Text 2669, 62 rader
Skriven 2008-04-01 14:21:42 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
   Kommentar till text 2563 av Richard Webb (1:116/901.0)
Ärende: MO
==========
Hello Richard,

On Sunday March 30 2008 14:35, you wrote to me:

 MvdV>> MO is/was used exensively in Z2. Often for major hub systems and
 MvdV>> it meant exactly what the FTSC docs say: mail only. The system
 MvdV>> is available for mail all the time. It will never be tied up by
 MvdV>> a users.

 RW> I knew of some z1 systems like this back in the '90's as well. I was
 RW> mo in net 290 in 1994-96.  IN fact, other sysops who had a user
 RW> express an interest in pointing often steered prospective points to
 RW> me.  I think at its height I had somewhere around 30 points.

Pointing was popular in Z2. At the height of Fidonet in 1996, there were 5500+
registered points in The Netherlands. An average of 4.5 per nodelisted system.
But not every system had points, the average number of points for the systems
that had points was about 17. There was one system that claimed to have over
800 points, but I suspect that sysop used some creative book keeping.

What was not unusual for systems with many points and users is that they had
more than one line and listed ony one. That way they only had to observe ZMH
for the nodelisted line.

 RW> HOWever, I knew of two systems that defied the assumed logic of mo.
 RW> ONe system was operated by a gentleman (a friend of mine) whose wife
 RW> ran a spitfire board, no fidonet connectivity for her board.  HIS
 RW> fidonet node, her bbs, one phone line shared. AFter midnight the bbs
 RW> didn't accept callers until the daylight hours.

There are always people who use the system in another way then what was
intended. Just as there are people who run red light. Exceptions like that do
not changed definition. We are not going to call red green just because some
oeople treat it that way do we?

 RW> THe other was iirc in the Kansas CIty area, and his was a bbs for
 RW> maybe half a dozen users at most, all friends of his. SAid bbs was
 RW> used so seldom that line was virtually always available for mail
 RW> calls.  YET it was there.

And so it was NOT mail only.

 MvdV>> The terminal emulator that comes with FD or InterMail is no
 MvdV>> match for telix.

 RW> Had a registered copy of telix as well.  Once I learned a bit about
 RW> salt scripting it unlocked a lot of power. started with procomm, soon
 RW> ditched it for registered telix.

Same here. Ands I did some fancy things in SALT. very nice scriot language. The
only thing I dearly missed were arrays. Had to kludge around that...

 RW> WOUld seem to, and exceptions were rare that I remember, but there
 RW> were still some.

Exceptions do not make the rule.


Cheers, Michiel

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