The Electronic GODS guide to the 10 golden rules RULE <1> Do ALL in your power TO be Obnoxious to the user 1.1 Subsection A - How to be Obnoxious. Users are to have unlimited access exept for downloading. Users Paging sysops when they are asleep are deemed 1 hour's worth of line noise whilst they are trying to download a file. Whenever a user says they are suffering from line noise it is important that you simply say "Looks clear on my screen' This is the most annoying thing you can do to them. When/if they attempt to haras you further then its time to make a special access level for them, or turn on the M-5 error Correction (Tech-referance section 1.1A-B). Another top way to anoy the user is to turn off his line- feeds so all he sees is 23 lines of Ansi Screen on one line. There are several others such as, Reset his or her more prompt to two lines ( this one is always popular), or just hold down the pause key on your consol ( This one also gets a good larf at the sysops end) and finally no self-respecting sysop ever lets a chance to type for a new user to totally confuse and bewilder him go bye ( This one is important and is a requirment if you whish to become a quallified Electronic God.) One last anoyance for the user is for the sysop to go into sysop chat with the user , ask an involved question that will take a lot of typing to answer, then leave just before the user sends it and return just after that and say sorry i missed that . ( This one is good for sysops with visitors in his room they can all enjoy the joke . PS save this trick for the really slow typist they enjoy it the most. 1.1 Subsection A Tech Referance 1.1a1 - How to Make Noisy Lines Firstly for that Special type of user, the type that spends all his/her time downloading files at 300 baud the noisy line treatment usually will get rid of him/her. Go to the socket, open the front panel by using a screwdriver, make sure its insulated or you'll have a nasty surprise. You'l need the following :-) 1 x 50 ohm resistor 1 x Capacitor 1 x 250cm multiconductor wire 1 x soldering iron 4 x clip type things that will fit on fone things (metal conductors) now split the wire into 2 = bits, solder the resistor onto 1 and the capacitor on the other then attatch the clips to the other ends of the resistor and capacitor. now attatch these new wires to your phone line and then attatch the other plugs to the plugs on the end of your wire, this will quite effectivly get rid of users giving them extreme cases of terminal line noise. ** I TAKE NO RESPONSIBLILITY FOR BROKEN MODEMDS AS A RESULT OF THIS** 1.1 Subsection A Tech Referance B - M-5 Error Correction Now because modems these days are too good at filtering out line noise its is neccesary to make use of the M -5 error correction Tecnique, this is made possible through various meathods, one is to alter your phone line. A simple bit of insulated wire is acceptable along with a few minor adjustments to your phone socket and computer mptherboard (at the fan socet powersupply). You'll need the following. 1 x Soldering Iron 1 x Eletric 12v DC motor 1 x Flexible insulated wire. 1 x 1M of multicondictor wire now, open your computer and get the fan wire, take off some of the insulation and tap into the powersupply with your long piece of wire, now attatch this wore to your DC motor. Solder the smaller piece of wire onto the revolving end bit of the motor. Glue the motor to your phone socket so that the small piece of wire can flick onto atleast 2 terminals simultaniously causing a small powercut - resulting in line noise thus creating M -5 Error correction :-). RULE <2> HOW TO HANDLE PRIVATE MAIL. Section II Subsection I.I05a Part (a) Section II Subsection I.IO5a Allways read private mail I repeat allways. This can be justified on the basis that you were looking for pirated software or abusive language Part (b) If possible edit private mail before the user receives it and distort the meaning of the mail .( This is also a great crowd pleaser if you have visitors with you ) Part (c) Another great mail trick is to forward private email in to the general message area, or if the message is of the abusive nature then forward it to the user that its about and ( If the user askes how it got there always blame him with A statement like 'DONT YOU KNOW HOW TO USE THE SYSTEM YET' or 'Bloody Software' will usually do the trick, if he persists refer to section 1.1a induce line noise.) Part (d) Mail with file enclosures must be checked as it could be a copywrited program , If it is grab it for yourself and then delete it, if its a public domain one just get an editor like norton's and change a few bytes of the EXE or COM file . ( This is good as the reciever can wast time downloading it ( you can larf as he does his 40 min d/load as you know the programm wont work.) part (e) There is the nastier type user who will encript a file with a password, NOW THIS IS SERIOUS you cant read it