> I hate to say it, but I think the future of Fido will end up as a
 > few major hubs charging $40 to connect, Internet extra,

 NP> I hope your wrong, but with drop off of nodes that seems to be
 NP> the way it is headed. 

  Fidonet works on multiple paths. It's unreasonable to expect someone
whose interest is religion or cat-fancying and starts off moving 200K
of mail a day, only to see that grow to 2,000K as other nodes drop
off, and end up carting areas like AVT totally inimical to his beliefs
and interests.

  It's ok as long as there are enough people spreading the load with a
diversity of interest but as nodes defect to the Internet what remains
is special interest fanatics, and it soon falls apart. I saw it happen
with CB radio. It starts with enthusiasts, and spreads, and then the
enthusiasts are overwhelmed and move on, and the loonies take over.
Finally they only have loonies to talk to, and it dies because not
even loonies are that loony.

Regards,
Bob
  
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
@EOT:

---