FAULTLESS or GLUKFULL ?
(disassembly of flights)
A demonstration of black and white magic with
subsequent exposure.
M.M.A / SPEED CO.'96
So, less than 
two weeks have passed since the moment- 
of the publication of the Kharkiv- 
electronic magazine "FAULTLESS", 
that it reached Sa- 
mara, and the narrow cir- 
cles of the broad public 
were able to ac- 
quaint themselves with its so- 
called "content". fig.1
A person who read the whole
truth about FAULTLESS #4
This magazine irritated me before, but the 4th issue was the last straw on the wound of my inflamed consciousness. Everything that follows is not an attack and not even a comment - it is the truth and only the truth. In principle, this article is almost useless, as progressive minds already know where gentlemen IMPETUS LED and JOKER got the materials for the fourth issue of the magazine, but still, some do not get it, and this article is recommended for them to read.
The reason for all this was the classification of OBERON and SPECTROPHOBY (the magazine published by our friends - SLIDERS GROUP - from Volzhsky) as PIONERs, PLATINUMs, and other truly low-quality electronic magazine construction.
At first, I wanted to forgive IMPETUS LED and JOKER (hereinafter I+J), as they surely saw only the first issue of OBERON at the time of writing the article. Yes, the first issue was not entirely successful. But then I was not there! However, the second issue, where I already appeared, turned out to be much more quality. Although, if you compare the first issues of OBERON and FAULTLESS - it is still unknown who is who!
But let's move from empty matters to words, printed words, which, as is known, cannot be traced by DEBUGGER. Below are the titles of all sections of the fourth issue of FAULTLESS without exception, a brief description of them, and my detailed comment.
1) DISCUSSION
In the section "Discussion," someone V.Alexander and O.Andrey express their thoughts about everything happening around the publication of their and other electronic magazines. Readers' letters are also "considered."
Let's start with the names and surnames of the authors. Since, according to my assumptions, the surnames "Alexander" and "Andrey" do not exist in nature, it is logical to assume that these are first names! In this case, the surnames are "V." and "O." respectively. Does it remind you of the tale about Winnie the Pooh?
"To the outsider V."
I am not a specialist in the Russian language (as well as in Ukrainian), and I did not study office work. But in my uneducated opinion, it would have been better to write "Vorozhkin A." and "Odintsov A." or to sign only with first names! Or like me - with my TM (for lamers - trade mark).
Although one could assume that the above is just a minor glitch, I insist on drawing attention to this, as in light of the events described below, this fact may play a decisive role. It is very easy to sign as "V.Alexander," and "when the time comes to pay the bills," shift all the blame onto another - also "V.Alexander"!
So, what did the gentlemen I+J tell us in this article? A lot! You can't mention everything at once!
Here is an excerpt: "... for you it may be "cool," but you are not alone - understand this!"
This is an excerpt from a moralizing paragraph dedicated to the authors of other (not FAULTLESS) magazines. Did you, gentlemen I+J, consider this phrase in relation to yourselves? That's right - you are not alone, and it is not for you to judge whether YOUR magazine is "cool" or NOT.
"... since similar ones have not been observed," and this is already from the history of the creation of FAULTLESS.
Yes, indeed - before you, similar magazines were not observed! A huge appendix, literally two words about each program included in it, a bunch of ripped articles, an immense number of ripped pictures, etc. and so on. And someone still shouted that it is necessary to look for artists and musicians. Well, you have your own music - not ripped, but how will the authors feel whose melodies play in articles that are completely reprinted from "ZX Spectrum and TR-DOS for users and programmers"?
"... we respect and value ZX-FORMAT, FAULTLESS, ADVENTURER, SPECTROFON ..."
Penially! I also respect ZX-FORMAT, OBERON, ADVENTURER, SPECTROFON ......
(who did not get it - read both statements again!)
Well, it seems like we've finished with this section!
Let's move on - that's where the most interesting part is!
2) ON DOSUPA
"Six months after the release of WINDOWS'95 ...."
"... APPLE pleased us with the first servers based on the AIX operating system ...."
"Dec will react to the decrease in the price of DRAM ...."
And so on and so forth! These unnecessary pseudo-news are copied from one of the PC newspapers. Who is interested in what 14 disks were released for Windows 95 or how fast the AIX OS is? I can churn out tons of such news!
Here I take something from the waste paper, bearing the proud title "COMPUTER WEEKLY OF THE COMPUTER," and start rewriting:
"Borland International and Sybase have entered into an agreement for joint development and marketing in the field of databases on desktop and development tools for client/server products that Borland is involved with, and client applications of Sybase."
