     Volume 8, Number  3                               21 January 1991
     +---------------------------------------------------------------+
     |                                                  _            |
     |                                                 /  \          |
     |                                                /|oo \         |
     |        - FidoNews -                           (_|  /_)        |
     |                                                _`@/_ \    _   |
     |         FidoNet (r)                           |     | \   \\  |
     |  International BBS Network                    | (*) |  \   )) |
     |         Newsletter               ______       |__U__| /  \//  |
     |                                 / FIDO \       _//|| _\   /   |
     |                                (________)     (_/(_|(____/    |
     |                                                     (jm)      |
     +---------------------------------------------------------------+
     Editor in Chief:                                  Vince Perriello
     Editors Emeritii:                    Thom Henderson,  Dale Lovell
     Chief Procrastinator Emeritus:                       Tom Jennings
     
     Copyright 1991, Fido Software.  All rights reserved.  Duplication
     and/or distribution permitted  for  noncommercial  purposes only.
     For use in other circumstances, please  contact  Fido Software.
     
     FidoNews  is  published  weekly by and for  the  Members  of  the
     FidoNet (r) International Amateur Electronic Mail System.   It is
     a compilation of individual articles contributed by their authors
     or authorized agents of the authors. The contribution of articles
     to this compilation does not diminish the rights of the authors.
     
     You  are  encouraged   to  submit  articles  for  publication  in
     FidoNews.  Article submission standards are contained in the file
     ARTSPEC.DOC, available from node 1:1/1.    1:1/1  is a Continuous
     Mail system, available for network mail 24 hours a day.
     
     Fido and  FidoNet  are  registered  trademarks of Tom Jennings of
     Fido Software, Box  77731,  San  Francisco  CA 94107, USA and are
     used with permission.
     
     Opinions expressed in  FidoNews articles are those of the authors
     and are not necessarily  those of the Editor or of Fido Software.
     Most articles are unsolicited.   Our  policy  is to publish every
     responsible submission received.


                        Table of Contents
     1. EDITORIAL  ................................................  1
        So, how about them Giants?  ...............................  1
     2. ARTICLES  .................................................  3
        War in the Gulf  ..........................................  3
        Just a quickie  ...........................................  5
     3. LATEST VERSIONS  ..........................................  7
        Latest Software Versions  .................................  7
     4. NOTICES  .................................................. 12
        The Interrupt Stack  ...................................... 12
     FidoNews 8-03                Page 1                   21 Jan 1991


     =================================================================
                                 EDITORIAL
     =================================================================


     For those of you who objected to last week's editorial: you
     are a minority (or at least you're a minority of those messages
     I received). But your point is well taken. I'll try to keep
     these outbursts to a minimum.

     It's sort of funny, though. There are really no particular
     restrictions on subject matter in FidoNews articles. The
     objections I heard seemed to suggest that the Editor has to
     apply restrictions to his(her) own contributions that nobody
     else need be concerned with.

     Balderdash.

     Let me tell you what I did today. I watched two football games on
     my projection TV system, fully enjoying the effects of Dolby
     Surround in each case. I played about 10 games of pinball down in
     the basement. I took the family out to dinner. I moved a bunch of
     files from a scragged Rainbow to one of my clones over a serial
     line. I watched coverage of you-know-what on CNN.

     What does all that have to do with FidoNet? Nothing and
     everything.

     You see, there was really no particular relationship between what
     I did and the technical aspects of operating a FidoNet node. So
     it is logical to assume that there was no relationship between
     today's activities and FidoNet.

     However, in the new social manifestation of FidoNet, the person
     who sits behind the keyboard is an integral part of the network.
     The contribution made to the network by this person is a function
     of everything that person experiences and performs. This leads to
     a logical conclusion that there is a relationship between my trip
     to Chili's with the kids and FidoNet.

     Last week, this tension in the Persian Gulf was occupying my
     mind. I was pissed off that things had reached the stage where
     war was inevitable. I needed to get it off my chest. I did so.
     An amazing number of people shared my feelings and many of them
     indicated that my core dump had been helpful to their own thought
     process.

