Subj : perl files for fidonet
To   : Maurice Kinal
From : Jasen Betts
Date : Wed Jun 20 2001 12:08 am

Hi Maurice.

14-Jun-01 05:45:42, Maurice Kinal wrote to Russ Johnson


 MK> Hey Russ!

 MK> 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.

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

 MK> 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.

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

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

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

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

 MK> The community is shrinking.  If I were a newbie here purusing the
 MK> echolist and turning on the ones that caught my eye I'd be in for
 MK> one huge disappointment sitting here waiting to witness that close
 MK> 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.

 MK> So do I.

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

 MK> You don't get around much do you?  I got an archive yesterday that
 MK> was ~55k that was corrupt.  The entire archive could not be
 MK> processed because of one message in there with a grunged header.

That's the fault of your software, not the format itself. It should be
possible for it to skip the damaged message and keep going.

 MK> I have seen it happen far too often to say that there is nothing
 MK> wrong with the packet format.  Have you ever looked at it closely?

A little binary header with routing info then A bunch of messages separeated
by null bytes, about as good as it could be without adding error corretion
overhead. (which would be worthless as the packets are sent via an
error-reciving protocol over an error recovering link, so any invalid data
is the result of hardware or software failure at one end.)

 MK>  I don't see much logic there and it doesn't take much to ruin an
 MK> entire archive.

pick an error resistant archive format (jar, rar, etc)

 -=> Bye <=-

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