Subj : perl files for fidonet
To   : Russ Johnson
From : Maurice Kinal
Date : Wed Jun 13 2001 10:45 pm

Hey Russ!

Jun 13 20:57 01, Russ Johnson wrote to Maurice Kinal:

 > Obviously, you aren't frequenting the right sites. I'm speaking of 
 > interactive sites, like slashdot. Some of the news sites take the place 
 > of a newspaper in my house. 

I go there every once and awhile.  When it's good it is very good.  Fido has 
been known to do something simular.  I could see it happening.

 > Like I said, you don't look at the right sites. Slashdot is different 
 > in about 15 minutes. Thousands of people, posting their comments daily. 

Often it is far too much.

 > I use Opera. It's free (ok, I have an ad on my screen.. I don't even 
 > notice it) and it works well. Mozilla is coming along too, but Opera is 
 > faster and smaller.

Myself I use Links but used to use Lynx.  But then again browsing isn't 
something I do all that often so a text browser is all I ever need.

 > That is a choice. As Geddy Lee says, "If you choose not to decide, you 
 > still have made a choice."

Not much of a choice.  It used to be that way with PCs.  Basically you could 
choose to run DOS or not even bother turning on the computer.

 > Better quality message areas. Among other things. Closer knit 
 > community.

The community is shrinking.  If I were a newbie here purusing the echolist and 
turning on the ones that caught my eye I'd be in for one huge disappointment 
sitting here waiting to witness that close knit community.  How long would I 
wait before looking elsewhere?

 > Yes, you can run your node on cable. Warren Hrach in LA does just that. 

So do I.

 > The only backward compatiblity is the packets. There's nothing wrong 
 > with the packet format. 

You don't get around much do you?  I got an archive yesterday that was ~55k 
that was corrupt.  The entire archive could not be processed because of one 
message in there with a grunged header.  I have seen it happen far too often to 
say that there is nothing wrong with the packet format.  Have you ever looked 
at it closely?  I don't see much logic there and it doesn't take much to ruin 
an entire archive.  It is a bad joke supposedly in the name of backwards 
compatibility.  I can easily argue that it isn't.

Regards,
Maurice

--- Msged/LNX TE 06 (pre)
 * Origin: How Many Things BBS (1:275/112)

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