Interview with ACBS
 1fIShWAVe & ACBS
   $Interview with ACBS of Ram Jam
   !arranged by  #fIShWAVe
  ! 
Welcome to the first interview in  #Seenpoint ! with an Italian guest. It is  #ACBS !, the organizer of  $Ram Jam ! and main editor of  "Showtime !. Read about the future plans for  "Showtime ! and  $Ram Jam !, get  #ACBS !' point of view concerning the " "The Charts !" affair and his contra to  #Mase ! &  #Posdnous ! and get to know Italys oldest scener more closer!
  !No time to waste, it is time for another interview somewhere in a German pub called  "Scene Cafe !...
  !
  "CN. !: Welcome in our  "Scene Cafe !,  #ACBS !. What is your favourite drink? Do you want to order a pizza or anything else?
  "  !
  "AB !: Hi scene, and thanks to you  #Seenpoint ! dudes for interviewing myself My favourite drink? Naturally it is the mighty old  "Jack Daniel's ! from Tennessee... but I'm not thirsty.. so I won't order anything for the moment....
  "  !
  "CN. !: I think our bouncer has forgotten to check your identity card, so please tell us some more personal informations about you to have the right picture in mind who  #ACBS ! in reality is.
  "  !
  "AB !: Well,  #ACBS ! is a 25 years old Italian male. You want to know who I really am.. but it's quite difficult since I'm not able to judge myself, how can you judge me? Anyway I'll try to describe the  #ACBS ! status as well as I can.
  "  !My real name is Andrea Calcagno (As  #ACBS ! stands for  #A !ndrea  #C !alcagno  #B !reaking  #S !ervice and I call myself in this way from our good old C64 years..) I live in the Sardinia Island (In the town of Alghero) and I am married with Sonia since 1992, I own a PC softwarehouse (argh..) and I've got a couple of cars like a LANCIA DELTA GTIE 1.6 and a small but nice OPEL CORSA 1.2i, naturally my hobbies are not far from Computers, like Internetting, coding demos and making  "Showtime !.
  !
  "CN. !: Now something about your scene-history: When did you enter the scene, what did you do at the beginning of your scene time, in which groups have you been and so on.
  "  !
  "AB !: Well, I'm actually the oldest scener in Italy, since  #E$G !/ $IBB ! left it. I entered in 1984 as I started making cracks on the C64. Then I made three games for that machine and an infinity of crack intros. I also coded a really cool Disk (de-)Assembler which was the best I have ever seen on C64, eheh. In 1989 I made my big step to the Amiga, and I formed a crew called  $The Power Home !, but we did only some packs, docs disks and three or four utilities. In 1990 I formed  $Ram Jam ! together with  #Levin ! (former  $Energy ! member) and I didn't change a lot from that, as I'm still the Leader of  $Ram Jam !.
  "  !
  "CN. !: Since some months you are besides your leader status in $ Ram Jam ! the main responsible editor for  "Showtime !, the new charts-magazine and successor of  "The Charts !. Why did you actually decide to let  "The Charts ! die? And were you the only candidate for the main-editors job?
  "  !
  "AB !: Well, we were really friends in  $Ram Jam !, with no exceptions. One day I received  "The Charts 16 ! from  #Posdnuos ! and I saw in the editorial: "The train is stopping". What? They decided to stop making  "The Charts ! without asking it to the one who did  "The Charts !... It was really strange .. or not? After discussions I decided to continue  "The Charts ! (as I released the Trailer for  "The Charts 18 !), but then, just not to lose my friendship with  #Mase ! and  #Posdnuos ! I decided that it was better to stop there with  "The Charts ! and make a new chart-mag. We thought that as The  "Eurocharts ! were dead and  "The Charts ! too, the new one should have been the official one... and  #Fashion ! (ex- $Eurocharts ! staff) joined us to make  "Showtime ! a sort of  "real official scenechart !.
  "  !
  "CN. !:  "Showtime ! looks very similar to  "The Charts ! and bad tongues said that most of the mag has been just a  "rip off ! from ex.  $Ram Jam ! members - what's true on those rumors?
  "  !
  #AB !: And that is really bad for me. As I said we were really friends. When we decided to stop  "The Charts !, we also decided to include in  "Showtime ! the overall design of  "The Charts !, becuase we loved it.  #Randy ! applied at his best to make a code better but similar to the old  "The !  "Charts ! one. When we finished  "Showtime ! I,as for any of our production, uploaded it in the Ram Jam area on  "The House BBS !, where  #Mase ! &  #Posdnuos ! downloaded it.
