Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine
Volume II, Issue 3, Year AD MCMXCVII
Monday, January 20th, 1997
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        "It's never too late for an unhappy childhood."

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        "I would not bet everything I own or my home on it,
but I would be willing to bet my car... and it's a very
good car".  Astrophysicist Ramesh Narayan, in a news conference
where black holes were considered almost certain.
	- The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, January 14th, 1997

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1.      Reader's Letters
        A.      MMF Spams
        B.      Don Fitch writes to Don Leo
        C.      CompuNotes writes back
2.      News Peak
3.      Girlfriends.
4.      Review -Bruce Jenner's World Class Decathlon

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1.      Reader's Letters

A.      MMF Spams

Date sent:        Fri, 17 Jan 1997 13:22:52 +0000
To:               Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro <leandro@ifront.com>
From:             Gard Eggesboe Abrahamsen <gabraham@graymatter.on.ca>
Subject:          MMF spams

>> fact 4) It is legal since you are paying for a service....
>And exactly what service are you paying for, again? Someone posts this
>MMF spam. You send them money. And they do -- what? Post it again on

Actually, I was thinking of starting to write to these spammers, asking
for my money back for services not rendered. I may claim that I asked
to be put on their mailing list. Since they have not done so (would
they keep all the requests, you think? Naaaah!) by now, I do no long
want to be on their stupid mailing list, and want my $1 back (which I
never sent in the first place). If enough people did this, the Get Rich
Fast schemes would soon become Get Poor Fast schemes. Sounds just fair
to me.

__________________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer:    These are my opinions only.    All mine.    Mine mine mine!
Gard E Abrahamsen, 2350 Dundas St W, Suite #1611, Toronto Ontario, M6P 4B1
Home: 416 531-6738            gard@scriba.org              Toronto Freenet
Work: 416 408-4778 ext 309    http://www.scriba.org/    Board of Directors

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B.      Don Fitch writes to Don Leo

Date sent:        Mon, 6 Jan 1997 03:45:54 -0500
From:             FitchDonS@aol.com
To:               leandro@ifront.com
Subject:          Re: _Capital... #28


Hi, Leandro:

I've just encountered, for the first time, and downloaded, an 
issue of _Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine_ (# 28 (I generally 
condense Roman numerals, for computer-related convenience)) and 
find it particularly delightful.  

Casual & informal without being sloppy, amiable without being 
smarmy, sometimes-serious without being self-conscious or 
pretentious, personal without being overly-egocentric, concise 
without being cryptic, stimulating (& even sometimes 
controversial) without being obnoxious.  

About the best balance I've seen in a 'Zine (electronic or on-
paper) in months; I'm hoping to turn up some back issues, and to 
obtain future ones of Vol. 2.

Thanks for Posting it to alt.ezines, and Best Wishes for the New 
Year.

Don Fitch
(fitchdons@aol.com)

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C.      CompuNotes writes back.

> "CompuNotes"    http://users.aol.com/CompNote/
> Published by:   Patrick Grote (pgrote@inlink.com)
>
>         I thought they dealt with computers in a hacker's way.
> Instead they are nothing more then a poorly done computer magazine.
> They take software and review it, and examine sites on the WWW.
> I lost all respect for them when I read their review on "Bruce
> Jenner's World Class Decathlon", which they described it as a
> wonderful tactical challenge.  For those that don't know what this
> is all about, let me warn you.  It is supposed to be a game, and
> in the end it can't even stand as a tutorial on Jenner's hair.
> Watch out in future issues for my review on Bruce Jenner's game.
> 
> subs:  Write to the editor and ask for a subscription.
> -----

concerning CompuNotes are based on one whole review. That's it. Get with 
it. A magazine is more than just one review. We've consistently hit one 
more than one cylinder since we've been up, but you nail us for a slip. 

As for subscribing it is:

COMPUNOTES-L on LISTSERV@PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM   CompuNotes-L

[because of lenght, the rest of CompuNotes propagandistic
 material that was attached to the message was cut. -Editor]
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2.      News Peak

Toronto cities vote to hold nonbinding referenda
        by Colin Barrett (egress@interlog.com)

The seven municipalities that makeup Metropolitan Toronto have resolved
to hold referenda on the whether the Province of Ontario should
amalgamate the seven cities into one megacity despite the fact that
such referenda are not binding on the Province's decision. While Party
appointed trustees who will oversee the transition from small towns to
megacity will not interfere with the referenda, the trustees did say
that the funds for the referenda should come out of the current budgets.
As a result, various municipal programs shall suffer because of the
costly and futile referenda staged by the cities. To counter such
actions, the Ontario Government is waging a highly cost-effective
advertising campaign in support of amalgamation.

Amalgamation of Metropolitan Toronto will reduce costs, improve
government efficiency and make local government more accessible to its
citizens.	

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3.      Girlfriends.
                courtesy of Betty Kwan <b3kwan@acs.ryerson.ca>

Last year, my friend upgraded his GirlFriend 3.1 to GirlFriendPlus 1.0
(marketing name: Fiancee 1.0). Recently he upgraded Fiancee 1.0 to
Wife 1.0 and it's a memory hogger, it has taken all his space; and
Wife 1.0 must be running before he can do anything. Although he did
not ask for it, Wife 1.0 came with Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw and
BrotherInLaw.

