--------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Annotated Real Pirate's Guide: A Cultural Guidepost, with notes from Jason Scott, TEXTFILES.COM 01/04/2002 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- How This Came About: In early 2001 I was asked to add to a music project by reading from whatever I considered to be a "classic" textfile. I chose an old, early 1980's file called "The Real Pirate's Guide", by "Rabid Rasta". I figured that this example of textfile writing would stand out in everyone's mind as the best type of Pirate Hubris and harken back to the days when 300 baud modems ruled the earth and no one really dreamed that people would have more speed going to their homes than once existed as the entire ARPAnet's backbone. As I browsed over the file and began reading it as if anew, however, I found that I was straining to understand all the references that Rabid Rasta was making, and that if it was giving ME trouble, with all the recent studying I'd been doing of BBS-era textfiles, then a whole generation of computer users were going to have the historical text available at a single mouseclick or URL, but lose the full meaning of what the text referred to. I decided to try, as a sort of experiment, to annotate the Real Pirate's Guide, and give some context to the lines in the file. This is not the best way to read this file for the first time; you should read the unaltered original, and then come back to this version. (A copy of the original file exists at http://www.textfiles.com/100/realpira.hum) To my surprise, this file has touched on many different aspects of the 1980's BBS era, much more than an instruction guide for "Real Pirates" would be expected to, and the effort has been well worth it. I've tried to be as complete as possible about a subject being touched on by this file. In some cases, I go completely overboard, but I'd rather have the maximum amount of information about a piece of history than not enough. Any entries and comments that I'm making are couched in a bunch of ----- lines, and be upper and lowercase, 80 columns. The original text is 40 columns, all uppercase. I invite any comments and additions to improve this file. - Jason Scott TEXTFILES.COM ============================================================================ The following file, "The Real Pirate's Guide", was a file distributed on computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) in the early 1980's. Dated as 1984, this file was probably written as a parody of specific figures within the author's local calling area. It was then "uploaded" (sent) to a number of BBSes, where its entertaining nature and easy accessibility as a humor piece encouraged users to "download" (retrieve) it and send it to other Bulletin Board Systems around the country, and later the world. Its popularity and quality show in the fact that a search of the Internet in 2001 finds copies of the file still accessible from at least two dozen sites, and it is likely buried in archives at even more, 17 years after it was first written. By 1984 there were thousands of BBSes connected to single phone lines throughout the country, running on microcomputers and using modems to answer calls coming in from all over. While most BBSes of the time could be considered "above-board" and focusing on computer tips, political discussion and generally "acceptable" conversation, there were also a large amount of "underground" BBSes, which contained information on computer hacking, phone phreaking, and software piracy. Lacking the space for large-scale program storage, very few BBSes actually contained pirated software for download (or would only have one or two programs available on a rotating basis) but they were often used as meeting places to arrange trade between two otherwise unlikely-to-meet users. This environment of piracy brought with it the usual baggage of a subculture composed of young teens: Hubris, One-Upmanship, wild claims, and most interestingly, unique and shifting language meant to leave nonparticipants in the dust. In this environment, an author calling himself "Rabid Rasta" created a humorous/instructive textfile about the world of online software piracy called "The Real Pirate's Guide." The idea of the "Textfile" or "G-Phile" was that aside from the messages and writing that users posted to a BBS, some essays and thoughts were considered important or entertaining enough to be given a separate section to read from. A number of BBS programs called this section the "General Files" section, reachable from their main menu with a "G" command, and these writings were soon referred to as "G Files", later "G Philes". At first just a random selection of textfiles, a small subset of the BBS world formed into groups who would produce a series of text; these serials soon became hot items for some BBSes as the newest installments would come out. The "Real Pirate's Guide" did spawn a large amount of sequels and homages (over 20), but Rabid Rasta's involvement with them seems minimal. Here, then, is the "Real Pirate's Guide", with my additional notes. I have tried to be as accurate as possible and kept my opinions to myself, focusing instead on why certain phrases are said the way they are, and to try to give context to Rabid Rasta's work. The file has undergone a number of edits and changes over time, making determination of what it originally looked like somewhat difficult, but I believe the file being annotated in this document is the "canonical" text, which I downloaded from a BBS around late 1984. ------------------- [/] [\] [/] [\] [/] [\] [/] [\] [/] [\] [\] [/] [/] THE REAL PIRATE'S GUIDE [\] [\] [/] [/] COMPILED BY [\] [\] RABID RASTA [/] [/] [\] [\] [/] [\] [/] [\] [/] [\] [/] [\] [/] ------------------- This