FidoNews is published weekly by the International FidoNet
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submit articles for publication in FidoNews. Article submission
standards are contained in the file ARTSPEC.DOC, available from
node 1:1/1. 1:1/1 is available for network mail between NMH-1
hour to NMH+1 hour. At all other times, netmail is not accepted
although submissions can be uploaded.
Copyright 1989 by the International FidoNet Association. All
rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution permitted for
noncommercial purposes only. For use in other circumstances,
please contact IFNA at (314) 576-4067. IFNA may also be contacted
at PO Box 41143, St. Louis, MO 63141.
Fido and FidoNet are registered trademarks of Tom Jennings of
Fido Software, 164 Shipley Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94107 and
are used with permission.
The contents of the articles contained here are not our
responsibility, nor do we necessarily agree with them.
Everything here is subject to debate. We publish EVERYTHING
received.
Table of Contents
1. ARTICLES ................................................. 1
Product Announcement -- ARC 6.00 ......................... 1
New Echo Conference Available ............................ 3
The Flamers Bible ........................................ 5
SEA Letter: New Stuff! ................................... 7
2. LATEST VERSIONS .......................................... 9
Latest Software Versions ................................. 9
3. NOTICES .................................................. 10
The Interrupt Stack ...................................... 10
FidoNews 6-07 Page 1 13 Feb 1989
System Enhancement Associates, Inc.
1:107/9@FidoNet, 520/1015@AlterNet
New Product Announcement
ARC 6.00
System Enhancement Associates, Inc. is pleased to announce that
we are now taking orders for version 6.00 of our popular ARC file
archive utility. The new manuals are at the printer now while we
touch up the code, and we expect to start shipping on February
14th.
This is a major enhancement to ARC itself and to the popular ARC
file archive format. New features include the ability to
compress and extract subdirectory structures and support for
extended file information such as longer filenames.
ARC version 6 is also FAST, FAST, FAST! It's over four times as
fast as our previous version, WITHOUT sacrificing the reliability
that ARC is famous for.
This version of ARC also includes many enhancements and additions
to the SEA utilities that come on the ARC disk. Almost all of
the utilities have been rewritten and updated. Major changes
include:
* The LF menu shell for MS-DOS is now much faster and more
powerful.
* The ScanDisk disk diagnostic utility can now shift data off
of questionable clusters, saving your data BEFORE your disk
goes bad.
* A new utility, OHMYGAWD, was added. If your lost data can be
recovered at all, OHMYGAWD will find it!
* And many others, too numerous to mention.
The complete ARC package with disk and manual is available for
$50 from System Enhancement Associates, Inc. We can be reached
by phone between 9 AM and 5 PM Eastern time at (201) 473-5153, or
by mail at:
System Enhancement Associates, Inc.
21 New Street, Wayne NJ 07470
As always, full program sources are available at no additional
FidoNews 6-07 Page 2 13 Feb 1989
cost. Those of you who have maintenance contracts need do
nothing -- you will be receiving your new ARC disk in the mail
soon!
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FidoNews 6-07 Page 3 13 Feb 1989
With all the recent sludge going through FidoNews about AIDS,
homosexuality, and the nutty ramblings from Fundamentalists, this
advertisement for a new echo conference I started really fits. I
couldn't have picked a better time.
The echo conference that follows is being distributed by me
personally. Yes, that means that *I* will poll *your* node
nightly for no cost or real effort on your part. You simply set
up the conference on your system. This is to get established--
later it shall be made available to the backbone. How can you
refuse a deal like that?
``ICGAL'': Issues Concerning Gays And Lesbians
Right now, there are some people thinking this is going to be a
"fluffy chat" conference. Nope, that seems to be the role of
GAYNET. ICGAL is to be more focused on real-world issues gays and
lesbians have to face, and through networking I think it can also
serve as an electronic "support group."
Some of you are probably thinking this will be a sexually
explicit conference. Not likely, unless you consider discussions
involving adoption, inheritance, and real estate sexually
explicit. The focus is on the special problems homosexuals face
dealing with laws, regulations, and social prejudice. Through
open and honest discussion, we'll try to find solutions.
ICGAL is publically accessable on my system, and I would prefer
that it be made public on systems that wish to participate.
However being gay myself, I know the kinds of prejudice
homosexuals face, and so I have no real problem if participants
wish to make it private on their systems. I see no need to make
the conference limited to "adults" as there are gays in their
teens who have problems they might like to discuss as well. I
myself would have given anything when I was 16 to find such a
conference to help sort out my feelings.
Although Pat Buchanan will disagree, estimates point to an
average of 10% of the world's population being homosexual. The
average BBS (at least in Net 260) has about 400 users, which
means that at least 40 of those users would find ICGAL
interesting and possibly useful. Consider it; if not for
yourself as a SysOp then for your users.