     When I was finished, I felt better. So did others. I made a
     positive contribution. That makes me feel even more better.

     Perhaps a few of you media critics could try writing the perfect
     article. It would sure be a gas to see someone in FidoNet win a
     Pulitzer Prize. It should be easy. Your only real competition
     would be some war correspondent, and who cares about wars anyway?

     FidoNews 8-03                Page 2                   21 Jan 1991


     -----------------------------------------------------------------
     FidoNews 8-03                Page 3                   21 Jan 1991


     =================================================================
                                 ARTICLES
     =================================================================

     Dirk Pitt
     FidoNet 1:120/224

                         Your Leader or Your Oil

     Wedneday, Jan. 16, 1991.  I had just finished the readings for a
     Political Science course on International Relations.  Scanning
     through the channels on the vcr I hit CFPL and see they are
     transmitting the live feed from CNN about something from Iraq.
     Wait a minute, it's 7:37pm.  Why is CFPL running a feed from CNN
     in prime time?  Better switch over to CNN and see what's
     happening.  In a lightning swift move, US President George Bush
     has launched an allied air strike on Iraq, and CNN, the little
     network that grew, is the only US or Canadian network that is
     transmitting live.  For the next three and a half hours I sit
     and watch what seems to be a very one sided battle.  As I go
     to sleep, wondering what is going to happen while I sleep, I
     can't help but think that I should have filled up my car's gas
     tank as the price of oil is likely to go through the roof when
     the stock exchanges open.

     Thursday, Jan. 17, 1991.  The hike in the price of oil that all
     the bankers and analists have been forcasting should war erupt
     never happens, but the price of Light-Sweet Crude (the U.S.
     Benchmark crude) has hit a low that only existed before Iraq's
     leader Saddam Hussain moved to illegally annex neighboring
     Kuwait.  And the NYSE rises over 100 points.  What's going on
     here?  From what I can piece together, it looks like Iraq,
     Kuwait, and/or Saudi Arabia will now have a permanent U.S.
     millitary presence, be it in the form of bases to "protect" the
     oil wells in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, or a multi-national
     occupation force will move into Iraq, dividing it into zones
     similiar to what happened to Berlin after WWII.
     Finally, almost 24 hours after the initial allied air attack on
     Iraq, some of the missles that escaped destruction have been
     fired at Israel.  What launching missles at Israel will
     accomplish, has yet to be discovered.  Israel did not take part
     in the initial attack, but has been singled out as the first
     nation to be attacked in retaliation.  Given the current
     feelings between the Arabs and the Jews, Saddam may have just
     signed his own death warrant.  Israel has repetedly demonstrated
     that it can and will defend itself.

     Now that conflict has begun, we can only hope that it will be
     over soon, and not plunge us into WWIII and/or a religious war
     composed of people of the Arabic faith vs. most other faiths.

     FidoNews 8-03                Page 4                   21 Jan 1991


     -----------------------------------------------------------------
     FidoNews 8-03                Page 5                   21 Jan 1991


     Garth Kidd
     3:680/828

           profuse apologies
           =================

     Apologies if the formatting on this one is bad, but I'm doing it
     by hand in FroDo. I may even take the time to do it properly
     later, but since it's just a short one...

           on with the story...
           ====================

     ... in any case, on with the story. As far as non-geographical
     nets are concerned: they're really not needed. There is NOTHING
     in POLICY4 that says you can't get your echomail from whoever
     you want. So, you can get your feed from the net next door if
     you like, and all you have to do is poll your real host every
     now and again to pick up your routed netmail.

     Seeing as the main reason people want to switch nets is to do
     with echomail distribution in some way or another, that little
     realisation should fix quite a few problems.

     Why am I bringing this up? Well, as it was pointed out to me:

      > Giving people a choice of which net they can belong to
      > makes it a social choice, and once a group gets together
      > they can just as easily 'socially choose' to not have you
      > in their net.