Looks like I did it! Cool news! Right at the level of the MAFIA giants I+J!
If only you wrote about AMIGA, but you are just rewriting some nonsense from the first newspaper or magazine you come across.
But the most interesting part is just beginning. Immediately after the above nonsense come the words: "To all our readers .......... about the ups and downs experienced... by creator Clive Sinclair." The next 4-5 kilobytes of text are a complete reprint of an article from the already mentioned book by A.LARCHENKO and N.RODIONOV. For those who do not believe, I provide the page numbers - pp.4-6.
One word -
3) DISCOVERY
I will not retell this section, as it simply cannot be retold! Also nonsense, also taken from some magazine. Moreover, it is even unclear on which platform the described package operates.
4) NEWS
The only truly interesting and useful section. But if you criticize, then criticize EVERYTHING!
In the header of the section we read: "How are SpeccyMabs doing?".
I am astonished, dear editorial staff! Even a schoolboy knows that the word MAN in English means "man." The plural form, i.e., "men" or "people," is formed not by adding "s," as I+J are trying to shove down our throats, but by writing the new word - MEN through the letter "E"!
Dear friend! Besides the artist and musician, at least two main editors are needed to create a magazine: one for Russian language, the other for English.
I myself am not very good with language. But that's why there is an editor, to read my texts and correct mistakes in them.
5) FROM THE OUTSIDE
In this section, dear reader, you will be able to read an interview with THE JOKER HIMSELF!
You probably dreamed of this all your life, my dear ones!
The only thing unclear is the title of the section. It would have been more logical to name it "TALKING TO ONESELF" or "FROM THE INSIDE"!
What is pleasing is the fact that this section, unlike the others, is not copied from any book or magazine. What cannot be said about the next section.
6) FOR USERS
"ZX Spectrum and TR-DOS
for users and programmers."
A.LARCHENKO N.RODIONOV "PITER"
1994
In the order of the text, it is taken from:
pp. 8 - 11 (the paragraph "The author of this book managed to... is omitted")
pp. 11 - 13
pp. 14
Comments are unnecessary!
7) PRESENTATION
Well, finally, we have reached the section that will tell us what is in the APPENDIX.
But what is this! In the books "500 games for ZX SPECTRUM," each program is given more space. The most interesting thing is that even with the presence of two or three sentences in the description of one program, a mistake can be made, and what a mistake!
"DIESIRAE - .... not just a demo, but a DEMO MADE IN ENGLAND."
And after such a statement, these gentlemen (I+J) claim to be the main mafiosi who know "the news not only in individual cities but also shape the weather of the entire region."
How can one confuse the Polish team EXODUS with British coders! Those who do not believe - read the scroller in the last part to the end! Yes, what about the scroller! Already by the music, it could be understood that this is a Polish demo, not MADE IN ENGLAND.
Or how about this statement: "... that our magazine is poorly distributed and is not in demand. We know perfectly well that the magazine is sold out and is in demand ...."
Of course, if you don’t praise yourself, no one will praise you! But the fact that FAULTLESS indeed enjoys weak popularity is scientifically proven and confirmed. Just take a look at SPECTROFON #20, where an absolutely independent MAGAZINE TOP from the city of Odessa is published. FAULTLESS occupies only the sixth place in it! And in communicating with Samara distributors of software, I realized that FAULTLESS does not "enter the top three best in SNP."
8) CPU FOR YOU
In this section, the gentlemen I+J told us about all the tricks of working with the Z80 - LDIR command. Of course, for beginner programmers, this is a very useful article, but.... I have the feeling that this literary work was also taken from some book.
9) ADVERTISEMENT
Well, it would seem, what could be wrong with ADVERTISING? But if there are glitches in all other articles, then there must be glitches here too!
And here are the glitches: scroll through all the ADVERTISING to the end, while the text will be gray (CYAN). Now, being on the very last page, scroll up, and all the text instead of gray will be purple (MAGENTA), that is, the same color as the text of the last line on the last page of ADVERTISING.
And although this glitch is small in size, it indicates that the entire FAULTLESS is made at a very low technical level. There are no sprites in the text, no loading of texts within one article, no additional memory of 128, 256, 512, 1024 KB, and so on..........
Five minutes have passed!
I tried to load FAULTLESS from 48KB and got nothing!
Wow! So your magazine doesn’t even want to work from 48KB! It needs 128!
