BKBBS4BS.RVW 930801 Wiley 605 Third Avenue New York, NY 10158-0012 USA 800-263-1590 "Bulletin Board Systems for Business", Wood/Blankenhorn, 1992, 34.95 There is no preface, and therefore no stated purpose, to this book. It would appear from both the title and the contents of the first few chapters that the intent is to promote the use or establishment of "bulletin board systems" (also known as "computer bulletin board systems", "electronic bulletin board systems" or just BBSes). The authors seem to be primarily concerned with PC based "in-house" systems, and Fidonet technology networks. Indeed, at one point they downplay the capabilities of commercial "online services" in favour of private BBSes, and the book never betrays any knowledge of the Internet, Usenet or the Waffle or SLIP (serial link Internet protocol) means of extending access to PCs. Also, PC based means MS-DOS PCs to the authors: aside from CP/M (for historical purposes) no other platform or operating system is mentioned. The authors do not make a very convincing case, at least not for what I assume is the intended audience: businesspeople. Certain specialized uses are demonstrated in "case studies", but the generic usefulness of the various BBS functions are not convincingly presented. There is somewhat of a tone of "preaching to the choir" about the initial chapters. For those who are trying to make their own case to management, however, there are some interesting and possibly helpful resources. Chapter one has a history of BBS development that any aficionado will find fascinating reading. Chapter two, "Should you run a board", as mentioned, makes a less than compelling case, but does give some possibly useful examples. Chapters three and four give simple background descriptions of BBS and computer communications technology components which may be useful in presentations. Chapter five delves more deeply into the "basics of telecommunications, with clear and concise explanations of such issues as parity, band (correctly distinguished from "bits per second") and file transfer protocols. Some of the material suffers from the PC bias: for example, the description of the Kermit protocol is unnecessarily harsh, and is unaware of the recent advances. Chapter six replays a fair amount of this material in its discussion of modem technology. Chapter seven is supposedly the "basics of modem software", but is primarily a brief listing of eleven terminal emulation programs. Chapter eight is entitled "File Manipulation" but is again a listing of software, this time file archiving and compression programs. The listings are longer in this section, given a brief history of each program and author, but more due to the inclusion of all the available "command line switches" and features of each program. (The material is somewhat dated. Given the 1992 copyright date, it is odd to see PKZIP represented by version 1.05.) There is also a short discussion of graphics file types. There is no discussion of "binary to text" conversion methods, which allow the transmission of program files over email systems. Chapter nine is another set of listings, this time of BBS software. The listings are duplicated, with a slightly differing slant, in chapter ten. Supposedly it deals with generic issues of management, but, in reality, it lists the "administrative" functions of some of the previously listed BBS programs. A list of the "top ten BBSes in North America" makes up chapter eleven. This may be of historical interest to those in the online community, but is not of great use to those building a corporate, "in-house" BBS. Chapter twelve discusses "online etiquette", a subject very dear to my heart. The list of "do's and don'ts" is useful and proper, but with little discussion preceding it, may not be compelling to the average reader. (Oddly, there is no mention here of the "smiley", or "emoticon", which can help greatly with one of the problems mentioned, that of "subtle" humour.) Chapter thirteen talks about legal matters. Perhaps the best advice from this section would be to get a copy of "Syslaw". Chapter fourteen is entitled "Viruses, hackers and other dangers". I won't say it "covers" the topic because it doesn't. The definition of a virus is flatly wrong, and the discussion is blatantly biased in favour of one John McAfee. Of five antiviral programs, one is the McAfee product and two others are commercial resellers of it. (The remaining two are Norton and Central Point, of which the shortcomings are, or should be, well known.) Two BBSes are listed, one the McAfee board and one the now-defunct NCSA/ICSA board. (Interestingly, the disk of shareware contained with the book does *not* contain the McAfee product.) Of hackers, the only useful material is some discussion of password choice. The future (limited to CPU speed, ISDN, MIDI and JPEG) is discussed in chapter fifteen. Sixteen is more helpful: a glossary of computer and communications terms, as well as common email abbreviations. FWIW ("for what it's worth") the "smiley" still doesn't make it, but ROTFL ("rolling on the floor, laughing") does. There are seven appendices. "A" is some information on offline mail readers and "Fidonet" protocol networks. "B" is a very brief discussion of the BBS situation by various regions: both "The Matrix" and Krol's "Internet Guide" contain more information on Fidonet alone than does this. "C" comments briefly on various commercial online or email services. "D" lists "selected" BBSes. (How the selection was done is a bit of a mystery.) "E" lists BBSes contacted during the preparation of the book; "F" lists the "outdial" modem parts of the U.S. "PC Pursuit" system, and "G" lists "resources". The book is packaged with a disk of software. The cover states that SMARTCOM EZ is included; according to the final chapter of the book it also contains a number of shareware programs. (These, of course, are fairly dated, but I note that PKZIP 1.10 did finally make it in.) The inclusion of these programs reminds me that the authors nowhere discuss the concept of shareware. For those with some background in BBS use the book is interesting for its anecdotal approach to history. There are a number of interesting stories, and "meet the name" pieces. For those who are seriously interested in setting up an in-house corporate BBS, there is a useful, if somewhat limited, overview of some of the concepts involved. Those completely new to the field will find helpful background information, although there are definite gaps that need to be filled from other sources. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993 BKBBS4BS.RVW 930801 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag