Hello Björn,

On Saturday June 30 2018 02:20, you wrote to me:

 MvdV>> The world of Fidonet is bigger than Argus and FrontDoor,

 BF>    With all the copies flying around, not by much.

To decide if something is harmless or harmfull, one has to consider all
applications. Not just the two most used...

 MvdV>> Ok, so maybe the example I gave was too complicated for you.

 BF>    Why suddenly resorting to insults?

Sorry if you felt insulted. I take back the last two words of the above
sentence.

 BF> Did I insult you in any of my comments?

Not me, but you did call Malcolm an "Aussie Kid" and he is not here to defend
himself.

 MvdV>> How about a minimalistic example.

 BF>    If you had one, why did you go for one that mark so easily proved
 BF> was not even remotely playing?

I wanted to present a more interesting sample than just the bare minimum. A
mistake obviously. Mark's "proof" was based on a false assumption on how to
read the table, and hence invalid.

 MvdV>> One that will still allow an Aussie POTS node to
 MvdV>> dial his/her NC and dial 000 from the nodelist?

 MvdV>> DIAL
 MvdV>> 61- 0
 MvdV>> END

 BF>    That's what I call a straw man.

Does or does it not:

A) allow the node to call his/her NC?
B) allow the node to call 000 from the nodelist?

 BF>    Why is it so important for you to disprove that the 000 scare was
 BF> nothing but a big hoax? After all, you are the chairman of the FTSC,
 BF> you should know better, shouldn't you?

I wonder why you think the onus of proof is on me. It is YOU that claims it is
a hoax, the onus of proof is on you. Until you prove otherwise, I still say
that Malcom's concerns were justified and that putting anything other than a
valid dialable telephone number or -Unpublished- in the nodelist is a bad idea
in any case.

 BF>    I know that you've always hated Frontdoor for some strange reason,
 BF> but why don't you let go of this hatred now that binkd is the major
 BF> FTN mailer?

I don't hate FrontDoor, but I do not like the atmosphere of holyness that
surrounds it. I recognise a mutual admiration society when I smell one.
FrontDoor was, and for those stuck in the 16 bit DOS POTS era still is, an
excellent mailer. But it is not the shining beacon of light that we all should
follow. And not every idea coming from its surroundings is a good idea. Putting
IP numbers in the phone number field was a bad idea.

You have a science education. You should know that science goes by trial and
error. Most of the theories that emerge are falsified sooner or later and
dropped. Even Hawking retracted some of his ideas.

I myself participated in the think tank that considered how to get IP
infomation in the nodelist. At one time I suggested to use AAA as a prefix
instead of 000 for putting IP numbers in the phone field. AAA being the DTMF
dialable number associated with 697/1633 Hz.

Some though it an excellent idea. But it was shot down because not all nodelist
processing software could deal with A-D as digits in telephone numbers. So I
retracted the idea. Nice try but not a good idea after all. No trial end error
without error.

So why do /you/ insist on hanging on to this bad idea? We have flags to
advertise IP connect info. The flags offer much more flexibility than
sacrificing the telephone number field for just one static IPv4 address.

We have dynamic addresses, we have IPv6 and we have nodes that can be reached
by more than one address. Plus that we even have some nodes that are still
reaceable by both POTS and IP. All that can be covered by the flags. But not by
putting a static IPv4 number in the phone field.

So why do you you insist on hanging on to this bad idea instead of just
admitting there are better ways, drop it and move on?


Cheers, Michiel

--- Fmail, Binkd, Golded