file was originally written in 40 columns, all uppercase. Why? Because the Apple II, one of the more popular home computers of the early 1980's, did not originally come with the ability to do 80 columns, or lowercase. This was later remedied, and for those who paid the money, a chip could be installed to give older Apples these missing features. BBS programs would often ask you how many columns you wished to see the BBS in. This normally only came into play in the message bases, where you might see the same message others were seeing, but converted back down to 40 columns. To a very small amount, the 40 column/80 column difference was used as a sign of eliteness or status, although Apple computers were already on the high end of the cost scale for most people and focusing on such a minor thing was not ultimately that relevant. Then again, the social strata around the speed of one's modem persisted for well over a decade. The use of 40 columns/uppercase helps the historian to locate the time of a file, although some people continued to use their 40 column computers well into the late 1980's. Additionally, as more and more BBSes became purely 80 columns, many older textfiles were converted to 80 columns upper/lower by later authors, who sometimes took this opportunity to put their own name on the works. This unfortunately muddles the vintage of a given file. In this particular case, Rabid Rasta was kind enough to give the date of his work as 1984, which helps indicate where things stood historically. Apples were now on the market for roughly 7 years, BBSes were in the middle of a huge explosion of computer users, and a reasonably popular file (like this one) could be expected to be distributed around the country, if not worldwide. Note that Rabid Rasta has put [/] characters around the title of his file. It's not currently known where exactly this habit started, but the use of minimal "text graphics" to surround the title and author of a textfile has continued to the present day. Even back then, the graphics could get somewhat elaborate, although nothing like it ended up becoming in the 90's. ------------------- [SIMULATION] FROM-> JHONNY THE AVENGER DATE-> SAT AUG 4 10:21 PM I SAW YOUR MESSAGE ON THE PIRATE BOARD ABOUT YOU HAVEING SIDE 2 OF SUMMER GAM ES!MY CONNECTIONS MR.ZEROX AND CHEIF S URGEN BLACK BAG ARE'NT AROUND TO MAIL IT 2 ME SO WANNA DO SOME SERIUS TRADEI NG?I HAVE GRAFORTH ,CHOPLIFTER ,MARS CARS,DISK MUNCHER AND SOME K00L OTHER STUFF AND GAMES.CALL ME AT 312-323- 3741.IF YOU NEED PHREAK CODES I HAVE THEM TO AND BOX PLANS.BYE *** ***** ** * * * * * * * ****** ** HONNY * HE * * VENGER *THE KNIGHTS OF MYSTERIOUS KEYBOARDS*! THE AWESOMEST HACK GROUP IN TOWN ------------------- Rabid Rasta is parodying a particularly geeky software pirate's message on a BBS. Besides the intentionally bad spelling (as opposed to the unintentional bad spelling RR has in the rest of the file), he also tries to touch on some of the more annoying aspects of "pirates" from the era. This file is very Apple-centric, and all the software packages mentioned were available on the Apple II. A few were ported to other platforms, but only the Apple had every package. "Choplifter" was a top-selling game of 1982, "Mars Cars" was never a top seller but was made in roughly 1983, and "Disk Muncher" was a disk copy program that was as ubiquitous as you could get, with its ability to copy a disk in four passes. "GraForth" was a graphics-oriented Forth language interpreter for the Apple II. (FORTH, the computer language, was created by Charles Moore in 1968.) The inclusion of a programming language disk in a listing of games is likely an intentional jab at "Jhonny"'s lack of computer savvy. As for "Side 2" of "Summer Games" (created by Epyx Software in 1983), this is a reference to the fact that floppy disks at the time could be double-sided, with each side holding 140k of information. If a game or program was particularly large, a company would put information on both sides of a disk, requiring the user to flip over the disk when prompted to by the program. This could be a headache for pirates who would get a copy of a game, only to find that what they had was a copy of just one side of the disk. Begging for "Side 2" would then commence, which made you look particularly foolish, since you hadn't even been able to pirate a complete program. "Jhonny" also makes reference to several prominent pirates and one pirating group in his message. Many pirates would band together into groups, under which they would all distribute their pirated games. Like any such culture, groups which made prominent, popular releases would gain positive reputations, while others that came off as a bunch of kids who were just giving themselves a big name would not. "Mr. Xerox" was not a member of the "Black Bag" pirating group as far as I can determine, but "Chief Surgeon" most certainly was. Obviously, these are both misspelled in the example. The "Knights of Mysterious Keyboards" is probably a reference to the "Knights of Shadow", a somewhat prominent phreaking group of the time whose most famous member was Bioc Agent 003, who wrote the "Basics of Telecommunications" series of phreaking files. As for the phone number in the example, I've gone through the trouble of tracking its history and it was in fact the phone number of a BBS called "The Chipmunk BBS", running in the Chicago area on an Apple II, that dates back to the early 1980's. This points strongly to Rabid Rasta making a not-so-veiled reference to an actual user of BBSes. ------------------- IS THE AUTHOR OF THE ABOVE MESSAGE A TRUE PIRATE? SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME THERE HAS BEEN AN IMPLICIT CODE OF ETIQUETTE GOVERNING THE ACTIONS OF SOFTWARE PIRATES, BUT AS MANY OF YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED AS OF LATE, THAT CODE HAS BEEN KNOCKED AROUND A BIT. ALTHOUGH IT'S NOT DIFFICULT TO DIFFERENTIATE A TRUE PIRATE FROM ONE OF THESE POOR IMI TATIONS, I BELIEVE THAT, WITH THE NUM- BER OF TRUE PIRATES DECREASING AT SUCH AN ALARMING RATE, THIS CODE SHOULD BE SET STRAIGHT. AFTER ALL, ALTHOUGH "JHONNY" IS ADMITTEDLY A MORON, IT'S NOT HIS FAULT THAT HE NEVER RECEIVED PROPER GUIDANCE. -------------------- The entire idea of "Real" guides (as this file spawned dozens and dozens of imitations) stems from a humor book written in 1982 called "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche", by Bruce Feirstein. In this book, you're told what makes a real man, with rule after rule accompanied by illustrations. This simple approach was easy for Rabid Rasta to use for this file, and for others to use when they made copy-cat files. Essentially, the structure is this: Line after line of "Real XXX do..." and "Real XXX don't...", with an occasional Corollary to make things clearer (or funnier, whichever was better). How well this worked depended on the talent of the writer. In the case of this first file, he did very well indeed, although as we'll see, the jokes are very "inside" and often haven't stood the test of time. By 1984 personal computers were becoming more ubiquitous, and with these computers came modems, and with the modems came more and more users of BBSes (and BBSes, as well). The cycle of the "January Losers" was now underway, where each January the local BBSes were filled with all the young kids who'd been given shiny new modems for Christmas and had hit up all their friends for BBS numbers to call. If you'd started calling BBSes from 1981 or 1982, it wouldn't be hard to feel like the barbarians were at the gates, and the special community you'd built up and good reputation you had was now on the verge of being worthless. To some extent, this is where the concept of "elite" came from, as you had to have some way to differentiate yourself from all the new unwashed masses that were keeping every BBS line busy well into the night. Eventually, of course, came a January that Never Ended (on the Internet the was called the September that Never Ended) when the number of people who now had modems arrive was so great than their flooding of the BBS world would never subside again until the 1990s. -------------------- ONE OF THE FIRST AND FOREMOST RULES OF PIRACY:REAL PIRATES ARE OVER 15 YEARS OLD! EXCEPTIONS TO THIS RULE ARE EX- TREMELY RARE AT BEST. -------------------- In 1984, anyone 15 or older would have been born in 1969 or earlier. -------------------- COROLLARY: YOU NEVER HAVE TO WONDER WHO BREEDED MICKEY MOUSE WITH A 2600 HZ TONE TO PRODUCE A REAL PIRATE'S VOICE. --------------------- The 2600hz tone had meaning in the context of blue boxing, where sending that frequency down a phone line in certain situations would cause the Bell telephone system equipment to suddenly start treating you as an operator. By sending additional signals (with the assistance of a blue box or other such phreaking device) you would then be able to do all sorts of interesting tricks. This number, chosen because it was unlikely to be a sound that would otherwise come over a phone line, is the source of the title of 2600 Magazine, the Hackers' Quarterly. For all that, Rabid Rasta is merely saying that a real pirate does not have a high, squeaky voice. Mentioning phone phreaking terminology in such an offhand manner was just showing off. ---------------------- ALIASES ------- REAL PIRATES ARE MORE IMAGINATIVE THAN TO USE THE WORD "COPY" IN THEIR ALIAS. COROLLARY: REAL PIRATES AREN'T NAMED "MR. COPY" BECAUSE REAL PIRATES DON'T BRAG ABOUT CRACKING DUNG BEETLES. THE WORD "CRACK" (OR "KRACK") IS FOUND NOWHERE IN A REAL PIRATE'S NAME...UN- LESS HE REALLY KNOWS HOW TO. --------------- An "Alias" was basically the name used by a user on a BBS, to shield their identity and give them more room to express themselves, or theoretically stop the law from tracking them down. Other terms for an alias were "handles" and "screen names". Often, an alias was an unintentional insight into the personality of the individual behind it. "Mr. Copy" appears to be local to Rabid Rasta, or at least someone who called to the same BBSes. He's attacked several times in the file, and is painted as an example of someone who is not a "Real Pirate" but who wishes he was one. "Cracking" in the context of this file means to completely remove the copy protection of a software product. It has been a major headache and project for Software companies since the beginning of the industry to prevent users from simply making a digital copy of a purchased (or borrowed) piece of software and distributing it to all their friends. To combat this happening, a company might invest many thousands of dollars in research and programming to make a program stop functioning once it was duplicated. In response, pirates with just as much talent as the companies would piece together how the protection had been added, strip it out, and modify the software code to no longer pay attantion to the protection. The result would be a "cracked" piece of software, which could be copied with ease, as if it were a standard disk (which it had not been before). In some cases, pirates would be talented enough to reduce an entire disk to a single file, making it possible to put several programs on a single disk accessible by a menu where previously only one program had been before. This made it easier to transfer the program over modems (as it was smaller and took less time to do so) and it earned you the right to brag about your ability as a "Cracker". Most crackers were pirates, but not many pirates were crackers. In recent times, "Cracker" has