Skyhigh 20 Tha Biz-mix

Tha Biz-mix





Yeahhh boyiiiiiee!!!

The wacko Biz man is back in his column!! This time I
will go straight to the point. No babbeling craptalk
as an introduction. Just pure text..


Lately, I have seen something which really makes me
wonder big time. But first a little introduction.

I, personally, haven't filled out a votesheet for at
least 2 years (maybe even more!!!). The reason is that
I simply have too much other things to do, than to
fill out sheets. Arrogant bastard you think now. Well
better check this out then!!  Skyhigh takes up quite
a lot of my time, when sitting infront of the C64, that
is. This isn't the problem itself, coz I love writing for
it. Another reason is that I have to send out a vote-
sheet for Skyhigh with every sending I do. Some may
say that is a splitted morality I have. I want other
people to fill in sheet for me but I don't fill any in
return. Hmm, yeah I can see a problem there,but then
again; If I had to send a disk + 2 sheets the weight
would cause me to put on more stamps. This will make
it way to expensive for me. Ok this is a lame excuse,
and definetely not the main reason. Another thing is
that I simply don't feel like filling in sheets. Yeah
that might sound arrogant, but it isn't. And if you see
it like this, well then be it!!
Another reason why I don't fill or send off sheets, is
that I don't want my addy in other magazines than my
own. Why you ask!! Well the reason is clear & simple :
I don't want more contacts, so I don't need my addy
to be spread.

BUT......

Recently I have seen my addy in various magazine re-
leases!!! Well how can that be??? I haven't told or
'allowed'!! anyone to put my addy in their magazines.
Still it has happend. Hmmmmmm!!!

Lately it was printed in the 2 Australian mags :
Vandalism News and Domination. In one of them it even
read: for Skyhigh and swap.. Ooops!! As I don't take
any new contacts (Or very little!!) it isn't that great
to see such an advert in other mags.  Well ofcourse
the editors, who both are good buddies of mine, did it
to give me a helping hand. But honestly then I would
rather they weren't included. So to all you editors
who see this . If you have my addy in your magazine
please remove all text saying that I want to swap..
Only texts like: Stuff for Skyhigh or: Skyhigh HQ are
ok!! Please see to that it will be corrected as soon
as possible - Thanx!!

Subject change...

One of the larger subjects in the different magazines
lately has been the debate on mail magazines versus
board magazines. Every board magazine with a bit of
respect for itself has had an article about the dying
of the mail scene based mag. Why all this I ask... Well
let me fill in some background story first.
Almost all of the before mentioned magazines starts
out with a little story about how mags like Script,
Nitro & especially this one has dominated the charts
for quite some time now. They write how big an influ-
ence "we" have had the last year or so. BUT now our
time has come. Many talk about our era being over
soon. They say that the sceners want more now. They
want release charts. They want the news splitted up
in cathegories. They want board orientated stuff in-
stead of all this mail stuff. Hmmm, what is this I ask?
To me it seems like they are feeling threathened...
Maybe even envious??? I dunno... Somehow it feels
like they are getting irritated about not hitting the
topspot in the charts. Well I can't blame them for
that, coz this is what is all about for them, right.

Well I myself admit there will be some major changes
in the magazine structure soon. The readers are get-
ting more and more demanding. They don't want to be
fed of with small bad looking outfits or boring and
non-quality text anymore. I believe there is an ex-
pression who says: "more , wants more" or something
like that. If not then I will explain what I mean.
The quality of magazines (and everything else in the
scene) is constantly rising, but people still want
more and more. This is understandable to me, and also
good. Coz this is the only way to get our products
more and more perfect, If the readers just sat down
and said ok, now the mags are great, then the quality
would stop progressing. This is not what I want. It
should be known to everybody that I have tried to
improve my own, this, magazine all the time, and will
keep doing so.
But that's not the entire thing there is to it. Somehow
I think that the board magazines overlook a very im-
portant fact. They keep claiming that "we" only have
our good positions in the charts becoz there are so
many 'mailers' compared to board sceners. Some even
writes inbetween the lines that we are not real mags.
We are only a "last hope for the mailers to get a
glimse of the real scene, the board scene..'

BULLSHIT
BULLSHIT...