     Now, there could be ways in which you could restrict this kind
     of thing happening under a new POLICY (like WORLDPOL), but it
     seems to me that it'd be mightily unwieldy. By the way, the
     worry about this kind of thing happening isn't just opinion --
     it's happening, live. Here's a simplified version of what's
     happening in one area of FidoNet. It's not arranged on the
     ol' geographical boundary system, and...

      > What would you say if, in your area of FidoNet, you had
      > two choices:

      > 1) Run a specific type of machine, 24-hours-a-day only, and
      > pay membership fees to a non-FidoNet-related club and honour
      > that club's rules/decisions about how you run your board.

      > 2) Run in an alternative independent network where you are
      > forced to pay _heavy_ contributions to the net's echomail
      > bill whether you take any or not, and operate under a local
      > policy (which you must sign) which forbids you complaining
      > outside the net without first going before the net's
     FidoNews 8-03                Page 6                   21 Jan 1991


      > "committee". (Among many other restrictions . . .)

     Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty worrying to
     me, especially as I really can see that kind of thing happening
     in many areas of Australia, said areas already having shown
     some pretty spectacular displays of applied politics and in-
     fighting.

     The POLICY4 we're all so "fond" of is quite explicit about what
     you have to do to join FidoNet. It's nice to know that if I move
     house, I'm not going to get locked out of the local network
     because of a personality conflict with my new area's host.

     As before, I'm just throwing stuff around to stir debate. Whilst
     WORLDPOL may be better than POLICY4 in a lot of respects, it's
     not perfect yet, and I'd hate to make a hasty decision on the
     matter.


     gk

           post script
           ===========

     PS. I love mail. If \ANYONE\ has any comments to make, send 'em
     in to me! International crashmail is not required -- nor would
     it work (me being a -pvt- node and all). The zonegate, on the
     other hand, seems to be functioning perfectly. Once it hits
     there, the beautifully efficient netmail routing we have here
     in ZONE 3 will get your message to me with loving care.

     Now, the amusing bit -- I leave for the big end of RG50 in a few
     days, and will be there for a couple of weeks. Don't expect any
     huge numbers of replies until then. Sorry.

     -----------------------------------------------------------------
     FidoNews 8-03                Page 7                   21 Jan 1991


     =================================================================
                              LATEST VERSIONS
     =================================================================

                         Latest Software Versions

                              MS-DOS Systems
                              --------------

                           Bulletin Board Software
     Name        Version    Name        Version    Name       Version

     DMG            2.93    Phoenix         1.3    TAG           2.5g
     Fido            12s+   QuickBBS       2.66    TBBS           2.1
     GSBBS          3.01    RBBS          17.3A    TComm/TCommNet 3.4
     Lynx           1.30    RBBSmail      17.3B    Telegard       2.5
     Kitten         2.16    RemoteAccess  0.04a    TPBoard        6.1
     Maximus        1.02    SLBBS          1.77A   Wildcat!      2.55
     Opus           1.14+   Socrates       1.10    WWIV          4.12
     PCBoard        14.5                           XBBS          1.15

     Network                Node List              Other
     Mailers     Version    Utilities   Version    Utilities  Version

     BinkleyTerm    2.40    EditNL         4.00    ARC            7.0
     D'Bridge       1.30    MakeNL         2.31    ARCAsim       2.30
     Dutchie       2.90C    ParseList      1.30    ARCmail       2.07
     FrontDoor     1.99c    Prune          1.40    ConfMail      4.00
     PRENM          1.47    SysNL          3.14    Crossnet      v1.5
     SEAdog        4.51b    XlatList       2.90    DOMAIN        1.42
     TIMS      1.0(Mod8)    XlaxDiff       2.35    EMM           2.02
                            XlaxNode       2.35    4Dog/4DMatrix 1.18
                                                   Gmail         2.05
                                                   GROUP         2.16
                                                   GUS           1.30
                                                   HeadEdit      1.15
                                                   InterPCB      1.31
                                                   LHARC         1.13
                                                   MSG            4.1
                                                   MSGED         2.06
                                                   MSGTOSS        1.3
                                                   Oliver        1.0a
                                                   PK[UN]ZIP     1.10
                                                   QM             1.0
                                                   QSORT         4.03
                                                   Sirius        1.0x
                                                   SLMAIL        1.36
                                                   StarLink      1.01
                                                   TagMail       2.41
                                                   TCOMMail       2.2
                                                   Telemail      1.27
     FidoNews 8-03                Page 8                   21 Jan 1991


