F I D O N E W S -- Volume 15, Number 22 1 June 1998

F I D O N E W S -- Volume 15, Number 22 1 June 1998
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| The newsletter of the | ISSN 1198-4589 Published by: |
| FidoNet community | "FidoNews" |
| _ | 1-209-251-7529 [1:1/23] |
| / \ | |
| /|oo \ | |
| (_| /_) | |
| _`@/_ \ _ | |
| | | \ \\ | Editor: |
| | (*) | \ )) | Zorch Frezberg 1:205/1701 |
| |__U__| / \// | |
| _//|| _\ / | |
| (_/(_|(____/ | |
| (jm) | Newspapers should have no friends. |
| | -- JOSEPH PULITZER |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Submission address: FidoNews Editor 1:1/23 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| MORE addresses: |
| |
| submissions=> [email protected] |
| |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| For information, copyrights, article submissions, |
| obtaining copies of FidoNews or the internet gateway FAQ |
| please refer to the end of this file. |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Blows Against What Empire?

Table of Contents
1. EDITORIAL ................................................ 1
2. ARTICLES ................................................. 3
Loggerhead is borirrrrrring .............................. 3
3. COLUMNS .................................................. 4
Pass The Mashed Bananas .................................. 4
4. GETTING TECHNICAL ........................................ 9
Crossposted in FTSC ...................................... 9
5. NOTICES .................................................. 10
Future History ........................................... 10
6. FIDONEWS PUBLIC-KEY ...................................... 11
FidoNews PGP Public-Key Listing .......................... 11
7. FIDONET BY INTERNET ...................................... 12
8. FIDONEWS INFORMATION ..................................... 14
FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 1 1 Jun 1998

=================================================================
EDITORIAL
=================================================================

A bit of international news, and then nothing...? Hmmm...I would
have suspected much more going on worlwide in FidoNet than just one
issue's worth of news.

As it is, enough mail has trickled through in the FidoNet Technical
Standards Committee to generate the need for a decision, and under
the rules of the FTSC, public input is requested, as presented below,
and taken from the FTSC_PUBLIC echo. No formal notice was sent to
the FidoNews...which seems odd for an intent of soliciting public
input.

Doc Logger appears yet again, along with an interesting observation
of his writing and prose.

In general news and information, it appears that more and more people
seem to feel that trying matters in the 'court of public opinion' has
more weight and value than trying to resolve matters through the very
simple process established within FidoNet Policy.

Moreso when claims of legal action are bandied about by those with
little or no legal experience to assess the validity of these claims.
If nothing else, this should be amusing to watch.

On another note, the message I received from a node in the former
Soviet Union has not been followed up by the writer. It would be
most interesting to hear from the "Quiet Giant" in Zone 2 and get a
perspective that many in the West do not have available to them.

If nothing else, it would be an interesting forum for the discussion
of the formation of "Zone 7", and offering both a true and earnest
representation of those who had no voice before.

Also, it would seem that more people are discovering Adrian Walker's
"so long and thanks for all the fish" message, posted on his website.

It's interesting to see so many cast blame and accusations over this,
but so far only see two people actually propose to do anything about
the loss of the EchoList management of tags.

For those of you who don't know, Adrian has apparently decided to
shut it down without offering the code to run it. Certainly, that is
his perogative...after all, it _is_ his code.

But my feeble attempt to recall the past remembers that his
predecessor, Mike Fuchs, offered to make _his_ code available at the
least to his successor, but the offer was refused...am I incorrect in
my recollection of this?

And, on a last note...

I receive a number of commercial E-Mails from various companies and
FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 2 1 Jun 1998

corporations around the world, offering 'free trial' software or
equipment, or offering 'discounts' on the same...

Should I post these in the FidoNews each week, or not?

Your input is welcome on the idea...these are not paid advertising,
nor is there usually any graphics attached. These are generally
press releases from these companies.

However, I'm not at all certain if these would be appropriate to
include. On the one hand, they are commercial; on the other hand,
these often include materials of general interest to sysops.

Feel free to contact me at 1:1/23, or at [email protected].

-zf-

-----------------------------------------------------------------

FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 3 1 Jun 1998

=================================================================
ARTICLES
=================================================================

Loggerhead is borirrrrrring
by Bob "Bobo I" Moravsik

Each week the nodes that read Fidonews must mechanically
skip over the drival written by Doc (doctor of buffoonery)
Loggerhead. Its the same old stuff:

Dear Rev Whatever....

