The Net Monkey Weekly Report, 17

Netmonkey Weekly Report Issue XVII August 16th, 1998 New Format Well isn't this just special! Ndetroit has not come online in i think it's like 11 days now. So, this coming week I will look for some other people to do the weekly stats and some guys to do the scene news since ND had a good approach to that. My apologies for the small issue, this iwll just be my report from the past 2 weeks and an interview with Jaydee. I have a couple articles that I may throw in or just wait till we do a real issue. Ok now on to it then. Lester [Co-Editor/Head Writer/WTF IS ND] -----------[ index ]----------- I.) Intro a) Lester II.) Lester's Biased Courier Report [2 Weeks] III.) Articles a) Movie Review - The Avengers b) Interview - Jaydee c) How to Nuke - Lester IV.) Closing =----------------------------------=----------------------------------------= -----------[ Lester's Biased Courier Section ]----------- Lester's Biased Courier Report Well I really need to stop putting this off till release day, but here goes anyways! Group Shit: Dimension: A little less active of a week, but still #1 or #2 on all the sites I believe, still waiting on tdpriest's lame ass to trade though. Overall: 4 Burning Crosses Risc: Oh my god! It's morbid, for about 2 days, and gone again. Risc can't seem to do much for consistancy anymore. Overall: 1/3 Burning Crosses Equality: Now the only reason I include Equality is to rip on Snap alot this week for his little couriering spree of like 7 days with 8 hours sleep all week or something. I will elaborate more in my weekly report of course. Other than Snap, they aint got shit, and they still have no sites. Overall: 1 Burning Crosses Devotion: What should I say, they dont have much happening in the trading department, but they have managed to pick up another site. IC has joined Dev without any conceivable reason, sparking much turmoil on a once great site. More details in the weekly area. Overall: 2 Burning Crosses Millenium: Same shit, different week. Only Doobie is gone now! Now, if they can dump Union and Mossyoak, MNM may be better than pondscum:) Overall: 1 1/2 Burning Crosses Weekly Happenings: Let's start with the obvious blunder of the week. IC (Siege/Razor) has joined Devotion. Now you consider the fact that Devotion is #3 alltime and oh about 2.5 gigs behind DMS, and still a few hundred megs behind RVL of all groups. Reasons? Devotion is "presitigious", now dont get me wrong, Dev has it's moments, but I hardly think allowing an admittedly open NFTP'ing cheater to remain in their group and actually defend him. Ya some prestige. So 1 siteop of a once very promising site has singlehandedly discouraged I believe 4 courier groups from wanting to support it, and even with the change of group. Devotion still can't come close to #1. Let's move on to Snap, couple of things amuse me about this situation, people rag on MGD to no end because they say he has no life and doesn't sleep that much. But yet people are congratulating Snap for basically being a no-life bum. And the lack of sleep really turned Snap into an asshole too. Arguing to keep releases that should be nuked so many times, that's the problem with traders today, they dont believe in quality, cuz to be #1. He's so proud of beating MGD and beating DMS, like it really means a damn thing, especially since he had to trade 24/7 to do it. Not saying DMS can't be beat, I'm not that biased:) But, it is just really pathetic to spend that much time on trading. It is his life though and if he's happy, then great. And Doobie, who threatened to narc on Roller if he ever left MNM, has now quit MNM on his own. So 3 cheers to MNM for losing one of the 3 stooges. Well that's all for this issue big boys. -------------- Lester's Biased Report for this week ---------------------- Lester's Biased Report Well kids, it's that time again, time for me to degrade everyone who made a mistake in the past week. So without further adieu let's begin:) Group Rankings: Dimension: A very shitty week indeed, mad props to Stix for rocking. Majority of the team otherwise didn't do shit. Though Moonsabre from AMB has joined DMS and there are others on the horizon(inside sources tell me, I'm in pretty tight with the leader) So we will see if DMS returns to the top this coming week. Overall: UnderAchievers Risc: Well, Risc apparantly decided they were tired of not doing anything, so they needed to fire up some cheaters and a few other guys. This week Bender left DMS and made his move to Risc(see weekly happenings). Morbid is back and pretty much in full force, though alot of rumors flying that he is using some type of speed control(riscftp) But at least they are alive right? Overall: Rise in Superior Cheating is back again? Millennium: Hrm, nothing special from MNM this week, other than this little MNMISO action, which I personally dont give a shit about and can't say much regarding it. Roller/Kruzin/Some other guys are still trading PC for them and so they are at least putting up more #'s than a few of the other groups. Overall: Waiting for the Millennium to make their move? Devotion: Towards the end of the week here I saw Native uploading, so maybe the dev boys are finally done with vacation and we will all cower in fear at their supreme talents. Then again, maybe not. Or maybe they will just at least win on their own sites?:) Overall: UnderAchievers NGT/AMB/RVL/VGN/RTS/ASS/ETC: Few decent guys scattered around, not enough action to warrant a full review. Weekly Happenings: Few interesting items, after the last NWR I was approached by Kruzin who felt that my report was biased, I was shocked to hear that since of course I only write LESTER'S BIASED REPORT in the title. Let's watch it unfold shall we? <Lester> it's a BIASED report <Lester> :) <Lester> that's the point <Kruzin> ok <Kruzin> GOOD <Kruzin> u admitted! <Kruzin> hehe <Lester> it says right in the title stupid <Lester> Lester's Biased Report <Kruzin> o <Kruzin> sorry =) Bravo to Kruzin for his observant ability. Next on the agenda is Bender, who kinda made an ass of himself trading this past week, when Hades was still up. <Lester> do you realize you have 41 bads on like 1 release? <bender___> so :) <Lester> so? <Lester> it's really really lame Apparantly 41 restarts on 1 release is no big deal. What else, Hades is now Resting in Peace thanks to some schmuck in KAC or some lame shit like that. I'd like to say a word or 2 about this guy Dogan if I could, Dogan is the leader of Motiv8, he's 24 and yet he lives for the scene it seems, a good friend of his left M8 for another group, and upon hearing about this, Dogan went into a tantrum and starting making that guys personal life a problem, and over what? A fucking hobby, some friend you are Dogan. Ok since I have to go edit the NWR issue, i'm out.:) =----------------------------------=-------------------------------------= =---------[ Lester's Movie Review Section ]----------= Sure he's a prominent scene member, leader of the #1 courier group, and former "Miss Scene 1995".. But did you also know that in real life, Lester's real name is "Roger", and he hosts a popular syndicated television show, where he plays a big fatass who has nothing better to do with his time than go to every single movie ever released? Well.. now you know.. Lester's Movie Reviews The Avengers Starring Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman & Sean Connery. Rating [1/2 */out of ****] Well I had hoped to do the exclusive movie review of this, I guess you can call it a movie, But it turns out some local papers had review in on Saturday, but none the less I will do this review to save you all the $7.50 that would be better used having your pubes ripped out one by one, by a small child. Well let's begin, Avengers is a remake of the classic tv show, "The Avengers", and this is apparantly sometime in the future, even though they dress and behave like it's from the 50's or whatever, they still have electronics that we dont even have and weird shit like that. So I'm not real sure on the time setting. We also have Sean Connery at his alltime lowest, playing August DeWinter of all names, and he is intent on controlling the weather(ya real villainous already). He has basically nowhere to go with this character but down, and he follows it there like a real trooper. Ralph Fiennes plays secret agent John Steed, he was not so bad in this movie, but the overall shittiness of character development and any real direction of the movie overshadowed his efforts. Uma Thurman looks damn good in that little black outfit, though one wonders how she ends up wearing it in the end(can't give away the crucial plot points). We lay witness to the evil villains dressed up as big teddy bears so as not to reveal each others identities, and yes I am serious. At 1 hour and 30 minutes, this movie really does jack shit for the first 45 and then does jack shit for the rest of the 45, there is not one positive thing I can say about this movie other than that they didn't pay Arnold Schwartzanigger 20 Million dollars to play a pathetic villain(See Batman & Robin). Oh and also, Uma Thurman looks real good in that black outfit, but I suggest everyone to wait for the VCD and just fast forward to those parts that show her in said outfit! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------ =------------Interviews--------------= This week's interview is featured with Jaydee, current leader of PFT and Senior of Devotion as well as co-siteop on FS/HDS and probably a few others. He's been around for some time and is a fan of NWR, so he agreed to sit down with me and share some information with us. So sit back and enjoy! <NWR> For the people that dont know you, please state your current and past affils & your sexual orientation. <Jaydee> My past courier affils were Mentality-Sun-Overkill-Motiv8-empire-malice-insanity and now Im in Devotion. When it comes to games I was in some group called Destiny and now Class. Utils affils has been Shock-premiere-tft and right now Im leading PFT. Which I feel pretty good about :) Im not gay btw, HETERO! <NWR> PFT is the spawn of the merging of TFT and PTM, what inspired you to merge the 2 groups together? <Jaydee> First of all, the groups had been friendly with eachother for a long time. Started with sharing the site FS. I was hangin in their channel alot, knew ALL the people and since they had same attitude as TFT (we┤re in it for the fun) I felt good there. And as time passed by we noticed how many releases we raced each other on and how MANY releases we could put out if we worked together. So I started to talking about it with Flotsam and Primus (the current ptm leaders) and one week later pft was born :) <NWR> Arguably PFT has become one of the best, if not the best utils group currently in the scene, but there are some criticisms, like the people who say PFT only releases stuff they rip from Iso's, what do you have to say about that and any other things you'd like to put to rest? <Jaydee> Well, I see no objection for ripping isos. Its mostly nice utils. And its not THE only way we get our releases. Our suppliers gives their cd┤s to various iso groups aswell. <NWR> Well alot of people will say that ripping from an iso is not really doing anything special and therefore no work is required to release them, so PFT does not get the respect of other groups. <Jaydee> Ripping isos is far from the only thing we do. Like other groups we got store suppliers-insiders and whatever. ISOripping is more like a bonus for us. <NWR> What do you think of the change Devotion has taken recently from the quiet friendly group to the more mainstream group? As well as the loss of some of the original Devotion members? <Jaydee> The change was needed and some more NEEDED changes will be done. Stepping out of the group was pretty lame. Building it up again would be more of a challenge for them but I guess all of them are STUCK in the ISO-scene nowadays. <NWR> How do you rate the current utils groups in comparison with the groups of the past in terms of quality and stature? <Jaydee> Utils groups are nowadays then it used to be. The quality more or less varies and every group can release something great sometimes and the other something completely useless. Since this cracking came(and every site got themself a lil cracking group) the amount of releases every day have exploded. And the fact is: Cracking groups release the utils ppl use(winzip and more). But when it comes to true quality, ms-adobe-lotus etc the big groups often dominates. But there is so many groups out there and there is a new group formed every day. And there is so much crap. Some groups trust the web as its source. And sometime they can be #1 in released megs, but never in quality(premiere?). <NWR> I'm writing an article about nuking, and what are your thoughts on cracking down on the crap that is allowed to go through sites these days, because a ridiculous amount of software comes out every week now, easily twice as much as just 2 years ago. And a great portion of it is there only to get credits on sites, do you think that more groups should be banned or nukers given more leeway to nuke on their best judgement? <Jaydee> Yes yes and yes. I hate all the shit some groups puts out Minor updates, Builds, Betas, whatever. Some utils are released in newer version every week, I can understand if ppl want updates on their major utils but somewhere in this mess it has to end An example: 200- 980612 ISP.Companion.v7.4.51-PREMiERE 17515KB 200- 980615 ISP.Companion.v7.4.53-PREMiERE 200- 980621 ISP.Companion.v7.4.55-PREMiERE Etc.Etc... Now how gay isnt that ? <NWR> What do you think makes FS the site that it is? And what would you like to do to improve it? <Jaydee> Firesites success depends on well organized staff-top affils-nice deamon (no crappy rftpd eww) and the fact that Im siteop there :P To make it better it needs faster link and some better hardware :) That is being worked on. <NWR> Well it's clear they were only released to improve group stats or a traders stats, but now what would you suggest be done to improve it? Because everytime something is nuked that is questionable, the discussion of bias comes up, that 1 nuker is out to get someone. <Jaydee> yeah, thats correct. This is problems we have to live with I cant prevent it myself maybe some siteop alliance could stop it, but that will never happen anyways <NWR> So you like most ppl have just kinda learned to live with it for lack of any other reasonable options? <Jaydee> I guess so. <NWR> You spoke of the changes being good for Devotion, but it has also led to more scandal, and more fights from Dev ppl at other people, I always respected Dev for simply trading and not getting involved in the politics of it all. What are your feelings on the admitted cheating of Snakeeyes and the lack of action taken? <Jaydee> Well first of all. My personal opinion is that I rather see speed0control than restarting, cause restarting and stalling SUCKS. I wont defend snake cause I know what he did was wrong but he admitted it. He should be credited for that. Other traders who cheated never admitted. And devotion isnt known for cheating, rather for NOT cheating. <NWR> That's true, but the traders who cheated have either been removed from sites or punished in some way shape or form. No action was taken again Snake.. <Jaydee> I guess ppl laughed too much at his letter to remember to punish him. And he was one of the best traders at the time, I dont know what to say. <NWR> As for the speed control issue, wouldn't you just prefer to remove people who slowup AND restarters? because both are cheating? <Jaydee> ofcourse that would be an option removing trader who cheat would be the best option but everyone got their tricks and shit. I dont know. ppl seem to be blaiming eachother. <NWR> But on the issue of cheating, if you found that someone in Devotion was cheating, and claiming not to be, would they be removed or would the same thing happen as with Snakeeyes? <Jaydee> If I was sure he cheated I┤d say his spot in devotion would be gone. We prohibit cheaters, but ppl in my groups would admit. Im pretty sure <NWR> Well if someone in your group admitted to cheating, would they be removed from sites you run? <Jaydee> Everyone deserves a second chance I┤d say. especially if they admit. <NWR> Hades has made it's return, what of the box that Acidstorm stole and all the shit about how unstable HDS has been, do you expect things to be different this time? <Jaydee> First of all. I dont know if he stole, he just dont give it to us. And he lied alot, but we will get it back. For thoose of u who read this: NEVER trust acidstorm! When it comes to be stable hades has had several problems. First it was the box. Then we lost the link, got new link which was 2 Mbit. Couldnt be used so we found another. Then it got busted by admins and acidstorm wouldnt give us the box back. Now we got a brand new stable box on killer link which seem to be pretty safe :) <NWR> Ok let's hear a little about you, since your the star here, How did you get started into the scene and why do you continue to stay in the scene and what would you still like to accomplish before retiring? <Jaydee> I started leeching pirate software cause I lvoed playing when I was younger then I put up a little site on my 512 Kbit line. This was back in the days when a site was pretty rare so a friend of mine intruduced me to a warez group on efnet(TFT). So it started out as distro in tft. After a while the site died for natural reasons, 512 kbit wasnt enough. But I kept on and soon I was siteop on a site at liu.se which I ran with Marxhz this led me into shock where. At this time I was a pretty established courier aswell. Donno if ppl remember me racing <g> Anyways time went on and I become leader of TFT and now later on leader of PFT. I dont feel that I can accomplish anything more special. Basically Im just another netmonkey with no life :) And its a pretty cool hobby <NWR> Well I'm out of questions, so would you like to close with any final words of wisdom or greet anyone? <Jaydee> I dont know any words of wisdom hehe. I┤d like to greet a few ppl. d-unknown-norseman-dizzident-miramax-sneeze-primus-mgd-allanon and all of devotion+pft. Well that concludes my interview with Jaydee, I'd like to thank him for sparing some time to do this for us, and I hope you learned something. Until next time, I'm Lester signing off. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------ =--------------Articles--------------= Deep Thoughts by Lester This week's little morsel of my never-ending wisdom, is on the subject of nuking, as in the past week I have experienced quite a few, how shall I put it, complete fucking morons trying to nuke?(I think that covers it) So without any further bullshit, I'd like to give my opinion on how and who should be able to nuke on sites. First of all, very simple guideline. You want unbiased, experienced and levelheaded people to nuke for you, now your probably saying how the fuck am I gonna find one of those in the scene today? Well my answer is I have no idea, but that is at least a guideline to work with. So right off the bat you have to say no traders get nuke, why does someone being #1 qualify them to nuke properly? It doesn't, most of them just mirror another sites nukes anyways. And why do traders want nuke so bad anyways? Because it can enhance their trading position. Yes traders are that pathetic and competitive:) So you say to yourself, well who really sees all the stuff that comes out besides the traders who move the stuff? Well that's pretty simple, most anyone in the scene can go through and site dupe and if they are around long enough they will recognize dupes without even having to search real hard, and it's not like there will only be 1 nuker for the entire scene. So you want someone with knowledge, but without bias. This is virtually impossible, because the average Joe who isn't in any group or has ANY feeling on any particular group, isn't going to know jack shit about what to nuke. So what is a poor siteop who doesn't want to spend his time nuking everything to do? Well there's some options, you find people who have been nuking for a long time, obvious choices are Winterhawk/Jess/Myself, and anyone who has been around that has done this kind of thing long enough where they know wtf is going on. And despite all the bullshit, are as unbiased as they can be. Now, even these people are in groups, and have their own preferences to who wins, but in my experience they are fair and do not nuke to let their guys win or not nuke something because that group upped it, etc..etc..So what I suggest all siteops do is just simply take away the traders nukes, unless they've been a nuker longer than a trader, and just keep an eye on their public attitude, and see how it reflects their nuking attitude. Ok, so I hope that all siteops do take heed on this and reevaluate their nuking staff. I am now going to kind of say my peace on what I feel should be nuked that is kind of not covered in rules, but has just been a common nuke among the years that I've been around. Screensavers, now most sites have updated their rules to include that SS' will be nuked, but if not, it's still a nuke. Small updates of already shitty programs leading to 800 releases of one program in the span of 2 months. Any addon that is greater in size than the original release, there are exceptions, I'm talking like the 99 meg util with the 60 and 75 meg addons following, this is clearly for credits and is just fucking lame, utils dont even need addons usually, so dont fucking release them. Games are a different story, though I find it useless to release the Intro addons, if you want to get the full game either get the ISO or go buy the fucking game, the PC scene is there to make games small enough for people to be able to d/l and enjoy and decide if they wish to purchase the full game. All Software that retails for under 10 dollars, at this point why dont you just goto the store & fucking buy it. Jesus Most other things are covered in the nuke rules of most sites, but the point is, enforce the rules, dont back out because some trader decides he doesn't wanna lose credits, the moment you see someone fighting for a worthless release, then you know he doesn't give a shit about the scene, just about being #1 on the weektop, and so you should go ahead and nuke it x2 to teach him a lesson, but that's just my opinion. Lester ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------ Well friends.. Thats about it. If you've read this far, we sincerly thank you. We like to know this thing gets read, so if you get the time, drop one of us a quick msg, and tell us what you think, give us suggestions, tell us it sucks, or just say "hi" to us!.... Please feel free to apply to write or help out in some way or another, as I am getting tired:) Find us on IRC in #nwr, or email us at our phearsome address: [email protected] A moment of silence for Ndetroit who is MIA. take care.. peace. lester. NWR 8/16/98