Glen, Sorry, I was swamped when you posted the original query, and accidentally deleted it too. For a dialup shell account, there's Realtime in Austin, and I think they are regional if not national. www.bga.com There are also a bunch (8-12) active FidoNet nodes here. I remember having to beat Google pretty hard to find the listing, though. Good luck with active BBS dialups. If you find a current listing, I'd really like to see it. I get free long-distance on my cellphone; I might set up IrDA and do some 9600bps BBSing. Just for nostalgia's sake. :) Doc

On Sun, 3 Nov 2002, Lawrence Walker wrote: I guess I need to clarify just a little here...I'm taking of an internal telephone-type system that I can connect all of my computer systems to. It really isn't that easy to have everything connected and ready to use at any given moment. Of course, some folks will consider my "Ideal" switching system to be overkill, which perhaps it is :) Oh boy, this topic can open a can of worms if one is not careful... I actually made more use of local BBS systems then the web right up till the end. I found once I lost those, that I still had little use for the web, and instead more often made use of services such as irc, usenet, and ftp. Reluctantly, I have been forced more and more to use the web over more efficient services such as ftp, but I have not been happy with that change. Perhaps I am being abit of an alarmist here, but I really don't see the internet _as a whole_ being able to continue along its current path of corporate abuse. In reality, it goes well beyond just the internet, and can be expanded to technology and society in general. Over the last 20+ years (and honestly, I've not been involved in technology that long, but I have done my homework), commercial interests seem to have had a very negative impact on the "personal" nature of communications. The very same commercial interests have also stifled innovation, but that is still related to a slowdown of communications, which has in turn been influenced by the increased restrictions on the sharing of information. The current US (and sadly, even the evolving global) patent and copyright systems tend to allow for major corporate abuse. Even universities today have really tightened down on the free-flow of information, which overall, has really hurt R/D and innovation in general. Many of the very R/D labs that gave us the technology that created the internet no longer exist. The ones that do still exist are for the most part not in R/D mode anymore. I personally believe that if our current socioeconomical system had been in place 20 years ago, the internet as we know it today would simply have never come to exist. Quite possibly, the internet would have never existed at all... Perhaps this little rant is somewhat OT, but I suspect I'm not the only one here on this list who has started to come to these sorts of conclusions. Yes, CC seems to be made up of some of the best and brightest minds I've found on the internet (and over the years, I've been all over the darned thing). I really wish I'd found classiccmp years ago, since it seems to be one of the few places where I can often find like minded people that can understand what I happen to be talk^H^H^H^Hranting about at any given moment ;) Well, again, I think my earlier post wasn't clear enough, but I would certainly welcome a more free flowing information network. Sadly, I think the overall restriction of information goes well beyond the physical (and is it really?) network, and overall might be better addressed by education. [Alright, thats my $0.50 worth at 4:30am, anyone else wanna comment? ;P] -Toth

On Sun, 3 Nov 2002, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote: s/a firewall/a poorly-administered MS firewall/ I move files (by both FTP and scp) regularly between very tightly firewalled networks. If the Network/Firewall Dude has any clue at all, it's simple to enable even active FTP transactions. NetMeeting is much more of a challenge. The MS setup demands random ports between 1024 and 65536, with *no* facility to limit the range.... Doc

On Sun, 3 Nov 2002, Tothwolf wrote: Um, I hate to interrupt your rant, but a "well maintained" HTTP site is pretty straightforward to navigate, as well. I've navigated plenty of horrible FTP sites. A service implemented badly is a horror, HTTP or not. ok r.

It was thus said that the Great Tothwolf once stated: Heh ... the number of commercial sites I visit can be counted on one amputated hand. I tend to use software that I can get the source code for, or write my own. I may be atypical in this reguard. Back in the early 90s I found out that what I considered a local call is not necessarily what the phone companies call a local call. I went to visit family in the Detroit area (Royal Oak) and I arranged access through some system (Tymnet? It's been way too long for me to remember anymore) so that I could get access to my college account in Florida. I only had to dial a seven digit phone number (in Royal Oak) for access and to me, that meant the phone call must have been local. I racked up over $100 in phone charges. Apparently, up there, a local call is restricted to those homes you can see from your front porch. Down here it's any phone within a fifteen mile radius. Of course down here the situation has gotten worse in other ways---Dade County (Miami) and now Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale) now require 10-digit dialing (since both now have two area codes overlaid), but I live just north of Broward County (Palm Beach County) and by just north, by like a mile. If I'm dialing a number in the Broward area, it's hit or miss if I can dial just seven digits, ten digits or 1 plus the area code plus the number. And then there was the time I tried dialing a Boca Raton number (561---Palm Beach County) from Coral Springs (954---Broward) from a pay phone (remember those?) Put the money in, dial seven digits. Sorry, must dial a 1 or a 0, and the area code when dialing this number. Sigh. Try again. Sorry, you do not need to dial a one or a zero or the area code when dialing this number. Okay, try seven digits. Sorry, need ten. Try ten. Sorry, need seven. Try 0. Operator can only give money back (as this wasn't a HellSouth payphone). Try 00 to talk to a HellSouth operator. Sorry, can't connect this call since this isn't a HellSouth phone. Oh, sorry. I started ranting there 8-) -spc (And the CEOs don't care---they got theirs so f**k you!)

One of my friends has some kind of AT&T Merlin phone system in his house. He thinks everybody else is missing something. As for BBSing, I think something like it will show, but it takes the old BBS combination of enough local people with some fairly broad common interest that INCLUDES locality. People are just now getting used to the concept that more than just their browser should be feeding off the net, ie music player, email, etc. all seamlessly access the web and its resources now, so that a new piece of software that fills the BBS spot could be welcomed quickly. I think the element of locality is essential, otherwise its just like this list, the automatic tendency is narrow focus. Once you have a strong enough local aspect, you get a host of OK local topics.

On Thu, 7 Nov 2002, Sellam Ismail wrote: Does it support standard analog lines like one would use for modems? How about pulse dialing? This sounds like what I should look into for my systems. Where would a similar system be found, and would would the costs be like? I suspect the only way I could afford such a system will be surplus/auction/resale, but maybe not... I think we all know that by now ;P -Toth