Hello Rob,
On Friday December 29 2023 18:00, you wrote to me:
Henk Wever's GIF kludge was not just an idea either. It has been in
actual use for several years.
Are you refering to this draft (by Sergey Sokoloff)? https://github.com/Mithgol/node-fidonet-jam/blob/master/avatar.txt
I was not refering to any document, I was refering to my memory. As I mentioned, it never made it into an FTSC standard. Possible because there was no FTSC yet when it was used. It was used by Henk Wever's bbs/mailer Dutchie that was not used much outside The Netherlands. I am talking about the very early days of Fidonet. end 80ties, begin 90ties. Here is the picture that Henk used in his GIF kludge:
http://www.vlist.eu/fotos/henkweve.gif
I merely meant to point out that having a kludge to facilitate displaying an image representing the author along with the message is not new. Indeed it differs from what you propose in that the GIF kludge directly gives the name of the file that contains the image.
http://www.vlist.eu/fotos/henkweve.gif
Interesting. Did this "GIF kludge" use the same format as defined by Sergey in 2017? The (few) GIF kludges I see in my message bases seem
to match Sergey's definition.
I merely meant to point out that having a kludge to facilitate
displaying an image representing the author along with the message
is not new. Indeed it differs from what you propose in that the GIF
kludge directly gives the name of the file that contains the image.
Yeah, I was aware. I think the BBS ID kludge could have other uses
too.
Even a kludge that is implemented in this in-the-clear system
as FTN is, is fraught with security issues. Anyone in the
chain of transfer can manipulate a message header kludge to
point something untowardly or inappropriate.
Why not? OpenXP doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
A few years ago, there were some duplicate net/nodes across
zones. Not sure of the situation now.
Yeah, I was aware. I think the BBS ID kludge could have other uses
too.
Possibly. But in Fidonet we already have a way to identify a system: the node number. And that is guaranteed to be globally unique within Fidonet.
What we don't have in FidoNet is a way to correlate systems with multiple FTN addresses (from multiple FTNs) as being the *same* system. That's the problem solved with the BBS ID Kludge.
Possibly. But in Fidonet we already have a way to identify a
system: the node number. And that is guaranteed to be globally
unique within Fidonet.
What we don't have in FidoNet is a way to correlate systems with
multiple FTN addresses (from multiple FTNs) as being the *same*
system. That's the problem solved with the BBS ID Kludge.
This was something that I wanted to address in clrghouz.
So my mailer - I do correlate FTNs to a single system, across fidonet
and othernets. It isnt easy (from my vantage point) - because folks
are listed differently in different nodelists (the only tool I have
that gives me that opportunity).
Has it occured to you that listing in a different way in different networks is because they do /not want/ to be correlated across networks?
Has it occured to you that listing in a different way in different
networks is because they do /not want/ to be correlated across
networks?
I have.
But the differences that I was referring to are what I would put in
the category of spelling mistakes, locations specifics or format
errors.
EG: In the case of one sysop, their BBS is listed as "United_States", "Bendigo_Vic", "Bendigo_AUS" and "Bendigo_VIC_AUS". I've seen some examples with Sysop names as well, normally those with Mac... Mc... or their name (or their BBS name) has an apostrophe that is listed in one nodelist and omitted in another.
| Sysop: | Tetrazocine |
|---|---|
| Location: | Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
| Users: | 14 |
| Nodes: | 8 (0 / 8) |
| Uptime: | 61:04:05 |
| Calls: | 178 |
| Files: | 21,502 |
| Messages: | 79,411 |
