Articles

• Full Moon
• A New Fidonet Structure?
• ECHO TALK - Y2K Information

Full Moon
Ol'WDB

This year will be the first full moon to occur on the winter solstice, Dec. 22, commonly called the first day of winter in, 133 years. Since a full moon on the winter solstice occurs in conjunction with a lunar perigee (point in the moon's orbit that is closest to Earth). The moon will appear about 14% larger than it does at apogee (the point in its elliptical orbit that is farthest from the Earth). Since the Earth is also several million miles closer to the sun at this time of the year than in the summer, sunlight striking the moon is about 7% stronger making it brighter. Also, this will be the closest perigee of the Moon for the year since the moon's orbit is constantly deforming. If the weather is clear and there is a snow cover where you live, it is believed that even car headlights will be superfluous.

On December 21, 1866, the Lakota Sioux took advantage of this combination of occurrences and staged a devastating retaliatory ambush on soldiers in the Wyoming Territory.

In laymen's terms it will be a super bright full moon, much more than the usual AND it hasn't happened this way for 133 years!

Our ancestors 133 years ago (1866) saw this. Our descendants 100 or 200 or so years from now will see this again.

I hope someone else might find this interesting! Remember this will happen December 22, 1999.

A Proposed new Structure
for Fidonet
by John H. Guillory (1:3807/1 john.guillory@mainline.nu)

There has been a lot of talk recently over various changes to fidonet. Many sugest we should not be bound to zone mail hours, some have commented that with the majority of fidonet getting their netmail and echo mail via internet, the need to be grouped via region is not needed as badly. Granted, we can't just throw all nodes in 1 zone/region/network, because then the NC would have a nightmare keeping up with everything, and the RC and ZC wouldn't have anything to do. An option I have been thinking about lately would be to group BBS's via Common Intrest. Rather than break fidonet by a sudden change, I say create a few extra zones, eg. Zones 7-9, which would then be known as the Common Intrest Zones.

Zone 7 could be defined as the Amature BBS's (I know, Fidonet is an amature Network, and as such all BBS's should be amature, but by amature here, I mean any BBS that does not fit into zones 8 or 9). Zone 8 would be defined as the Business/Support Zone. Groups in this zone would include the Binkley Term Support Board, IREX Support, FMail Support, Portal Support, etc. The Region would define the type of support, Network would define the product. Any additional support boards/distribution boards, etc. would be listed under the network for the product. Such that if I was looking for the latest version of Portal of Power, I could be guaranteed to find it by looking in Zone 8, in the Mailer Region, under the Portal Network on any of the BBS's within that network. (It should become clear here what the intentions of this are). Any product who's programmers offers support via Fidonet would be listed in Zone 8.

Zone 9 could be for Non-Profiet Organizations, if there's any left in fidonet.

Within Zone 7, we'd have Regions broken down by main Intrest with networks being a sub-intrest. Eg. Suppose I'm looking for some MIDI files, I could then go to Zone 7, Multi-Media Region, MIDI Network, and find a list of BBS's that specialize in MIDI files.

The way I see it, we are loosing many Fidonet BBS's on a regular basis, and many have stated they will pull the plug on or before Dec. 31, 1999 due to lack of callers. We need to help the users find the BBS's they want in order to save whats left of fidonet, and change the direction back to a Growing Network. Imagine sysop's providing BBS listings to the users based on primary features of the BBS's. We could also have online doors that let the users browse the nodelist for other BBS's. Another benefit to this is that the BBS's who share a common intrest tend to communicate with each other more frequently. By sharing the same Net number, many BBS's would require the users to only enter the Node number of the BBS. It'd be that much quicker and easier for the users to communicate with other users via netmail in common intrest networks. It's just something I've been thinking about, and wanted to post in fidonews for others to ponder and post their opinions.

ECHO TALK
Food for thought from Fido's echomail.
Purloined without permission by D Myers

Rumor has it that in less than two weeks, the Internet will fall from the sky and it will be the end of civilization as we know it. And it's all because computers can't count past 2000, I'm told. Like many sysops, I've known all along that I should be preparing for these momentous events by buying a new computer, upgrading all my software, and adjusting my attitude.

Somewhere along the way, the system fell apart for me... I never knew quite what to do. I learned a few simple tests I could run on my system to tell if it would work in the year 2000... and then heard that it may not work even if the tests work. I've learned that much of the software designed for Fidonet won't work in the year 2000, but then I learned that the software I was going to replace it with wouldn't work either.