taken on additional meanings within computers. While nearly everyone would agree that the process of removing complicated disk protection from a commercial game is at the very least a formidable task requiring a lot of (misused) talent, the new meaning denotes an almost slack-jawed use of pre-made tools to cause trouble. To people who saw the first usage of the word as applied to computers, the new use of the term is especially onerous. The game "Dung Beetles" is a Pac-Man clone where your character goes through a maze leaving dots while a number of creatures (the Dung Beetles of the title) try to find you. The gimmick of this game was that the maze was actually very large, and a magnifying glass would follow your character as it moved around, letting you have a very clear view of the maze directly around you, but not so great a knowledge of the entire maze. By the time this file was written, the "Dung Beetles" game was over 3 years old, so either Rabid Rasta is insulting Mr. Copy because he has cracked a very old game, or he's claiming that Mr. Copy did no such cracking at all. --------------- REAL PIRATES' ALIASES DON'T SOUND AS IF THEY WERE EXTRACTED FROM THE LYRICS OF AN OZZY OZBOURNE SONG (I.E. PROVISIONER OF SATAN, BLACK AVENGER, DARK PHANTOM, ETC.). REAL PIRATES DON'T NAME THEMSELVES AF- TER HEAVY METAL GROUPS. --------------- Around this time was the rise of the Neon Knights and Metal Communications, who most certainly named themselves after Heavy Metal themes and kept up both the Metal theme and references to Satan and Hell wherever they could. Metal in 1984 was yet another major genre playing on the radio, so it would make sense that it would inspire some kids to base their handles and group names on those themes. It wasn't rare to see some people sticking upside-down crosses and 666s all over their messages or files, or some variation of "HAIL SATAN". But like a lot of the Heavy Metal of the 1980's, this wasn't all that serious a call to the powers of darkness. ---------------- REAL PIRATES, IF NAMED AFTER SOME AS- PECT OF PIRATE LEGEND (I.E. JOLLY ROGER, CAPTAIN HOOK, EYE PATCH, ETC.) DON'T SAY, "AVAST YE SCURVY DOGS," OR ANYTHING OF THE LIKE. ----------------- While pirates generally didn't use the words "Avast Ye Scurvy Dogs", there was a definite Days-of-Yore theme that went through a lot of Pirate BBSes. Some boards from the time were named "The Pirates' Cove", "The Treasure Chest", "The Pirates' Corner", etc. While in some ways it was unwise to advertise the true, illegal nature of your board, giving it a mysterious name would guarantee a greater amount of callers, which was the lifeblood of a BBS. A common calling card of pirates who had "cracked" a game was adding code to display a graphic "splash screen" or "intro screen" to the front of the program, giving credits to the pirates who had cracked the software, and the BBSes they called! In these little graphic displays, there was often a solid "pirates" theme, with the Jolly Roger or english lettering making an appearance. Often, after pressing a key while looking at this screen, the user would then be able to use the actual game. In a few cases, the "intro screen" code written by the pirates was better written code than the program itself, loading an image within a fraction of a second or doing a neat graphic trick. Occasionally, this code would itself be "pirated" by other pirate groups for use in THEIR cracks! ----------------- REAL PIRATES' NAMES AREN'T PARODIES OF OTHER REPUTABLE PIRATES (I.E. RESIDENT OF LAVENDER BAG, MR. PAC MAN, FRANKLIN BANDIT, ETC.). ----------------- "Lavender Bag" is a parody of the previously mentioned "Black Bag" Pirating group. "Mr. Pac Man" is a reference to "Mr. Krac-Man", whose name was probably most seen on a cracked version of the Electronic Arts game "Hard Hat Mack". The "Franklin" was a runalike version of the Apple II that was, in some ways, quite superior (the disk drive was internal, for example), which was among the Apple clones that were all sued by Apple for patent infringement. A prominent pirate of this time was "Apple Bandit", hence "Franklin Bandit". ----------------- REAL PIRATES DON'T NAME THEMSELVES AF- TER ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES (I.E. JACK DANIELS, HARVEY WALLBANGER, JIM BEAM, ETC.) ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY'VE NEVER HAD ONE. REAL PIRATES SPELL THEIR ALIASES COR- RECTLY (UNLIKE "THE POENIX"). REAL PIRATES AREN'T NAMED SAM HOUSTON, SIR SPANKY, THE GAMEMASTER, LORD FAGEN, NIKKI SIX, (INSERT YOUR OWN LOSERS HERE), OR MR. COPY. --------------- Again, these appear to be local pirates who Rabid Rasta doesn't like, especially Mr. Copy. Ironically, the appearance of their names in this file has guaranteed some amount of fame/persistence of their handles that otherwise would have never been. In insulting them, Rabid Rasta saved knowledge of them. --------------- WARES ----- REAL PIRATES WOULD NEVER THINK OF DE- LETING "SABOTAGE". IT'S TOO MUCH FUN IMAGINING THOSE LITTLE MEN ARE ACTUAL- LY SIR KNIGHT. --------------- The term "wares" is most likely a contraction of the word "software", as in "I have some software to trade with others" being shortened into "I have software" or "I have softwares" and finally "wares". This sort of corruption happens frequently in social groups, as commonly done activities and terms for them are repeated over and over until a new clever term arrives. If the term makes a perverse sort of sense, enough people will use it until newcomers assume it has always been that way, and things perpetuate. A good example of this is the "-gate" suffix to mean "scandal", (Contra-gate, Monica-Gate) even though the original Watergate Scandal simply referred to the name of a hotel. "Sabotage" is a program that