Then some bellowing about Satti...Zorch and Kohl.

This is followed by a paragraph on "peefour"
a document that has words larger then 5 letters.
Loggerhead shows he hasn't yet gotten to section
8. Doc...to modify Fidonet's policy one
must restate it then get 50%+1 of the RC's
to present it to the IC for a *C vote. Sorry
but any other way ya got a document that shares
one property with you...being a phony,

Hey...Satti ain't perfect but he's the IC and ZC1.
Kohl ain't perfect but he's the RC10. Loggerhead
ain't perfect and he's a buffoon. What these
guys do is a lot more constructive then the
repititious ravings that Loggerhead stuffs into
Fidonews. Maybe we should have two additions:

Fidonews I for the regular nodes and Fidonews II

with Doc Buffoon's column that will someday
line the cages of electronic birds.

Give it up Loggerhead....you are like a fire
dectector...all noise...no substance. You waste
bandwith in the echo and seem to have attracted
no allies. I guess when one is a doctor of buffoonery
and stuff white powder your his nose all day...your
keyboard is your only outlet.

Go away...leave Fidonet to normal people.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 4 1 Jun 1998

=================================================================
COLUMNS
=================================================================

Dear Editorbeing,

This article is submitted by Doc Logger(163/110) who was
awash in mashed bananas which he was gumming in teary-eyed
nostalgia about the good old days. Of course, for Logger,
the "good old days" are anything that happened before
yesterday but that is a minor semantic quibble.

Roll da flic, Zorch....

Dear Reverend Visage,

This may be longer than my usual bird cage liner because it
represents a sort of milestone in my less than sterling
pursuit as a Fidonet columnist. There have been
miscellaneous articles and letters before I started
sequentially numbering them, but this represents the 50th
column that I have submitted in the format of letters to
you. The fact that you are stuck in a Thai bordello with
opium vacuity in your eyes, large lizards trying to eat your
spleen, and vicious nightmares involving Henry Kissinger
tormenting your every waking hour, are all of small
consequence to me. I've already become independently wealthy
by selling the future rights to your brain. Surprisingly,
the Smithsonian Institute was outbid by a small tribe in
Borneo who claimed that it must represent the largest
earthly repository of pure Ibogaine.

I meant to start off with something sentimentally touching
like "Roll da flic, Zorch, Tom, Thom, Dale, Vince, Tim,
Sylvia, Donald & Christopher.." In honour of all the
Fidonews editors who have seen fit to include my weaselings
in the esteemed Snooz organ. It is a great credit to all the
people on the list that the Snooz at least withstood the
slings and arrows of outrageous elflords and remained true
to its purpose. It is not as if there weren't moments when
Fidonews was in peril, particularly from elflords like
Bonine and the occasional whining from Dallas Hinton. I have
just completed reading all the Fidonews that have ever been
issued and what a strange and interesting history it
represents.

I'd would like to roll back a few pages and talk about the
Glory Days of Fidonet. (If it isn't too much trouble, you
may want to cue up some sentimental music...something that
stirs the heart... y'know, music with tubas and all-nude
majorette dancing girls.) I have in my study, a faded and
yellow print-out of a chat I had with Bert Binary in
December, 1985. He had just set up his BBS and we were
discussing the concept of creating an echomail conference
FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 5 1 Jun 1998

that could be passed between our systems. During the
conversation, a spider strolled across Bert's monitor. The
spider became a topic of discussion and somehow got named
"Spike." The echomail conference became "Spike's Bar" - a
sort of semi-fiction, roman au clef, circus, roadshow and
irreverent conversation echo. I subsequently discovered that
the echomail conference was among the first of what were
ultimately called "rogue" echos. It propagated outside the
backbone structure reaching Vienna, Montana and occasionally
we would get strange and incomprehensible netmail from
Australians who had somehow linked into the echo.

What made the echo remarkable was the the messages were
creative, witty and there were *hundreds* of them every day.
I do mean messages, and not the quote-'N- grunt vulture shit
that permeates echomail conferences today. One of the Great
Themes that emerged in that echo was the delicious pastime
of satirizing the various presumptive rulers of Fidonet. In
general, we chose local targets but since that represented
the era where Tom Kashuba's many personalities reigned, it
was a rich environment for poking fun at the morons.

Spike's Bar was where you made your echomail debut with the
immortal line: "Your lips are like two roses in dung." You
brought us Lucie LaFlamme whose short-short skirts and whose
Franglais language was a great amusement. Out of Spike's
Bar, five full length cheesy electronic novels were spun
off.

