Welcome new readers of the Hornyrob news group. Along with the rest of the regulars we hope you have read the FAQ for this group, and post accordingly. Visit us on the web as well at the following address: http://start.at/abpeh Any questions regarding the FAQ can be addressed in the group, or via email to siren@yuck.net This FAQ is merely maintained by siren, all changes are subject to a vote within the group. Subject: FAQ FAQ Horny Rob Group FAQ FAQ --- Read BEFORE Requesting or Posting last updated 16 Oct 98 FAQ FAQ FAQ Horny Rob Group FAQ FAQ FAQ TABLE OF CONTENTS ---------------------------------------------- WHAT IS THE MISSION OF THE HORNY ROB NEWSGROUP? WHO IS HORNY ROB? WHO ARE THE OTHER CONTRIBUTORS OF ORIGINAL WORK IN THIS GROUP? ---------------------------------------------- WHAT ARE THE RULES OF BEHAVIOR IN THIS GROUP? ---------------------------------------------- WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE LEVELS OF PARTICIPATION IN GROUP ACTIVITY? ---------------------------------------------- HOW DOES ONE MAKE A REQUEST? WHAT REQUESTING ACTIONS ARE FROWNED UPON? ---------------------------------------------- HOW DOES ONE BECOME AN ACTIVE POSTER IN THE GROUP? ARE THERE ANY RULES ABOUT POSTING? WHAT POSTING ACTIONS ARE FROWNED UPON? HOW CAN I HELP REDUCE MULTIPLE REPLY POSTING? WHAT'S THAT ABOUT FRIDAY POSTING? ---------------------------------------------- WHAT IS VERIFICATION? WHY DO WE NEED VERIFICATION? WHAT DO PEOPLE DO TO PICTURE FILES? WHAT ELSE DO PEOPLE DO? HOW IMPORTANT IS VERIFICATION? WHAT'S WITH "THE SHERIFF" ARE THERE ALTERNATIVES TO SHERIFF? WHAT ABOUT FILES I CAN'T FIND CRC LISTS FOR? ---------------------------------------------- OTHER THAN THIS FAQ, WHAT USEFUL DOCUMENTS EXIST? ---------------------------------------------- ********************** WHAT IS THE MISSION OF THE HORNY ROB NEWSGROUP? The group serves two purposes. First, it is a location where Horny Rob, and a few other traditional posters who closely follow his style and intent, can first publish their new work. Second, it is a meeting place for collectors of his and those few others work, where on a friendly, helpful basis they can exchange items with each other in order to build their individual collections. The trading concept of something for something does not apply here. If someone has a need, and someone else can help, that's all there is to it. WHO IS HORNY ROB? HR is a Dutchman with a longtime interest in visual erotica. He does some original work, but a great part of his output consists of scans taken from various sources. He also samples many videos, as for instance Dirty Debutantes for the debut series. Other sources are vintage and classic erotica, from which the hr60s collection, Classic Nudes and the Erotica Universalis derive. At this date HR and his "family" have posted more than 15000 pictures to the Internet, a figure which keeps increasing with new releases usually on a weekly basis. WHO ARE THE OTHER CONTRIBUTORS OF ORIGINAL WORK IN THIS GROUP? A very few others have been deemed by HR to be acceptable as original contributors to the newsgroup, on the basis of similarity of viewpoint and techniques. These are: Son of Horny Rob (SOHR) A Son of Horny Rob (SHR) Daughter of Horny Rob (DOHR) 2 Bees Please Niro There is no present expectation of any addition to that list. ------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT ARE THE RULES OF BEHAVIOR IN THIS GROUP? Observe "Netiquette" pretty much says it all. The Golden Rule applies. It doesn't hurt, when writing messages, to visualize the other person as sitting a few feet away from you, instead of hundreds or thousands of miles. Don't say anything you wouldn't care to defend at close quarters. --------------------------------------------------------- WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE LEVELS OF PARTICIPATION IN GROUP ACTIVITY? There are basically three levels. They are lurker, requester and poster. LURKERS, the actual number of whom can never be known, simply visit the group and read the Message List. If they become interested in some discussion among group members they can follow its progress, although it might be pointed out that there isn't much discussion in this group compared to many others. Our primary interest is pictures, rather than words. After reading the Message List each lurker can select posted pictures which would assist in building his/her own collection, and download them. For beginners it might be useful to point out that a complete "HR and Family" collection would probably now require close to 1 Gigabyte of hard disk space to store. Unless blessed with unlimited resources the new collector might need initially to decide on a restricted collecting goal. Most beginners concentrate on the basic HR-### series. These at the moment run from HR-001 through HR-183, for a total of around 4500 pictures, taking close to 250 Mb of disk space. REQUESTERS are born when lurkers have randomly accumulated enough pictures in a given set (or series - the terms are interchangeable) to become impatient about getting the rest. The reluctance to break the message-posting ice finally is overcome by the urgent need to get results. A minor aspect of becoming a requester is that