Harmon Seaver wrote:
I had a fidonet node for awhile. The concept really needs to be revived -- and combined with more recent developments like Publius, freenet, and gnutella. Sort of an underground internet -- the Information Subway.
yepp, old fido-times sometimes make me smile in nostalgia feelings. though the german fido burried its own grave when a couple of buerocrats took over. when switched off my node, I was ashamed of what fido had become.
And for all I know, people are already doing it. A subterranean "fidonet" partially using the net, partially (or maybe totally for some groups) the old fidonet, middle of the night phone updates and downloads, coupled with pgpfone. Add in packet radio. And what with carnivore, et al, maybe it'll become the next big thing.
all you need to do is use the internet as a transport layer. it's there, so why use the phone? cops can possibly intercept your phone calls more easily than randomly routed IP packets. the technology is there. all you'd need to do is set up a network of nodes that rsync itself at regular intervals, preferably using at least ssh.