or look at it , The only answer is to delete it ( if you cant have it why should he ). Because of the serious nature of this offence the user should have line noise induced every time he/she goes to upload private mail. RULE <3> HOW TO DESCRIBE YOUR SYSTEM. Section III Subsection I.I06a Part (a) Always Claim to have more phone lines than you actually have, and number your lines by 2 this will make a 4 line system look like 8 . Part (b) Files and storage, When adding up the online files available allways include all your floppy drives, hard drives, backup disks and the capacity of tape drives ( These drives do not have to be in your system you can include all close freinds computers as well) As a rough guide never claim less than one meg. Also if your drives are MFM always class them as if they where RLL or Perstored. subsection (1) of part (b) Files are allways added up in non-compressed form RULE <4> HOW TO GET THE MONEY. Section IIV Subsection I.I07a Part (a) Now if your bbs has more than about ohh.. 200k storage and about 2 message areas then it is seriously worth considering making people pay for access, after all the logic of users is that if you have to pay then it must be good. As long as you follow RULE 3 in full you'll have no worries getting the sukkers to pay. Also when the new user arrives dont let them read or look in your message/file sections make them curious. If a BBS that runs half or half the time at only 300 baud can squeeze $30 out from some people then surely any other sysop can score a buck or two from some silly people Part (b) How to go about making the Bulletins to draw people in. Use a colour scheme so that it catches the eye, but be careful not to burn peoples retina's with colours like bright white with orange text. Use BIG words as to make people think you are not an Electronic-GOD. BUT be careful not to make this screen too bland, red on black is quite suitable, or flashing blue on flashing red/green is a big hit in US Electronic GODS systems. RULE <5> MENUS Section IV Subsection I.I09a Part (a) Menus must be kept on the confusing side as we Electronic Gods need to make the user feel totally intimidated by our ability to whiz him through the different sections . part (b) Still on menus , never use the first letter of the command word as the key to activate the command a better system would be say the roman number system or even better the hexidecimal value of the third letter of the command eg <0E> for Goodbye or for File Areas . If a user ever complains or offeres advice refer back to section 1 and its subsections. Part (c) Allway make sure your menus are 80 chrs wide and 24chrs long as to annoy people with telix and that sort of software and in Ansi only this will make it impossible for all your users who still have 40 chr monitors to see the menu commands and its even funnier if they don't have Ansi all they see is [[37;1m^6h 's all over there screen .( If only you could be there to enjoy the joke with them ) but still you will have the satisfaction of knowing that sooner or later you will get one of these suckers. Part (d) Colours, yes colours are important, I will attemt to pass on years of expirence to you up and coming Electronic Gods .Recommended colour combinations, these have proved very unpopular amongst users. 1) Flashing RED on PURPLE 2) Flashing YELLOW on BRIGHT GREEN 3) Light Blue on Bright Green ( this is almost unreadable) 4) Normal PURPLE on CYAN ( this also is very hard to read) 5) Dont for get the black on black menu for the new user this one really gets them and will give you, the Electro God hours of larfs watching them stumble through it woundering what they did wrong Part (e) Spelling, Try to mis-spell a lot of the commands so that the user will bearly be able to understand what you mean, This is good for them as it teaches them to think. Electro GODS after all like all gods ARE permitted to spell documents and menus as the deem. RULE <6> HOW TO NAME FILES. Section IXX Subsection I.I38a Part (a) Remember to give files confusing names that do not relate at all to the software eg. A database file could have a name like 180_4_O-3.zip a name like this is sure to give you a chuckle as they try to remember it as they get five or six ( file not found messages) while trying to download it. Part (b) Trick number two , if the file is a zip give it an ARC extension or Pak , even though you cant enjoy this little sysop joke online you can allways picture the frustration in you above average mind as the user tries to uncompress it . This is good for business as he will ring back looking for a later version of the de-compression utility. Part (c) If the user wakes up to your godly tricks with extentions you still have a trick up your sleeve , in file names with several zero's in them slip in an uppercase letter "O" , with the colours you have set the user will find it very difficult to pick the difference. eg. change a