318 lines
9.0 KiB
Plaintext
318 lines
9.0 KiB
Plaintext
############################
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#TRANSMISSION RECEIVED#
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############################
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L
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O
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A
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D
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I
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N
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G
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.
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.
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.
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#############
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#THE BBS ZINE#
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#############
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###########
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#BY MHJ#
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###########
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#############################################
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#Issue 5 - For the week of 9/22/19 - 9/28 #
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#############################################
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########################### #Date Published - 9/24/19 #
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###########################
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#####################
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#Frightfully Mundane#
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#####################
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Index:
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Foreward
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Alpha Centauri
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Amiga City
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Linux and BBSes
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The DOS era
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Guest column
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Game of the Week
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Music of the Moment
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Links
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Outro
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Contact
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Next Issue Preview
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##########
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#Foreward#
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##########
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It’s really amazing what people are capable of being ignorant of. If you
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asked 4/5 people today what a BBS is, most likely they would have no
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answer. People have no knowledge of the computing past, they are only in
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it for the latest and greatest technology and fail to learn from the
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past regarding what made those particular things important.
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I’m not here to rant though, I just find the state of modern communities
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online to be in a sad state of affairs. There is some pushback, like
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with tilde.town(and the wider tildeverse), mastodon, gopher and BBSes
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that are still around, but to most people, they have no understanding of
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that type of thing. I suppose we could blame accessibility for this, as
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in, it’s rather difficult to get those places unless you know how to use
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specific applications(except mastodon)… but it’s also because I think
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that some of those places want to remain insular.
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It’s their choice to remain that way and should be respected, but I
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think that alternatives for everyone else should be developed, because
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at the rate we’re going, the net itself will become akin to just a theme
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park.
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If you have the means to do so, fight back against these forces and
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teach others the benefits of what made and make BBSes what they are and
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encourage others to understand everything about their online lives.
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################
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#Alpha Centauri#
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################
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Cool art here, from the opening, that is. It seemed to be a bit on the
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decidedly average side though.
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I didn’t explore the text files though, which I imagine there were lots
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of, given it’s prominence on the main menu. Seemed to be running a
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commonly used BBS software, in any case.
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Regarding the BBS games, it has a small number, but I would still
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consider giving this BBS a shot.
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The Main Menu
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[Main menu]
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The Games Menu
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[Games]
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The BBS List
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[BBS]
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#########################
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#CONNECTION METHODS#
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#########################
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telnet://acentauribbs.no-ip.org:2002
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#################
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#Amiga City #
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#################
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Amiga, certainly a name people probably haven’t heard of it in a while.
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This name certainly brings back the time in the early 90’s or late 80’s
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when the Amiga ruled the scene, especially in the UK. This BBS loads up
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with nice artwork, and then you’re greeted with a good looking main
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menu.
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As far as the files go, they have a nice selection. I saw stuff for
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AmigaOS(Of course!), and various BBS-related things that were of great
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interest to any Amiga owner. I highly recommend checking the files out
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if you have one!
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The games were amazing, they have at least 13-14 screens of games you
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could pick from. The SysOp must really know his games, because they’ve
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seemingly implemented every single one that I’ve never heard of.
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I highly recommend checking out this place, it seems very effecient and
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there’s so many games to choose from!
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Main Menu
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[Main Menu]
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Games Menu
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[Games]
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Files Menu
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[Files]
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#########################
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#CONNECTION METHODS#
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#########################
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telnet://amigacity.xyz
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ssh://amigacity.xyz:3459/
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##############################
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#Linux and BBSes#
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##############################
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If you’re a Linux/BSD user like myself, you’ll be glad to know that
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there exists many clients for BBSes made specifically for those
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Unix-like OSes. Lets go over all the BBS clients and also take a look at
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some of the servers.
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Syncterm is a nice client that I use for this zine, and it provides a
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very nice and easy to use interface, and so that in turn makes it easy
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for me to in turn just plug in a BBS and go browse it.
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Netrunner is another client, which I haven’t used much, but I heard from
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others that it’s pretty good. I would give it a shot as well.
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You have the venerable Telnet command itself if you absolutely can’t get
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any other client.
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Another one is PuTTY, which is also available on Windows.
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Then there’s zssh, which also has telnet support, but it might be an
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afterthought. I haven’t played with that one yet.
