 9-Nov-98 by steve.steffler@gen.lcrnet.org, 1:261/1550,
steve.steffler@gen.lcrnet.org (steve steffler)

email: generica@antisocial.com web: http://listen.to/equatorial icq: 2690054
"I dress for success, but success is not impressed." - Poster Children