is probably still stuck in the mind of anyone who originally played it on an Apple II, even if the name itself has faded from memory. This was a simple game on one level: You had a gun on the bottom of the screen that you could aim left and right with two keys. On the top of the screen, planes would drift by, dropping men with parachutes, who would float towards the ground. If five men landed, they would gang up on your gun and blow it up. Your task was to destroy the men before they landed. Occasionally, a plane would come by and drop a bomb on your gun that you had to shoot away quickly, but this was just to keep your attention. On the surface, this may sound repetitive, but the program was really well-done. While you could shoot the men and make them explode, it was possible to aim your shots just right and blow away a man's parachute, leaving him to plummet to the ground and explode on his own. You could also shoot a man who was above another man, making him plummet into his comrade and sending both to their deaths. Ship debris cascading on parachutists, needless torture of characters, and the simplicity of the controls added up to a really fun game. As for the resemblance to Sir Knight, I have the memory of having heard from others that Sir Knight was a somewhat unpleasant personality to be around, but this wouldn't make him unusual around the sub-culture. More likely, Rabid Rasta or a friend had a poor experience with Sir Knight and it transmuted itself into a less-than-positive mention in this file. Sir Knight created a file called "Making Your Phone Into a Cheesebox", which is neither informative nor inspiring. Perhaps he doesn't need a parachute, after all. ---------------- REAL PIRATES PLAY "BILESTOAD". ---------------- "The Bilestoad" was a unique and spectacular game for the Apple II that came out in 1982. It won the 1983 Golden Floppy award for excellence from Electronic Fun with Computers and Games Magazine, and quickly became a must-have for anyone with an Apple II or access to one. Pirates considered it an especially sweet plum in their collection. In the game, you controlled one of two "meatlings", humanoid figures who were put on a large map with lots of different disks, or "shyben". The view was from above, and you had a complicated (but learnable) set of keys to make your Meatling walk around the map and swing weapons. If the two meatlings were not in the same area, the game would flip between the two players until they came together, a multi-screen concept that doesn't really make another major appearance until the 1990s.. You could attack your opponent with amazing ferocity, and the game had a relatively large amount of blood and gore (although at graphics levels that wouldn't raise an eyebrow today). The game is credited to "Mangrove Earthshoe", who in fact was a Georgia Institute of Technology student named Marc Goodman. Mr. Goodman created a number of games for the Apple, and has since gone on to do much research and work in data mining and projective visualization, as well as gain a doctorate. Dr. Goodman went on to create a Macintosh version of The Bilestoad, which he still maintains and sells. ----------------- REAL PIRATES HAVE LONG SINCE DELETED "SNEAKERS", "E.T.", "ALIEN MUNCHIES", "BUG BATTLE", "SNACK ATTACK", AND EVERYTHING FROM SSI, AVALON HILL, AND SCOTT ADAMS. ------------------ Rabid Rasta throws out a few examples of "Old Wares" in this paragraph, showing that if a game isn't recent, it's probably not worth your time or even space on your floppy disks. His list actually cuts through a large variety of computer game companies for the Apple II, and it's worth delving a bit into their histories. "Sneakers" was a somewhat straightforward Space Invaders clone for the Apple from Sirius Software that was published in 1981. It had multiple waves of unique characters and was popular when it first came out, although by three years later it was probably losing a bit of its sheen. It was written by a 16-year old Mark Turmell, who went on to co-create such later arcade games as "NFL Blitz", "NBA Jam", "Smash TV" and "Wrestlemania" for Midway. Sirius Software went out of business in 1984, and some of their games were then sold to Broderbund and other rival game companies. "Bug Battle" was a clone of "Centipede", the arcade game by Atari. Very little else could be found about it; it's an almost exact duplicate of the original, and was pirated by "The Untouchables". As the original Centipede came out in 1980, it was likely that this clone came out in 1981 or 1982. "E.T." is very likely a reference to "E.T. Comes Back", an adventure game by Alliance Software that arrived in 1984. Obviously, it didn't leave much of a positive impression on Rabid Rasta. The game was cracked by "The Nut Cracker" and has a very strong similarity to the work of the Sierra On-Line Adventures such as "The Dark Crystal", with simple drawings of locations and two-word commands. Some of this genre was memorable indeed, but not this particular game. "Alien Munchies" was a game that consisted of pulling a propane barbeque back and forth along the bottom of the screen to capture aliens falling from the sky. As an interesting side note, the cracked, file-based version of this game includes the following message: "Re-kraked by the disk jockey. Learn to krak right, freeze. Also, if you take out the author's name again to put in yours, I'll break all your arms and legs. No kidding. Sincerely, the disk jockey." "Snack Attack" by Dan Illowsky of Datamost Software was a Pac-Man clone from 1982 that was one of the Softalk top 10 Apple II games for that year. Datamost software was also the publisher of the aforementioned "Bilestoad", as well as several computer-related books. The company went under in 1984, although