Articles

• One hundred years
• Is Fidonet Still Needed?
• 2002 Off Centre Rally - The Big U

One hundred years
By Warren Bonner
wdbonner@pacbell.net

This ought to boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1902 .. one hundred years ago ... what a difference a century makes! Here are some of the U.S. statistics for 1902:

The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.

Only 14 Percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the American homes had a telephone.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.

There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st- most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents an hour.

The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home.

Ninety percent of all U.S. physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard."

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason.

The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease!
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was 30.

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented.

There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.

One in ten U.S. adults couldn't read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and the bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health."

18 percent of households in the U.S. had at least one full-time servant or domestic.

There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.

Just think what it will be like in another 100 years. ......It boggles the mind....! .

Passed on by Bob Crown

Is Fidonet Still Needed?
By Scott Royall
<royall@conchbbs.com>

I joined Fidonet in the summer of 1986 as 1:106/357. Back then, BBS were all the rage. It was the first time average people from all over the world could send messages to each other simply by sitting down at their desks and typing on these strange machines called computers. Of course things didn't really start rolling until an unknown named Jeff Rush invented something he called echomail. That simple little concept gave us both an economical way to move messages around, and-more importantly-a vehicle for holding conversations organized by topic. During the late '80's, it was routine for five to eight megabytes of compressed messages to flow into the Houston net every twelve hours. Just getting this mass of mail delivered to the 278 Fidonet BBS Houston had at its height required a squad of dedicated sysops acting as distributors. I had the honor of being both a distributor and a NC during that period.

So much for the walk down memory lane. You may say, "that was then, this is now." Maybe, but maybe things aren't as different as we believe. While the Internet has achieved ubiquity, it is not the universal answer. Most notably, it doesn't have a good facility for topical discussion. Newsgroups are really a free-for-all where the only form of topic control is to have a moderator approve every post. The other method, mailing lists, has its share of limitations as well. I find it interesting that what we used to call a BBS seems to be resurfacing on the Internet. They are often called "forums," but they work just like a BBS right down to the user verification and using moderators. I run such a site, www.conchbbs.com <http://www.conchbbs.com/> , although it's just getting started. (Yes, that's the same domain name I used for my Fidonet BBS.) About the only thing I haven't noticed these sites doing is sharing messages in an echo-like manner, and I think that's just a matter of time.

Why would a group of web-based BBS sites share messages? After all, old-style BBS did it to make topics available over a given geographical area while managing the cost of long distance telephone calls, and the Internet doesn't charge by the mile. That's true, but there is a growing trend among providers of charging customers based on the amount of data transferred. The cost right now rests with people like me who are sysops of web-based sites. Web hosts usually charge both a fixed fee and additional sliding charges if extra bandwidth is used. Even if I do my own hosting, it is only a matter of time before my ISP wants to charge based on the amount of their bandwidth used. This is just basic economic sense, and it is likely to drive web-based sysops to find ways of maximizing the usage of their connections just as their telephonic brethren did. That's why I believe that something similar to web-based echomail is a logical step.

That statement leaves me with one fundamental aspect of Fidonet to discuss, and that's the sense of community which made it popular. The life of my BBS, Conch, curiously paralleled the life of my best friend, Corby. Corby was a dog, but I wouldn't call him a mere pet. He was the first to come to terms with the limitations of my physical disability, and helped me find ways to get around it. The BBS also allowed me an opportunity to be seen for my abilities rather than my disability. Both Corby and the BBS were with me until 2001, although I could see their decline. When Corby died, so little activity was left in Net 106 that keeping the BBS up on an aging OS/2 machine seemed futile. Yet, I must admit that, despite the unending flame-wars among the upper political levels, I have missed the community of Fidonet. Just as I now have a new dog, Lilly, who's trying to carry on with Corby's goodness, perhaps it's time for our virtual friend, Fido, to be reborn on the Internet.

Scott Royall

2002 Off Centre Rally - The Big U
Submitted by David Drummond, 3:640/305

Day 15 - Sunday 17th August (The Causeway to Bundaberg)

Before we left, we rang Mum and Dad to see how they were getting on, then rang Rick in Mt Isa Hospital. He is now in the Men's Surgical Ward, and had just had a shower, so is not gingerly up and about. They had set his thumb last Friday and were now talking about sending him back to Brisbane on Thursday or Friday if his lungs improve sufficiently. Good news indeed.

We left then, through Emu Park to Rockhampton, and on to Mt Larcom and Calliope. There, we turned inland and took the Many Peaks/Monto road, expecting another nice dirt ride. To our surprise, t was a fairly new good sealed road. Apparently there is a new dam to be built in there shortly, which explains the expensive new road.

We rolled into Many Peaks Pub at lunchtime to see about 30 other bikes there as well. It turns out they were mostly workers at the smelter and associated companies. Our meal (two steak sandwiches) took about 1 1/2 hours to come. We sure picked the wrong day to stop there for lunch!

While we were there, the clouds rolled in and it started to rain. We were assured that the road wasn't sealed on the Monto side of Many Peaks, the way we were intending to go. Of course, now I started to worry about what the rain was doing to the road and any possible creek crossings.

It stopped raining and we finally got our lunch. After wolfing it down, we continued on, in the opposite direction to all the other bikes. The road, thus far, wasn't too bad - just a bit damp in places. It became seal to climb up the range, then dirt again at the top. We turned off onto the Kalpower/Gin Gin road which promptly went into the State Forest on a clay road. The heavens opened up again.

We stopped, put on our wet gear and I, for one, started worrying in earnest about how slippery the road would be. Most of it had a thin sprinkling of gravel over it, so I kept away from the shiny parts as best I could, and managed okay.

This part was very winding and skinny - definitely not a high speed road. After some time, we climbed over another mountain, then the road opened out and we could get a bit more speed up. The rain had finished now, and I just enjoyed the ride.

I fuelled up again at Gin Gin, then we took the Bundaberg Road, turned off at Bullyard for Bucca. We reached our "Country Estate" weekender about 4-ish. No hot shower tonight, but a nice comfortable bed after we devoured the last of our tinned tucker.

Conclusion

We'd done over 5,000km in three weeks - not a real lot by our standards. David had spent $344 in fuel (average of 16km per litre). and I spent $218 (average of 24km per litre). The most we spent for fuel was $1.30 a litre at Urandangie. The least expensive fuel was in Mt Isa at $0.819 in Mt Isa for PULP - even cheaper than Brisbane! Not counting any bike maintenance before or after the trip (including tyres), we'd spent only about $1,500 for the two of us for the 3 week period. This includes accommodation, fuel, food and souvenirs (only two "Dangie Pub" polo shirts). Not too bad I think.

Neither of us had any falls at all - quite different to the 2000 Off Centre Rally to Old Mornington Bush Camp in the Kimberley. So neither bike has been damaged. That makes it a successful trip, in my view.

Next year, for something completely different, we're planning to go "trekking" in New Zealand with Rick. Then the following year will be Innamincka ...