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Ärende: FidoNews 33:21 [02/07]: General Articles
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                        GENERAL ARTICLES
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                Why I shall vote against TTIP
                By Michiel van der Vlist, 2:280/5555


TTIP stand for Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. It is
a proposed trade agreement between the Europen Union and the United
States of America. It is presently being negotiated. The negotiations
are conducted in secret but some information was leaked out. The
genaral idea is to tear down trade barriers and that presumably is
good for the economy of all countries concerned. I have my doubts.

The very fact that the negatiations are conducted in secret is a
reason for concern. I also have reservations about the parts that
leaked out. But that is not the main reason that, if and when TTIP is
the subject of a referendum here in The Netherlands later this year,
I will vote against.

No, it is not what is or will be in the agreed rules that concerns me
most. It goes much deeper than that and it can not be repaired by
rewriting the rules. The main reason I will vote against is that I do
not trust our partners across the pond to loyaly honour the
agreements when push comes to shove.

Sadly enough it is incidents in Fidonet that were the trigger for
this decision. The most recent incident was the FIDO_SYSOP moderator
election. What we saw there was a pretty clear rule. "Once a year, as
close to mid March as practical, an election is held". That however
was not convenient for our fellow sysops across the pond. So instead
of loyally following the rule, they did what we have seen many times
over in Fidonet before: they re‹nterpreted and twisted the rules,
called on unwriten rules and "traditions", to make the rules fit to
what was convenient for them.

Some even told us we misundertood the rules because of our lack of
understanding of the English language. If that were true, we should
not engage in agreements written in English at all. We may not be
smart enough to properly understand English, we sure are not so
stupid as to agree to to something we presumable do not understand.

And in the end, as ever so often the ones for whom the rules were not
convenient tried to get their way by right of might.

In Fidonet the US sysops can no longer rule by right of might. Right
of might only works for the strongest and that they no longer are.
Not in Fidonet. But in the real world things are different. The US is
still the most powerfull economy and has the most powerfull military
in the world. That may change in the not too distant future, but for
now they still are. So in a trade agreement between the US and EU,
the EU is the weaker party.

So what I fear is that whenever there is a conflict of interest and
the agreed rules are not in their favour, our trade partners across
the Atlantic will turn and twist the rules to their advantage and get
away with it by right of might. And so the EU, as the weaker party,
will always end up with the short stick.

I shall vote against TTIP because I do not trust you guys across the
pond the be loyal and reliable partners.


(C) 2016, Michiel van der Vlist.

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Nodelist distribution during summer in Z2
Ward Dossche - 2:292/854


As many in the Z2 constituency know, during summer I am away for
a lengthy time and that may invoke the "Wevers Effect".

The "Wevers Effect" is named after a former Z2C Henk Wevers who
had a system which was notorious for crashing every time when he
went on a vacation by car before even reaching the first stop-
sign at the end of his street.

Despite a number of ill-inspired rumours that 2:292/854 crashes
all the time, it was very reliable during the summers of 2009
throughout 2013.

In 2014 towards the end of my sojourn the powerbox in the house
burned and send a power-spike that damaged elements of the
computer, lucky enough the house didn't catch fire. The system
outage was for about 10 days and everybody survived.

Last year quite early in summer, July 3rd or 4th, someone local
messed with the system and blew the back-up. As a result it was
partially down, accepting inbound calls, processing mail,
processing nodelists, putting them in the FTP-area but not
sending-out anything anymore.

Luck had it that previously Kees Van Eeten (2:280/5003), Michiel
van der Vlist (2:280/5555), Wilfred Van Velzen (2:280/464) and I
privately had been talking about a back-up scenario. We could
call upon that scenario and Kees produced the nodelist, daily-
list, daily-utf and zone2 files until my return.

Not everybody caught it though but the system worked.

I've asked Kees to try that scenario again this summer, this
time not as an emergency-measure but as a planned event, and he
agreed.

Therefor, as I will be leaving around June 9th, Kees will start
distribution of the NODELIST-, DAILYLST-, DAILYUTF- and ZONE2-
files as of Friday June 3rd. Anyone polling my system from that
date until my return will not be getting these files there.

My system as a rule forwards all the REGION-segments to Kees and
has been doing this already for years. As long as 2:292/854 is
up that will continue to happen, but if it doesn't happen
anymore for whatever reason then there's a problem.

To deal with that I request every RC who isn't doing this
already, to deliver their region-segments also to Kees at
2:280/5003 for proper inclusion. He is also already receiving
the ZONEx-segments from the other zones, so that info will also
be up to date.

Questions anyone (from Z2) ?
Ward Dossche
Z2C

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DAILYLST-operations in Z2
Ward Dossche - 2:292/854


Just a quick reminder to all in zone2 that as of Monday May 23rd 2016,
only DAILYLST.jjj will be distributed as the full daily nodelist.
Starting that date no file named NODELIST.JJJ will be distributed
anymore in the DAILYLST file-distribution.

The distribution of UTF8LIST continuous as before.

Ward Dossche
Z2C

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