So, at this moment, I'd like to hoist another glass of
Ibogaine to Spike, and all his characters and friends who
gave me years of enjoyment from Fidonet. It is an acute
embarrassment that I have been reduced to an old troll whose
message output is almost entirely devoted to poking sticks
at dumb, confused Fido elflords. If I were honest about it,
which I'm rarely inclined to be, I'd say that a great deal
of my disgust with the Fido elflords has to do with the fact
that their intrusions led all of us to get lost in the
process and to forget that the medium is capable of magic
moments.

The second nostalgic event is of a savage and ugly nature.
I'd read Fido admin echos with detached amusement as the
elflords battled with serfs, and as tyrants like Bonine
stamped their jackboots across the noble dream that Tom
Jennings had created. The only "political" inclinations I
had concerned my absolute joy and wonder that a whole
network could be created with anarchy as its guiding
premise. The militantly public domain status of some of the
early software, the lack of commercial domination, and the
fact that it joined a world - were all things that caused me
to marvel in wide-eyed amazement.

The event, which was 10 or 11 years ago, that toppled me
from complacency was a netmail message from a friendly
local sysop who advised me that I really ought to attend the
FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 6 1 Jun 1998

upcoming Net163 sysop meeting because on the agenda was a
resolution to remove my nodenumber for "bringing Fidonet
into disrepute." I did attend the meeting and was stunned
that the issues involved the International propagation of
the Spike's Bar echo. This may sound incredible now, but the
theses of the sysop who proposed the resolution was that
Fidonet was a medium whereby sysops should be "serious"
exchanging technical information or talking about computers
or software. In the proponent's mind, there was no place or
room for fun in Fidonet and certainly no allowance should be
given to an echo which featured a spider who worked as a
bartender.

Our NC at the time, a fellow named Al Hacker who had all the
literate skills of a Bob Kohl and half the brains, took the
resolution seriously. I glanced around the room and it
occurred to me that the NC, the NEC, and all of the HUBS ran
Mail Only systems. Not only did they not have human callers,
but the only messages they ever wrote were self-referential
commentary of how many kilobytes (it *was* kilobytes in
those days) of mail they moved through their systems.
Fidonet to them was all form and no substance. It was a
mechanism and not a medium.

When I asked why the other sysops would care about an echo
which went out on my dime when it left the net, or went by
non-Hub routed means within the net, their answer was
equally amazing. They said that only *they* had the right to
move mail and only *they* had the right to determine whether
content was appropriate. In fifteen minutes of insane
discussion I heard enough proprietary declamations to choke
a whale. It was "their net" or "my nodes", or "my mail Hub"
etc. etc. on and on. Another social observation became
obvious as I looked around the room at the various people
who were laying claim to dominion over various aspects of
Fidonet. In every case, whatever titles they'd acquired in
Fidonet were their highest achievements in life. They were
variously unemployed, low level government clerks, janitors,
hotel bell hops - but not one of them in real life had
either the skills or the education to rise to management.
But there they were, infesting Fidonet, and like any long
disfranchised class, they were hell-bent on flexing the only
power they'd ever acquired in life.

Mercifully, the resolution to hoof me from Fidonet was
narrowly defeated. The incident caused me to look at the
Fidonet elflord structure and I realized that there was a
stunning overpopulation of similar real-life failures
occupying elflord positions. It is no small wonder that this
collection of mutants tried to foist Peefour on what they
hoped would be a somnolent populace. These cretins needed
rules because they had no shreds of judgment of their own.
They needed the lash of policy to inflict their totalist
revenge on everyone and everything that they should have
recognized was the only prayer for freedom they ever could
achieve. A generation of swine, to steal Thompson's phase,
FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 7 1 Jun 1998

burrowed like maggots into Fidonet's structure and gave
viability to every sniveling, whining, social misfit who had
an ax to grind and a keyboard with which to file a policy
complaint.

If you have the right music on, and you squint your eyes
just a tiny bit to catch the contrail, you can see the
trajectory from Dodell through Bonine and Peace all the way
to Satti. A lineage of wild peccaries who took as their
anthem the sanctity of a policy document and who fiddled
while Rome was burning. We have Kohl whose pathology is
devouring Region10 and we have Bob "noted" Satti with all
the management skills of Euglena; telling us that "they are
bound by policy." It used to be that humanity was bound by
common sense and the civilizing influence of justice. That,
I think, was when there were people with the strength of
character to make decisions.