of "revealing oneself" to the world. Whether your concern is about getting unwanted junk e-mail, or of that dreaded knock on the door at 4 AM, simply look at the structure of messages while still lurking and note how different people use their posting software to create fictitious identities and addresses. It is very much in the group's interest for lurkers to become requesters, since that action reinforces the group philosophy of "Request and Reply". As will be seen further on, the group tries to discourage the posting of material which has not actually been requested, in the interest of conserving space on marginal news servers. There are a number of things a requester can do to help the group run smoothly, which will be touched upon in a later section of this FAQ. POSTERS have gone a step further toward learning about their software and its ability to have an "attachment" made to a basic message. Most everyone's first attempt involves a single picture, which hopefully will appear properly on the Message List after one or a few tries. There is a heady feeling of achievement about that, and sometimes an almost addictive urge to post more, More, MORE. That is why there is a fair section later on devoted to the do's and don'ts of posting. --------------------------------------------------------- HOW DOES ONE MAKE A REQUEST? Never send a request message by making it a reply to a posting message, thus starting with "Re:" and including the description of the already posted file on the subject line. That is totally confusing. Simply post a new message into the group asking for what you need. Be as clear as you can, describing pictures correctly. Say hr-017 not hr 17, sohr0512 not sohr 512. Always indicate that the message is a request. The preferred way to do that is to begin the message subject line with "REQ" or "REQUEST" (Omit the quotes) Saying "ATTN" is more appropriate in announcing some other sort of statement to an individual or to the group, while saying "RE" specifically implies a reply to some other message. If you only need some items in a set, list those items -- don't ask for the entire set. To avoid confusion, if you only need parts of a set, don't just mention the set number in your message header, as often a poster will misunderstand and send you the entire set. If only a few items, make them part of the subject. If many, give some indication to look inside the message. When requesting say please if that is normal to your nature. Say ASAP and risk being ignored by posters for all time. While you can say TIA (thanks in advance) it is far preferable to post a follow-up "Thank you" message, letting the poster know that his efforts were indeed successful. WHAT REQUESTING ACTIONS ARE FROWNED UPON? Not many, really, particularly since newbies are the potential lifeblood of any group, and are bound to screw things up now and then in the learning process. One unnecessary annoyance to everyone, though, is the hybrid poster/requester who says "Here's what I have, fill the gaps." This person is asking a potential poster to do his homework for him, rather than making up his own wishlist. In addition there is no way of knowing whether the gaps represent actual needs, or simply failure of the Internet to get those items through. ------------------------------------------------------------ HOW DOES ONE BECOME AN ACTIVE POSTER IN THE GROUP? Anyone who finds he has something that someone else needs, and who has taken the trouble of learning how his posting software works, is warmly invited to join in the fun. ARE THERE ANY RULES ABOUT POSTING? The most important rule is to be sensible about quantity of material posted. A limit of 100 picture binaries per day has been set, as well as a limit of 10 MPG files. News servers vary greatly in their capacities for retaining posted material, before it must be discarded to make room for newer items. People in areas with relatively poor service will encounter more and more missing item problems as the volume of posting goes up. In line with this, don't feel obligated to fill the request of someone who asks for several full sets at one time. Also, ration those who ask for all of lengthy series like hr60s or debut or Street Hookers. Give them a fair sample, and let them request again if they want more. It will show courtesy to the group, on the part of each poster, to post material which merits the marking vfd (verified). In accordance with general Usenet practice, the correct file name should be displayed in the subject line of each posted item. In order to make the downloader's reading job as easy as possible, it is preferable not to include too much "garbage" in the subject line. One item well omitted is a requote of the requester's subject line. "Short and sweet" particularly benefits downloaders working with small monitors. WHAT POSTING ACTIONS ARE FROWNED UPON? (1) Simply emptying one's hard drive into the group, with some subject heading like "all my HR". (2) Posting basic HR-###, SOHR or SHR sets that no one has requested. There is no assurance that there is anyone interested out there, at any given time. Bandwidth will be better utilized when those who have been lurkers overcome their shyness and learn to take that small extra