Hello Steven,

 MvdV>> day dearly regret having put all our eggs in the basket of the
 MvdV>> A medium that puts much more control in the hands of
 MvdV>> others than was the case with POTS.

 SH> POTS technology is controlled by the telephone companies
 SH> and not by you or me.
ˆ
But it is me who decides when and who to call.

The operative word is /more/. Intelligence agencies monitor e-mail. Not
netmail AFAIK.

 MvdV>> Are you aware that FidoNet technology (POTS) played a role in the
 MvdV>> liberation of Eastern Europe at the end of the cold war? A medium
 MvdV>> the spies could not intercept?

 SH> A sloppy or incompetent lot of spies.

Maybe. Fact is that contrary to the InterNet, FTN technology was not intercepted.

 SH> The content of electronic communications over telephone lines
 SH> has been used in the United States to convict several sysops,

Was it done by actually tapping the lines or was it done by just reading
the echomail?

Note that tapping a telephone line and intercepting and decoding the modem
signals is much more cumbersome than tapping e-mail.

 MvdV>> competition right now, so it may not be too long before I too
 MvdV>> have a permanent InterNet connection. If and when that happens I
 MvdV>> may lose interest in FidoNet. Or not. The future will tell.

 SH> Or you may rekindle your interest in Fidonet because you
 SH> will be able to contact other systems with a minimum of
 SH> effort.

It can't be less effort than it is now. I just type in the messages and the
system does the rest. I don't see how a permanent connection to the
InterNet will make it even less of n effort to communicate with FidoNet
systems.

There is a fair chance that if and when I get a permanent connection to the
InterNet that I will find all that it has to offer much more interesting
than FidoNet.

 SH> And why is a dial up connection not attractive in
 SH> the Netherlands?  Is it because you are charged for each
 SH> local call or for time for the call?

Yes, that's it. Plus that international calls are relatively cheap here.
Making a call to the US costs only three times as much as a local call. So
getting my FidoNet echomail via POTS would be cheaper than getting it via
IP, even if I had to make a daily call to the US for it.

 MvdV>> But, whatever the future brings, I believe giving up downward
 MvdV>> compatibility will be the death of FidoNet.

 SH> Fidonet has turned its back on downward compability before,
 SH> most notably through introduction of the St. Louis nodelist.

Yes, but that was in the very early stage when there was just a handful of
sysops that all used the same programme: TJ's Fido. The could all go to e
new version overnight. Trying that today would surely make a lot of niodes
loose contact.

 SH> And does your advocacy of old technology include
 SH> the advocacy of 300 baud or 1200 baud modems?

Of course. Why exclude them? My modems still supports 300 and 1200 Bps.

 SH> One does have to careful because even POTS technolgy has
 SH> changed since I was first listed as a node in 1991.

Indeed it has. Up until 1995 we still had mechanical exchanges here that
supported pulse dial only. Now it is all digital. But downward
compatibility is 100%. All my old telephone equipment from 30 years ago
still works on the modern excanges.

Cheers, Michiel

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