-=> Quoting Mark Lewis to Nancy Backus on 03-26-04  11:20 <=-

 NB> and, going the other
 NB> direction I was thinking about gathering the outgoing
 NB> messages and "tossing" them out into the ether (and hoping
 NB> that they would land where they were supposed to, instead of
 NB> the great black hole gobbling them up on the way...)

 ML> i can see where a bbs user would have that point of view... echomail
 ML> messages, however, are sent to specific systems connected to the echo
 ML> at the originating system... unless the archive of messages is
 ML> corrupted at one end or the other or during transmission or the
 ML> software at the receiving end is buggy, the messages actually travel a
 ML> well known and very tracable path... see below... 

Well, yes, I know that actually echomail "echoes" from one bbs to
another, along the usual routes or paths... and I've seen the SEEN BY
stuff before, as well.  Hence stating that echomail and routed netmail
follow the same paths... :)  I admit to being just a wee bit fanciful in
my previous description...   (But you do have to admit that there do
sometimes seem to be random black holes that gobble up the echomail, so
that it doesn't always make it to the person it was intended for, though
it may have been seen by others along the way... that corruption of the
archive you were referring to, no doubt! )

 ML> ===== quote =====
 ML> This report covers 5 unique pathlines in area BLUEWAVE
 ML> as seen from 3634/12.
 ML> 3634/12
 ML> +105/50--105/360--106/2000--123/500--123/666
 ML> +106/2000--123/500--123/140
 ML> +123/666
 ML> +323/120
 ML> ===== quote =====

 ML> you can see that my system is directly connected to two systems...
 ML> 105/50 and 106/2000... there are three systems connected to 123/500...
 ML> you can also see that there is more than one path for messages coming
 ML> to me via 123/500... these are the only known systems connected to this
 ML> echo... unless someone posts a message from a system not in the above
 ML> chart, we'll never know if there is anyone else out there connected to
 ML> this echo... 

Of course, there have been other systems connected in the past, and most
likely there are lurkers reading this echo on other bbs's.  Actually,
one could leave out "most likely"... as, case in point, I* read this
echo on chowda (323/120), doc's (123/140), fonix (in GB, zone 2), and
collin county station in TX, and could theoretically answer from any one
of them, but normally, I answer from only chowda, and lately,
occasionally doc's.

ttyl       neb

... I started out with nothing. I still have most of it left.

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