The third rumination concerns my first letter to Fidonews. I
remember sitting at the computer, filled with trepidation
about whether I should send it. I feared that Tom Jennings
would never publish something from a fido serf, particularly
because the tenor of the letter was to swing large broadaxes
at a collection of Fido elflords. To my joy and amazement,
Tom not only published the letter but sent me a kind netmail
suggesting that the whole network could use my kind of
irreverence. Tom didn't know it then, but his words were
like giving milk to a stray kitten.

Whenever I had doubts about whether Fidonet had fallen under
a cloak of despair and sycophancy towards the elflords, I
merely had to look at the netmail responses to my various
articles. To all of those people who wrote, even the ones
who wanted to carve out my liver, I thank you. To those
whose writings in Fidonet I admired most - it is sad that
most of you are gone, even though there was a consensus
among you that writing for Fidonews was "proselytizing to
gas station attendants." I dearly miss the energy and
literacy that a fair number of people devoted to their
messages.

Anyway, those are my flashbacks from an earlier Fidonet era.
I realize that the last worthy windmill to tilt at is in the
lack of content of echomail messages. I also know that my
opinion represents a very tiny minority. It is infinitely
ironic that in one of Fidonet's echo conferences devoted to
writing, there are only a couple of people who actually take
the care to write as opposed to barf back previous messages
while adding their own minor trail of phlegm to the end.
I've recently had occasion to read nine doctoral theses of
people who were recently blessed with the title "PhD" and I
was appalled that not one of them possessed basic
communication skills or even knew how to write a coherent
sentence. It caused me to muse that knowledge without the
means to use it or convey it is a trivial pursuit. When I
give business seminars at one of the local high school, I
FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 8 1 Jun 1998

give the students a choice of submitting either a ten
thousand word essay or four paragraphs of cogent and
original thought. I rarely get students choosing to write
four paragraphs.

In a couple of weeks I shall toss the cameras into my
mid-life crisis car and go on a driving adventure.
Eventually I'll meet up with a collection of friends who
convene once a year to embarrass each other about past proud
assertions that we were going to change the world. For some
of us, merely surviving in the world is triumph enough.
We'll talk about the novels we never got around to writing,
or the fact that our art isn't gracing galleries across the
country, or the fact that we aren't in politics making some
sort of difference, or the fact that we gave up acting
careers for something as pedestrian as wanting to be able to
pay the rent. As a group, we need to torture ourselves with
these failures of nerve and spirit. We also want to wish on
our children the old resolve to go out and make a difference
in some fashion while suppressing the fear that their
generation will be riding the downward side of the asymptote
where dreams and reality are implausible partners.

I've already written too much. Poor Dallas' lips must be
horribly bruised and the batteries must be dead on Kohl's
Speak 'N Spell. I must go Visage, and this has nothing at
all to do with the fact the car is rumbling ominously with
tanks full of nitro-methanol, *serious* driving music racked
up in the dash CD player, and a need to get back out there
to reset the edge.

Regards,
Doc Logger
Furlang Island,
South Pacific

-----------------------------------------------------------------

FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 9 1 Jun 1998

=================================================================
GETTING TECHNICAL
=================================================================

Hello All.

We currently have a case of a FTSC Standing Member who has decided to
become a point instead of staying a node. He is willing to continue
as member if allowed.

The problem is that FTA-1001 requires members to be nodes. I don't
know the background for this requirement, since I was not around when
the document was originally drafted.

FTA-1001 is only amendable after public input, so I am asking this on
behalf of the FTSC: May Standing Members be points as well as nodes?

Please give your input during the next three weeks, after which I
will summarize and make a decision based on your input.

Thank you.

Odinn

--- FTSC Administrator 1.0
* Origin: http://www.goldware.dk/ftsc * e-mail: [email protected]
(2:236/77)

### 30 ###

-----------------------------------------------------------------

FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 10 1 Jun 1998

=================================================================
NOTICES
=================================================================

Future History

3 Jul 1998
FidoNet European Convention (see issue #20 for details).

14 Sep 1998
Start of International BBS Week [thru 20 Sep 98].

22 Sep 1998
First anniversary of the FidoNews domain of www.fidonews.org.

1 Dec 1998
Fifteenth Anniversary of release of Fido version 1 by
Tom Jennings.

24 Jul 1999
XIII Pan American Games [through 8 Aug 99].

31 Dec 1999
Hogmanay, Scotland. The New Year that can't be missed.

1 Jan 2000
The 20th Century, C.E., is still taking place thru 31 Dec.

1 Jun 2000
EXPO 2000 World Exposition in Hannover (Germany) opens.

15 Sep 2000
Sydney (Australia) Summer Olympiad opens.

1 Jan 2001
This is the actual start of the new millennium, C.E.

-- If YOU have something which you would like to see in this
Future History, please send a note to the FidoNews Editor.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 11 1 Jun 1998

