5 ms·

Disclaimer: I am in no way encouraging or advocating for software piracy. The warez scene in 90s and early 00s was fun to follow. I consider the NFO files a le

Disclaimer: I am in no way encouraging or advocating for software piracy. The warez scene in 90s and early 00s was fun to follow. I consider the NFO files a legitimate form of art, not to mention the skills for unpacking and keygen-ing or cracking of the protected software. https://scenelist.org/ https://scenelist.org/

unixhero 4y ago
Nfos, great Culture.
pfoof 4y ago
and keygen music
- ckozlowski 4y ago
  The channel Ahoy on YouTube dove into Tracker music, and has a few callouts on how this materialized in the Warez scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roBkg-iPrbw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roBkg-iPrbw
- accrual 4y ago
  I listened to keygen music a great deal at one point. I'd run them through Winamp to produce something I could burn to a CD and listen to in the car. Pretty funny seeing Photoshop, Easy DVD Creator, Power ISO, and whatever else streaming across my car's track display.
LaserDiscMan 4y ago
I wasn't aware of this at the time, but apparently INC "leaked" a game to The Humble Guys which was modified to search for a modem and dial 911, supposedly leading to some police visits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Network_of_Crackers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Network_of_Crack...
jll29 4y ago
...and Drive Music is a form of art (even if it makes your local data safety person cringe): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR454sxi27o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR454sxi27o
theonething 4y ago
growing up in the 80s with a Commodore 64, my friends and I never bought any games. They were all "cracked by $some_cracker"
- jamiek88 4y ago
  Yeah we literally had a club we’d go to and just copy each others floppies! As a poor 12 year old they weren’t losing money. I had none!
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  Grew up around the same time, we would typically change $some_cracker to our nicknames before trading them to the next person.
- npteljes 4y ago
  Me neither, whatever little money we had, it went towards hardware.
ihusasmiiu 4y ago
> I am in no way encouraging or advocating for software piracy. I am.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  I do advocate for the importance of backward engineering - with its companion, competence and awareness over the lower-level.
Rodeoclash 4y ago
So much fun. Hanging out on Undernet in channels like #zeraw, exchanging hacked corporate FTP servers where people had uploaded disk images. My friend was way further (better?) at the scene then I ever was but we'd pool our resources. I.e. he'd get access to an FTP and share it with me. I'd download disks 1 - 10 and he'd grab 11 - 20. We'd then use a direct dial program with our modems to share the remaining disks with each other (using ZModem!) overnight. Double our bandwidth!
- johnwheeler 4y ago
  #cracking4newbies on efnet
nailer 4y ago
First piece of dance music i ever heard was the Razor1911 Terminator demo
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
accrual 4y ago
> I consider the NFO files a legitimate form of art I still install DAMN NFO Viewer on my main PC just so I can appreciate some of the .nfo files I still have.
- tracker1 4y ago
  I have VSCode set to use CP437 as my codepage and show control characters for "plain text" files, which works surprisingly well as it's only older art/projects/bbs stuff, generally anything else is a specific file type that will use utf8 by default. "files.associations": { "*.msg": "plaintext", "*.ans": "plaintext", "*.asc": "plaintext", "*.rip": "plaintext", "*.nfo": "plaintext", ... }, ... "[plaintext]": { "files.encoding": "cp437", "files.eol": "\r\n", "editor.renderControlCharacters": true },
rx_tx 4y ago
If you want to watch a cool talk about the evolution of NFO and ascii (color) art scene and processes, I recommend watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILNs1GChGDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILNs1GChGDk
enos_feedler 4y ago
Yessss, this was so fun. I still have backups of all my own nfo files that I was credited for cracks in ;) razor, pdm, myth.
npteljes 4y ago
>I consider the NFO files a legitimate form of art As a teenage boy, I had them printed with my father's dot matrix printer, and put them on my wall as decoration. Fascinating stuff.

unixhero 4y ago

Nfos, great Culture.

pfoof 4y ago

and keygen music

ckozlowski 4y ago
The channel Ahoy on YouTube dove into Tracker music, and has a few callouts on how this materialized in the Warez scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roBkg-iPrbw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roBkg-iPrbw
accrual 4y ago
I listened to keygen music a great deal at one point. I'd run them through Winamp to produce something I could burn to a CD and listen to in the car. Pretty funny seeing Photoshop, Easy DVD Creator, Power ISO, and whatever else streaming across my car's track display.

LaserDiscMan 4y ago

I wasn't aware of this at the time, but apparently INC "leaked" a game to The Humble Guys which was modified to search for a modem and dial 911, supposedly leading to some police visits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Network_of_Crackers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Network_of_Crack...

jll29 4y ago

...and Drive Music is a form of art (even if it makes your local data safety person cringe): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR454sxi27o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR454sxi27o

theonething 4y ago

growing up in the 80s with a Commodore 64, my friends and I never bought any games. They were all "cracked by $some_cracker"

jamiek88 4y ago
Yeah we literally had a club we’d go to and just copy each others floppies! As a poor 12 year old they weren’t losing money. I had none!
rufus_foreman 4y ago
Grew up around the same time, we would typically change $some_cracker to our nicknames before trading them to the next person.
npteljes 4y ago
Me neither, whatever little money we had, it went towards hardware.

ihusasmiiu 4y ago

> I am in no way encouraging or advocating for software piracy. I am.

mdp2021 4y ago
I do advocate for the importance of backward engineering - with its companion, competence and awareness over the lower-level.

Rodeoclash 4y ago

So much fun. Hanging out on Undernet in channels like #zeraw, exchanging hacked corporate FTP servers where people had uploaded disk images. My friend was way further (better?) at the scene then I ever was but we'd pool our resources. I.e. he'd get access to an FTP and share it with me. I'd download disks 1 - 10 and he'd grab 11 - 20. We'd then use a direct dial program with our modems to share the remaining disks with each other (using ZModem!) overnight. Double our bandwidth!

johnwheeler 4y ago
#cracking4newbies on efnet

nailer 4y ago

First piece of dance music i ever heard was the Razor1911 Terminator demo

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

accrual 4y ago

> I consider the NFO files a legitimate form of art I still install DAMN NFO Viewer on my main PC just so I can appreciate some of the .nfo files I still have.

tracker1 4y ago
I have VSCode set to use CP437 as my codepage and show control characters for "plain text" files, which works surprisingly well as it's only older art/projects/bbs stuff, generally anything else is a specific file type that will use utf8 by default. "files.associations": { "*.msg": "plaintext", "*.ans": "plaintext", "*.asc": "plaintext", "*.rip": "plaintext", "*.nfo": "plaintext", ... }, ... "[plaintext]": { "files.encoding": "cp437", "files.eol": "\r\n", "editor.renderControlCharacters": true },

rx_tx 4y ago

If you want to watch a cool talk about the evolution of NFO and ascii (color) art scene and processes, I recommend watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILNs1GChGDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILNs1GChGDk

enos_feedler 4y ago

Yessss, this was so fun. I still have backups of all my own nfo files that I was credited for cracks in ;) razor, pdm, myth.

npteljes 4y ago

>I consider the NFO files a legitimate form of art As a teenage boy, I had them printed with my father's dot matrix printer, and put them on my wall as decoration. Fascinating stuff.