Begging your pardon, Moderator, for this posting having nothing to do
with GEOS, but it has a lot to do with our access to this echo, and so
I think it is important material to share with the other users.  If I
am wrong, feel free to slap me with a wet noodle. 
At various times in this echo, we see people posting that their
BBS boards are going down and they are looking for new ones so they
can keep on participating here, and we see people complaining that
their messages aren't getting out, or that they are seeing answers
to messages written by other people but never saw the original posts.
Today, Sunday, September 29, there was a huge article started on the
front page of the Business Section of the Houston Chronicle and
contining on two inside pages on this subject. It is too large to
post here, but these excerpts from it go a long way in explaining
what is happening to our Fidonet highway.
The article started out by announcing the closing of a well known BBS
in Houston that carried a BBS list for this area that was updated every
month.  Later on it said, "The Atomic Cafe listing had nearly 600 boards
in September 1995. Now, it has less than 250. National BBS numbers are
harder to come by, but two years ago Boardwatch magazine founder Jack
Rickhard was saying there were about 60,000 BBSs in the United States.
Today, estimates range from 30,000 to 45,000."  He is then quoted as
having said about Fidonet, "...each BBS that subscribes is a node" and
that "Fidonet is losing between 200 and 250 nodes a week."
The article lays the blame, as many of us have been doing, on the advent
of software that lets users see graphics on the World Wide Web. This is
said to have been the beginning of the end for BBS boards even though
some software companies began offering more visually appealing BBS
programs because that hasn't been enough to offset the Web's appeal.
The article then states, "As a result, BBS operators say the number of
users of their systems has declined, particularly over the past year.
In response, many are shutting down their systems. Those who charge
for system access but don't offer some way to get to the Internet are
suffering the most...."
I am lucky in that there are still 250 boards in my city and that my
local BBS is a full service subscription board that carries Fidonet,
offers Internet newsgroups and web access, and much more.  I know
that many of you live in towns where Fido access is very limited and
that you will be stuck with long distance calling expenses if your
board goes down and you can't find another one close by.  But I am
more concerned about how long we will have the Fidonet highway
to travel than about finding local boards with which to access it.
My reading of this article on top of what I have been seeing posted
in the echoes I frequent over the past few months tells me that
the reason we are losing so many Fido nodes is because it is too
expensive a proposition for the SYSOPS of free boards and most
nominal subscription boards to invest in the equipment and technology
to access the Internet through servers.  What worries me the most is
that I know that Fidonet is a volunteer network where nodes are
in particular hubs and hubs are in particular regions covering the
country. What happens when nodes that contributed financially to
their hub who moves the mail go down? That hub suffers.  I assume
that eventually a hub goes down when it has too few nodes sustaining
it. Would that account for the problems we are seeing with our
echomail these days? Does that explain why traffic drops off to
almost nothing and then huge packets with messages dating back a week
or more arrive in our downloads?  Are regions having to restructure
themselves to circulate the mail in different routes because hubs
went down after their nodes went down. I don't know much about the
Fidonet hierarchy, but this is how I am picturing the situation.  So
I wonder even more after reading the Houston Chronicle article today
whether Fido is fatally ill or just suffering a long term chronic
illness from which it will neither get better nor die.  Is there
anything we individual participants in this echo can do to encourage
a long term remission?  I don't want to see Fidonet die!
                                                  Anne Page
 * SLMR 2.1a * A country road's more scenic than a freeway. Fidonet!
 * SLMR 2.1a * Growing old is NOT the same as growing wise.
--- QScan/PCB v1.16b / 01-0075
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