[HN Gopher] Razor 1911
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Razor 1911
        
       Author : jruohonen
       Score  : 203 points
       Date   : 2023-10-30 16:05 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
        
       | darklycan51 wrote:
       | Definitely not me but man I remember headbanging to my friends
       | keygen software from Razor1911
        
         | pixelpoet wrote:
         | Keygen music is truly one of the greatest genres, absolutely no
         | joke.
        
         | sysadm1n wrote:
         | You can browse chiptune/keygen music here:
         | https://chiptune.app/
        
           | CapstanRoller wrote:
           | Nostalgia overload, especially with the UI
        
           | chungus wrote:
           | http://keygenmusic.tk/
           | 
           | and here
        
         | malermeister wrote:
         | The artist behind a lot of that still makes music - under the
         | name dubmood! I like this song for example:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7RE8ue6V74
        
           | Mindless2112 wrote:
           | Another Razor 1911 musician runs an internet radio station:
           | https://scenesat.com/
        
         | m0zzie wrote:
         | I have vivid memories of reopening game installers from CLASS,
         | long after installing, just so I could keep listening to the
         | music. This one by Maktone still pops into my head from time to
         | time, almost 25 years on:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NjxgaZtHqA
        
         | mavamaarten wrote:
         | I have an mp3 of the patcher/keygen by Digital Insanity for
         | Sony Vegas in my music collection. Such a banger, even after
         | all those years.
        
           | Eduard wrote:
           | this one? https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nwiff
        
           | markus92 wrote:
           | Unreal Superhero 3
        
           | w0z_ wrote:
           | Haha, same - found it on YouTube:
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCMzIE9p07Y
           | 
           | I didn't think many people cracked Vegas back in the day, I
           | needed it for digital media presentations :)
        
       | halper wrote:
       | Wow, that brings back memories. Long nights, CRTs, that fresh and
       | health-promoting smell of warm electronics in poorly ventilated
       | spaces, microwaved garbage food, sugary drinks ... not sure how
       | my friends and I survived until adulthood.
        
         | waynesonfire wrote:
         | You were one of the lucky to have found your people.
        
         | blackhaz wrote:
         | I need to find a CRT and recreate one of those nights. Always
         | wanted a 17" Viewsonic.
        
           | digitalsanctum wrote:
           | I remember being pretty stoked after getting a flat screen
           | CRT. Oh how things have changed
        
           | short_sells_poo wrote:
           | I'd say you'll feel miserable and will wonder what is it you
           | are missing from the old days. We look at it with rose tinted
           | glasses, but for all practical purposes, everything was
           | significantly worse back then. The kind of hardware and
           | software we have available today was the stuff of the wildest
           | dreams and imagination.
           | 
           | I remember we could spend entire weeks in 4 player Doom 2
           | deathmatch during summer with my friends. We could spend an
           | entire day just playing made-up scenarios where we tried to
           | kite cyberdemons from one part of the map into another (an
           | exercise which we called demon shepherding).
           | 
           | I fired up Doom 2 again on one of the many ports and it looks
           | great, all the nice memories came flooding back, and yet it
           | wasn't the same. It made me realize that the magic wasn't in
           | the games, or the computers or the people. The magic was in
           | us being a bunch of kids born into infinite curiosity and no
           | (real) responsibilities. That magic unfortunately cannot be
           | recreated in adult life.
           | 
           | Now if you spend an all-nighter on any hobby, your 30+ year
           | old body will wake up feeling rubbish the next day. Do it 2-3
           | days in a row, and you'll feel like death.
           | 
           | I can afford any piece of hardware and any game my heart
           | desires, my steam library numbers more than 200 games. I have
           | played less than half of them, and less than a quarter to
           | completion. It's the age old curse of aging :)
           | 
           | When you are young, you have time but no money. When you are
           | old, you have money but no time.
        
