[Annatar]

today’s warez scene is total crap compared to C64/amiga scene, as you mentioned the groups had at least some time to code a nice intro, and test their cracks properly.

Consider the situation, though:
back in the day, both the crackers and the consumers of their content were enthusiasts; even "lamers" were enthusiasts with some motive or another. Telecommunications sucked ass, but even if you picked any given BBS, you’d still find a community of enthusiasts.

Cracking software and anything related was relegated to the realm of obscure, and but for an occassional bust, nobody cared about that world because almost nobody but those from the community knew about it.

Also we as kids growing up back then did not have the same amount of brain washing that generation Y enjoys. We read a lot and loved to tinker and gain a deep understanding of how things worked. Today, in large part thanks to general population of generation X, a lot of really smart generation Y kids are completely dumbed down, complete with short attention spans.

Now contrast this with today: we have a modern telecommunications network, but the general population also consumes this resource. And with that, the network and those who built it and made it what it is today came to the attention of that general population, most notably lawyers, who then go on to become judges and various politicians – law enforcement.

What happens when someone without specialized technical knowledge begins to draw conclusions on removing protections on software and sharing information – sharing knowledge? You guessed it – if they aren’t brainwashed by the Windows-PC-bucket world already, they will form opinions based on misunderstanding or worse, ignorance. When laws are applied to the situation — laws being nothing but rules of a game to lawyers and courts, these two worlds, of technology, tinkering and gaining understanding, sharing knowledge, and the world of rules, "must not", "shall not", "are not allowed to" – are bound to collide viciously, under various dubious moral, ethical, and sociological pretenses from people who don’t understand technology and have no interest in knowledge even if their life depended on it.

So the telecommunications are great, but the world at large sucks because any idiot now has access to it, and they abuse it through their ignorance.

My point being simply this: do not wonder that the shitty scene today cannot compare to the halcyon days of yore; that was the dawn of modern computing, now there is a lot more attention on that environment and it has become much more riskier, so it is no wonder it sucks so bad.

I dream of a day when the general population will have enough knowledge to make the next logical step and gain insight, when the general population will not be so primitive any more so as to empower systems that censor and prohibit and which are solely focused on profits.

I dream of enlightened humanity as described in "Star Trek next generation".

[Annatar]

# BrainWalker :
Paranoimia split into Skid Row and The Company.

Why did they split?
Skid Row was cool… The Company sucked so bad… their releases seemed shoddy, although I can’t substantiate why. It seemed like the guys in "The Company" only cared about getting a release out of the door as fast as possible, everything else be damned. I don’t know why, I just couldn’t stand any of their releases, possibly because their intros sucked so much ass that I just wanted to smash the monitor! There has never been a group I felt so much aversion towards like "The Company".

However stellar Skid Row was to me, "The Company" was their antithesis. Again, this is my personal perception, and I obviously look up to Skid Row as the standard.

Oh, and Brainwalker, what exactly was your connection to Skid Row, and how did that come to pass?

[Annatar]

What can you tell us about Amay, and Skid Row in particular?

My impression of them was that they were Belgian-Danish-American (with SSR being the German branch).
Where did they mostly come from? Who founded them?

And why did they suddenly disappear overnight so to speak?

Back then, it appeared to me that Skid Row was to Amiga what IKARI was to C=64. After they disappeared, PaRaDoX took over and held the #1 spot briefly, then they too vanished, followed by Crystal, which also seems to have vanished into thin air, only to be succeeded by PRESTiGE (which seems to have had more than a few former Skid Row members). By that time I had quit the scene so I do not know who succeeded PRESTiGE.

So what can you write about Skid Row?

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