Wish to connect? Simply leave me a netmail message, set up an
echo conference named ``ICGAL'' on your system, and I'll go about
connecting you. Already have a similiar-sounding conference on
your system? Tell me about it, and we can talk about adding it
to ICGAL, which would benefit everyone.
Send netmail to John Passaniti on 1:260/218. Thank you.
FidoNews 6-07 Page 4 13 Feb 1989
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FidoNews 6-07 Page 5 13 Feb 1989
The FLAMERS BIBLE
Origin: Unknown (actually, I wrote the first one a few months
ago, but I thought "origin: unknown" looks cool)
Revision 1: Dec. 2, 1987 by Joe Talmadge
In the time I have been posting to net, I have encountered flame
wars of epic proportions (Brahms Gang vs. Tim Maroney), and flame
wars of a more modest nature (MIT vs. CIT). Flaming has evolved
into a highly-stylized art form, complete with unwritten rules
and guidelines.
Here, I have attempted to document the Art of Flaming, in such a
way as it will be interesting to old hands (flame masters) and
novices (virgins) alike. Without a further ado, then, I present:
***********The twelve commandments of flaming**************
1. Make things up about your opponent: It's important to make
your lies sound true. Preface your argument with the word
"clearly." "Clearly, Fred Flooney is a liar, and a dirtball to
boot."
2. Be an armchair psychologist: You're a smart person. You've
heard of Freud. You took a psychology course in college. Clearly,
you're qualified to psychoanalyze your opponent. "Polly
Purebread, by using the word 'zucchini' in her posting, shows she
has a bad case of penis envy."
3. Cross-post your flames: Everyone on the net is just waiting
for the next literary masterpiece to leave your terminal. From
rec.arts.wobegon to alt.gourmand, they're all holding their
breaths until your next flame. Therefore, post everywhere.
4. Conspiracies abound: If everyone's against you, the reason
can't *possibly* be that you're a fuckhead. There's obviously a
conspiracy against you, and you will be doing the entire net a
favor by exposing it.
5. Lawsuit threats: This is the reverse of Rule #4 (sort of like
the Yin & Yang of flaming). Threatening a lawsuit is always
considered to be in good form. "By saying that I've posted to the
wrong group, Bertha has libelled me, slandered me, and sodomized
me. See you in court, Bertha."
6. Force them to document their claims: Even if Harry Hoinkus
states outright that he likes tomato sauce on his pasta, you
should demand documentation. If Newsweek hasn't written an
article on Harry's pasta preferences, then Harry's obviously
lying.
7. Use foreign phrases: French is good, but Latin is the lingua
franca of flaming. You should use the words "ad hominem" at least
three times per article. Other favorite Latin phrases are "ad
FidoNews 6-07 Page 6 13 Feb 1989
8. Tell 'em how smart you are: Why use intelligent arguments to
convince them you're smart when all you have to do is tell them?
State that you're a member of Mensa or Mega or Dorks of America.
Tell them the scores you received on every exam since high
school. "I got an 800 on my SATs, LSATs, GREs, MCATs, and I can
also spell the word 'premeiotic' ".
9. Accuse your opponent of censorship. It is your right as an
American citizen to post whatever the hell you want to the net
(as guaranteed by the 37th Amendment, I think). Anyone who tries
to limit your cross-posting or move a flame war to email is
either a communist, a fascist, or both.
10. Doubt their existence: You've never actually seen your
opponent, have you? And since you're the center of the universe,
you should have seen them by now, shouldn't you? Therefore, THEY
DON'T EXIST! This is the beauty of flamers' logic.
11. Lie, cheat, steal, leave the toilet seat up.
12. When in doubt, insult: If you forget the other 11 rules,
remember this one. At some point during your wonderful career as
a flamer you will undoubtedly end up in a flame war with someone
who is better than you. This person will expose your lies, tear
apart your arguments, make you look generally like a bozo. At
this point, there's only one thing to do: insult the dirtbag!!!
"Oh yeah? Well, your mother does strange things with vegetables."
The Golden Rule of Flaming:
My flames will be witty, insulting, interesting, funny, caustic,
or sarcastic, but never, ever, will they be boring.
Here endeth the scriptures.
Joe Talmadge
hplabs!hpda!hpsemc!jat
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FidoNews 6-07 Page 7 13 Feb 1989
What's Happening at SEA?
We're told that the path to success lies in emulating a duck;
Look calm and unruffled on the surface, while paddling like mad
underneath!
We haven't said much lately about what we've been doing, but that
doesn't mean we haven't been doing anything. Rather the
opposite. We've been doing everything at once! Many of the
pieces are interrelated to one extent or another, and we don't
like talking about vaporware, so we've held off talking about any
of it until it was finished.