             | ilyt wrote:
             | It took like a decade to get average LCD screen to look as
             | good as old CRT. And still need a ton of post-processing to
             | make old pixel art games to look as good as before on LCD.
             | 
             | And I did play a bunch of games 10-20-30 years after they
             | were released and they still hold up. My limit seems to be
             | around SNES-era graphics, before that it just feels too
             | ugly and clunky for me.
             | 
             | Sure, many games just feel like any modern titles do
             | everything better, but some play just fine if you can
             | stomach some of the obsolete mechanics.
             | 
             | > I fired up Doom 2 again on one of the many ports and it
             | looks great, all the nice memories came flooding back, and
             | yet it wasn't the same. It made me realize that the magic
             | wasn't in the games, or the computers or the people. The
             | magic was in us being a bunch of kids born into infinite
             | curiosity and no (real) responsibilities. That magic
             | unfortunately cannot be recreated in adult life.
             | 
             | I thought about it a lot and come to conclusion that every
             | new interesting experience bumps our "standard" up and so
             | once you accumulate a ton of that it's just harder and
             | harder to be wowed by new game, even if it is just fine,
             | fun and plays nice. But me getting my first car in my 30s
             | was still thrilling and I was giggling like mad so dunno
             | about "kid" part. Yeah kids know shit all so everything new
             | is exciting but that doesn't mean you can't find magic
             | moments in the adulthood, just amount of work required is
             | higher.
        
             | chanandler_bong wrote:
             | Youth is wasted on the young.
        
             | scubbo wrote:
             | > When you are young, you have time but no money. When you
             | are old, you have money but no time.
             | 
             | I've heard it described as a three-phase progression:
             | 
             | * Child -> Time and Energy, but no Money * Adult -> Energy
             | and Money, but no Time * Elder -> Time and Money, but no
             | Energy
             | 
             | (Where "Energy" is a short-hand including also physical
             | capability and bodily health)
        
             | riversflow wrote:
             | Off topic:
             | 
             | > Your 30+ year old body
             | 
             | Hey, wake up call, not just to parent commenter but anyone.
             | 
             | If you feel this way in your _30 's_ chances are good you
             | should probably spend more time focusing on your physical
             | health. Start getting more exercise and working on your
             | diet.
             | 
             | You don't need to go crazy, just make small improvements
             | and try to stick with them as much as you can. Start
             | simple: Go for a short walk in the morning when you get up.
             | Cut back on refined sugars, alcohol and sugary drinks.
             | 
             | I'm in my early 30's and my capacity to push hard and be
             | durable is stronger than ever. But I made small but steady
             | steps on my diet and kept up a modicum of conditioning
             | throughout my 20's. I love backpacking, so "durability" is
             | something I'm very interested in.
             | 
             | For example, this weekend I was easily able to stay up and
             | game with friends in their early to mid 20's(UFC 5 release)
             | until the wee hours of the morning. I then slept curled up
             | in a ball on the couch(it was cold and that position kept
             | me warm) and bounced up first thing in the morning after
             | like 3 hours of sleep feeling great.
             | 
             | I don't do things like that often because it runs counter
             | to being healthy. Sleep is when your body repairs itself,
             | and it is constantly taking damage. My experience also is
             | that when you are young, you are just less in-tune with
             | your body. By the time you are 30 most people are actually
             | able to recognize how detrimental sleep deeprivation is in
             | the moment.
        
               | doublerabbit wrote:
               | Depends on the person. I too keep fit. As writing this
               | I'm currently on the subway to go to sword fencing class.
               | 
               | I feel the same as OP. If I miss sleep I feel wrecked and
               | I'm 34.
        
               | nintendo1889 wrote:
               | Use red light glasses after sundown and use f.lux or iris
               | (anti flicker software).
        
               | short_sells_poo wrote:
               | Of course you can slow down the process through living
               | healthier. My point is: when you are young, you don't
               | need to. You can go weeks having little sleep and be
               | fine. You don't need to actively pursue a healthy
               | lifestyle in order to avoid feeling drained. Your body
               | reaches the peak in your 20s. After that it's a
               | progressive decline.
               | 
               | In your 30s, no matter what you do, your ability to
               | recover starts to decline and you can no longer do stuff
               | consequences free like before.
               | 
               | You say if yourself: as long as you get enough sleep most
               | of the time, you can pull an all nighter and feel fine.
               | Pull 3 in a row and throw in some drinking, and you'll
               | note a sharp difference between 25 year old you and 35
               | year old you.
               | 
               | Genetics plays a huge role in this. Some people win the
               | lottery. However, by your 40s you realize that some
               | activities might simply be off limits. Repetitive back
               | injuries from lifting too vigorously mean that you have
               | to cut back on deadlifts. You get dehydrated more easily
               | and the symptoms are worse. You need to watch your ankle
               | after having twisted it too many times during football.
               | 
               | You have to accept it and move on. Some magic you had is
               | lost, but you can usually replace it with other magic.
               | You can't play 12h with your friends every day, but now
               | you can afford a nice car for example, etc...
               | 
               | You can't go clubbing 5 days a row, but you have the
               | focus to train for a marathon and finish it.
               | 
               | My post was about recognizing that the circumstances that
               | make certain things possible when we are young simply
               | disappear. Accept this and move on, there are other
               | things that one can do.
        