step of posting request messages for items that they will be there to receive. Complete sets, other than those mentioned above, may be posted even though not requested. It is only asked that the poster exercise reasonable discretion and restraint. Very large JPEG sets should be broken up into 50-100 file blocks, to be posted on successive days. When posting MPEG's keep in mind their much larger file sizes, and hold down quantity accordingly. (3) Posting graphic material generated by anyone other than the approved posters listed earlier. There are many other specialized groups appropriate to various interests, where non-HR items can easily find comfortable homes. This group is for Horny Rob and "HR Approved" work only. HOW CAN I HELP REDUCE MULTIPLE REPLY POSTING? In order to allow other posters to decide whether a given request has already been answered, always include a statement such as "for JohnDoe" in each subject line of your reply. "As requested" just doesn't hack it. If the individual making the request used an internal message signature different from his "Author" identity, by preference use the author name in your "for -------" statement. It is the only one other posters can see in a simple message list presentation. WHAT'S THAT ABOUT FRIDAY POSTING? There is a school of thought in the group that not posting on Friday until HR has done his weekly upload will improve the chances of his stuff getting through to everybody. No real evidence one way or the other, but a lot of us go along with it just to be good buddies. Let's the modem cool down a bit, too :-) --------------------------------------------------------- WHAT IS VERIFICATION? Verification requires that an electronic document be evaluated in comparison to some standard, in order to find whether the document has been altered from its original form. A document which passes the test is then considered verified (vfd). In our group the chosen method of verification employs the JPEG Sheriff program, which checks file name, file size in bytes, picture size in pixels and precise file content. It should be noted that a simple agreement on file size in bytes is NOT adequately accurate to permit declaring a file verified. WHY DO WE NEED VERIFICATION? When an original scanner, for example HR, presents his work to the cyberworld each picture is in the form of an electronic document. These documents (files) are quite highly organized internally, in accordance with one of many available standard formats. The format employed for still pictures in this group is JPEG. Any change to the internal structure of a JPEG file can result in the viewed picture being defective in some fashion -- streaks, missing picture areas, color degradation, even complete failure to function. Changes can come about accidentally through Internet transmission errors, inadvertently because of bugs in uploading and downloading software, and all too often as a result of the actions of PEOPLE like you and me. WHAT DO PEOPLE DO TO PICTURE FILES? One of the most common actions by people is to use a graphics program to "compress" a file, thus permitting storage of more files in a given hard disk space. This isn't to be confused with commercial compression programs intended for "space saving", because they are designed to be "lossless" -- that is, not to permanently alter the files they handle. However, JPEG files are nearly incompressible by those programs, and there is a temptation to use the inherent JPEG capability of being compressed at different ratios to achieve file size reduction. By "opening" a picture in a suitable program and then "saving" it at a higher compression ratio, the file size can often be cut by 1/2, 2/3 or even more. The penalty paid will be in degradation of picture quality, especially important to us because it is most apparent in the rendition of skin color tones and texture :-( A WARNING to all in connection with this. Even though you may have no intention of doing so, if instead of "closing" a picture after viewing you "save" it, you will most likely have changed the file irreversibly. The nature of JPEG's is that this will always degrade picture quality to some degree, even if you deliberately save to a larger file size. There is no way of improving a JPEG picture through re-saving it. WHAT ELSE DO PEOPLE DO? If someone is working with a small monitor, he can use a graphics program to fit a picture to his screen by reducing its pixel size, as from 800x600 to 640x480. This involves a total recomputation of the picture file and will usually raise havoc with its appearance. Or, someone may decide to remove part of a picture by "cropping". Or, someone may think he can improve a picture by using a suitable program to change contrast, brightness or color balance. Or, at minimum, someone may rename a picture to fit his own filing scheme. Obviously, every one of us has the right to do whatever we want with our own copies of pictures. But, we also have a responsibility to our fellow groupies not to post back into the group any files which we have knowingly modified. HOW IMPORTANT IS VERIFICATION? Some group members are very serious and fussy collectors. Others are far more casual and don't demand total authenticity in their pictures. For