But it's wrapped up now, which leaves us with a new problem.
(Was there ever a problem whose solution didn't lead to more
problems?) Now that we've finished working on everything all at
once, how do we tell you about everything all at once? We can't,
so we'll deal with them a piece at a time. This week we'll lead
off by mentioning something for the techies out there.
No doubt you saw our product announcement for SEAdog 4.50 last
week, and saw lots of interesting goodies in there. How do they
work? How does a chat link work, and what's this "domain"
business?
To answer those questions (and others) we've started publishing a
series of Technical Memoranda. These are machine-readable
documentation files describing various aspects of our software.
Techies will appreciate these for the hard data they provide on
how our stuff works, and everyone will appreciate the many
helpful tips and suggestions.
Here is the current list of titles for our Technical Memoranda
thus far:
Number Title
====== =====
TM0001 Technical Memoranda
TM0101 Using SEAdog within FidoNet
TM0102 Using SEAdog with TBBS
TM0103 Using SEAdog with Fido
TM0104 Using SEAdog with Opus
TM0105 Using SEAdog with RBBS
TM0201 SEAdog 4.50; Session Passwording
TM0202 SEAdog 4.50; Domain Addressing
TM0203 SEAdog 4.50; Event Scheduling
TM0204 SEAdog 4.50; External Event Triggers
TM0205 SEAdog 4.50; Chat Mode Functions
TM0206 SEAdog 4.50; TTY Interface Functions
TM0207 SEAdog 4.50; Chat Session Protocol
TM0208 SEAdog 4.50; Shells and USNO
TM0209 SEAdog 4.50; Undocumented Features of MAIL
TM0301 Technical Aspects of Implementing Group Mail
TM0302 GROUP 2.05; Undocumented Features
FidoNews 6-07 Page 8 13 Feb 1989
TM0303 Coupling Group Mail to EchoMail
TM0304 GROUP 2.05; High Volume GroupMail
Any of these may be downloaded from our technical support
bulletin board at (201) 473-1991, or may be file requested from
node 520/1015@Alternet or 1:107/1015@FidoNet. The names of the
files are the TM number with an extension of ".TXT". For
example, TM0304 is in a file named "TM0304.TXT". The complete
set of technical memoranda may be had by requesting "TM.ARC".
Next week: XlatList and route files
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FidoNews 6-07 Page 9 13 Feb 1989
Utility authors: Please help keep this list up to date by
reporting new versions to 1:1/1. It is not our intent to list
all utilities here, only those which verge on necessity.
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FidoNews 6-07 Page 10 13 Feb 1989
Hal DuPrie 1:101/106 Chairman of the Board
Bob Rudolph 1:261/628 President
Matt Whelan 3:3/1 Vice President
Ray Gwinn 1:109/639 Vice President - Technical Coordinator
David Garrett 1:103/501 Secretary
Steve Bonine 1:115/777 Treasurer
IFNA BOARD OF DIRECTORS
DIVISION AT-LARGE
10 Courtney Harris 1:102/732? Don Daniels 1:107/210
11 Bill Allbritten 1:11/301 Hal DuPrie 1:101/106
12 Bill Bolton 3:711/403 Mark Grennan 1:147/1
13 Rick Siegel 1:107/27 Steve Bonine 1:115/777
14 Ken Kaplan 1:100/22 Ted Polczyinski 1:154/5
15 Larry Kayser 1:104/739? Matt Whelan 3:3/1
16 Ivan Schaffel 1:141/390 Robert Rudolph 1:261/628
17 Rob Barker 1:138/34 Steve Jordan 1:102/2871
18 Christopher Baker 1:135/14 Bob Swift 1:140/24
19 David Drexler 1:19/1 Larry Wall 1:15/18
2 Henk Wevers 2:500/1 David Melnik 1:107/233
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FidoNews 6-07 Page 12 13 Feb 1989
Membership for the International FidoNet Association
Membership in IFNA is open to any individual or organization that
pays a specified annual membership fee. IFNA serves the
international FidoNet-compatible electronic mail community to
increase worldwide communications.
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Address _________________________________________________________
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Baud Rates Supported ____________________________________________
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Your Special Interests __________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
In what areas would you be willing to help in FidoNet? __________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
Send this membership form and a check or money order for $25 in
US Funds to:
International FidoNet Association
PO Box 41143
St Louis, Missouri 63141
USA
Thank you for your membership! Your participation will help to
insure the future of FidoNet.
Please NOTE that IFNA is a general not-for-profit organization
and Articles of Association and By-Laws were adopted by the
membership in January 1987. The second elected Board of Directors
was filled in August 1988. The IFNA Echomail Conference has been
established on FidoNet to assist the Board. We welcome your
input to this Conference.