               | riversflow wrote:
               | > Your body reaches the peak in your 20s.
               | 
               | Citation needed. Plenty of people only reach their
               | physical peak at 35+. It's not too late!
               | 
               | > You have to accept it and move on
               | 
               | No, you don't. You can bounce back, but it requires
               | effort. All I can say is it's better to learn early than
               | when you are 65+ and just had major surgery that you need
               | to bouce back from if you want to keep living a normal
               | life.
        
             | bojan wrote:
             | Recently I played a game of Civilization 1. It actually did
             | take a me back to that feeling of awe that I had as a
             | child, except now the sound worked and I was able to read
             | English so I actually knew how to play, which enhanced the
             | experience.
        
               | Gibbon1 wrote:
               | Reminds me of playing life on a minicomputer at my dads
               | work in 1970. It's hard to grasp the feeling of seeing
               | that when nothing like it exists elsewhere. Almost
               | everything mechanical in 1970 was a purely mechanical
               | device without a shred of agency.
               | 
               | At the heart computers can represent and transform
               | complex structured data iteratively. That was new new 50
               | years ago.
        
               | blackhaz wrote:
               | Yep, same here. I fire up my 386DX-40 and Pentium-133
               | occasionally.
               | 
               | Civilization 1 and 2 are still beyond awesome. Very
               | playable and loveable games. I play Doom II now more than
               | I did when I was a kid. Mortal Kombat 3 is the best.
               | Windows 95 and 98 are likely the best Window GUI ever for
               | me. Microsoft Office 4.0 is pretty fast on a 386 with 4
               | MB of RAM running Windows 3.1. At the age of 41 I've
               | bought my first non-pirated version of Magic Carpet and
               | now understand how to play this game. This game is
               | freaking awesome. I can now afford to buy Sound Blaster
               | AWE32 without asking my parents! IRC is still awesome.
               | mIRC and EFNet still work!
               | 
               | My life rocks now! (Except web browsing.)
        
               | Borg3 wrote:
               | Hey, an IRC dude and Doom 2 player here too :) We play
               | ocasionaly using zandronum. If anything, find us on
               | #games. Our IRC homepage: http://damnet.uu3.net/
        
               | TylerE wrote:
               | There's actually an SNES version of Civ. Surpassingly
               | playable without a mass, but processing time on turn end
               | is really long. To the point where it's not really
               | playable past, say, 1700 or so because it gets to the
               | point where it takes over a minute to end each turn and
               | advance.
        
           | ukyrgf wrote:
           | Oh boy. I got my friend's old CRT when he was moving. Carried
           | down 3 flights of narrow stairs, drove the hour back to my
           | house, loaded it up the front steps, got my PS2 out of the
           | attic, was so excited... and the PS2 doesn't work anymore.
        
           | flir wrote:
           | I had one of those! It made this amazing clunk-wibble noise
           | when you hit the degauss button, and weighed more than my
           | first car. Memory says PS600?
        
           | graphe wrote:
           | You need the hard drive seeking noise too or it won't feel
           | righr
        
           | HappyDaoDude wrote:
           | Get on it sooner rather than later. Many CRT's were thrown
           | out when they were considered obsolete and the ones remaining
           | are dying from age.
        
         | rubinlinux wrote:
         | > Dycus, a member of Razor 1911, died of throat cancer in 2012.
        
         | Unfrozen0688 wrote:
         | That's still me now but LED screens and mech keyboard...
        