  #  !A couple of days later I phoned them because I wanted to give them the code (as any source code of  $RamJam !'s productions is shared between the coders of the crew...) but they hanged up the phone. From that day the only things they told me were SOB, Worm etc. etc.... I never said a bad word against them and I won't say any ever. I've got my style, and I'm no more a child as they are now showing. I'm not jealous of a work from a friend, as I wasn't when they made  "The Charts ! and had a big success. Now the incredibles bros made a Web Page showing the "proofs" that we ripped  #Mase's ! source. Apart that I have the original source, so no need to rip it, they showed in an IFF  "Showtime !'s bottom panel and  "The !  "Charts !' one to let people see they are equal. Well, the one they placed there has never been released as it was made for  "The Charts 18 !. And if you rip  "Showtime !'s gfx you will notice the difference. So I ask to everybody:  What do you think about someone who to prove something uses a false clue, knowing it's false?
  !
  "CN. !: Has this defamation caused a loss of motivation to you so that  "Showtime ! may get delayed or even cancelled?
  "  !
  "AB !: Not really. Instead it gave me more strenght to continue this job, and to show that  "The Charts ! weren't great for  #Mase ! &  #Posdnuos !, but for all the  $Ram Jam ! crew, who worked so much for that. They thought it was something they did alone, and they thought we were not able do to something like that without their apport.  "Showtime ! is the best answer we could give. A better code, a better design and better graphics and musics. The whole group worked really hard for it. And it's not finished. You will see from issue 3. We are thinking of something really great.
  "  !
  "CN. !: In the first issue of  "Showtime ! you wrote that this chart will be produced until the end of the scene - do you think this is a realistic promise?
  "  !
  "AB !: Yes, for sure. Not because I'm immortal or  $Ram Jam ! is immortal, but because I see very near the end of the (Amiga) scene. In any case we will strongly encourage people not to leave the Amiga and to support our wonderful machine more than before, but sadly I'm quite sure of what I'm saying.
  "  !
  "CN. !: Several people moaned about the voters of  "Showtime ! - there were too many Eastern Europe sceners who somekind "faked" the charts and did not reflect the whole scene's opinion. What do you say to this?
  "  !
  "AB !: I quite agree. Strange? Not, it's not my fault if we got hundreds of votesheets from Poland and 4 from Germany.  "Showtime ! is the scene chart and everybody is allowed to vote. But if people didn't vote, I can't fake the charts and place at the best places western Europeans. I just counted the votes we got and made the charts on that. Anyway I think that problem applied only to issue 1, because, fortunately for the scene, German people, French people and Nordic people restarted sending us votesheets. You can give a look to the List of Voters of issue 2 to understand this, but you will also notice that eastern Europeans are still there, maybe not at the first place, but they're still there. And that because the scene is now more developed in eastern Europe despite that in the western part. How many sceners are there in Poland? And how many in the rest of Europe? This is a question to which we all have to answer, and if you are not a liar... Anyway I also think that coders like  #Musashi ! or  #Sputnik !, or musicians like  #Dreamer ! or  #XTD !, or graphicians like  #Lazur ! deserves their place in the charts.
  "  !
  "CN. !: Besides that patriotism problem, are there still people who fake the charts just to get into it? Are there some examples you could name us?
  "  !
  "AB !: Yes, surely. Many times I received votes faked by someone (especially swappers) who send me 4-5 votesheets with their votes and the ones of unknown people, naturally all voting for them. In this case I count only the votes of the guy who sent directly the pack. The others flies in the trashcan.
  "  !I won't make any name tough, We say the fact, not the maker. eheh. Anyway I can say that some really wellknown scener (and not a swapper) faked a bit... You know.. the editor of a really important diskmag.

  "CN. !: Do you think competition between different chartsmags would help the scene or is it killing motivation of any charts staff at a specific point of time?
  "  !
  "AB !: No, one of the reasons for the death of  "The Charts !, is that we beated the  "Eurocharts !. They died, we won. And the motivation to keep on wasn't the one we had trying to become the best one. It's better to have someone who tries to beat you, you give the maximum. If there's no competition, you are "allowed" not to give your best. Just keep on conscious to be the best.
  "  !
  "CN. !: Would you like to have the  "Eurocharts ! back produced by a new production team? Wouldn't this be a great piece of scene history back?
  "  !
  "AB !: Yes, I'd like it. But I'm quite sure we won't see any more that production, as, for what I know,  $Estrup ! won't give the rights to anyone.
  "  !
  "CN. !: Ok, last question to  "Showtime !. Are you planning something special for further issues like e.g. a statistics service a la  "Eurocharts !, are you going to built in something completely new or will the mag be untouched in its concept?
  "  !
  "AB !: Well, as I already said we are planning some innovations. For the moment they are top-secret, but you probably will notice them from the third issue. The only thing that I can say is that we will introduce the gallery, since from the death of the  "Eurochart !, I didn't see any good one.