Now I understand the phrase: "enters the top three best in SNP." Only two magazines, ZX-FORMAT and WELCOME PRESS, work only from 128KB, and now there’s a third one - FAULTLESS!
Do you even understand, gentlemen I+J, what it means to work only from 128KB? It means that your magazine must have smooth pixel-perfect two-screen multicolor scrolling, RAM DISK for articles, the coolest design (not that pile of scrollers that you present as this design), and much much more.
By the way, I am very interested to know: what compressors were used to compress FAULTLESS #4? The second issue of OBERON occupies 1101 sectors without an appendix and consists of 9 sections, which, it is worth noting, are repeatedly loaded (each loading - 20K of compressed articles). FAULTLESS #4 also consists of 9 sections and occupies a similar number of sectors (1090), but the articles have no loads.
The following conclusion suggests itself: FAULTLESS #4 is much less informative (in terms of the volume of information) than OBERON #2, but why does it occupy so much space? And what about 128KB?
And finally, let's discuss the main trump card of gentlemen I+J - the extensive APPENDIX containing only new stuff.
New stuff is certainly cool, especially if there is a lot of it! But new stuff is new stuff, and a magazine is a magazine! As the publishers of SPECTROFON used to say: "Read - play!". And in FAULTLESS it turns out "Read one - played another!". Of course, perhaps your magazine was conceived this way, but at least a kilobyte of description for each program from the appendix could have been allocated!
Even MAX IWAMOTO, who released just a disk version of the game TITANIC BLINKIS, did not forget to include a brief but very useful help for passing. And you, dear I+J, even bothered to reprint this help in the magazine! And not every user will think to press the "S" key during the loading of MAXI INTRO, and then read the text obtained with ZX-WORD.
In short, a large amount of new stuff in the Appendix is good. But is there a need for a magazine that says literally two words about this new stuff?
Yes, for our appendix we take not the newest programs. However, the disk versions of these programs, which are placed in the OBERON BOX, are absolutely new, corrected, supplemented, adapted, etc.
Moreover, we provide a detailed description for each program. We care about users, and users care about our wallets!
And there is no need to "scare" people with the closure of FAULTLESS. The fewer magazines in the country, the more each individual magazine publisher will pay.
With this, I will probably finish telling the TRUTH about FAULTLESS and say goodbye to you, my dear readers.
P.S. Gentlemen IMPETUS LED and JOKER! I hope you perceived the critical remarks soberly and took the current moment into account. I in no way wanted to offend you, just if a person does not notice their own lameness, it is simply necessary to point it out.
I have never considered and will never consider that MAFIA is some great force in the modern SINCLAIR movement. At the same time, it should be recognized that MAFIA is the largest center for the transfer and distribution of software for SPECCY. In this regard, you can be placed on par with MAGIC SOFT (Moscow) and FIKUS-PIKUS of FLASH ibc. (Novosibirsk). But it is one thing to be cool in this matter, and quite another to meddle in someone else's field (publishing magazines!).
Therefore, I wish IMPETUS LED and JOKER every success in their difficult hacker work, and most importantly, I wish them to listen to my remarks and make a truly cool and interesting FAULTLESS #5.
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Contents of the publication: Oberon #03
- From the Authors
The editorial of the third issue of Oberon reflects on its wide distribution across Russia and nearby countries, overcoming production challenges, and its aim to cater to various readers, including gamers, programmers, and hackers.
- How to Write in Oberon - M.M.A
Guide on submitting articles to Oberon using ZX-WINWORD. Detailed format and process explanations for text, graphics, and music. Insight into editorial practices and preferences.
- Scroll - M.M.A
A historical overview of the game THE EIDOLON on ZX Spectrum, covering its restoration process and gameplay mechanics, including level challenges and story background.
- Scroll
Dark Star is a space shooter game where players pilot a ship against a tyrannical alien race. Players customize settings, navigate space, and combat enemy forces on various difficulty levels. Strategic planning and skill are vital for successful gameplay.
- Scroll - M.M.A
Detailed gameplay mechanics for the game with Mechnotech klp2. Strategy involves disarming reactors and managing droid transformations. Insight into different droid types and weapons available.
- About Everything - M.M.A
Discussion of reader interactions with the 'Oberon' editorial team, including feedback on previous issues and commentary on game compatibility and magazine content improvements.
- About Everything - M.M.A
The autobiographical article explores the author's role in Samara's ZX Spectrum scene, detailing his contributions and aspirations. M.M.A positions himself as a leader and innovator in the community. It highlights the importance of local distribution and cultural impact.