The information has been so bad that I've simply taken a fatalistic attitude... I'll wait until after Y2K and see what's busted. It's not a bad approace: rumor has it that I won't be able to use my hardware or software, so anything I can actually use is a bonus. I'm not due for any disappointment using this approach.

But in his regional echoes and in the Z1C echo, Darrell Salter has taken a more ambitious approach and is actually discussing operating systems and software. I don't know how accurate all of it is, but if you're not content to stick your head in the sand and wait for what Y2K brings, here's some information.

----- fidoy2k.txt begins -----
Y2K INFORMATION FOR FIDONET SYSOPS

Note: As this database fills out we should come up with a pretty good idea of what is, and isn't Y2K compliant. Please notify me of any errors or additions to the following list. If you are unsure about a piece of software you are running, notify me and it will be added to the list, and perhaps someone can notify us of it's Y2K compliancy. By all means, please contact the software's author to verify.

Sysops may download Fidonet related Y2K programs, updates, and patches from my BBS or by surfing to my web site at http://sparkys.dyndns.org and going to the Y2K section of the File Archives. ftp://sparkys.dyndns.org also works.

OPERATING SYSTEMS

DOS

MSDOS  ------ NO! Several problems, no fixes planned.
DR-DOS ------ YES
PC-DOS 2000 - YES
CALDERA DOS - YES

WINDOWS

WINDOWS 3.1 ---------------- NO! Problems. Some patches.
WINDOWS 95 ----------------- Patches required
WINDOWS 98 ----------------- Patches required
WINDOWS 98 SECOND EDITION -- Patches required
WINDOWS NT ----------------- YES (Service Pack 4 required)
WINDOWS 2000 --------------- Beta, should be ok

OS/2

OS/2 V.3 -------- YES (FixPak 40 required)
OS/2 V.4 -------- YES (FixPak 10 or higher required)
Note: TCP/IP and MPTS must be upgraded seperately.

LINUX

All Versions - YES

FIDONET SOFTWARE

NODELIST COMPILERS

FASTLIST - YES
QNODE ---- YES
XLAX ----- UNKNOWN

FRONT END MAILERS

FRONTDOOR ------ YES (version 2.26 required)
BINKLEYTERM ---- NO (Cosmetic problems)
BINKLEYTERM XE - YES
ARGUS ---------- YES (Versions 3.1 and above)

BBS

CONCORD ------ YES (Version 0.01g5 and above)
MAJORBBS ----- NO!
MAXIMUS ------ YES (Y2K Patch required)
SEARCHLIGHT -- YES (Version 5.02 and above)
WILDCAT! ----- YES (Version 4 and above)
WORLDGROUP --- YES (Version 3.1 and above)
REMOTEACCESS - UNKNOWN
SPITFIRE BBS - YES (Version 3.6 and above)

MAIL PROCESSORS

FASTECHO -- YES (Version 1.46 and above)
SQUISH ---- YES (Y2K Patch required)
WATERGATE - YES (beta)
GECHO ----- YES (non-shareware)

FILE ECHO PROCESSORS

ALLFIX - YES (Versions 5 and above)

NETMAIL MANAGERS

NETMGR - YES (Y2K Patch required)

NETMAIL UTILITIES

CFROUTE - YES

MSC. UTILITIES

MSGTRACK --- UNKNOWN

EDITORS

TIMED ------- YES (Y2K Patch required)
MSGED ------- YES (TE Versions)
GOLDED ------ UNKNOWN
FLEETSTREET - YES

Contact Information

Fidonet: 1:229/2
BinkD: sparkys.dyndns.org
Email: r12c@sprk.com
Web: http://sparkys.dyndns.org
Ftp: ftp://sparkys.dyndns.org

Links

http://www.microsoft.com/Year2000 [faulty URL [jb 4/25/01]]
http://www.software.ibm.com/year2000 [faulty URL [jb 4/25/01]] Update: http://www.ibm.com/ibm/year2000/
http://www.novell.com/y2k [faulty URL [jb 4/25/01]]
http://www.intel.com/Year2000 [faulty URL [jb 4/25/01]]
http://www.amd.com/support/y2k/y2k.html [faulty URL [jb 4/25/01]]
http://www.cyrix.com
http://www.award.com
http://www.phoenix.com
----- fidoy2k.txt ends -----