  "  !
  "CN. !: As we already mentioned, you are the organizer of  $Ram Jam !. Lately the Swedish division got quite active and seems to be very promising. Do you plan to build up more divisions soon?
  "  !
  "AB !: No, I don't think so. I've got interesting plans, but I don't think there will be many "divisions" as you call them.  $Ram Jam ! is one group. No divisions. We have 5 members in Sweden who are working really well, we have one guy in Germany who is making his best for  "Showtime ! (Hi Fashion) and we have some other Italians making  "Showtime ! and working hard. If someone else will join  $Ram Jam !, this won't be a division, it will still be  $Ram Jam ! and nothing more. 
  "  !
  "CN. !: And what's about the Italian section - how active are Italy's most popular sceners?
  "  !
  "AB !: Now we are only 7, and 3 are swappers... So the Italian RamJammers won't release tons of stuff as they used to. Anyway we are making something really cool, but  "Showtime ! takes quite all of our free time, and, as we are "aged", we have to work to survive.
  "  !
  "CN. !: Are there any productions planned for the near future? Can we expect any big surprises?
  "  !
  "AB !: Well, you will see a really nice demo for the Virtual Outing 96 from the Swedes and then a cool musicdisk from the Italians, a hd only production which will be called  "Spaceman ! (musics from  #N-JOY !) that will be released within June.
  "  !
  "CN. !: Well, you're living in Italy - surely a very nice country to live in, but the scene is not very spread there. What do you think about your country's scene?
  "  !
  "AB !: That there is no scene. I mean, Italians, in the most of cases, thinks only to make money and not to have fun. That's why you see many games from Italians (like Kick off,Breathless, Pool Arcade, Virtual Karting) but not many demos or scene-related stuffs.
  "  !
  "CN. !: Lately some other Italian groups got more famous especially  $Biosynthetic Design !. What do you think of the other groups. Are they friends to the Ram Jammers or is there a competition to be Italy's number one?
  "  !
  "AB !: No way. There is no competition, since  $Ram Jam ! is something more than an Amiga group in Italy. We made a course published by an Italian real mag, which teaches how to code demos. The main part of the new groups here in Italy started coding with that course (done by  #Randy !...) and pay us for that (as it's shareware...). So no way of compos or whatelse.  $Biosynthetic Design ! is something different. It's made by sceners and they are closer friends to us as you might have noticed they did the Intro for  "Showtime 2 !.
  "  !
  "CN. !: In case you will not stay in the scene until the bitter end, will there be anyone allowed to continue with the  $Ram Jam ! label?
  "  !
  "AB !: I don't know.. who knows? Everything should come to an end, but in this moment I see nearer the end of the Amiga scene than the end of  #ACBS !.
  "  !
  "CN. !: Let's leave the scene world a bit. What is  #ACBS ! doing after he switches off his computer? What has the  $Ram Jam ! organizer to do to get his salary?
  "  !
  "AB !: Well, it should sound strange, but I never turn off my computers. I own a small software company for the PC, as I make contability programs and if I have free time it's my Amiga turned on; if I have to work it's one of my PCs.
  "  !I've got a family (also if we are only two, me and my wife) and I have to earn enough to live. I don't plan to become a millionaire, but I'd like to live in a good way, without troubles. That's why I don't have as many time as I'd like to spend in front of my 1200....

  "CN. !: Do you want to become "daddy" sooner or later and see some small sceners growing up?
  "  !
  "AB !: I'll be in near future, or at least we planned to have a child as soon as Sonia finishes her university studies, for the moment it's the daughter of my sister who will become a scener. She's a little 3 years old girl called Naomi, but she's already starting to type on the keyboard.....
  "  !
  "CN. !: And here it is - the traditional  #Seenpoint ! question! If you could chose between one million dollars, a night with one of the top models of this world or  $Ram Jam !'s number one ranking in any scenechart - what would be your decision?
  "  !
  "AB !: For sure I won't spend a night with a top model. I love my wife, and she's not so bad, too. Then I should decide to have one million dollars. Also because with so much money I would pay the best coders and graphician to work for us (naturally I'm kidding.. I've some other project to develope with money.... The scene is only fun & friendship I don't care if I'm ranked #1 or #100... It doesn't matter...)
  "  !
  "CN. !: So, we have reached the end. Do you have something to add or do you want to greet anybody? If yes then take your chance now!
  "  !
  "AB !: Wow... quite a couple of hours spent together... but as I said before everything comes to an end. And this is not an exception. I'd like to greet everyone in the scene, and an special greet to  #Fishwave ! who bored himself in sizeing this crap. Stay cool and thank you for making such a nice mag!
  "  !
  "CN. !: Thank you for your time and we wish you the very best for your further life!