it apparently resurfaced in 1986 until 1989 to produce another set of games. SSI (Strategic Simulations International) and Avalon Hill were both leaders in Turn-Based Roleplaying games for the Apple II (and many other platforms) in the early 1980's. The focus of these roleplaying games would be on famous armed conflicts from history, although games based on sports, famous books, or medieval times/witchcraft also made their appearance. Avalon Hill was founded in 1958 and had been involved in actual board games of conflict simulations, also known as "turn-based roleplaying", where you had advancing armies and troops that moved in rounds towards a goal. With pieces, maps, and historical background of the conflict being portrayed, this sort of game was very popular with a subset of the gaming audience. The first forays by Avalon Hill into computer games were, needless to say, rather sedate in terms of gameplay, with the focus being on "porting" the board games into a computer version without much regard for the advantages a computer may bring. Many were text-based, and all were still turn-based, requiring a set of commands and then telling you where to move. This did not impress a generation of Apple Users who had seen the potential of the computer in games like Broderbund Software's "Choplifter" and Electronic Arts' "Skyfox", where graphics were starting to come into their own and the rewards in terms of gameplay were immediate and spectacular. To be given a game from Avalon Hill meant that you weren't exactly getting the greatest computer-based experience on a floppy. Strategic Simulations International was a little less staid than Avalon Hill, having been formed in 1979 and better focused towards the potential of the computer. Starting from their first game, "Computer Bismarck", they were soon a major challenger to Avalon Hill's market, and they had a much better grip on using graphics and sound to enhance the experience. After 1984, the company continued to expand upon its games and had a number of successes with many different types of genres, with role-playing being just a part of their entire outlay. Both companies were later bought out, and are part of other, larger firms at this point: SSI is a division of The Learning Company, which also bought out such diverse firms as Broderbund Software, Softkey, and Compton's. Avalon Hill is now a division of Hasbro, and continues to focus on Turn-based games for computer, albeit with much flashier graphics and interfaces. The Learning Company itself was purchased by Mattel, but later sold to "Gores Technology Group", and parts of it were spun off to other firms. Suffice to say, the story is rather depressing if you attach any sort of nostalgia to the products from these firms and try to track down where they are now. As an aside, if you're seeking happy endings, it's much more effective (and rewarding) to follow the lives of the programmers who made the actual games. For example, Joel Billings, who founded SSI out of college in 1979, has gone on to continue his work with computer gaming to this day with a company called "2by3 Games" (World War 2 By Three Guys) and has held to his initial love of wargames. Finally, Scott Adams sits a bit apart from these other programs. Founding his software company "Adventure International" in 1979, Scott Adams created a series of adventure games (text adventures, where you entered two word commands to move around in locations and solve puzzles) that garnered much praise from magazines and reviewers of the time. Adventure International expanded in scope, creating games and other programs not only for the Apple II but a wide variety of other plaforms, including the Atari 400/800, Commodore 64, TRS-80, and Texas Instruments TI/99. Ultimately, however, the games business took a downturn and Adventure International went out of business in 1984. Scott Adams has since worked for Avista Inc. as a senior programmer. It is likely that his dozen adventure programs that were written for the Apple II were distributed far and wide and were pretty hard to consider "exclusive" wares, and therefore the subject of Rabid Rasta's scorn. ------------------- REAL PIRATES UPLOAD. THEY REALIZE THAT LEECHING IS THE #2 SIN (BEHIND, OF COURSE, BEING 13 YEARS OLD). ---------------- Setting aside the moral and legal issues of pirating software, there were and are a lot of aspects to the sub-culture that are worth noting. When you have a rough alliance of hundreds of people dealing in copying and distributing commercial games, certain interesting conventions and issues arose and continue to make themselves known. A major issue when trading in copied software is that people tend to just take all the software being offered and not actually give anything back in return. This process, often called "leeching" (and recently, "freeloading") is a natural human tendency and efforts have been made for decades to counterract it, with varying results. One solution that presented itself was the "Ratio", where people could only download a certain amount of files before they were forced to upload. Ratios could be somewhat lax, like requiring an upload for every 99 downloads (which wasn't really a ratio at all) or extremely strict, like requiring one (or two!) uploads for every download. Other variations have included "validation", where users could browse the site and see what it had to offer, but they couldn't download any files or post messages until they were given a higher level by the System Operator (SysOp). On some sites, especially pirate boards, you might be required to fill out an application to join, not unlike an exclusive school or club, which in some ways this was. Obviously, if you knew the right people, you got everything anyway; this was just a set