From: Day Brown 

Martin Foster wrote:
>  DB> Sunna bitch. I been thinking of trying to see if fidonet was still
>  DB> working.
> 
> Of course it's still working :-)
> 
>  DB> Is it still pretty clear of spam?
> 
> Naturally :)
> 
>  DB> Where do you logon?
> 
> One way to access it is to get hold of a copy of the nodelist, select a
> prospective Boss and apply for a Point.
i downloaded the nodelist, which has a .z02 extension that I dont have
an archive extractor for.
Why, in the sam hill dont they just make it a .zip? WTF?

And why, when an internet greenhorn goes to fidonet.org, dont they just
have the links to show him the numbers that might be a local call? Fido
might once have been a powerhouse that people hadda do things their way,
but now, it should be accomodating to the habits of net users, or it
will continue the slow slide to oblivion.

I see a similar phenomena on the Ham radio lists, very low traffic, and
again, they have not tried to integrate their system with the available
bleeding edge, (never mind cutting edge) technology that would make the
hardware setup a lot more affordable.

It looks like the internet is taking over all forms of communication,
which makes us all much more vulnerable to disaster should terrorism,
sabotage software, or just plain stupidity, crash the net. 

Nowhere, on either fido or ham lists did I see anyone trying to
integrate the two technologies, which would permit a wireless data
network to operate as a backup to the internet. formerly, when there was
an earthquake, flood, hurricane, or whatever, local ham radio operators
offered valuable communication services. That safety net is vanishing.
You get the idea that cell phones has made ham obsolete; which makes
sense to urbanites, but anyone who lives in a mountainous area knows how
spotty coverage is.


--- Internet Rex 2.29