Articles

• The Fidonet, Zone 1, Echolist
• What has been, will be again?

The Fidonet, Zone 1, Echolist
By Frank Vest

Just some random thoughts. Take them as ideas, suggestions or just ignore them

The Elist:

While this is a good tool, I have some concerns about it.

1. Why list echos that are not distributed? If you look at the thing, there are a lot of "place holder" and "Tag holder" entries.
   1. This adds a lot of bulk to the Elist.
      1. Harder to search the list
2. It robs others of starting an echo that might be viable if distributed.

This is a dis-service to Fidonet. What if someone generated a list of thousands of combinations of "Echo Tags" and elisted them? A person with a computer could do this and I'm surprised it hasn't been attempted.

1. Why is there a "Volume" listed?
   1. How can anyone know what the volume of an echo will be?
      1. Estimate the volume?
         1. Over what? a week? month? year?
      1. Is this a "weapon" that can be used to remove an echo?

In this day and time, an echo can have a volume of 50 messages one week and 0 for the next four weeks... only to be followed by 100 a week after that.

Just some things to think about. I'm not kicking the Elist. It is a good tool to prevent duplicate echos, show what echos are available, tell who the Moderator is and other facts that help Fidonet Echomail. On the other hand, it could be used to control echos.

Regards,

Frank

What has been, will be again?
By Frank Vest
1:124/6308

There is a belief that time is a circle and what has been will be again. IOW, If it happened in the past, it will happen again in the future.

I'm not sure what the above has to do with what I'm going to write, but it sure sounded neat. :-)

I'm sitting here thinking about Fidonet, computers, the past, the future, computer viruses and other such things (that seems to be normal for me). :-)

I'm not a tech sort of person, but I remember having an old CPM machine. I graduated from that to a "real" computer (IBM PS/2) shortly thereafter. When I got to the "big time" of the PS/2, I started learning about viruses and how they can infect and affect a computer. With Dos 5.00 as my operating system and me accessing BBS so much, I was concerned. I took the measures to prevent infection and did my best to "keep an eye" on the system.

Time went on and along came the likes of Windows, OS/2, Linux and other such programs and operating systems. Along with these came, of course, more and stronger viruses.

So, where is this editorial going with all this? I don't know. :-)

Here's a thought

It seems that the more popular the operating system, the more viruses there are that can affect it. Of course, things like the Internet, Fidonet and other stuff where many people share and access each other's systems has helped, I'm sure. I can't say for sure, but I don't remember CPM having a virus problem. I hear that a virus can't be written for Linux. OS/2 is supposed to be fairly safe as well.

Ok, so what?

Well, It seems that as new operating systems come into being, or become popular, there are more viruses written for them. So, here's a strange thought.

Fidonet programs, as we know, tend to be small. Many are still Dos based, or have a Dos version. Now, I've not heard of a virus being written for Dos in a long time. So, is it safe to say that Dos is virus free? Probably not, but I'd say that the chances of having a new Dos virus hit your old Dos box is not very likely. :)

With that in mind.... As computers become even more popular, the internet gains even more use, operating systems evolve and viruses follow along with this path, there could come a time where a virus will succeed in stopping the Internet and, maybe, enough computers in the right places to shut the world down.

Wouldn't it be something if all of us "old Dos" users became the only systems that didn't get shut down due to a virus? Wouldn't it be strange to see international powers come to Fidonet and ask for help in getting information flowing since Fidonet and these old Dos machines were the only things still running?

<shaking head upon awakening>

Wow! What a dream!!..... Or was it? ;-)