       | avg_dev wrote:
       | > On April 22, 2011, Razor 1911's demo division won the public
       | choice award[7] during the Scene.org Awards ceremony at The
       | Gathering for their 64k intro "Insert No Coins" coded by Rez with
       | music from Dubmood.[8]
       | 
       | Insert No Coins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5CNlMGcARA
        
         | jchw wrote:
         | This and The Scene Is Dead[1][2] are some truly extremely
         | memorable 64k intros. I immediately thought of them when I saw
         | this on the frontpage here.
         | 
         | [1]: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59105
         | 
         | [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFXIGHOElrE
        
       | doublerabbit wrote:
       | Please don't nostalgise me of my script kiddie days..
       | 
       | I miss those times; it all feels like we've all been lumped in to
       | one big box.
        
       | flykespice wrote:
       | Btw the same group whose GTA cracked copies Rockstar were using
       | to sell: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37394665
        
         | airstrike wrote:
         | Reminds me of when we were writing subtitles in Portuguese for
         | pirated US only to see the fan subs copied verbatim on the
         | actual cable channels months later, when episodes would finally
         | get released in Brazil
         | 
         | https://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/18881/18881.PDF
         | 
         | RIP InSUBs
        
       | harrisonpage wrote:
       | Are bots just submitting random Wikipedia articles?
        
         | bigbillheck wrote:
         | It's the action of but a few seconds to click on the
         | submitter's name and from there their comment history.
        
       | smokel wrote:
       | To prove that you are elite, what do these mean: RZR, FLT, DRG,
       | TDT, TRSI?
       | 
       | Oh wait, you can just look these up on the internet :(
        
         | naiv wrote:
         | Hotline, Eagle Soft, ...
         | 
         | I do not want too write too much but what a time.
        
         | doublerabbit wrote:
         | I knew that FLT was FairLight and TRSI was TriStar?
        
           | velo_aprx wrote:
           | tristar and red sector incorporated*
        
         | maremmano wrote:
         | Quartex? THG?
        
           | nshkr wrote:
           | the humble guys
        
         | inversetelecine wrote:
         | I miss tKC (The Keyboard Caper) and Phrozen Crew.
         | 
         | FAiRLiGHT was popular during the game CD / SecurROM days iirc.
         | 
         | PARADOX, CLASS, SKIDROW and RELOADED I remember as well.
         | 
         | Reading .nfo files was fun, the artwork was great too.
        
           | short_sells_poo wrote:
           | I remember the sometimes less than subtle jabs these groups
           | threw at each other in the nfo files :)
        
           | rzzzt wrote:
           | One of the "Commander-class" file managers had a quick view
           | that displayed the contents of FILE_ID.DIZ if you navigated
           | to a directory that had one.
        
           | tommica wrote:
           | Man, I do remember those names - never would have guessed
           | that the groups that provided me so many games would make me
           | feel nostalgic...
        
         | jorvi wrote:
         | I remember RZR, FLT and DRG. There was also a group doing rips
         | where they took out all alternate language audio, re-compressed
         | cutscenes, and then repacked the whole came with uHARC, turning
         | 9.4GB downloads into 5GB, maybe even less. I had a good
         | internet connection already at that time, but I imagine for
         | people in countries with bad internet (<2020s American internet
         | for example) it must have been magical.
        
         | papaver wrote:
         | to prove you are elite, what do these mean: f00, BAR, SLOW,
         | ABS, NB, TF, SLM
         | 
         | ;P
        
       | WXLCKNO wrote:
       | Is the main motivation for these groups notoriety?
       | 
       | In particular this group was created before I was born, which
       | makes me extremely curious about what makes them keep going this
       | long.
        
         | 29athrowaway wrote:
         | http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/anatomy.txt
        
         | fluder wrote:
         | Yes and no. Access to warez dumps is more interesting part.
        
         | ronjouch wrote:
         | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and...
        
       | digitalsanctum wrote:
       | Great memories of spending all my time on IRC and hunting for
       | Photoshop when it was just a desktop app. Untold hours spent in
       | college while procrastinating for my next exam.
        
       | pricees wrote:
       | This hit hard. I have a smile from ear-to-ear.
       | 
       | I can still remember plugging my USB Robotics 14.4k modem in for
       | the first time. We could transfer 1 megabyte in 5 1/2 minutes!!
       | 
       | Thanks for the memories.
       | 
       | Here's a shout out to all those who read 2600 magazine and tried
       | to hack their local PBXs so that they could call some TDT support
       | board, internationally.
        
