Others popular under Linux are Syncterm and Netrunner. Under ArcaOS, I
use LiveWire which is great but only runs under ArcaOS (OS/2).

ArcaOS sounds like just the kind of thing I need to avoid! As an alternative OS geek, I'm sure it's something I would get very excited about - and I can't afford the time for anymore geekery at the moment :) Near enough to divorce as is!

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At 11:49 PM on 21 Sep 19, Sean Dennis said to Simon Geddes:

Simon Geddes wrote to Sean Dennis <=-

Great! Have you consciously tried to reduce your usage?

Yes and no. I have a lot of other hobbies, such as amateur radio, programming, my BBS, writing short fiction, and reading that keep me offline. Once I have more room, I'll get back into leatherwork, woodworking and metalworking as hobbies.

This seems like the best way to go to reduce usage. Squeeze it out with more interesting things. Based on one of the top stickies on the nosurf reddit, a lot of people have genuinely forgotten what other things there are to do, other than use their smart phone/internet. They maintain a list there of top recommended alternative activities, including the ones you describe. It's kind of sad, scary and telling that such a list is needed. One complaint you see there is that people's attention spans are so shot, they struggle to read a page of a book, ordraw a picture or whatever.

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(You are witnessing life without the internet in action - the old me

I don't get on too much these days though I do enjoy getting on IRC
every so often. My Internet usage has dropped considerably these days.

Great! Have you consciously tried to reduce your usage?

ps. I think I spent most of the 2000s on IRC!

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I had wondered about VoIP as a solution to diminishing landlines -
didn't know data signals over VoIP are problematic.

It's in the analog-to-digital conversion. To greatly oversimplify for
the sake of brevity, analog signals are 'chopped' at certain frequencies
to fit within a digital sine wave and that can cause issues with data
loss.

Makes sense. I wonder if the analog signal could be scaled or processed in some way to still work. Anything is possible I suppose, if there's sufficient will.

The biggest issue I have faced is just getting old terminal software running on a more moderm OS (MorphOS). Everything seems to half-
work. Not like first time around in the mid-ninties, where
the process seemed to be very plain sailing. I've
definitely wanted to give up a few times!

I use Qodem (qodem.sourceforge.net) on Windows 10 and Slackware Linux without issue.

Good to know. I've heard of minicom as another Linux option, which I was planning to use with Ubuntu and an external USB>serial modem I have. ZTerm workswell with this Mac's internal 56.6k modem, on OS X.

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On 09-28-19 05:48, Richard Falken <=-
spoke to Mike Powell about Re: FidoGazette Vol 13 ne <=-

Most people here don't think of having a home phone any more, either. I am guessing the market is more for people who still want one. I am almost 50, so maybe you are right. :)

You know, in Spain, ISPs are giving the home phone line for
free with their home Internet packages. This way, ltos of
people end up having a home phone but it does not actually
see much use anymore.

My daughter no longer has a home phone, only a cell phone. OTOH, our
cell phone is only used in rare occasions. Our home phone is our main
phone for everything, and it is bundled in with our ISP and TV service
(for less total cost than when we had a copper phone line).

Dale Shipp
fido_261_1466 (at) verizon (dot) net
(1:261/1466)




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But back to the dial-up, those modems only really work
with analog
lines, and not with VoIP lines. Yet, I wonder what the fax
machines are
working with...since practically all the old analog lines
are now
digital/VoIP. If there was a way to make that work, I'd put
dial-up
access back on the BBS...but I saw a comment from Rob
Swindell (aka
digital man), author of Synchronet, noting that "28.8 and
33.6 aren't as
fast as you remember them".

I have a very strong internet feed and I purchased Magic Jack as a joke as I did not think it would work after I tried a couple of others but I have a USR HST modem dialing and answering just fine at 9600 baud via analog via VOIP. I had to play with com port settings and others but on a Windows 7 machine, it dials my uplink and downloads to my downlinks just fine with a minor hickup or two now and then. It does just redial and off it goes.

Of course for my main feed I use BinkP but wanted to see if I could get the old setup to work. May not work for a BBS but for a mailer it gets by.


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On 11-25-19 08:08, Ward Dossche <=-
spoke to Janis Kracht about Re: FidoGazette Vol 13 no <=-

WD > The problem here is finding a turkey ...

...

Somehow I'd bet I couldn't even ship one to you if I wanted to..

Correct, the EU's food-safety chain does not allow the
import of meats from most countries. Seafood is not a
problem, so send me Maine-lobsters instead.

Curious as to the distinction. Could it be because the lobsters would
be shipped live and beef is not live? If so, could someone import a
live steer?

In seriousness, we once were gifted with a $100 gift card for Maine
lobsters from a particular company. Turned out that the various
packages they put together cost up to twice that amount for the most
part. And then they wanted more to ship them from Maine to Maryland
than it would cost us to go to a local store and buy equivalent
lobsters. Sort of like ordering from Omaha beef if you know who that
is. It was also true that a web search turned up other Maine companies
who had deals costing 1/4 as much.

Dale Shipp
fido_261_1466 (at) verizon (dot) net
(1:261/1466)



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Correct, the EU's food-safety chain does not allow the
import of meats from most countries. Seafood is not a
problem, so send me Maine-lobsters instead.

Curious as to the distinction. Could it be because the lobsters would
be shipped live and beef is not live? If so, could someone import a
live steer?

It goes either direction, one cannot import meats and dairy products either into the USA. I think it has to do with the food-safety chain. Also there is a strong belief in Europe that US beef is hormonal treated and that is a no-no here. Now some of my friends in Montana breed beef and they're shocked by that ...

There's also worry here re: poultry because chicken meats in the US are often chlorine-washed while here it is outlawed stating that if you allow the meat to become contaminated, you should work on eliminating the source of the contamination instead of washing it away.

Food-safety goes as far as to print a code on every egg to determine from which chicken coop it comes in case of issues.

My comment re: Maine lobsters finds its origin in the tiny size of lobsters here ... they're fu**ing expensive in restaurants and often you'll be offered half of a tiny one.

So when I'm in the Seattle area I always go to Salty's in Redondo, best seafood ever, also Aliotto's in San Francisco and that place I once was in New Hampshire I think, I can find it but don't know the name.

One of the issues with seafood is it needs to be fresh. I once tried deep-frozen lobster ... neveuuur again.

\%/@rd

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