MSGID: 2:221/6.21 16bf15c2   
   PID: Hotdoged/2.13.5/Android   
   TID: jNode/Android   
   CHRS: UTF-8 4   
   REPLY: 2:333/808.7 5fa73a2d   
   Hello, August Abolins.   
   On 11/8/20 1:22 AM you wrote:   
      
    AA> Hi Charles! 07 Nov 20 05:28, you wrote to me:   
    CP>> I remember the initial participation fall off of some of the    
    CP>> echos I most actively participated in. At the time, connecting to    
    CP>> the internet was primarily dialup, so I don't really accept that.   
    AA> There were a lot of different BBSes (mostly single POTS) to choose    
    AA> from in the early days. As the AOL, Prodigy, and public uucp    
    AA> services emerged, busy signals were probably a rarity for those    
    AA> well supported systems with multiple lines.  Hence, users gravited    
    AA> towards systems where they could get on right away.  That's how I    
    AA> felt with Compuserve; I don't recall ever getting a busy signal    
    AA> with that. Meanwhile, supporting multiple lines for a hobby-based    
    AA> BBS was expensive. The other services mentioned above were all $'s    
    AA> supported.   
      
   I remember with AOL, it would cycle through local numbers until it connected.   
   The others I don't recall.   
      
   But as far as single line BBSes, I had several different systems in my   
   terminal program. At least 20-30 local one's during the height of popularity.    
   With autodial, the terminal program would simply go down the list until a   
   system connected.  I primarily logged on transferred QWK or BW packets and   
   logged off.  A few systems, I would play a few door games. Primarily league   
   games.   
      
   Once Telnet became more common, it was much the same, but more globally as far   
   as BBS systems were concerned.   
      
      
       
    CP>> I did see it as being something shiny and new, so obviously    
    CP>> people were going to look around.  But I also expected them to    
    CP>> eventually come back around the echos. Perhaps not as often as    
    CP>> before, but consistently.   
    AA> To come back? Why would they do that, when they get pretty    
    AA> graphics and colours (html) and buttons to click on the screen?    
    AA> It's so much more fun.   
      
   True, you could see things that you couldn't on a BBS, but why is it either/or?   
      
   For the most part, with a few exceptions, you still have far better quality   
   discussions on Fido than elsewhere online.   
      
      
    CP>> Obviously I was wrong.   
    AA> :)   
    CP>> I tried newsgroups now and then.  I didn't care for them.  It    
    CP>> seemed a cheap imitation of echomail. Email group lists were    
    CP>> better, but many of the lists I was on then were primarily by    
    CP>> people coming from a Fidonet background, and the lists reflected    
    CP>> that.   
    AA> I thought ngs where quite amazing - before my regular hangouts    
    AA> started getting trolls and spam.   
      
   Maybe I was late to it, but i generally saw more spam than anything on usenet.   
       
    AA>>> Myself, my community for fast answers and interesting    
    AA>>> conversions included Compuserve for at least 3 or 4 years.   
    CP>> I never did find anything like that on Compuserve or AOL.   
    AA> I hung around the areas for music and film primarily. The odd    
    AA> technical place for Windows and OS/2 was pretty good for questions    
    AA> and answers.   
      
   Fidonet had a Message area for nearly any topic you could imagine.   
      
   The only difference was that until internet packet transfers became more   
   common, a conversation took days or even a couple of weeks, depending on   
   routes. Now instead of everything in North America have to go system to system   
   usually during an overnight mail hour, until reaching a system who volunteered   
   a good hit to their phone bill to call overseas to a similar system in Europe   
   or Asia or Australia or Africa or South America, then hop system to system   
   again until the end. Then replies come back the same way.   
      
   Now systems either can send packets as soon as there is new mail or hourly, as   
   they choose, so you can have back and forth in a  conversation several times a   
   day.   
      