of walls set up so that the principles of spreading files far and wide were upheld, but a board wasn't completely taken advantage of. ---------------- REAL PIRATES REALIZE THAT PENGUIN AREN'T REALLY "THE GRAPHICS PEOPLE". ---------------- Penguin Software (renamed after legal issues to "Polarware" in 1987) were the creator of a number of graphics programs for the Apple II. Among their more famous products were "The Graphics Magician" and a game called "The Spy's Demise". They had a large number of game companies license graphics routines from them, and they gave themselves the motto "The Graphics People". Obviously, Rabid Rasta did not agree. ---------------- REAL PIRATES FEEL GUILTY WHEN PIRATING BEAGLE BROTHERS. OF COURSE, THAT NEVER STOPS THEM. ------------ Pirates would feel guilty about pirating Beagle Brothers because they were one of several companies that took the risk of releasing their software with absolutely no copy protection on it, and then imploring people to make the best judgement and not make copies of their software except for backups. This approach was also taken by Penguin Software, with similar success. Beagle Brothers were also reknown for making absolutely fantastic software; they had a special talent for cramming as many goodies and hacks onto every disk they sold. You might be buying a word processor or programming tips disk and find a whole plethora of fascinating code buried within the disk as well. You could definitely feel bad about ripping off the Beagle Brothers. ------------ REAL PIRATES DON'T BELIEVE THE MORONS WHO SAY THEY HAVE ULTIMA IV AND POLE POSITION. ------------ In the modern day, where Ultima now means "Ultima Online", it should be mentioned that the Ultima series by Lord British (Richard Garriott) was created in 1980 for several platforms, including the Apple II. The object of the game was to guide your player (named "Avatar") through a series of adventures in the land of Britannia. Ultimately, there have been nine Ultima Games (and then Ultima Online), with each new chapter over the last 20 years being more anticipated than the last. This game had a major cult following even in its early years, and promises by pirates that they had the next version of Ultima became a constant, shrill joke on BBSes. Ultima III had been released in 1983, and this file was written in 1984. Ultima IV did not make an appearance until 1985, although it was theoretically possible that someone could have had an early copy of Ultima IV in 1984. This was a very unlikely prospect, though. "Pole Position", the Namco-Produced Arcade Game that was licensed by Atari and brought to the United Stated under their name, was in fact announced for the Apple II by Atarisoft in April of 1984. This indicates that either Rabid Rasta had assumed that Pole Position, an Atari game, would never come out for non-Atari computers, or the file was written before April of that year. As it turned out, however, Atari never did release Pole Position (although it did release a number of other programs for the Apple II) and the program joined the legion of "vaporware" that has accompanied the history of the computer since its beginning. ------------ COROLLARY: REAL PIRATES REALIZE THAT THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FORMULA I RACER AND POLE POSITION. ------------ I am unable to find any direct information about a game called "Formula I" for the Apple II, but it wouldn't be that hard to assume that Formula I was a racing game that, if one convinced oneself with great effort, might be similar to Pole Position, minus the graphics and sound. ------------ BOARDS ------ REAL PIRATES AREN'T THE FIFTH TO POST THE SAME "I HAVE..." MESSAGE. CORROLARY: REAL PIRATES DON'T POST "I HAVE..." MESSAGES WHEN THEY REALLY DON'T HAVE. ------------ "Boards" in this case refer to message sub-boards, sections on a BBS that are dedicated to one subject that users could post to. In this case, the subject is trading games. The "I Have" messages being referenced here are messages that would be posted on the "Trading" sub-board of a BBS, where users would announce what disks or programs they had available, and others would send them mail asking to trade for other programs. Messages that were just asking for programs were "I Want" messages. In this way, BBSes provided a way for disparate groups of people to get together to trade files, because otherwise things came down to the same dozen disks within a social group. Alliances and friendships would be struck over these trades. ------------ REAL PIRATES DON'T DOWNLOAD PROGRAMS FROM PUBLIC AE'S AND THEN POST "I KNOW IT'S OLD, BUT I HAVE...TOO" MESSAGES ON PIRATE BOARDS. ------------- The term "AE" is used only twice in this file, It stands for "Ascii Express", which was a terminal program for the Apple II that changed the face of Apple II piracy forever. While the use-the-modem-to-connect-to-BBSes side of the Ascii Express program was uneventful, it had a second feature, whereby it could run as a sort of file server, allowing anyone who dialed in and typed the password to browse the operator's disks. This changed everything. People could put up Ascii Express on their phone lines with absolutely no difficulty or preparation, and just start offering copies of programs out to anyone who called. Obviously they would also hope that others would upload to their "AE Line" as well. AE Lines were among the best way to distribute files and disk images on a previously-unknown scale, requiring only one of the two users involved in the trade to do the work. This was also a situation where "cracks" into a single file from a full disk worked to a great advantage, as a maximum amount of programs could be made available on a single or double-disk system. ------------- REAL PIRATES