The Affinity MindRape Interview
Alan Dykes - October, 1996
Please state your name and afflictions.
Hello, i'm Donald Moore also known as MindRape and i'm a member of Damaged Cybernetics
What exactly does Damaged Cybernetics do, and what part do you play in this group?
Damaged Cybernetics is a group of ppl that like to screw around with technology. Consoles, odd-end machines, Operating Systems and anything that interests us. the group's main purpose is to share info or help each other out.as to wot part i play i maintain the Main Damaged Cybernetics web site (http://www.futureone.com/~damaged)
Ok, when was Damaged Cybernetics formed and by whom?
it was originally formed back in 91 and it was formed by me at the time it was nothing serious, just something to dork around with, and i was pretty much the only member, I wrote various utilities and released it under that name such utilities were mr-lite, which was a pklite header stripper (not patcher), hex editors and similar stuff
Wow, it sure has grown since then :) As to above where you told your name, why do you include your name? Couldn't that get you into trouble?
Well i'm not afraid to let ppl know who i am, and encourage the other members of DC the same way.DC isn't a warez group or a hacker group since we use our real names as well, we have had more contact with ppl
How many members currently comprise of DC and have you had any media coverage or attention?
DC is made up of about 12 members, and yes we have had some coverage.We appear in a CGI authoring book from QUE it was releaesed in the middle of september it features some of my javascript bombs
We have attention as well. Various gaming companies have contacted various DC members about projects we are working on or things we have done or they refer ppl to us about certain *bad* things =)
We also get attention from companies like Netscape, Microsoft, Novell, AT&T and many others visiting our web pages and I converse with them in email quite a bit
Can you speculate why the likes of MS have visited DC and what they hope to find there? Have you had any complaints or flames from those or other compaines?
we are not sure why MS visits our pages, we know they come straight from the programming/development machines, since I talk to them in email sometimesThey tell me that the DC web site is passed all over the MS campus and many MS employees think wot we do is very kewl, surprise!
And yes we have had flames from other ppl saying that our site endorses piracy, destruction or bad net activities.
May I ask how old you are and possible what age range the rest of your members are?
i'm 24 years old, and the age coverage goes from 14-24 (with me being the oldest member)
How does one join this group or rather an organization even?
just ask and show us wot you got. You got to be more of a thinker than anything, otherwise we have no need for group politics and big egos. i think that sounded wrong :). oh well =)
Can I ask you whether you read Affinity? And if so, what are your thoughts on that. Should there be any magazines that deal with piracy?
Yes i read affinity? It has a good start and hope to see more come from it, and yes there should be magazines that deal with piracy. Talking about it, how it is done, new tricks, techniques and such, what kidn of piracy is out there, the ppl who make that scene thrive, a real mag, not some bullshit scene mag, and a mag that utilitizes the WWW for mass exposure, because piracy isn't just a computer system. It can be anything, and it should be accessible from everyone, and talk about everything it can =).
As far as I can imagine, magazines such as Affinity that deal with Piracy should are not illegal. However, I find that Affinity is regularly deleted from public ftp sites such as ftp.cdrom.com, do you think that is fair?
consider this: ftp.cdrom.com is owned by someone they can choose to delete wot ever they want and no it should not be illegal
i was hoping for an indepth answer. but that'll do i guess. Now to totally switch the subject, DC seems to play a MAJOR roll in consoles (not that it doesn't in other areas) why are so many of you interested in them?
heh because we all have copiers =) the truth is this: Consoles are much more fun than the PC Warez scene and other scenes. It's more based on the c64 scene than anything, the attitudes the friendships and fun! We were there to have fun and we all did! waiting for new releases watching groups get the releases out first, plus Consoles Piracy wasn't really heard of, so the scene was much smaller, and since many of us at DC are techies already we do wot we do naturally played around with them wrote senders, and tools and other programs.
Sounds like fun! Does DC have any upcoming plans that you could let us in on?
Well the DC site is going under some reorganization, new look possibly. We did open up a public ftp section (ftp.futureone.com/users/damftp), and you can send us your uploads to ftp.futureone.com/users/damftp/incoming, we figure other ppl out there may have some goodies they want to drop off to us. We will be moving all of our archives to the ftp section to make them more accessible and to appear on more search engines and to generate more interest in gray area information.Some of the things i would be interested in doing is offer some pages on pager modding, other forms of piracy and maybe even extend our ftp section to carry all those files that other FTP sites refuse to
It looks like DC is a great group and we wish you luck! Anything you would like to add?
yes actually i do, i like to send out some greets to the #snes guys (you're the only and the best!)... and to all the #emu guys for supporting y0shi and the Brain for their kick ass emulators!
also if you have a web page that you think can fit inside the DC network and are serious about it, email me at damaged@futureone.com, we can get you the exposure you need!
and obviously big thanks to Sdragon and MrMister =)
Thanks for the great interview and your time MindRape!
