Hi Mark,

 PK> The issue ONLY appears for INCORRECTLY CONFIGURED mailers, and it
 PK> is only the NEW SYSOP within Fidonet Aus that is likely to miss the
 PK> point and can be stung by this issue, and New Sysops are exactly
 PK> the ones that NEED protecting, not the experienced Sysop.

 ml> errrmmm... this same problem exists for every entry in 
 ml> the nodelist, 

No it does not, and don't try and sweep it under the rug that way. If a new
sysop in North America tries to dial a Node in India and ends up dialing
the PSTN no. 911 repeatedly, then I am pretty sure he may be in a spot of
bother over this error, so YES a different version of the SAME issue can
happen there was well. 

The DIFFERENCE between these 2 scenarios that I am trying to point out is
that the North American issue is as a result of PUBLISHED and KNOWN
standards, whereas the Aussi issue only happens because of the stuffing of
an INVALID country dial-code into the Nodelist. 

 ml> then... not the specific problem of 
 ml> dialing emergency services but there is still the same 
 ml> basic problem if one does not have their dialing tables set up properly...

So you agree that we should do all things possible to minimise the impact
of incorrectly configred nodes? Great, get rid of 000 in the Nodelist.

 ml> so.... what it _really_ comes down to is that it is 
 ml> /not/ a *technical* problem but a social problem where 
 ml> one hasn't been taught or learned to completely 
 ml> configure their software before using it as well as a 
 ml> second social problem of letting the machine have its 
 ml> head without sufficient monitoring...

Absolutely, that has never been denied. So rather than force the problem
back on the new Sysop, Fidonet should do all it can to minimise the
potential for error, the best way to do that is to remove all INVALID ISTD
codes in the Nodelist.

I am glad you recognise that this non-technical "problem" can be
minimised by some logcal thinking.

Cheers............pk.


--- Maximus/2 3.01