I don't know diddly about the boards, calling out or
the socalled 'boardlife/scene'. A shame really, but..
This sort of scene simply isn't me, period. And the
story tells it clear words; this is the way most of the
sceners feel about it. Maybe they are not allowed to
call out, or simply can't afford it. Well they might
even not find it interessting at all... So they turn to
the magazines which writes about all that they find
interessting. Personally I think this says it all.. The
wide spectre do not want the board magazines, so I
don't start to panic and turn my mag into a boardmag
right away!

BUT, ofcoz I am not blind! I, too, see that the maga-
zine structure is changing slowly. The readers don't
want pure mail magazines, and they don't want pure
board magazines either. So the solution in my eyes is
to make a fusion of these two directions.
Listen to my prediction. In the year of 1996 you will
find some magazines with stuff for everybody, and
the one with the best balance will be the winner. It is
as simple as that! In the future you will see a narrow
teamwork between the mailers and the boarders.
This magazine will for one catch the progress in the
air, and do what it can to fulfill this demand. I will
personally see to that the before mentioned balance
will be found and brought into Skyhigh alongthe way!
I have my loyal group of readers out there who most
definetely will back me up all the way. My plan is to
enlarge this group with the people who are about to
try the board scene aswell. And along the way pro-
bably even grap the 'real' boarders too..

My good colleague Bizarre, who edits the popular
Vandalism News, wrote in the Silver edition a list of
magazines which would take over the top 5 in 1996.
These magazines were: Domination, Vandalism News,
The Pulse, Relax abd the last one was Propagand I
believe. But no Skyhigh... Hmmm, Jose, that wasn't nice
Well I think that we must discuss this again in Decem-
ber 1996, coz I will do anything within my powers to
prove you wrong. Listen to me now, and listen to me
good. Your predictions will not come true. At least
one of the names will be replaced by Skyhigh. Yep I
feel quite comfortable with myself. The reason is
that I've gathered some of the finest sceners in my
staff. People who are highly respected within their
terretories, and I know they will do what ever they
can to uphold our position. Sure the other magazines
claims to have just as good co-editors, and I will not
argue with that. So I guess the point of this article
is to shake it up a bit, and see what wil happend.
Finally I will wish each and one of you editors out
there the best in 1996. Let's stick together and make
the best out of it, let's show them that 1996 is ano-
ther milestone in the C64 magazine history. The year
where there were magazines for everybody, for the
entire scene.
Meet you out in the future. Meet all you 'next gene-
ration' magazines. He he!!

Ok something quite different!

I would once more like to express my opinion about
the PC and the C64.  7-8 months ago I bought a PC.
This was a whole new life for me.  All these things
such a wonderful piece of machine could do. And all
these programs which was needed to start it all up.
It is not like the cool C64 where you simply turn it
on, and it is working. When turning on the PC it has to
boot, check various programs, set numerious para-
metres and, and ,and... If something was deleted or
changed in one of these programs, your PC most pro-
bably wouldn't start up at all. Damn a lot of problems
But hey, this actually not what I wanted to write
about. Nah, see as I bought my wonderful PC it was a
quite neat and powerful one. Not the top machine, but
in the very best end of the of the scale. I bought a
486 DX2 80Mhz, with 420 MB harddisk, a quad speed CD
rom drive and some other things. But guess what...
This nice machine of mine is perhaps already in the
lower half of the scale by now. See now we are talk-
ing Pentium processors or maybe even pure 32 bit
Pentium Pro based processors. Now 80 Mhz is nothing
to brag about. Soon the frequencies is 120 or even
133 Mhz, and within long these are standard and the
150, 166 or 200 Mhz are the real thing. Hmm for some
this might be pure black talk, and I will end it for now
eventhough I could mention a lot more. (Eg. 8-10 spd.
Cd rom drives - 1.2. 2.0 Ggb hard disx or....)
STOP, Biz man!! - Ok, ok... The morale of the story is
that my nice PC is already a bit outdated, and that is
in only 8 months!!!