         | borgchick wrote:
         | I remember spending all the money in the world I had on a USR
         | Courier HST, and that world changing moment the HST
         | connected... ahh, good memories.
        
       | 29athrowaway wrote:
       | Besides a piracy group, they are a demoscene group. You can check
       | their productions here
       | 
       | https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=158
        
       | gainda wrote:
       | a fixture of my childhood .... in the early 00's. aXXo being the
       | other one.
        
       | marttt wrote:
       | Ooh, as a pre-teen of An Early Post-Soviet Country, I remember
       | how puzzled I was as to what the hell that message and the files
       | with those curly logos in the folders of most of my pirated DOS
       | games actually mean. A paper dictionary lookup (razor =
       | "habemeajaja" or "raseerija" or "ziletitera" in Estonian) didn't
       | help either. Also, in our language, "warez" rhymes with "vares"
       | [v-uh-res], which typically stands for "hooded crow" (corvus
       | cornix), so... this + 1911... uh... that didn't make sense
       | either.
       | 
       | As a boy really into drawing, I was seriously impressed by that
       | ASCII art, though. It is surely a big part of why I still find
       | the DOS/ASCII aesthetic the most pleasurable in terms of computer
       | graphics and GUIs.
        
         | skeletal88 wrote:
         | Hiiele!
        
       | seatac76 wrote:
       | Man, lot of games I played were due to them, good times. They had
       | such a trusted reputation.
        
       | badrabbit wrote:
       | Shoutout to C.O.R.E, who for some reason are missing from
       | wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_warez_groups
        
       | satvikpendem wrote:
       | Ah, Razor. Sadly it seems that DRM companies like Irdeto, makers
       | of Denuvo, are now simply hiring talented crackers such that
       | there are very few people now able to crack games beyond simple
       | DRM. Empress is the only one remaining.
        
         | unaindz wrote:
         | There are still more talented crackers in the wild, emulators
         | still getting worked on, new DRMs being defeated, denuvo is the
         | exception. Sadly you can't expect people to work a month+ for
         | free for cracking games with arguably less quality every year.
         | 
         | Also a pet theory of mine is that teenagers (the ones with
         | actually free time) currently tend to pick these skills less
         | often, more computer and internet access but tons more of cheap
         | entertainment and a steeper learning curve. Who knows what I
         | would have learned if I had TikTok, Instagram and infinite
         | free/cheap games when growing up.
        
           | satvikpendem wrote:
           | > _Sadly you can 't expect people to work a month+ for free
           | for cracking games with arguably less quality every year._
           | 
           | True, at least one solace is that Denuvo is now a time-
           | restricted SaaS, so if a game is old enough, Denuvo is often
           | removed as the license duration has passed. So at the very
           | least, we are still getting DRM-free games, we just have to
           | become /r/patientgamers, a great sub by the way for these
           | kinds of discussions on older games.
           | 
           | > _Also a pet theory of mine is that teenagers (the ones with
           | actually free time) currently tend to pick these skills less
           | often_
           | 
           | I've noticed this too, apparently lots of Gen Z don't know
           | what a file system is as they only ever grew up with tablets
           | and phones which don't expose these (usually iOS, while
           | Android does to some extent).
        
         | leshokunin wrote:
         | The only groups are Empress and FitGirl? Sounds very
         | progressive!
        
           | satvikpendem wrote:
           | It's actually unknown whether they are actually women, lol.
        
       | sgloutnikov wrote:
       | The Scene is a fun and related miniseries worth mentioning and
       | checking out. [0][1]
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scene_(miniseries)
       | 
       | [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC2FCB2871C396459
        
         | b8 wrote:
         | The first season of The Scene is better than the second season
         | (yeah it exists) in my opinion.
        
       | jasondoty wrote:
       | Anyone have inside stories to share on more modern software
       | cracking in Scene/P2P?
        
         | SSLy wrote:
         | Just google for the unhinged Empress rants, everyone else is
         | not interesting
        
           | boppo1 wrote:
           | Is there anything technical in those or is it just games-
           | politics?
        
