Explain to me...who STILL uses FIDOnet, and why??

[Duke Newcombe]

I remember haunting the "echoes" in my dial-up BBS (Bulletin Board System) days...but when decent Internet access came to the masses, the BBSs kinda dried up and blew away, AFAIK.

[CreekDog]

1. yeah those people are losers

i only use Gopher.

[billyoc]

3. Easy, Grandpa.

[billyoc]

2. Russians.

[RoyGBiv]

4. I do ...

When the Internet access came to the masses, the signal to noise ratio on the groups I frequented improved significantly. To be perfectly honest, it improved so much that we found many of these groups only existed because of the noise, and most of them dried up and went away. There's still some around though where people I know hang out.

What was interesting was that at the time this was happening, that same ratio on Usenet got exponentially worse.

In any case, Fidonet isn't just the domain of private BBSes. I ran a node back in the day, and the problem with doing it was the damn phone bill. Gateways whereby everything is passed through the Internet in one way or another are in use now, so that part of it is no longer a concern.

OnEdit: It's also something people who live out in the sticks will use. Now that I think of it, most of the people I know on FidoNet live in rural areas far away from broadband.

[blogslut]

5. heehee

Think of it as the CB radio of the Interweb. Telnet rulez!