file called CU0001.pak to CU00OI.pak notice the upper case letter I instead of 1 . With practice this will all become second nature to you ... and your sysoping will just turn into one endless larf .... RULE <7> HOW TO HANDLE SYSOPS OF OTHER BOARDS. Section VXI Subsection I.I57a You've just raided some mortal sysops board of about 200 files and you sudenly find them on your board.. This is where the true test comes in, any mortal sysop would collapse under this burdon. but wait with the aid of your new Electronic GODS guide Book you can defeat this mortal. Firstly turn on the M -5 modem correction device every 2 minutes and quickly install the line noise device (tech section 1.1a 1.1) and switch it on. If you are really tricky you can whip to dos and make some changes to your bbs making sure that sysop cant page you. Now if this mortal manages to somehow defeat you in this first case dont worry, after all your only an apprentice. Now you are faced directly to the other sysop, he abuses you, tels you not to raid his system, at this point your flying you have him where you want him, flick the m -5 modem error connection and explain you where simply getting a few essentials and it wont happen again. If the mortal sysop then remebers thet you raided his board last week and the week before your in a spot of bother. You then have to make a decision. You can opt for the mortal way out by simly saying someone musta got your password --OR-- You can take a huge step in the ways of an Electronic GOD, and tell him of wonderfiles from the US that your mate is sending you. This will be enough to make him weaker and you'll see him change from a nasty mortal into a greedy filescabbing mortal sysop, he'll say Oh.. thats nice or something, and when he does you have him. You tell him you'll upload some new files that no-one else has. He'll usually go away at this point but if not a severe case of line noise followed by ripping the fone connection from the back of your modem will ease you of this problem. Now for the tricky bit, you have to go and raid somene elses system for the required files, eather make them REALLY old and change all the dates and version info or actualy get the real ones. An Electronic God would get Both, the REAL new ones for his own system and the old for the Mortal sysop.. Part (b) What to do when another god advertises his bbs on your board. Never delete it this is the mortal thing to do, a true Electro God will leave the message online but edit the phone number in the add and replace it with the fax number of a local business. This is a very godly move as the fax will answer the modem but drop the carrier , The BBS will get a really bad name for bad phone lines and wasted calls . The Advanced God may even choose to use the advertisers Parents home number , this is dirty bbs'ing but after all you are fighting to retain your position as El Supremo Super Electro God and you don't want an apprentice god to even get a taste of the power , so crunch him quick and nasty. Part (c) If you are one of the MEGA GODS (multi line bbs) there is another option open to you . Your system is quiet so don't waste those phone lines , plug in modems and ring all the one line bbs's so no one else can use them .( This is getting into the advanced God Reference manual stage so I will drop it for now but watch for the next publication ADVANCED MEGA GODS DIRECTORY OF DIRTY TRICKS) RULE <8> HOW TO RUN A BBS ON THE CHEAP. Section XXXV1 Subsection I.I90a Part (a) Now you have the users money the last thing you want to do with it is actually spend it on the bbs , Here are a few tips on how to keep your running costs down. 1a) Only buy an xt clone with a 1.2 meg floppy drive or at most a 10 meg hard drive. This is all you need to have over two gigs of files availiable to your user. 2a) Now you have the hardware ring every other bbs in town and download there catalog of files , Join all of these catalogs together and display them as your file listing. If a user actually gets to try and download a file ( Remember you still have the M -5 noise inducer running and unreadable menus) just have the system throw up a message, section closed for maintain- ance ring back tomorrow , this will give you time to ring the other BBS and download it for him. 3a) As time goes by you will actually accumulate a meg or two of files that you have had to get in for the most persistant down- loaders. This is the time to start the begging letters Tell the users that a big expansion program is under way for them but un- less they can make a $20.00 donation the bbs may have to close ( This one allway works as the user will want to protect his access to this fine bbs ..) 4a) Now you dont want to have to keep downloading files for the users so just re-date the files you have to the current date say once a week and upgrade the version numbers (Nortons again) then ask for more money to help pay the phone bills ( Tell them all this new software is downloaded daily from the States ) after a month or two completely change the names on all your files. The users never even notice as they never run the software they download anyway. 