                                                   TMail         1.15
                                                   TPBNetEd       3.2
                                                   TosScan       1.00
                                                   UFGATE        1.03
                                                   XRS           4.00*
                                                   XST            2.2
                                                   ZmailH        1.14


                                OS/2 Systems
                                ------------

     Bulletin Board Software   Network Mailers     Other Utilities

     Name            Version   Name      Version   Name       Version

     Maximus-CBCS       1.02   BinkleyTerm  2.40   Parselst      1.32
                                                   ConfMail      4.00
                                                   EchoStat       6.0
                                                   oMMM          1.52
                                                   Omail          3.1
                                                   MsgEd         2.06
                                                   MsgLink       1.0C
                                                   MsgNum        4.14
                                                   LH2           0.50
                                                   PK[UN]ZIP     1.02
                                                   ARC2          6.00
                                                   PolyXARC      2.00
                                                   Qsort          2.1
                                                   Raid           1.0
                                                   Remapper       1.2
                                                   Tick           2.0
                                                   VPurge        2.07


                                 Xenix/Unix
                                 ----------

     BBS Software                  Mailers         Other Utilities
     Name             Version  Name      Version   Name       Version

                               BinkleyTerm 2.30b   Unzip         3.10
                                                   ARC           5.21
                                                   ParseLst     1.30b
                                                   ConfMail     3.31b
                                                   Ommm         1.40b
                                                   Msged        1.99b
                                                   Zoo           2.01
                                                   C-Lharc       1.00
                                                   Omail        1.00b

     FidoNews 8-03                Page 9                   21 Jan 1991


                                 Apple CP/M
                                 ----------

     Bulletin Board Software   Network Mailers     Other Utilities

     Name            Version   Name      Version   Name       Version

     Daisy               v2j   Daisy Mailer 0.38   Nodecomp      0.37
                                                   MsgUtil        2.5
                                                   PackUser        v4
                                                   Filer         v2-D
                                                   UNARC.COM     1.20


                                 Macintosh
                                 ---------

     Bulletin Board Software   Network Mailers     Other Utilities

     Name            Version   Name      Version   Name       Version

     Red Ryder Host     2.1    Tabby         2.2   MacArc         0.04
     Mansion            7.15   Copernicus    1.0   ArcMac          1.3
     WWIV (Mac)         3.0                        LHArc          0.33
     Hermes             1.01                       StuffIt Classic 1.6
     FBBS               0.91                       Compactor      1.21
                                                   TImport        1.92
                                                   TExport        1.92
                                                   Timestamp       1.6
                                                   Tset            1.3
                                                   Import          3.2
                                                   Export         3.21
                                                   Sundial         3.2
                                                   PreStamp        3.2
                                                   OriginatorII    2.0
                                                   AreaFix         1.6
                                                   Mantissa       3.21
                                                   Zenith          1.5
                                                   Eventmeister    1.0
                                                   TSort           1.0
                                                   Mehitable       2.0
                                                   UNZIP         1.02c

                                   Amiga
                                   -----

     Bulletin Board Software   Network Mailers     Other Utilities

     Name            Version   Name      Version   Name       Version

     Paragon           2.082+  BinkleyTerm  1.00   AmigArc       0.23
     TransAmiga         1.05   TrapDoor     1.50   AReceipt       1.5
     FidoNews 8-03                Page 10                  21 Jan 1991