=================================================================
FIDONEWS PUBLIC-KEY
=================================================================

FidoNews PGP Public-Key Listing

[this must be copied out to a file starting at column 1 or
it won't process under PGP as a valid public-key]

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: Democracy Requires A Free And Uncensored Press.
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=G82W
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

File-request FNEWSKEY from 1:1/23 [1:205/1701] or download it from
IKVHFoT! BBS at 1-209-251-7529 anytime Zone 1 ZMH at 300-9600+ V34.
The FidoNews key is also available on the FidoNews homepage listed
in the Masthead information.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 12 1 Jun 1998

=================================================================
FIDONET BY INTERNET
=================================================================

This is a list of all FidoNet-related sites reported to the Editor as
of this appearance.

NOTE: I am looking for a comprehensive list of Telnet, VMODEM, BinkP,
Argus and other TCP/IP based nodes operating FidoNet on the
InterNet, either by Zone or worldwide, to post here as well.
- Ye Editor

============

FidoNet:

Homepage http://www.fidonet.org
FidoNews http://www.fidonews.org [HTML]
http://209.77.228.66/fidonews.html [ASCII]
WWW sources http://www.scms.rgu.ac.uk/students/cs_yr94/lk/fido.html
FTSC page http://www.goldware.dk/ftsc
Echomail [MIA]
WebRing http://ddi.digital.net/~cbaker84/fnetring.html [TFN]
General http://owls.com/~jerrys/fidonet.html

============

Zone 1: http://www.z1.fidonet.org

Region 10: http://www.psnw.com/~net205/region10.html

Region 11: http://oeonline.com/~garyg/region11/

Region 13: http://www.smalltalkband.com/st01000.htm

Region 14:

Region 15:

Region 16: http://www.tiac.net/users/satins/region16.htm

Region 17:

Region 18: http://techstop.pdn.net/fido/

Region 19: http://www.compconn.net

============

Zone 2: http://www.z2.fidonet.org

ZEC2:
Zone 2 Elist: http://www.fbone.ch/z2_elist/

Region 20: http://www.fidonet.pp.se (in Swedish)
FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 13 1 Jun 1998

Region 23: http://www.fido.dk (in Danish)

Region 24: http://www.swb.de/personal/flop/gatebau.html (in German)

Region 25:
http://www.trak-one.co.uk/net254

Region 26: http://www.nemesis.ie
REC 26: http://www.nrgsys.com/orb

Region 27: http://telematique.org/ft/r27.htm

Region 29: http://www.rtfm.be/fidonet/ (in French)

Region 30: http://www.fidonet.ch (in Swiss?)

Region 33: http://www.fidoitalia.net (in Italian)

Region 34: http://www.pobox.com/cnb/r34.htm (in Spanish)
REC34: http://pobox.com/~chr

Region 36: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/7207/

Region 38: http://public.st.carnet.hr/~blagi/bbs/adriam.html

Region 41: http://www.fidonet.gr (in Greek and English)

Region 48: http://www.fidonet.org.pl

============

Zone 3: http://www.z3.fidonet.org

============

Zone 4: (not yet listed)

Region 90:
Net 904: http://members.tripod.com/~net904 (in Spanish)

============

Zone 5: http://w3.eastcape.co.za/fidonet/index.htm

============

Zone 6: http://www.z6.fidonet.org

Region 65: http://www.cfido.com/fidonet/cfidochina.html (China)

============

-----------------------------------------------------------------

FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 14 1 Jun 1998

=================================================================
FIDONEWS INFORMATION
=================================================================

------- FIDONEWS MASTHEAD AND CONTACT INFORMATION -------

Editor: Zorch Frezberg

Editors Emeritii: Tom Jennings, Thom Henderson, Dale Lovell,
Vince Perriello, Tim Pozar, Sylvia Maxwell,
Donald Tees, Christopher Baker

"FidoNews Editor"
FidoNet 1:1/23
BBS 1-209-251-7529, 300/1200/2400/9600/V.34/V.90

more addresses:
Zorch Frezberg -- 1:205/1701, [email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

(Postal Service mailing address)
FidoNews Editor
P.O. Box 642
Fresno, CA 93709-0642
U.S.A.

voice: 1-209-446-9038 [voice mail = 'blind' numbers not returned]

------------------------------------------------------

FidoNews is published weekly by and for the members of the FIDONET
INTERNATIONAL AMATEUR ELECTRONIC MAIL system. It is a compilation
of individual articles contributed by their authors or their
authorized agents. The contribution of articles to this compilation
does not diminish the rights of the authors. OPINIONS EXPRESSED in
these articles ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHORS and not necessarily those of
FidoNews.

