Hi Frank,

 FV> "Ok, come up with one"
 FV> "I've already suggested a solution"
 FV> "First, attitudes have to change (which is what I'm attempting to do
 FV> right now)"
 FV> "If you can't put -unpublished- in there, too bad"
 FV> "I lack the programming skill, otherwise I would be
 FV> attempting to write such a program already"

 FV> Fidonet has come up with ideas. Many ideas.
 FV> Many suggestions for solutions have been made to many problems.

Suggesting solutions is one thing, making it actually work is something else.

 FV> Attitudes remain the same, sadly. :(

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

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

The solution to use the Pvt keyword together with an -Unpublished- phone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

Call that "attitude", call me the bane of FidoNet, call me an
elitist, it is not going to change that fact. Shooting the messenger never
did. There is just no way to get all those 9000 nodes and 100.000 points to
upgrade their software. We can make extensions to the existing format, but
everything that is not 100% downward compatible is going to kill Fidonet.
And that is my expert opinion.

 FV> If you can't do it my way is a common theme.

You know, I have a problem with people that call upon experts to do
something and then refuse to listen to them when they get told that what
they want is impossible.

It is not just FidoNet where I have encountered this. Twenty years ago I
worked as a research fellow at Utrecht University in the depeartment of
what loosely translates into "alternative energy". The guys the
receiving the mail send all the mail from crackpots that thougth they had a
perpetuum mobile to us. It was always the same story. They had something
that "almost" worked. There was just this "little
Problem" they needed help with. "If I were a scientist, I would
have solved this little problem myself" they said. When told by the
scientists they would never get beyond "almost" they started
yelling we were part of a government complot to protect the oil companies
or something like that. The only thing to tell these people is to come back
when they have a /working/ model.

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

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

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

They create problems were there aren't. The "Pvt" problem is a
non existent problem. It is politicians like Michael Grant that refuse to
see that "Pvt" is computerese and "private" is English
and that they are not and need not be the same. This problem does not
exist. That does not mean there are no problems at all, it means that
/this/ problem does not exist.

Technically there is nothing wrong with giving Pvt a different meaning for
POTS and IP. But people like Michael Grant don't like that. They want pi to
be equal to 3.

 FV> 

 indeed....

Regards, Michiel

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