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#Issue 2 - For the week of 09-01 to 09-07-19#
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#Date Published - 09-03-19#
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#New Spaces#
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Index:
Foreward
A2K4.com
Acid Underworld
Guide to BBS clients, part 2
Modern BBS-like communities
Links
Outro
Contact
Next Issue Preview



##########
#Foreward#
##########

Community. What is a community, exactly? Is it one individual guiding and creating spaces for other individuals to thrive? Or is it multiple
individuals working together, leaderless, towards a common goal? In the BBS world, it seems to be the former.

Now, this happens to have repercussions, but also makes sense, as it gives the scene a greater deal of individualism. This individualism, 
wanting to stand out from the crowd, resembles the web of old. It can also make or break a community, depending on how that individual acts and 
reacts to changes which are ever-present in the tech world.

The last big change in the tech world was the introduction of the GDPR, but that mostly concerned big web sites and European users. Nevertheless, 
SysOps are responsible for their community and their content. What I am getting at is that corporations and governments are nowadays cracking down 
on subversive content, possibly because of authoritarian regimes or "for the good of the people." I feel SysOps and the greater BBS community have 
a responsiblity to ensure the future of the net remains open for all.

With that said, lets begin our journey into the world of BBSes!



##########
#A2K4.com#
##########

A2K4.com is an interesting place. I didn't poke around too much though, to be completely honest. It had an ample assort of files, games and messageboards
to interact with, in any case. When I tried to go into the Door games menu, it said that the Door games were closed for that day. I will go in tomorrow
and see if the SysOp has put them back on.

The BBS itself didn't seem to have a lot customizations present, as far as I could tell. Hopefully I'm wrong. Another thing was that, despite there
being no door games, there was a seperate games menu. I don't know if the games present in the menu could be classified as "Door" games, however.

Overall, I did find the BBS to be pleasant, just a bit underwhelming compared to other BBSes that had loads of screens of ANSI art, Door games
and lots of chatting/msgboard activity. I think it would be great for a newbie to come to, though.



#################
#Acid Underworld#
#################

This BBS was really overwhelming, in many senses of the word. It seemed to mostly focus on horror figures such as Freddy Kreuger, Elvira, zombies and
lots of other fun Halloween/horror film staples. You don't see that kind of theme, as far as I know, with a lot of other BBSes. It also seemed to be
more adult orientated than other BBSes I've been to. 

There were a lot of customizations present in this BBS, from the opening screen which scrolled through with Elvira, to the second loading screen with
Freddy Kreuger, a lot of time and effort makes this BBS into something one should see at least once.

I would really like to meet the SysOp of the place, just to understand their reasoning for the theme. I would say that everyone should definitely
check out this BBS and try the various Door games, chatting and whatnot.



##############################
#Guide to BBS clients, part 2#
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If you didn't know it, most systems, even nowadays come with a BBS client. It's not very good, but it's passable. The client is simply
the Telnet command. You can usually find it by either going into Command Prompt/PowerShell in Windows, the Terminal in Linux and finally
the Terminal.app in MacOSX. I assume that if you're a user of an older system, such as an Amiga, you know your way around the net with
a BBS client fairly well.

So lets talk about the Telnet command. Since it is a given that comes with most operating systems, the syntax is fairly simple as well. 
Usually, lets say that you wanted to go A2K4.com. With telnet, all you would have to do is type "Telnet A2K4.com" and you should be
instantly connected to the BBS server.

The downside is that most system terminals can't interpret ANSI art well or at all, so everything will look scrambled. I suppose that if
it's a BBS without much ANSI art at all, it could work, but again, I wouldn't recommend it. I don't think you would be able to download
files either, and I'm sure chatting would be a huge mess.


#############################
#Modern BBS-like communities#
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OK, so say you didn't like the general attitude of most BBSes or the method of connecting to most BBSes, since the majority still use an 
insecure protocol for connection(Telnet). Good news is that there many alternatives out there. I'll list the 2 most popular.

1. SDF
2. Tilde Town

SDF started as a BBS, amazingly enough. Now, it runs as a Public Access Unix System, specifically the operating system NetBSD. NetBSD is known
to run on many, many different types of hardware. Reportedly they used to use the Linux operating system, but due to a number of breaches,
they switched the hardware from the standard x86 to some other architecture, and as Linux didn't support it well, they chose NetBSD. 

I personally have an account there, and have had lots of good experiences just chatting to the myriad of users who reside on there. They
also have webmail, gopher and other assorted features for free and paying users. I would greatly recommend them. You could learn a lot
about Unix and how a community, virtually without any sort of presence on any social media nowadays, runs and feels.

You can find them at sdf.lonestar.org.

Tilde town is relatively recent compared to the likes of SDF. Nontheless, the community is very friendly and has many users. I wouldn't hesitate
to say that if you're looking for an inclusive community that will welcome you with open arms, tilde town is that one. 

There is a lot to do on tilde town, from chatting to posting the msgboard. They also have an internal email system, which makes it easy to send
email to anyone on the system with the program called 'Alpine'. 

I've learned a lot from there and so encourage you to join as well. 

You can find them at tilde.town.


#######
#Links#
#######


http://www.telnet.org/

Features telnet how-tos, places to telnet to and more!

https://tildeverse.org/

Place to find tilde.town and many other modern BBS-like communities.




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#Outro#
#######

I hope you've enjoyed this issue of the BBS Zine. I would like to thank my friends and others in their respective communities for their
helpful comments and contributions in order to make this happen. Without you folks, I wouldn't have the energy to do this! 



#########
#Contact#
#########

For questions, concerns, comments and anything else, please contact me at the following:
mhj@sdf.org

Thank you.

############
#Next Issue#
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Subtitle:
Here and Now

BBSes:
After Hours
Afterlife

Columns:
FIDONet
Decentralization and BBSes

More coming soon...!





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