Authors retain copyright on individual works; otherwise FidoNews is
Copyright 1998 Zorch Frezberg. All rights reserved. Duplication
and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For
use in other circumstances, please contact the original authors, or
the Editor.

=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

OBTAINING COPIES: The most recent issue of FidoNews in electronic
form may be obtained from the FidoNews Editor via manual download or
file-request, or from various sites in the FidoNet and Internet.
PRINTED COPIES may be obtained by sending SASE to the above postal
address. File-request FIDONEWS for the current Issue. File-request
FNEWS for the current month in one archive. Or file-request specific
back Issue filenames in distribution format [FNEWSFnn.ZIP] for a
particular Issue. Monthly Volumes are available as FNWSmmmy.ZIP
FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 15 1 Jun 1998

where mmm = three letter month [JAN - DEC] and y = last digit of the
current year [8], i.e., FNWSJAN8.ZIP for all the Issues from Jan 98.

Annual volumes are available as FNEWSn.ZIP where n = the Volume number
1 - 15 for 1984 - 1998, respectively. Annual Volume archives range in
size from 48K to 1.4M.

INTERNET USERS: FidoNews is available via:

http://www.fidonews.org
http://www.fidonet.org/fidonews.htm
ftp://ftp.fidonet.org/pub/fidonet/fidonews/
ftp://ftp.aminet.org/pub/aminet/comm/fido/
ftp://ftp.irvbbs.com/fidonews/

*=*=*

You may obtain an email subscription to FidoNews by sending email to:

[email protected]

with a Subject line of: subscribe fnews-edist

and no message in the message body. To remove your name from the email
distribution use a Subject line of: unsubscribe fnews-edist with no
message to the same address above.

*

You may retrieve current and previous Issues of FidoNews via FTPMail
by sending email to:

[email protected]

with a Subject line of: help

and FTPMail will immediately send a reply containing details and
instructions. When you actually make a file request, FTPMail will
respond in three stages. You find a link for this process on
www.fidonews.org.

*=*=*

You can read the current FidoNews Issue in HTML format at:

http://www.fidonews.org

STAR SOURCE for ALL Past Issues via FTP and file-request -
Available for FReq from 1:396/1 or by anonymous FTP from:

ftp://ftp.sstar.com/fidonet/fnews/

Each yearly archive also contains a listing of the Table-of-Contents
for that year's issues. The total set is currently about 13 Megs.

FIDONEWS 15-22 Page 16 1 Jun 1998

=*=*=*=

The current week's FidoNews and the FidoNews public-key are now also
available almost immediately after publication on the FidoNews Editor
homepage on the World Wide Web at:

http://209.77.228.66/fidonews.html

There are also links there to jim barchuk's HTML FidoNews source and
to John Souvestre's FTP site for the archives. There is also an email
link for sending in an article as message text. Drop on over.

=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

A PGP generated public-key is available for the FidoNews Editor from
1:1/23 [1:205/1701] by file-request for FNEWSKEY or by download from
IKVHFoT! BBS at 1-209-251-7529 as FIDONEWS.ASC in File Area X. It
is also posted twice a month into the PKEY_DROP Echo available on the
Zone 1 Echomail Backbone.

*=*=*=*=*

SUBMISSIONS: You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in
FidoNews. Article submission requirements are contained in the file
ARTSPEC.DOC, available from the FidoNews Editor, or file-requestable
from 1:1/23 [1:205/1701] as file "ARTSPEC.DOC". ALL Zone
Coordinators also have copies of ARTSPEC.DOC. Please read it.

"Fido", "FidoNet" and the dog-with-diskette are U.S. registered
trademarks of Tom Jennings, P.O. Box 410923, San Francisco, CA 94141,
and are used with permission.

"Disagreement is actually necessary,
or we'd all have to get in fights
or something to amuse ourselves
and create the requisite chaos."
-Tom Jennings

### -30- ###
---------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------