      
    AA>>> FTN echomail... web forum style too (eg Synchronet's eWeb    
    AA>>> thing?)   
    CP>> It has. But it's also had a tendency to be very insular. There is    
    CP>> very little, if any promotion of what it has to offer.   
    AA> Sysops do there best with listings on TelnetBBS Guide, getting    
    AA> noticed on places like ipingtherforeiam, creating Welcome webpages    
    AA> that offer fTelnet connections, and even some Facebook presence to    
    AA> make announcements and try to inform new visitors. But, for the    
    AA> most part Fidonet (or any othernet for that matter) remains    
    AA> obscure to the average user out there.   
      
   Exactly.  How many of those things would someone not part of the BBS community   
   even know exist?   
      
   Even with Facebook, I belong to a Group called FidoNet TREK Echo.   
   It was supposedly set up to mimic it's namesake. There are about 175 members   
   in the Group. Besides myself, I know 3 members that were for certain part of   
   Fidonet in the past.   
      
   Even if more were in FidoNet before, as far as I can tell, I'm the only one   
   still actively participating in FidoNet.   
   As far as the content of that group, people share articles related to various   
   Star Trek related shows, movies, events, actors.  Occasionally, someone will   
   post an opinion on an episode.  But there is no discussion to speak of.    
      
   It hardly reflects what the Echo it's named after was.   
      
   My point is that if you have something like that, wouldn't you want to promote   
   where it came from?   
       
       
    AA>>> BBSing is probably still strongly associated with dialup.   
    CP>> I actually think more in terms of Telnet these days, the local    
    CP>> BBS's I called on dialup vanished long ago.  I'm sure there are    
    CP>> some still, but I no longer even have a landline phone.   
    AA> Precisely. So, the average person thinks that BBSes are quite dead    
    AA> since many people don't use dialup for their internet/computer    
    AA> activity anymore.   
      
   The average person has no idea what a BBS is, or if they do, it's a vague idea   
   of what computer geeks did in thier spare time when not running away from   
   dinosaurs going to and from school.   
       
    AA>>> Twitter, I won't comment on, except to say that I don't like the    
    AA>>> hashtag mess that the tweets become.   
    CP>> I don't get the hashtags. I mean, I understand what the intent    
    CP>> was, but I don't get it.   
    AA> They are a way to categorize a message. Clicking on the tag in the    
    AA> message shows you other messages that contain the same tag.    
    AA> Apparently Telegram has something similar but I haven't studied    
    AA> that.   
      
   I know what hashtags are and their purpose. I don't get the need for them.   
       
    AA>>> ...Perhaps if there was a consistent approach to reacquaint the    
    AA>>> ex-BBS user and the new generation of conversationalist to the    
    AA>>> Fidonet and BBS communities then maybe we'd notice some    
    AA>>> increased presence by their participation.   
    CP>> There is the issue in a nutshell. But it's more than that. The    
    CP>> BBS community is where I've met some of the most innovative    
    CP>> people in computers. Terminal programs, BBS programs, offline    
    CP>> readers, door programs, FTN and other style networks.... while    
    CP>> there is commercial software, for the most part it was done by    
    CP>> individuals, or groups of people, creating these wonderful    
    CP>> programs because they could.   
    AA> The ZDnet article mentioned The Well.  The internet presence for    
    AA> The Well looks amazing and well organized.  It's basically the    
    AA> same thing as Fidonet, but webbased forums. Not sure if there is    
    AA> an offline option for messages. Its philosophy of real names,    
    AA> etc... reads very much like the Fidonet BBSses of old.   
      
   The Well is a commercial BBS, more or less.   
       
    CP>> You don't see very much of that now. Now, the BBS community seems    
    CP>> more about preserving the history. Why can't it be both?   
    AA> I dunno. I think the preservation part is due in part to the    
    AA> necessity of sticking to minimum FTN standards?  But Fidonet (and    
    AA> its counterpart othernets) have done a pretty good job being    
    AA> accessible via nntp, qwk, and other means.   
      
   I wasn't clear enough, I guess.    
       
   History is important. FidoNet showed what a bunch of regular people are   
   capable of. Linking thousands or more people together worldwide talking about   
   things. Not governments, not corporations, not Universities.  People. On their   
   own time, out of their own pockets.   
      
   Different computer systems, it didn't matter.   
      
   Different OSes, no problem. We have this program in DOS, let's make it   
   available for people that use OS2 or Linux. Or vice versa.   
      
   You have a C=64? No problem, join in the fun.   
      
   If I'm not mistaken, every model of home computer there was could participate.   
      
      
      
      
    CP>> Smart phones and tablets have been around for over a decade. But    
    CP>> look what happens when the conversation comes up about software    
    CP>> for these mobile devices to connect with FTN networks. There is    
    CP>> very little interest, if not outright hostility to the idea.   
    AA> I don't sense hostility as much as I sense apathy.  Time and money    
    AA> could be limiting factor. Producing an app for the MacOS requires    
    AA> some kind of upfront fee, I think. WRT time, there is probably the    
    AA> notion that something like Fidonet is dying anyway, so why bother?   
      
   Maybe hostility wasn't the right word.   
      
   Apathy fits a lot of it. But there is more than that.   
      
   How many BBS related programs are there that have versions for multiple   
   operating systems?  What if those programmers thought, "I only use X OS. I   
   don't need to port it to Y." ? Or release the code so someone else can.   
      
   That's exactly what this is here. Android is simply a different OS.   
      
   But there are negative reactions to the idea.    
      
    CP>> Recall the reactions to my idea of running a BBS on a smartphone    
    CP>> or Tablet?   
    AA> You would encounter critics wherever you go.   
      
   True. Criticism if fine, expected even.   
      
   It's the negativity.   
      
   "The screen is too small"   
   "The Keyboard is too small"   
   "It's too hard to read on it"   
      
   Ok, in your particular situation, any or all of these comments might be true.   
   But that doesn't make it universally true. Millions of people use tablets and   
   smartphones on a daily basis.    
      
   A few months ago, I saw a guy testing a connection with a software he's   
   working on.  I thought it was along the line of what I'm looking for, but it's   
   more a remote connection to his home system.  It's not something that I   
   necessarily would use myself, but I'm fully supportive of his efforts.   
      
   My more current discussion in Asian Link. His idea works. It's more programmer   
   heavy than I'm looking for.  But it's there, and if it works for people, I'm   
   in full support.   
      
   The general public aren't big programmers. But they can install an app.  They   
   can type an address. They can fill out a form.    
   So the typical BBS related software, a decent Telnet that supports  ANSI   
   graphics and BBS transfers for Mail Packets, seem a very good thing to me.   
      
   A point system that has the features that one on a PC does seems even better.   
   Once you're set up, it's only a matter of sending and receiving mail.   
      
   As far as the BBS on Android idea?  It's definitely not for everyone. But it's   
   something that I see potential for.   
      
      
      
    CP>> At best, my ideas have been met with a response that is    
    CP>> basically, "Yes it is possible, but I have no interest in using    
    CP>> that myself. Good luck with that."   
    AA> At the moment you haven't met the right individual that shares    
    AA> your vision.   
      
   I've seen some alternative ideas.    
      
   I may not ever find that person. That's fine.   
       
    CP>> Like it or not, you're going to have little, if any growth in the    
    CP>> BBS network community without adapting to new technology. This    
    CP>> doesn't mean discarding the past. But existing BBS software can    
    CP>> be adapted to mobile device technology without making the    
    CP>> existing tech obsolete. The proof of concept exists in the    
    CP>> program I am using now. It's just not being supported.   
      
      
    AA> Yes, Hotdoged seems to be a fine adaptation for Android devices.    
    AA> But is that the one where the code is not available?   
      
   The Fido provider portion of HotdogEd is based on jNode. I'm not sure about   
   the other portions.   
      
   Aftershock I don't know about,   
      
   --   
   Best regards!   
   Posted using Hotdoged on Android   
   --- Hotdoged/2.13.5/Android   
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