- Amiga rulez? - M.M.A
Critical essay on contemporary computer culture, contrasting IBM and Amiga platforms. Discusses societal impact of IBM standardization and advocates Amiga as a symbol of creativity and individuality. Reflects on the evolution of computer usage and preferences since the ZX Spectrum era.
- What Should 'Boot' Be - Unbeliever
The article explores the evolution of boot programs for ZX Spectrum, discussing early developments and key innovations over time. It highlights significant breakthroughs in automation and design, including fully assembler-written boots and the introduction of modern features. The text concludes with reflections on ideal boot characteristics from a contemporary user's perspective.
- Letter from Queen Software
An open letter from Queen Software criticizes ZX-WINWORD's design and Russian keyboard layout, denounces 'Mortal Compot' and the degradation of games, and shares views on demoscene events and computer emulation.
- Review - Unbeliever
The review provides insights into various 128K exclusive games for the ZX Spectrum, highlighting titles like 'Space Gun', 'World Championship Soccer', and 'Night Breed'. Special attention is given to their graphical prowess and gameplay mechanics. Furthermore, the article addresses the acquisition of Spectrum software via the Internet.
- Review of Assemblers - Maxsoft
Review of various assemblers for ZX Spectrum, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. Focus on EDAS 3.3, AFS, XAS, ZX-ASM, ALASM, MASM, and TASM 4.1. Each assembler is evaluated on performance, features, and usability.
- Our Answer - M.M.A
Critical analysis of the electronic journal FAULTLESS, highlighting plagiarism issues and content quality. Discussion on the comparison with OBERON and other journals. Suggestions for improving FAULTLESS are provided.
- Our Response - Alex Noman
Debate over the compatibility and capabilities of Scorpion and Profi computers with the ZX Spectrum. Critique of programming claims by Chung Software regarding outdated languages and methods. Discussion on operating systems like CP/M and iS-DOS in the context of their utility in modern computing.
- Our Response
Exploring the varied interpretations of the term 'hacker' in Russian, highlighting distinctions and misconceptions.
- Hardware - Dr.Death
Connection instructions for AY-3-8910 on Spectrum-compatible machines. Solutions for common audio issues in Russian computers. Advice for improving digital sound compatibility.
- Hardware - Dr.Death
Discussion on modifying SCORPION ZS 256 for better performance, focusing on timing issues and TURBO mode. Explanation of improvements and potential problems with multicolors. Suggestions for further upgrades.
- Hardware - Poltergeist Corp.
Analysis of hardware issues with Profi, a ZX Spectrum clone, focusing on INT signal problems causing graphic flickering. A solution is proposed involving a simple hardware modification. The author shares their success and the widespread adoption in Samara.
- Let's Gurm
A microdrama illustrating the chaotic interaction between computer components during a printing task.
- Let's Feast
Satirical story depicting an alternate reality where American culture and symbols are humorously twisted by Soviet influences.
- Let's Feast
The story humorously describes Popov's efforts to help Papuans progress, amid desert struggles, political intrigue, and personal challenges.
- Let's Discuss
Overview of military jargon known as 'Army Absurdities' collected by students, highlighting unique language and instructions used in military training and communications.
- Let's Feast
Satirical article describing military humor and fictional military equipment.
- Literacy Campaign - Paul Atrides
Analysis of hacker misconceptions and societal attitudes, exploring hacker culture's roots and ethical dilemmas.
- Primer - Paul Atrides
Article discusses the role and activities of Russian hackers in the late 1990s, highlighting notable cases and categorizing different types of hackers. It covers the operations, risks, and impacts of hacking on international and local levels. The text also examines the societal perception of hackers and their portrayal in media.
- Contest - M.M.A
A contest involving identifying songs from poorly translated lyrics, inspired by a radio segment. Participants guess the song and artist. No specific prize yet, but a free journal issue is promised.
- Contest
A poetic reflection on personal struggle, misunderstood communication, and the burden of saving the world.
- Contest
A poetic reflection on isolation and inner dreams, contrasting with harsh reality.
- Contest
The article presents a poetic tribute to the community, emphasizing themes of unity, immortality, and strength through metal music.
- Advertisement
Advertisement in Oberon magazine offers free publication and discusses available software, hardware, and stores related to ZX Spectrum.
- Advertisement
Advertisement of computer repair and upgrades with pricing for various services. Options include drive connection, signal normalization, and memory upgrades. Specific services for different computer models like Pentagon and ATM.
