Subj : perl files for fidonet
To   : Russ Johnson
From : Maurice Kinal
Date : Mon Jun 11 2001 12:49 am

Hey Russ!

Jun 10 14:26 01, Russ Johnson wrote to Maurice Kinal:

 > Well, since I frequent several sites on a regular basis, I know that 
 > it's getting better. 

Yes but my point is and was that any half decent http sites are few and far 
between.  Once you've been there a few times there is nothing new.  Is any of 
that content worth running a browser for, especially a browser such as Netscape 
that hogs a healthy portion of your HD, crashes and chokes on it's own 
bloatedness, and other such nasty things?  I say it isn't, even a simple 
browser such as Lynx isn't worth the bytes given the limited usefullness of the 
www.  The sites I frequent with any regularity can easily be handled in other 
ways.  If I'm looking whether a new kernel has been released it is a simple 
matter of checking out the ftp site either with a ftp client or a robotized ftp 
script that looks for any changes in the listing.  Simple and effective.

 > Yes, there will probably always be the commercialism on some sites. The 
 > best thing about it is that you can choose where to go. 

Or you can choose not to bother in the first place.

 > I personally think that TV in general is getting really bad. Every 
 > station has to proclaim itself in the lower corners of the screen. 
 > Sometimes, there are two overlays down there. On top of that, most 
 > sports events are starting to have headers and footers with the 
 > sponsers ads in them. 

I gave up on TV a long time ago.  I never even bothered watching the Stanley 
Cup playoffs this year (caught a couple of games earlier on) since I find it 
annoying with all the commercials and inane chatter of the announcers.  
Normally I am a sucker for hockey so I find this indicative that TV is a total 
waste of time for me other then keeping up with the "news" (debatable how real 
any of that stuff is) which takes up about 30 minutes out of a day tops.

 > The idea behind us putting it on sourceforge is to get other people 
 > intereseted in putting up a fido based site. We've been hemorraging 
 > sysops for several years now. If we can get what we have brought up to 
 > todays processes, then we can interest the new sys-admins out there.

Possibly.  But perhaps the reason for the loss of sysops is that there isn't 
any good reason to maintain a Fido node.  What are you going to tell these new 
people when they ask why anyone should want a Fido node?

 > We'll need to show what they can do, and show that it's sort of like 
 > the distributed projects out there. Kinda like SETI, only for messages.

And that is the way Fido really works?  What about software?  Can I run my node 
on cable?  What benefits are ther to running a node as opposed to just logging 
into a BBS as a user?  What software would I need to do that?  etc.  I think 
you get the idea.

 > It's better than news, because there's no spam. If more people have 
 > access to it, then we'll see an increase in message volume. While I 
 > agree that that's not always a good thing, in this case, I believe it 
 > is. 

This is a debatable point but I agree that overall an increase in traffic 
wouldn't hurt too much.

 > Obviously, we'll need to toot our own horn as well. Maybe we can win 
 > back some of the old sysops that have moved on to the internet, by 
 > showing them that we can have our better systems, and fido too. 

I believe that if Fido returns to a more pioneering attitude that might happen. 
 I see no reason for the current strategy of protecting outdated software.  
Backwards compatibility in this particular case is a very bad joke.

And that's the way this cookie crumbles,
Maurice

--- Msged/LNX TE 06 (pre)
 * Origin: Pointy Stick Society XII - One shy of a baker's dozen  (1:2320/38.9)

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