5a) You are truly on your way to becoming one of the immortal Electronic Gods once you master the being cheap section of the manual. Dont forget spend all the subscription money on useless junk not related to the BBS.. When you run out just threaten to close again and the money will roll in ... RULE <9> FIDO-NET unRULES and Regulations Section IIV Subsection I.I07a As your system gets going and becomes extremely popular but you feel it lacks the 12,000+ messages that mortal sysops claim to have then it becomes essential for you to proceed and get echo mail for your system. Personally i find Binkley to be a supurb program as it has a 20second delay which if you dont ave an esc key can be extremily annoying. Now after 15 minutes of setting up your frontdoor it is neccesary to make 'bombing-runs' to all other bbs's around that place, specially to mortal sysops bbs's that you find particularly annoying. A bombing run consists of making a few false net-mail messages containing copies of random clusters of your hard disk whuch you have converted into files via nortons utils. These packets as they are called are to be at least 500k and are to be Zipped as no system supports the .zip mail packet unpakthingo's. Make taylor designed mail packets specially designed for people that you know only have 2 meg free are to fill that persons disk and make it impossible for them to unpack it. Also the up and coming Electronic God MUST blame these bombing runs on the software please (section 1.1 (c)). After you have had fun making all these calls out its time to direct stray packets through your host network to more boards, preferably sending a message in an international echo area with a heafty 2meg of file attatched filized clusters, this will not only annoy your host but hundreds of other sysops that recieve that particular echo area and if you are VERY lucky you'll get the Net_Zone_co-ordinator sending abusemail and or thousands of other flame mail messages from all the sysops you have burdened with this superflouse trick. later on too ** RULE <10> Bulletins and Questionares Section IIV Subsection I.I07a (a) How To make log on bulletins. It is very important for you to make at least 8 system messages or so to waste a users time make these totaly irrelivant to the bbs and make sure that they cannot be paused or aborted. A true God will even include ANSI in these and special codes to flash the users password in random places. This brings me to mention the special tricks of Note-takers, as few special codes placed in here by a user will show up the name and password of whatever user sees it, This is very handy and extremily annoying for a user. The joke is quite good as the user will rush and change their password, little do they know that no matter what they change it to it'll still show up on the screen. This little trick is worth doing specialy if you have visitors that can larf with you as the user wonders what has happened. The bulletin on the other hand is slightly more serious and you must mention all the good points on your system, now if you are a GOD then you'll have all good points and thus have to make about 10 pages of solid text with GODLIKE spelling all through. You must make sure you repeat every feature at least 2 times and describe your system as is done in section 3. After these pages it is a good time to ask for money as users will be exited about all your files and message areas and all 96 phone lines. Colours are also important, use colours described in section 5 Sub-section I.I09a Part B as these will get the best results. (b) Questionares Another important part of your bbs is the questionare files, these MUST contain at least 19+ questions some of which going into detail beyond the comprehension of mortals. Questions such as 'Whats your name' are Pisspoor and must be replaced with statements such as 'What was your dead second cousins third generation grandmother's nephew's niece's uncle's intention that your grandmothers daughter should denounce you as?' now after a user has answered all 19 or more questions along the same line as that then they should have almost run out of time. If however a user manages to get past that with still more time left then you must deduct their time so that they get the 2 minute warning followed instantly by the ** Time's Up ** message, however this may cause a few little problems next time that user logs on, you must simply tell him the crystal in your machine was running at 400 Mhz and the clock flew a bit fast. That should be enough to blow their mind. Now to class yourself as an Electronic God you should delete the answer file every couple of months to make ALL users go through the ritual of the Questionare.