             | branon wrote:
             | I wouldn't say _technical_ but some of the recent ones have
             | Empress and Skidrow feuding and there's some dialog about
             | the peripherals of how the cracks are made (in between the
             | slurs and personal attacks). For example
             | https://i.redd.it/p3s5d14i7hib1.jpg
        
       | m00dy wrote:
       | Another group to mention is Knights Of Doom. Bunch of high school
       | kids from Turkiye, they were rebranding already existing
       | cracks/warez releases. One of the innovation that they brought to
       | the scene was self-typed serial number boxes. So, you insert a CD
       | to setup a game for example, you go through installer and then
       | you realise serial number is already typed in. They even had
       | their own forum so.
        
       | nxobject wrote:
       | They had an incredible capacity to compress large games... as a
       | broke person with ~1MB/s ADSL, it was the only reason I was able
       | to pirate GTA IV back in the day. They really thought about the
       | common gamer...
        
         | airstrike wrote:
         | Funny to think of GTA IV as being "back in the day", but also
         | didn't actually realize it's been 15 years already
        
       | m348e912 wrote:
       | Side note, I have and will continue to pronounce "Warez" like the
       | Mexican city Juarez. I know it's wrong, but I read the word years
       | before I heard someone pronounce it and it's stuck in my head
       | that way.
        
         | WD40forRust wrote:
         | The correct pronunciation always is, always has been, and
         | always will be: war'ehz.
        
           | bonzaidrinkingb wrote:
           | Hacker Ramzi was first big player in the Kazaa++ Warez Scene.
           | 
           | He pronounced it War...Ez...
           | 
           | https://youtu.be/bAQqrnX7BsM
        
         | vizzah wrote:
         | yeah, we've all pronounced it like that in xUSSR..
        
       | ghuntley wrote:
       | brings back memories https://ghuntley.com/under-suspicion/ the
       | person who taught me how to program ran the r1911 botnet and was
       | taken down in operation buccaneer.
        
       | nintendo1889 wrote:
       | NFO viewers on GitHub:
       | 
       | https://github.com/model-map/EmpressNfo
       | 
       | https://github.com/syndicodefront/infekt
       | 
       | nfo files were used to describe the release.
       | 
       | Similar to FILE_ID.DIZ files, which were a way to describe a zip
       | file for bbs software to index them.
       | 
       | Another good article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DrinkOrDie
        
       | brotchie wrote:
       | I learnt to code primarily by writing IRC bots for these groups +
       | wrote an auto-trading FXP client in C++ that looked for pres
       | dropping in top site channels, and automatically FXP couriered to
       | other topsites.
       | 
       | I wish I'd know back then (13 years old) what I know now (39) in
       | terms of even simple things like linked lists, linear
       | programming, estimators, etc, could have dominated.
       | 
       | The "hardcore" in the scene would actually set up shell boxes and
       | write a bunch of shell scripts to do auto trading. That also
       | piqued my interest in learning Linux and Bash scripting.
        
       | jmacd wrote:
       | In 9th grade I was a "VP" of a group called aPC. We were
       | couriers.
       | 
       | I used to walk down the hallways of my Jr High school thinking
       | how I was so fucking cool and not one single person around me
       | knew it. :)
        
         | burnte wrote:
         | Ditto. I lucked into being a courier. We had a second phone
         | line at my house and while we cancelled it, Bell Atlantic left
         | it active for three YEARS, but no active billing attached to
         | it, so I could call anywhere in the world for free. I used
         | Slip.NET for years too, and became a courier between EU and
         | North America, since I had free long distance I could make the
         | long calls to upload/download. To this day I have spoken aloud
         | my warez courier handle exactly once, to my wife, and I doubt
         | she remembers it. There's two other people in the world who
         | know (each ran a BBS in the 412 that were my US endpoints), but
         | I doubt they remember today, and I have no plans on becoming
         | culpable what that identity did. :D
        
           | EternalUsenet wrote:
           | The 412? As in the Pittsburgh area?
        
           | jmacd wrote:
           | Greets!
        