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There’s numberous other ones that I haven’t even heard of until today,
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such as cgterm, fqterm, qelly, quickrdp and finally pcmanx.
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Regarding the servers, there’s many of those as well. I believe
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Synchronet is very popular, since it can run on a raspberry pi.
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There’s also Mystic.
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As far as the others goes, I think it’s harder to find the sources
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and/or binaries for them, but if you know any different, send me an
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email!
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#############################
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#The DOS era#
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#############################
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The DOS era was a time of great upheavel in the computing world. Home(or
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micro) computers were still a thing, but then IBM brought out the PC,
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and that was the beginning of the end for the micros. IBM also brought
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along with it standardization, and thus, the path of the i386
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architecture was established, and PC’s came to dominate. One of the most
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popualer operating systems for these machines was MS-DOS, which was
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based off of CP/M.
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Having grown up in the era when DOS PC’s were becoming standardized, I
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remember mostly all the fun games you could play on them, such as
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Thexder, King’s Quest, Space Quest, Commander Keen and many others. My
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particular favorites were Stellar 7 and MechWarrior 2.
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What stands out to me most about this era was that home computing was
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still in it’s infancy. Not everyone had a computer at home. Also if you
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used a computer you were seen as a “nerd.”
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I believe my most fun time spent online back then was using CompuServe
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to download preview images of video games, like one for Mega Man, and
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finding any discussion on new games coming out for the NES and Genesis.
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Game magazines were still in their infancy as well, so it was a blessing
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to find online info.
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############
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#Guest article#
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############
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The following article is by cat, you can reach them at:
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gopher://baud.baby.
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################
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#BBS and Gopher#
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################
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What up y’all, I love BBS but I also really, really love Gopher so I’m
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going to share with you two very neat places where BBS and Gopher
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intersect.
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Ok, let’s start from the Gopher side.
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In his Zaibatsu Gopher hole,
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dokuja(gopher://circumlunar.space/1/~dokuja/telnetbbs) maintains a list
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of telnet BBS services. I know you’ll all have seen one of those before
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but what makes this one interesting is that the list is formatted using
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Gopher’s standard telnet item type. From this list you can quickly
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connect to any of the BBS listed, I’ve tested in lynx and vf1 and it
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works great. It’s a really fantastic way to find new BBS to explore.
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Now from the other side!
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One of my favorite BBS is aNACHRONiST’s
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aBSiNTHE(telnet://absinthebbs.net:1940), it’s a really nice board with
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excellent attention to design. It also has a neat application that I’ve
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not seen anywhere else; an implementation of lynx called aBSiNTHE lYNX,
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and you guessed it, you can use it to access Gopher.
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Once you’re in the core menu of aBSiNTHE hit 6 for aBSiNTHE lYNX and
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then g for Gopher and you’re in! It’ll start you off on a portal but
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then you’re free to browse Gopher space as you wish, you can even read
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FAX SEX files!
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#######
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#Links#
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#######
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Synchronet: http://www.synchro.net/
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zssh: http://zssh.sourceforge.net/
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#################
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#Game of the Week#
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#################
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LORD II
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LORD II was definitely a different experience from the original LORD. It
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was very much inspired by roguelikes like Nethack and such. For the time
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I got to play it, I didn’t fight anything as I feel I wasn’t a high
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enough level. So it kinda ended a uninspiring note. As I am in the
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beginning of the game though, I think I’ll go back and play it, so long
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as no one kills my character.
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I think I would give it a chance as it seems even more like a primitive
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MMO than the first LORD was. If you have time to kill, give it a go!
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###################
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#Music of the Moment#
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###################
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Outrun - Magical Sound Shower(C64 conversion):
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESwrrCshV6s)
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#######
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#Outro#
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#######
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I hope you enjoyed this issue of the BBS Zine. I’m using a program
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called pandoc to make everything from one file, it’s a wonderful
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utility. If you have document formatting needs, visit them over at:
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https://pandoc.org
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#########
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#Contact#
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#########
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For questions, concerns, comments and anything else, please contact me
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at the following: mhj@sdf.org
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Thank you.
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############
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#Next Issue#
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############
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BBSes:
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Alley Cat BBS
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ALTERANT
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Columns:
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Music and BBSes
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Security and Privacy and BBSes
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Guest column
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Game of the Week
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Links
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####################
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#TRANSMISSION ENDED#
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####################
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