Interviews

Interview with Charles Cruden of Internet Rex.
By Frank Vest

Q: Tell us a little about Charles Cruden. Just who are you? :)

Charles Cruden is in fact a fiendishly sneaky alien plot to take over the world. The first step in this plan is infiltration of Fidonet, which appears to have gone well, but the details of the jump to the second step (total domination of world governments) seems to have been less well planned, and will shortly be coming under review. Those involved will no doubt be feeling the wrath of large halibuts shortly.

Q: What got you first interested in BBS?

Apart from the obvious need for the first step in world domination, the main thing that got me involved was the purchase of a modem to connect to the university. When I found other places to connect to, the whole process sort of snowballed, and I soon found myself buying another modem and computer to put together my own BBS. Mostly the door games drew me in, but at the time, it was also one of the best ways of going about exchanging shareware games. (Mmmm... DOOM.)

Q: How long have you been programming?

Pretty much since the first computer I got in '84. (Go go Timex Sinclair!) At that point it was just experimenting. In university I went into computing science, and that's when the real programming started.

Q: What prompted you to begin writing Irex?

InterBBS gaming mostly. (How better to practise world domination?) I'd started exchanging files with other boards over the net in '94, mostly by Telix scripts. It worked really well, but although a lot of folks were interested, the complexities behind setting it up were a big impediment. TransX and Fido2Int came along to simplify things a bit, but at the time they just didn't do enough, so I set about writing something of my own to fill the gap....

Q: What do you see as the strong points of Irex or any programs you've written for Fidonet? Give us a quick review.

I'd say Rex's best feature is its flexibility: whatever you want to do to transfer your files over the net, Rex can do it. Native versions for most OSes and support for most of the mailers out there don't hurt it either.

Q: Where do you see Irex going in the future?

My goal is to make Rex the first "universal" mailer: that is, regardless of the method you want to use to exchange your mail or the setup you have, Rex can do it for you. With any luck, I can make it reasonably simple to configure at the same time.... :)

Q: Where do you see BBS systems going in the future?

That depends a lot on what you consider to be a "BBS". The current incarnation (dialup line with text based echos / doors / etc.) does have certain advantages, but I just can't see it sticking around for long. Things are going to move towards access over the net (witness the number of telnet boards springing up all over the place), and if they stuck with a text interface for long, I'd be surprised. Already, you could consider some internet websites BBSs of a kind: they have their own message areas, some have games, files abound.... Start networking them, and you have a whole other kind of BBS network. If BBSing can throw off the shackles of a nearly 20 year old stereotype and catch up with the net, I think great things could happen.

Q: Anything else you want to add or tell the readers?

FIDONET IS JUST THE FIRST STEP! SOON ALL YOUR PUNY NATIONS WILL FALL UND... @(#&^R

Umm... Nope, nothing comes to mind. :)