Subj : Re: Gauteng BBS To : alt.fan.countries.south-africa,alive.bbs,alive.bbs.dialup,alt.bbs,alt.bbs.ads,soc.culture.south-africa,za.misc From : hayesstw.spamless@yahoo.com (Steve Hayes) Date : Sun Oct 05 2003 04:45 am On Sun, 5 Oct 2003 10:15:30 +1000, "Blacklord" wrote: > >"Tim Jackson" wrote in message >news:30qtnvs1okna8qasi2p76fskeoiqstnhtj@4ax.com... >> On Sat, 04 Oct 2003 06:23:47 GMT, hayesstw.spamless@yahoo.com (Steve >Hayes) >> wrote: >> >> Is FidoNet STILL going? I honestly thought that FidoNet and BBSs were dead >> since the Net came around. > >Around 11,000 nodes in the current nodelist, still declining by a few a >week, but still in there & a lot of the echos are still very active. Interestingly enough, "the Net" preceded Fidonet (and other Fido-technology networks) by about 10 years or so. As a result, Fido mesaging technology is still in some ways more advanced than Internet technology. The Echomail format is vastly superior to e-mail mailing lists, which are a crude kludge and waste a lot of bandwidth. And it is also better than the newsgroup format. The biggest problem with BS networks was the arrival of Windows 95, with its lack of a good coms program (Hyperterminal is awful). DOS comms programs still work with Win 9x and later, but the interface and installation are to unfamiliar to people who have never used anything other than Windows. What is needed is a good freeware comms program for Win 9x and later, that will allow people to connect with BSs. And updates of some of the offline readers and messages editors wouldn't come amiss either. Many of them were not Y2K compatible. But they are still better than anything available for newsgroups and mailing lists for many purposes. That's one of the sad things about the Internet - losing functionality for the sake of "progress". There have, of course, been gains in functionality that have come since BBS technology was first introduced -- the Web, for example, and search engines. And Fido Technology Networks (FTNs) mostly rely on the Internet for international transport of mail, through such programs as Internet Rex. But I miss the functionality of offline readers like Blue Wave and Silver Xpress in genealogy forums, for example, where they were able to highlight messages relating to certain surnames or topics. No newsreaders or e-mail mailinglist readers for Win 9x+ seem to be able to do that. Steve Hayes FamilyNet: 8:7903/10 Fidonet: 5:7106/20 E-mail: hayesstw@yahoo.com http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/pretbbs.htm .