[telnet] Re: the future and popularity of the BBS
- From: Tony Baechler <baechler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: telnet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 23:30:56 -0700
Hello. First, about email via telnet. It is very unsecure. That is why
there are warnings on the major web sites about not sending your credit
card via email. Everything is sent in cleartext in most cases, but with
some ISPs you can use SSL. One example is myrealbox.com. If you leave
Eudora's default setting alone, it automatically uses SSL for
download. That is fine but it is very, very slow. It takes about five
minutes for a short message to download.
Second, I have not read the interview but I have read similar things from
others before. We might as well face reality though. BBSs are basically
dead. Out of the entire Internet and millions of people who use it, there
are about 500 BBSs in all, and in most cases one is just like another. The
majority run Synchronet. I know a bit about it because I have used
it. Any BBS I telnet to is basically the same because of the
interface. In the old days, there was no dominating software. Just in my
calling area there was Telegard, Renegade, Wildcat!, Maximus, RemoteAccess,
PCBoard, and others. There was one Synchronet system for awhile but it did
not last long.
With that said, I agree with you that the biggest thing which could help is
informing others of the existance of BBSs and what they are like. In that
regard we have the same problem as Fidonet, which is why it is basically
dead also. People like and want the small community atmosphere. I like to
know my local sysop. Often the only reason why I would call a BBS is to
chat with the sysop and nothing else. I passed many pleasant hours that
way. That is just not practical nowadays, and somewhat impossible for big
boards running 250 nodes. Also, it is against the nature of the
Internet. For example, I felt nothing wrong about giving out my name and
address to local sysops because I implicitly trusted them. Who in their
right mind would want to give this to a total stranger half a world
away? Not to mention that anyone between here and there could use packet
sniffers and discover that information. No thanks. I still trust most of
them, but there are a lot out there who just want to make a buck (for
international readers, make easy money) with no concern for privacy.
Finally, we have two other problems. Synchronet and Wildcat! are killing
themselves. Why should I bother to login to a BBS when I can just use
anonymous ftp? It is already built in to Synchronet anyway. Besides, with
most telnet clients they do not support zmodem transfers. For that matter,
why should I subject myself to an hour time limit when I can go to the web,
download what I want (and a lot faster), play games, and set up my own
local system? I can now, for the first time ever, set up any DOS or
Windows door with no concerns about if it will talk in local mode or
not. I just fire up my telnet client, telnet to my local system, login as
sysop and I have no time or credit limits. If I want to play for six hours
a day, why not? Meanwhile I have to give some stranger my contact
information for only an hour per day. Also, even in the BBS community spam
is a problem. I signed up for a BBS and gave my email address. I got
their newsletter which I did not want. I consider that spam since I
selected the "no" option.
In one way, the Internet can duplicate the community spirit. Even though
Fidonet is just barely limping along, email lists are thriving and there
are lots of free servers hosting them. Of course a list depends on its'
moderator or lack thereof. I moderate this list just as I would a Fidonet
echo. I was never an echo moderator but I always wanted to be one. I let
subscribers freely post and only take action if necessary. I could set the
list to make me manually approve all posts or not allow posts at all. With
usenet, everything is a big free-for-all with no rules at all. It is
impossible to moderate and flame wars are common. The best thing Fidonet
could do is switch entirely to a mailing list based system and forget
trying to move traffic via traditional dial-up lines. They could still
have zone gates which would bundle the mailing lists into packets for
overseas distribution but that would be it. In other words, many people in
Europe and Asia do still use Fidonet. For them, it would be up to their
local nets or regions to pull from central zonegates via dial-up, ftp,
telnet or something else and to pass those packets along a chain, similar
to how it is done now. However, instead of echos where only Fidonet system
can join, there would be mailing lists with the same human moderators as we
would expect from Fido and anyone could join. They could put spam filters
in place as well. However, this would never happen since the entire
structure of Fidonet would have to be changed. To a point this is
happening, echos are gated to mailing lists. What I mean is that echos
would disappear entirely and everything would be Internet-based. Netmail
could still be done as always, with each net responsible for their own
Internet gateway if they want one or paying connect charges otherwise.
Just for a laugh, read the 1985 Fidonews newsletters. You can read all
about 300 and 1200 BPS modems and how to get them to work with Fido. In
those days, the modems would ring back the caller. In other words, I would
call your BBS and hang up. Your modem would have to call me back and my
modem would answer the call. Ah well.
---
To unsubscribe from the telnet list, send a blank message to
telnet-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the subject. Make sure this
is sent from your actual subscribed email address. To contact the list owner,
write to telnet-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx This list's home page is at
<http://members.cox.net/~baechler/>.
Other related posts:
