Buds Biased Utils Report, 2

Bud's Biased Utils Report #2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ OMG here it is for the second week in a row... some changes to the format this week. Groups that haven't released aren't going to get a review, unless they do something outrageously stupid in regards to another area so I can have some fun. I'm also adding my QOTW (Quote of the Week) section... these can be in response to my report, or just something really stupid I've come across that I feel should be paraded about =) Disclaimer: It's BIASED moron. My opinion. So don't send me a bunch of mail & message's bitching about this or that. If you don't like it... SCREW YOU =] Rankings: Groups get a score out of 10. Points are given for amount of releases, but QUALITY titles will give a group a much higher score. Nukes for duping, broken releases and just plain CRAP will lower a groups score. However on the occasion that a title is nuked which I don't feel should have been, MY OWN JUDGEMENT TAKES PRECEDENCE. Cuz I'm writing this. Groups can also get points for any other reason I see fit. Week: Week is based from 12/06/98 to 12/12/98. I'm in EST time zone so dates/times run according to it. Groups: (In no particular order) PIRATES WITH ATTITUDE: PWA started the week off with SpecBuilder 3.3... and then basically stalled. Now PWA's not exactly known for mass releasing, but they're going to have to release more than this to stay amongst the top groups week to week. Total: 6/10 THE CORPORATION: Well Corp let me down this week... after giving them credit for Director 7 it turns out to be Beta3. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to test it till after I passed in last weeks report. Set your clock ahead a month and it expires, with a "This Pre-release copy has expired" message. So you can't even use it as a beta! (There were other signs as well, version 7.0r190, and the readme.html). And on top of all this their "FINAL" could have been a lot smaller... the Corp version is 11 2.88MB disks.. 10 * 1.44MB is what I got it to compress to in my test, where I used rar (same as corp) with multimedia compression at max. Again Corp "forgot" max compression. Honestly guys, is the -m5 flag REALLY that fuckin' difficult? They've done this before and wound up repacking, so Corp should have learnt its lesson by now. Needless to say I was very disappointed when I downloaded D7, and I'm knocking 2 points off Corp this week for a really bad job on that release. Now on to this weeks releases from Corp... Corp put out some of the Veribest 99 series, I haven't tried either of the releases myself but so far no one's made any complaints. Not much to be said about ProtoShare Broker Edition... Highlight of the week was MS SQL Server Enterprise Edition... Corp would have had a much better score if not for loosing 2 points. Total: 6/10 RISE: Rise got back into it this week starting with a couple releases at the beginning of the week. Unfortunately one was a repack but the apology from "A sad RiSE Staffer" earns their salvation. They broke out a couple of nice cracks of Materialise programs =) The leadership in RISE is excellent, so its great to see them do some titles this week. More mainstream utils would be a nice change though. Total: 7/10 SIEGE: The SGE team picks up where it left off last week by releasing WiseCAD on monday, and kept rockin by releasing Kai's Power Tools 5, and excellent title from Metatools. This tool is arguably the best util this week, and undoubtedly one of the most popular, although it's limited to PhotoShop and Painter 5.5 users. They also picked up on Corp's failure and rocked out Director 7, beating out several other groups in the process. Taking the two top releases this week gives SGE a 9! Total: 9/10 X-FORCE: XF hasn't done much again this week. MS Publisher 2000 beta2, but it would be nice to see more releases outta these guys, other than just betas. Other releases include Ultimate Toolbox for MFC December... which if you hadn't noticed is released by them twice a month (1st & 2nd edition) so it doesn't even register on me anymore. Highlight of the week for XF was Rayflect Phototracer. They also did a linux proggie which I won't take into consideration. This will hold true for any group as I don't run linux. So what else about XF can be said? Well... *** Now talking in #x-force *** Topic is '--X-FORCE DOMINATING THE WORLD AS USUAL--' Dominating what exactly.... Beta's? Idling? See ya next week. Total: 6/10 SHOCK: Well despite a fucked up rumor in NWR #26 last week, Shock isn't planning on banning LND on any sites, and I have no idea where that rumor came from. They did benefit from LND getting nuked for stealing though, and the releases in question (Informix titles) went out under the proper group. On top of this, some Roguewave development tools for C++ made a good start on Sunday. They seemed to stall in the middle of the week, but picked up on Thursday by releasing Java Embedded Server from Sun Microsystems & some other apps. SHK finished the week with some titles from the ObjectStore series by Object Design. Total: 7/10 ENTITY: Well I said ENT was far from out of it last week, but I might have to take it back. On top of loosing MGD and other members to Corp over the past month or so, Hazzy has retired. They are still getting the releases out though, and that's what counts. These guys seem to have a bit of a packaging problem of late - their NFO's give almost no information on the programs released. The Bytecode and Sourcecode editions of JClass Enterprise Suite have identical descriptions aside from the name, although there's a huge size difference between the two. (Bytecode contains the actual apps, but not everyone is going to know this). Their NFO for Lotus DevPack 1.5 In Action gives a short paragraph taken from the Lotus website - only it's the description for the normal DevPack, and doesn't mention a thing about differences found in the In Action copy. They got more bad news near the end of the week as Dthangel left the group and MDK, their EHQ, dropped them. This apparently occurred due to some comments Hazzy (hey isn't he retired anyways??) made. They did get quite a few big releases out however, but next week is not looking so great for Entity. Total: 7/10 PENTIUM FORCE TEAM: PFT drop out of 1st place this week, but still did some nice releases, including SolidView 3.3, NetObjects Script Builder, and a preview (ick!) of NetObjects Fusion 4. Not a whole lot to say here.. a few good utils and a repacked English version of a messed up TFT multilanguage util, and a bunch of average titles. Not enough to hold top spot but still good... hrmm that's about all I have to say here I guess, though Seagate Manage Exec is nice just cuz I like Seagate. =) Total: 7/10 LEGENDS NEVER DIE: No comment. Fuck but then this would be much too short... well lets see... a fix for CabinetVision Solid started the week for LND. Actual releases this week started with products from Ciscoworks and a minor version of CimatronIt. They also beat all other groups to ripping the Adobe Premier 5.1 ISO. A couple other releases rounded out the week which I didn't really check out do to exams on my part, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on those. They finished the week much like they started it - one of their last releases was a fix. Total: 5/10 PINNACLE: Hello? HELLO???!!?? No answer :P Total: N/A DRINK OR DIE: Well DOD has pretty much owned Command Antivirus, and they released a new version of it this week... AuraLine v1.6 was a much nicer title, unfortunately that's all we saw from DOD in the past 7 days. Total:6/10 MANIFEST DESTINY Would the real MFD please step forwards? Manifest always seems to be a little confused as to wether they're going to be a crack group or a utils group. But its pretty much worked out for the better. They were a dominating force on the crack side of things, and some Sierra products got them onto the utils list. A couple Midisoft proggies were decent as well. Switching to FS from STH hasn't phased them (kinda like going from coke to pepsi), and they picked up MG. Good work MFD! Only question that remains is if they can step up the utils releasing and be a real force. Total:7/10 HERITAGE: More nukes really hurt HTG again this week, and they only got out 2 legit releases this week. Rumor has it they wanted a merge with Entity but were declined. Total:4/10 REBELS: Uh-oh... one of RBS's first offerings this week looked nice: Microsoft.Visual.Basic_6.0_Professional-RBS, until, that is, you realize that it was included in Entity's earlier release, MICROSOFT.VISUAL.STUDIO.v6.0.PRO.EDITION.FINAL-ENTiTY, which included some other great features on top of VB 6 Pro. They did do a lot of cracks this week however, and can be given credit for a couple larger apps. Total:7/10 TRPS: Well after some criticism for not including these guys, and considering that I decided to include MFD, I've added them in. I'm not going to consider the slew of small regged and cracked minor updates of programs a lot of people don't want anyway, instead I'll look at what they released on top of it (those releases are more comparable to those of cracking groups which I said I'll keep out of the report due to time/size restraints). The utils this week for TRPS were highlighted by NetManage Support Now 2.1 Client&Server... also Config Pro plus. CWS apparently ranked TRPS high due to # of releases, since I look at quality first and foremost I can't quite agree there. TRPS also celebrated their 1000th release recently, so congrats to them. (It needed a fix though :P) Total: 6/10 New this week: Manifest Destiny & TRPS are new additions this week. Idle this week: Pinnacle Quote of the Week: <Ryan1-> oh yea and youre ugly <Ryan1-> you even talk like a wannabe Siege took top slot again this week with a solid week of releasing and some very nice titles. Next week will determine if I keep MFD & TRPS on the list. Premiere's rumored return to the utils scene should be interesting, we'll have to see whether old members return to the flock - this could hurt many of the groups which benefited from their earlier demise. It will also be interesting to see the type of PRM this time round, hopefully the quality problems of the last incarnation will not be seen again. This of course depends on if the heavily rumored reformation even takes place - although PRM leader Fusion has been about, and #premiere has once again become populated. Their return(?) is yet another entry into the crowded utils field, so don't be surprised if at least one of the groups reviewed this week makes its exit within the next few months. Well that's about it for this week. Any errors in the above I blame on my exams, so don't bitch too much cuz I'm in a bad enough mood already ;) - Bud