all members to be satisfied a successful ongoing verification effort is needed, to keep the quality of posted images high -- insofar as possible, identical to the original HR postings into the group. For those less experienced ones among us, it would be asking too much to require that no posting be made of a picture that they have not personally verified. But, it is also reasonable to expect that such members will be posting just for fun, and not in large volume. For bulk posters, those who answer lengthy request lists, there is a moral obligation to the group to put up only good material. The means are available and there is no excuse for shoddy work. Happily there seems to be pretty good agreement on that, and there have been a number of independent comments recently as to the notable improvement of quality in the group. WHAT'S WITH "THE SHERIFF" JPEG Sheriff is a program which, when presented with a group of JPEG files, will generate a "CRC list". As noted earlier that list contains, for each file: file name, file size in bytes, picture size in pixels and a mathematically computed CRC number which is unique for that file. By using files of known correctness when generating the lists, those lists can be widely distributed as standards and anyone with a copy of Sheriff can use them to check another collection. Any file in that collection which does not conform in all respects to the standard will be flagged. Further mention of Sheriff CRC lists will be found under OTHER USEFUL DOCUMENTS at the end of this FAQ. The Sheriff site may be visited at (a new address) http://www.eboa.com/Sheriff/index.html For collectors of other scanners' work, links from there will get you to sites for many, many CRC lists. ARE THERE ALTERNATIVES TO SHERIFF? Unfortunately for some potential users, the only available version of Sheriff requires Windows 95 to run. Since the official standards of the group are Sheriff CRC lists, any alternative program must still derive its comparison data from those lists. A member of the group has recently come forward with a DOS program capable of doing that, and there have been some successful tests of it. On the Mac side, justbob wrote a program called File Collector a while back, and is now working on a fancier version. The present one also employs Sheriff lists (after easy reformatting), but is of somewhat limited usefulness. It will only run on Power Macs, and still might not if OS 8 is being used. It has worked OK with OS 8.1 (as well as 7). WHAT ABOUT FILES I CAN'T FIND CRC LISTS FOR? An official Horny Rob CDROM (nearly a year and a half old now) was employed as the reference in creating CRC lists covering about 8000 files. More recent HR files were selected as references by cross-comparing downloads made by several careful collectors until it was felt that agreement was sufficient to insure correctness. This process worked adequately for reconstructing all HR-### sets, as well as those of the HR "family". It also has served well to handle other fairly recent HR material. This leaves a "gray area" of material (nearly 700 files) posted after the CD was burned, but long enough ago to have been circulated a lot and degraded by handling and mis-handling. This has left enough versions of each file around to make any correct choice among them impossible. It appears that the only way these sets can ever be reliably organized will be to get reference copies (or maybe CRC lists) from HR himself. Some efforts have been made in that direction, but so far with no success. Meanwhile, here is a listing of "gray area" sets, hopefully fairly accurate and complete, although figures indicating the number of files in each set could be off a little. As the man said, don't hold your breath while waiting for CRC lists. A HR Animal Sex Presentation (HR's own BBS downloads) -- 70+ (wide range of filenames) anna##hr -- 62 b-tina -- 14 hr-ac -- 56 hr-ang -- 19 hr-brz -- 12 hr-cac (Crazy Sex Collection) -- 25 hr-dog -- 41 hr-frk -- 5 hr-hp (Home page) -- 61 hr-sles (Sex Lessons) -- 4 hr17t -- 292 prbaby -- 23 Also, 3russn, sg5h, hr_con and hrjap indexes, which weren't on the CDROM although the sets were. ------------------------------------------------------------- OTHER THAN THIS FAQ, WHAT USEFUL DOCUMENTS EXIST? (1) Over several months mefib, our "CRC Lady" created CRC lists covering nearly all HR and "family" material for which reliable references could be found. She posted these as they became available, and also did repeated postings of "crcpkg.zip", containing all lists current as of each posting. mefib eventually retired from this arduous task. Work is continuing as new series are released. This is done by a group of regulars working together. Look for regular new postings of revised individual lists and of crcpkg.zip. (2) An alphabetically sorted (by filename) list of HR material posted prior to about the end of 1996, and containing 5200 items, is posted regularly. There are two versions, PRE97DOS and PRE97MAC. (3) There are 214 indexes which Shadow constructed during the Spring of 1997, for HR series which have no indexes of their own. The SHADOW "SUPPLEMENTARY INDEX" LIST lets you see whether there are any you would care to request in the group. *** END OF FAQ ***