Guest Editorial

OPEN LETTER TO OUR NEW IC AND ALL ZCs
by Andy Manninger

To those of you my notoriety has not reached yet, please allow me to introduce myself. I am a FidoNet user of 14 years' standing, and a moderator of the ENGLISH_TUTOR echo for two. As such, I am not, strictly speaking, a member of the FidoNet organization. But if you will indulge me, I would like to make some observations and, for a change, put a positive spin on them. If I wanted to be highfalutin about it, I would call this blurb a "Clarion Call to Action." Modesty being one of my salient characteristics, I refrain from doing so.

When I recently had a look at the Z1 Nodelist, my chin dropped. It is pathetic how it has become a ghostly skeleton of its old self in British Columbia and elsewhere. This fact is well known, and I am not going to rehash what has already been belaboured at length by others. I won't bemoan the passing of the "good old days," and I won't lament what could have been but isn't. We've seen enough handwringing, dammit. Instead, I would like to submit a few ideas for your consideration on how to plug at least some of the holes in poor old Fido's sinking raft.

Reliability or the Lack Thereof

I have already carped about the lost messages and the delays in the echomail message flow in the Snooze before, so I won't bore you with the obvious. Let me just say that Russian Fido is totally constipated again, and has been so for over a week. And if you are tempted to say, "Well, that's Russia for you," may I remind you that the same thing happens with fair regularity right here in different parts of North America, most recently in Tennessee (as far as I know). So what are we going to do to address this problem?

Let me bounce this off you, if I may: mirrored systems. The concept was already known and implemented back in the early '60s when only the Pentagon could afford such luxury. For those who don't know what I am talking about, "mirrored systems" and "disk mirroring or duplexing" mean two or more interconnected computers or disk controllers and their hard disks running in tandem and doing the same processing. If one of them goes on the blink, the other(s) take over. More sophisticated systems constantly compare their results and, where three or more computers or controllers are in the system, in case of a discrepancy "vote" on which one of them is right, and continue from there. But we needn't get esoteric about it. Simple manually switched duplex systems would do for us.

Some naysayers have said to me that our volunteer sysops cannot afford this "luxury" when I suggested that the vital parts of FidoNet should be obligated to use duplexed systems. My answer is that less than three years ago I bought a pretty decent Pentium computer for CN$2,200. Today this amount will buy two comparable machines. Anyone who could afford to run a hub or a host system on a single computer three years ago can afford to run it on a duplexed system today.

The March of Progress

I hate to rub it in, but this is the 21st century. Maximus and Wildcat served admirably as BBS software in their time, but their character orientation--and the character-based technology of the entire FidoNet--have long been passe. Like it or not, this is the age of multimedia. Those who can't keep up, perish. Does the word "dinosaurs" ring a bell? What are we going to do about not following in their wake?

I suggest that the Cs call upon the creative talents of the membership to bring the Net into the 21st century. You might like to set up a committee to examine the ways of modernizing FidoNet. Surely Tom Jennings and company, who created this Net from scratch, did not hold a monopoly on creativity.

To help get the creative juices flowing, thought might be given to allowing some degree of commercial activity, namely, advertising. Let's face it, it's greed and ego that make our world go around. I don't like it, you may not like it, but the facts are undeniable. Even the idealistic, august International Olympic Committee has succumbed to the pull of the almighty dollar and allowed a degree of professionalism in the Olympics that would have been unthinkable not too many years ago.

Graphical Data

It is not impossible to send graphical data through FidoNet, but the cumbersome UUENCODing and, more importantly, the limitations on the size of the files that can be sent, make it impractical. Sure you can "crash" your data to its destination, but you'll be stuck with the cost of the long-distance phone call. I much prefer e-mail attachments. Let's address this problem too while we are at it.

Running in Place

FidoNet, in all its essential features and operation, is the same as it was 10 or more years ago. Granted, mail-transit speed has improved. When everything works as it should, it takes less than 12 hours for echomail from Russia to reach North America. It's not in the Internet league, but much better than it was years ago.

Telnet is another noteworthy and valuable development. It enables those of us with Internet connections and with poor or no local FidoNet service to log onto distant BBSs at no extra cost. It also creates competition among sysops. The good ones become widely known and flourish, and those providing poor service and having attitude problems fall by the wayside--as they should.

I think we can breathe new life into Fido. It will never match the Internet in scope and versatility, but there is no need for it to wither on the vine. It can fill a well-deserved niche. But wither it surely will without modernization as the Internet becomes more affordable all around the world. I would really hate to see this happen. So let's get off our duffs and do something about it!

These are my two cents worth I am submitting for your consideration. If they generate some creative action, they will have been worth the effort.