On (30 Oct 02) Michiel van der Vlist wrote to Frank Vest...

Hello Michiel,

 FV> Fidonet has come up with ideas. Many ideas.
 FV> Many suggestions for solutions have been made to many problems.
 Mv> Suggesting solutions is one thing, making it actually work is
 Mv> something else.

True enough.

 FV> Attitudes remain the same, sadly. :(
 Mv> One should not confuse attitude with expert opinion. What Michael
 Mv> Grant wants equates to making pi equal to three. I as an expert say
 Mv> that is not a good solution. That rocket to the moon will not reach
 Mv> it's destination if pi is made equal to three.

Attitude, expert opinion or not, is still attitude. Attitude and
expert opinion once was that the Internet would never fly.... for that
matter, the expert opinion was once that man would never fly. :) Of
course, in fairness, man still can't fly, but the planes can. :-)

What can't be done today, might be done tomorrow. I do, however, see
your point to a point.

 Mv> Saying that people like me are the bane of FidoNet and that attitude
 Mv> has to change first is not going to change the fact that equating pi
 Mv> to three is bad juju.

I don't think I said that.

 Mv> The solution to use the Pvt keyword together with an -Unpublished-
 Mv> phone number to avoid old POTS mailers to attempt to dial IP nodes is
 Mv> a kludge. It is not "nice" but it is the only sure way to
prevent ALL
 Mv> old POTS mailers from attempting to dial and have them automatically
 Mv> reroute to the host/hub. Had we foreseen this in the early days we
 Mv> would have created a more flexible nodelist format. But we didn't and
 Mv> now we are stuck with what we'v got.

Ok. I have no problem with the kludge.

 Mv> And this is what I tell people that say "if I were a
programmer...":
 Mv> If you can't do it yourself stop claiming it is possible when the
 Mv> experts tell you it is not.

If I were a programmer , I would be trying to do things that the
"expert opinions" say is impossible. That's just me. I may fail many
times, but then again, I might eventually succeed. What was impossible
yesterday is now possible. What is impossible today, might happen
tomorrow.

 FV> Lack of programmers is and isn't the problem.

 Mv> Lack of programmers IS the problem but not in the way you probably
 Mv> meant. There are enough left to write new software if needed. But
 Mv> there aren't enough technically competent people left to control the
 Mv> network. As a consequence the politicians have taken over. They are in
 Mv> the driver's seat now. and THAT is the problem.

Even in the "hay day" of Fidonet, the control wasn't with the
programmers. Otherwise, P4 would be a lot different than it is today.

 FV> 

 Mv>  indeed....

 again.

Regards,

Frank

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/flv
http://biseonline.com/r19

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