Some features I'd like to see in the Upcoming GirlFriend 4.0...

- A "Don't remind me again" button

- Minimize button

- Shutdown feature

- An install shield feature so that Girlfriend 4.0 can be completely
  uninstalled if so desired (so you don't lose cache and other objects)

- "Abort" button (O.K. that one's pretty bad - but had to say it)

I tried running GirlFriend 2.0 with GirlFriend 1.0 still installed,
but they tried using the same i/o port and conflicted. Then I tried to
unistall GirlFriend 1.0 but it didn't have an uninstall program. I
tried to uninstall it by hand, but it put files in my system
directory.
Another problem with all versions of GirlFriend that I've used is that
it is totally object oriented and only supports hardware with gold
plated contacts.

  *****  BUG WARNING  ********

Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1
before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files
before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to
install, claiming insufficient resources.
 
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4.	The Review on Bruce Jenner's Decathlon.

Just do it!.. but why bother?

	I'm just terribly hurt.  I keep on getting games that really have
nothing interesting into them.  Fifty-nine bucks (Reads 59$) spent on
basically a computer manual more then a game that allows you to be just
like your all-favorite star Bruce Jenner when he was young and athletic.
He must've really needed the money to accept such a job, and what was
the computer company thinking when they published this one?  If I want
to find information about the Decathlon I can either go to the library,
or check on the Internet, where the information is absolutely free.
Just one search brought me screens and screens of information.  I did
another search on Bruce Jenner, the information was low, but I guess
so it's his popularity this days.

	There have been a lot of sport games coming up, but nothing in
which the toughest thing you do is press the space bar or click the
left mouse button to make the player do something, like jumping.  You
train him to build his endurance, which at the beginning will be
very low (and buddy Brucie will taunt you).  You can play single or
multiplayer all the season events, if say, you got tired of playing
Quake against your friends, you can challenge them at throwing the discus.  

2/10 Review by Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro (ordnael@freenet.hut.fi)

Storyline/Performance:  There is no story to this game.  (Is it a game?
What the fuck is this shit?)  The Introduction leaves a bit to be desired,
but at least it's not one of those games were the intro is everything,
and ooops, we forgot about making the game any good.  In Decathlon it
sucks from the moment you install it.  There are a lot of videos of
buddy Brucie who will tell you plenty of information about the decathlon,
which will help you along the way.

Strategy/Tips: Don't buy the game.  If you did, read the manual, which
will explain the most important parts of the game, while creating your
new player and how to train him to be perfectly fit.  Also, listen to
what Brucie says in the Coach Room, because, according to the manual
"some of his tips may help you become a better Decathlon player!" . The
"may" part leaves me pondering.  On a good side, there are no complicated
key commands, like in NHL Powerplay 96 were you had a combination of keys
to press depending on what you wanted the player to do.  Here you press
space.  So keep your eyes peeled when you play, and when you feel the time
is right, press that space bar.  Train yourself, so you can become perfect.
Also your player has a certain amount of endurance.  Try not to use it all
for just one event, or you'll do (like shit) poorly on the next ones.

Audio/Video: 	Bruce is the star of the game.  You can turn the volume of
his voice off, but he will still make sense since he moves his arms
constantly (is he trying to fly?), or turn Bruce off completely (that
should teach the fucker a lesson).  The AVI in which he is on, he looks
at you to give you a brief introduction of what you are going to (painfully)
endure.  In the Coach Room, he talks, but he is looking elsewhere, perhaps
towards some imaginary person that is interviewing him.  (poor sad sack
of shit).  The videos are crisp, the images are not slowing down, that's
probably because the game screen takes about half the monitor and whatever
buddy Brucie says to you takes 1/4 of that.  You can still make out his
face though and that annoying hand movements of his.  The game's sound
are below any quality standard made.  The crowd cheers, but it sounds
more like wind blowing against a microphone, whoever created the music
has the worse taste, and the voice of the "judge" that screams "FOUL!"
sounds like it's coming from someone's stomach.  The graphics are
nothing special either, with athletes that look like they have been
inflated with helium, with all their happy round arms and legs.

Playability:  What's there to play?  You create your athlete, select
his skin color, nationality, how long he has been playing, change his
skills around to improve his endurance and then you train him.  Or
actually, you train yourself in understanding when to slam that space
key so your player does his best.  There is no real point to the game,
no plot, and after you raced against other players (may this be real
or virtual) you can do it all over again for your own personal glory,
and see if you can break and records.

Compare to:  Compare? You mean there is other stuff as bad as this
one out there?

Nice Touches: HAHAAHAHHAHA!

Not-so-nice-Touches: The game is an insult to the word game itself.
There is no concept of making the player interested in playing more.
Unless you are a secret devoted fan of Bruce Jenner and find Decathlon
incredibly exciting, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT buy this game.
The list of negative things about this game could go on and on, but
I don't want to get insulting.

Hintbook/Manual:	The manual is well done, (at least they got
one right) with a description of all the events you will be involved
with, what the showers actually do (you'll loooooove this one), and
of course, a brief (not his underwear) history of the great Brucie
(I'm already sick and tired of this loser).

System Requirements:  486DX-2, 8 MB of RAM, SVGA, 2x CD-ROM and Windows 95. 
     