         | exclusiv wrote:
         | Same! And APC rings a bell - were they MP3 and ISO?
         | 
         | I was an MP3 courier in a group on a lot of global top sites. I
         | remember being in an irc chan for one of them (I think it was
         | the hungarian one) and kali of the top group RNS stated his
         | birthday or something else personal and said "oh crap I
         | shouldn't have said that" lol. He was indicted by the DOJ in
         | 2009! He was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit copyright
         | infringementalthouh 4 other members pleaded guilty.
         | 
         | They busted sites from time to time but RIAA couldn't do
         | anything substantial. I stayed away from movies and tv because
         | that was riskier and I enjoyed getting music a week or two
         | before the p2p platforms got them. And also getting high
         | quality rips. The sister group that did ISOs eventually got
         | busted.
         | 
         | Saw the move from ftp to fxp and shell accounts and semi-auto
         | and automated trading. Some government officials would spend
         | years to infiltrate the groups to bust the sites and members.
         | 
         | Anyway, it was with being a courier that I got interested in
         | code and had an insane amount of lines to handle all the
         | topsite rules on what they would accept and I traded semi-
         | automated. We even had a UI to help.
         | 
         | I actually met a few people from those days in person and they
         | were really cool. Still friends with one of them today. Many
         | groups required meeting in person or doing a phone call before
         | you could join and then they eventually relaxed that.
        
           | jmacd wrote:
           | MP3. They were mostly rippers but I was a courier who would
           | get their stuff on topsites and then the indies or courier
           | only groups would distro it. I have trouble remembering all
           | the structure and rules (written and unwritten) after all
           | these years, but an ASCii NFO file still makes my heart leap
           | like nothing else!
        
             | exclusiv wrote:
             | Ah yes! So APC was more like an RNS then. I recall now
             | after looking up some of your groups' releases too. APC was
             | the next best group as far as releases to RNS. I probably
             | have a ton of those NFO files from back in the day and the
             | courier mp3 rankings for EU and US. I was #1 US and top 5
             | Europe once. EU was quite hard due to competition and
             | latency, although a uni shell account certainly helped. :)
             | 
             | Most were current year only US releases, 192kbps and VBR?.
             | Some accepted 320kbps and older releases if they had never
             | been ripped. Some topsites only accepted releases from
             | certain groups. My favorite site had a folder with an
             | archive of all the billboard top 100 albums. I think that
             | was the top swedish site (bbs?) or maybe chiplips which I
             | believe was hungarian. There were a couple good ones in US
             | (MIT/RIT) but the others were in sweden, hungary,
             | netherlands. I think one in France.
             | 
             | It was interesting to see how those groups and topsites
             | were chased and shut down, but the P2P platforms that came
             | out made it impossible to shut down anyway.
        
         | nilespotter wrote:
         | I was in RiSC in Jr High School. Not a VP though, not as /<rad
         | I guess.
        
         | figmert wrote:
         | What's a VP and what's a courier in this context?
        
           | jffry wrote:
           | VP I assume is vice president?
           | 
           | Courier is
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez_group#Courier_groups
        
         | ExoticPearTree wrote:
         | And yeah, the bandwidth requirements back then to make it as a
         | courier. I almost forgot about all the groups in the '90s.
         | 
         | The .nfo files were the best art.
        
       | NorSoulx wrote:
       | Great memories being part of a few C64/Amiga groups and the demo-
       | scene community back in the 80s, such as:
       | 
       | * Special F/X (C64)
       | 
       | * The Deadly Friends (C64)
       | 
       | * The Supremacy (Amiga)
       | 
       | We made the first ever Amiga Demo/Intro Creator back in May 1987,
       | used by a few groups to create their first Amiga Intros,
       | including Fairlight:
       | 
       | https://coding-and-computers.blogspot.com/2022/05/first-amig...
        
       | silisili wrote:
       | > 1911 which translates to 777 in hexadecimal.
       | 
       | Interesting. Having seen the name a million times in younger
       | years, I always assumed it was a reference to the pistol.
        
       | 0x008 wrote:
       | Just a great time.
        
       | TacticalCoder wrote:
       | Muhahaaaa this thread full of people mentioning _.nfo_ files. You
       | guys are ten years late at least! Razor 1911 was a C64 an Amiga
       | group way before the PC scene was a thing [1]
       | 
       | [1] My crew and I made _ex aequo_ first place at a PC demo-compo
       | in Sweden /Uppsala, tied with Future Crew, before Future Crew
       | became a thing so believe me I know about the PC scene being late
       | to the game ; )
        
       | w0z_ wrote:
       | Music was also binded to AOL progz - miss those days.
        
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       (page generated 2023-10-30 23:01 UTC)