Ok I then turn to the C64. My C64 is the new model,
but it is more or less the exact same machine which
saw the light of day 12 years ago (13??). This is incre
dible, don't you think so.
The only improvements we got along the way was a
nicer designed machine, a few changed chips (if that
was an improvement!!), cartridges with fast loaders
and some extra stuff. But basically the raw machine
itself is th exact same as it was presented the first
time. No other computer can brag about that, and I
really mean NO ONE!!! Think about it: 8bit... Doesn't
sound like much eh! Still we showed the world that it
is enough. Isn't it amazing that people still can gath-
er around this 'antique' piece of development.

The reason why I mention all this, is that I would like
to talk about the culture which is connected to it.
Some people call us nerds. Computernerds or geeks.
Why do they call us like that.. Hmm, I say that they
don't know what we are doing. Maybe the envy us a lit
tle; maybe they envy this sort of underground life
we occasional have. Well yeah, maybe we are to be
compared to the savages, maybe.. Truth is that we do
gather now and then around in Europe. Here we outlive
our passion, our little secret.
I think most of your parents has been just like mine.
As I got my C64 they said that it was stupid and it
would NEVER be a success for me. I would only find it
interessting in the beginning, and then.... A complete
waste of money. Time went on, and I still used it. I
used it a lot. I used it so much that they started to
complain about it. Why don't you leave your damn C64
alone and get out in the fine weather! You are spend-
ing way to much time infront of this stupid machine!!
Hmm, maybe I was a nerd in some eyes, naaah I don't
think so. I have had a lot of fun besides my computer.
I most definetely had a socalled social life aswell.
Chasing girls, getting drunk and laid. Yep that was a
nice time. On the other hand I have also gone to odd
parties around Europe. 3 days with other nerds from
different countries. 3 days with a lot of junkfood,
liters of Coca Cola, sweat, bad smell and weird people.
I have also slept under the table. Not becoz I was
drunk, but to be near my computer. People does not
really understand this, and therefore some people
would even cathegorize me as a freak, a nerd. SO BE
IT!! I know that I am no nerd, no fuckin way!
They have laughed at us.. We didn't really care. Now
the technology is over us, and the people who laugh-
ed are now the ones to be lughed at. See now we have
the advantages. We know our way around with com-
puters, they don't. So now we are ok to them, coz now
we can help them. Well fuck 'em. They should have
thouht about that earlier. So maybe we should start
laughing back at them; but no we are not like that.
(well yeah a little perhaps..)
So I don't give a damn about what people think, call
me a geek, call me a computer genious, call me what-
ever you fucking want to. I don't give a damn, and I
never regret my time on this, the coolest, computer
ever, so far!!!!

Now after having returned from the Party 5 here in
Denmark, I feel even stronger and prouder of being
what I am. I had 3 cooooool days in Fredericia this
year.(Erhm, last year!!).

So what made me feel so proud? I'll tell you:
For the Party organizers, our little breadcase is al-
most dead. It seems like they do not want to know of
it. Fortunately we are still so many, that they had no
other option than to squeeze in a C64 demo competi-
tion. But that was all for our beloved computer.
But you know what? They can't control us like that!!!
No fucking way! 2 groups joined forces and made both
a music- and a graphics-compo for the C64. These 2
groups were F4CG and REFLEX.. My deepest respect to
both of them!!! What really hit was the competition it-
self; you should have seen the massive crowd around
this little television/monitor and the mini sound sys-
tem. Amazing!! It was absolutely incredible, to see
how people got together and supported the scene
like this. FUCK the big screen, FUCK the 20.000 watts
loudspeakers, and FUCK the prizes. These people
couldn't give a shit about it; most of them hardly
could see the screen, and the sound system had its
problems, but the sceners didn't care. The prize was
a bottle of homemade booze for the winners and a
video from The Tribute. But the point of it all is, that
they did this for fun!! And perhaps in protest to the
lame organizers who didn't want to make these two
important competitions! I felt joy seeing this hapend,
and no matter what you say then the sceners from
other systems may have had a strange taste in their
mouth!! Becoz this could NEVER have happend on, say
an Amiga or PC.

Brotherhood?, family?, friendship?. Well I don't know,
but I feel happy to see it!!




And these where the words from me for this time. The
morale of the story may be : We are far from dead,
and we are still going strong. Friendship really rules.

I wish you all a happy 1996, may it be just a great as
1995.


BIZ KID
BIZ KID

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