                               WelMat       0.42   booz          1.01
                                                   ConfMail      1.10
                                                   ChameleonEdit 0.10
                                                   ElectricHerald1.66
                                                   Lharc         1.30
                                                   MessageFilter 1.52
                                                   oMMM         1.49b
                                                   ParseLst      1.30
                                                   PkAX          1.00
                                                   PK[UN]ZIP     1.01
                                                   PolyxAmy      2.02
                                                   RMB           1.30
                                                   RoboWriter    1.02
                                                   Skyparse      2.30
                                                   TrapList      1.12
                                                   Yuck!         1.61
                                                   Zippy (Unzip) 1.25
                                                   Zoo           2.01



                                 Atari ST
                                 --------

     Bulletin Board         Network                Node List
     Software    Version    Mailer      Version    Utilities  Version

     FIDOdoor/ST    2.11*   BinkleyTerm  2.40jt    ParseList     1.30
     QuickBBS/ST    1.02    The BOX        1.20    Xlist         1.12
     Pandora BBS   2.41c                           EchoFix       1.20
     GS Point       0.61
     LED ST         1.00
     MSGED         1.96S

     Archiver               Msg Format             Other
     Utilities   Version    Converters  Version    Utilities  Version

     LHARC          0.60    TB2BINK        1.00    ConfMail      4.03*
     ARC            6.02    BINK2TB        1.00    ComScan       1.02
     PKUNZIP        1.10    FiFo           2.12*   Import        1.14
                                                   OMMM          1.40
                                                   Pack          1.00
                                                   FastPack      1.20
                                                   FDsysgen      2.16*
                                                   FDrenum       2.10
                                                   Trenum        0.10



                                Archimedes
                                ----------

     FidoNews 8-03                Page 11                  21 Jan 1991


     BBS Software           Mailers                Utilities
     Name        Version    Name        Version    Name       Version

     ARCbbs         1.44    BinkleyTerm    2.03    Unzip        2.1TH
                                                   ARC           1.03
                                                   !Spark       2.00d

                                                   ParseLst      1.30
                                                   BatchPacker   1.00


     + Netmail capable (does not require additional mailer software)
     * Recently changed

     Utility authors:  Please help  keep  this  list  up  to  date  by
     reporting  new  versions  to 1:1/1.  It is not our intent to list
     all utilities here, only those which verge on necessity.

     -----------------------------------------------------------------
     FidoNews 8-03                Page 12                  21 Jan 1991


     =================================================================
                                  NOTICES
     =================================================================

                          The Interrupt Stack


     16 Feb 1991
        Fifth anniversary of the introduction of Echomail, by Jeff Rush.

     30 Mar 1991
        Jim Grubs (W8GRT) was issued his first ham radio license forty
        years ago today. His first station was made from an ARC-5
        "Command Set" removed from a B-17 bomber.

     12 May 1991
        Fourth anniversary of FidoNet operations in Latin America and
        second anniversary of the creation of Zone-4.

      8 Sep 1991
        25th anniversary of first airing of Star Trek on NBC!

      7 Oct 1991
        Area code  415  fragments.   Alameda and Contra Costa Counties
        will  begin  using  area  code  510.   This includes  Oakland,
        Concord, Berkeley  and  Hayward.    San  Francisco, San Mateo,
        Marin, parts of  Santa Clara County, and the San Francisco Bay
        Islands will retain area code 415.

      1 Feb 1992
        Area  code 213 fragments.    Western,  coastal,  southern  and
        eastern portions of Los Angeles  County  will begin using area
        code 310.  This includes Los  Angeles  International  Airport,
        West  Los  Angeles,  San  Pedro and Whittier.    Downtown  Los
        Angeles  and  surrounding  communities  (such as Hollywood and
        Montebello) will retain area code 213.

      1 Dec 1993
        Tenth anniversary of Fido Version 1 release.

      5 Jun 1997
        David Dodell's 40th Birthday


     If you have something which you would like to see on this
     calendar, please send a message to FidoNet node 1:1/1.

     -----------------------------------------------------------------