DON'T POST THEIR HIGH SCORES. COROLLARY: REAL PIRATES DON'T KEEP SCORE. REAL PIRATES DON'T SAY "K-K00L", "K-AWESOME", "X10DER", "L8R0N", OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT. REAL PIRATES KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BE- TWEEN "F" AND "PH" (I.E."PHILES", "PHUCK", "FONE", ETC.). -------------- The use of the spelling "fone" for "telephone" stems back from the days of the Technological Assistance Party (or Youth International Party Line), which preceeded 2600 magazine in bringing deep-hidden secrets about the phone company (the once-invincible Ma Bell) to an eager audience. There is a very good likelihood that this F-PH switching goes back to the 60's and even beyond; people who really got into the technology of the phone company might be referred to as "freaks", and it would be a logical step that they would playfully call themselves "Phone Phreaks". It's known that Phone Phreaking started at least as far back as the 1950's, but compared to today's level of organization within this sub-culture, it was probably a very loosely-knit and disparate group of people who took the term to refer to themselves, possibly independent of each other. (The History of Phone Phreaks and Phreaking in general is far beyond the scope of this file, but is a subject worth exploring. A number of books have gone into more recent groups of Phone Phreaks, and they make an excellent start for the historian trying to understand this fascinating culture.) It is entirely a guess on my part, but made from observation of hundreds of textfiles, that the "K-" prefix is an abbreviation for "OK," as in "OK, Cool" becoming "K-Kool". This quickly mutated into forms for "K-Rad", "K-Awesome", and the like. The origins of the word "OK" itself comes from an abbreviation fad in the late 1830s, where it stood for "Oll Korrect", and was part of a family of silly abbreviations that newspapers were using at the time. This abbreviation was later grabbed by Martin "Old Kinderhook" Van Buren in his presidential campaign, and it fell into common use some time later as a result of that publicity. So, one could argue that "K-Rad" has a history of more than a century and a half, which is both breathtaking and depressing in one swoop. Finally, the use of 1 for "I", "0" for "O" and the like are traditions going very far back and are also worthy of a treatise in themselves. There is a belief that these alternate spellings are the result of a Usenet phenomenon called "B1FF", but "B1FF" was created by Joe Talmadge in 1988, and is in fact an homage to the already-existent spellings that were on BBSes for years before. -------------- REAL PIRATES DON'T WASTE EVERYONE'S TIME BACKSPACING OVER THEIR ALIAS 50 TIMES. COROLLARY: REAL PIRATES DON'T USE BACKSPACING IN FEEDBACK TO SYSOPS. (SYSOPS DON'T READ FEEDBACK AT 300 BAUD) ------------- This was the reference that first inspired me to write this file; the concept of "backspacing" is almost completely lost in the modern world, where DSL and cable modems can download at the rate of an entire Apple II disk in a SECOND. This is far past the concept of "baud" as a speed measurement; we now use kilobits or kilobytes per second, instead of thinking of something as 128,000 baud or the like. A good percentage of the country in this new century can connect at between 33,600 baud and 56,000 baud. But once, the best you could do was 300. In the era of 300 baud, text would crawl along the screen; it was very possible for a talented typist to type as fast as 300 baud, and reading at that speed was just as easy. This meant that the BBS experience, when you weren't downloading a file, was a matter of watching the cursor leak across the screen, line by line, sentence by sentence. This could be very exciting or extremely boring, depending on what was happening at the time. For example, typing "?" for a menu at the BBS prompt when you meant to type something else would mean another 15-30 seconds sucked out of your life. Besides all the standard alphanumeric characters, some BBS programs would let you enter unusual key sequences in your keyboard to add deletes or cursor moves to your message. Imagine, then, that when signing your name, for extra emphasis, you enter it into the message system like this: THE WYVERN WYVERN ...and so on. What anyone reading your message at 300 baud would see, as they got to the end of your message, was your name, and then the name reversing and erasing itself, and then the name appearing again. This little text trick would give your name a sort of shimmer, and then the message would be finished. Obviously, if someone mistyped as they entered these sequences, it would leave half-finished lines and words scattered throughout their message, which was an unintentional joke in itself. A more involved concept was the spinning cursor, where you would add a sequence to look like a spinning line after your name: -\|/- As the message constantly printed characters and then deletes, it would look a little like a line spinning in place. (Trust me on this.) A remnant of this trick exists in the boot-up sequence of Sun Microsystem's Solaris Operating System, where the cursor spins for you, like the old days, as your system loads. The tricks and oddities of backspaces began to fade with 1200 baud, where they would spin ludicrously fast, and came to a complete death with 2400 and 9600 baud, where you couldn't make out what was being done. And as Rabid Rasta indicates, reading these messages locally (on the same computer as the BBS, which the System Operator would be) was an exercise in frustation as these little keyboard tricks made the screen a mess. "Feedback", by the way, was the general term for messages sent directly to the System Operator, or Sysop. ------------- REAL PIRATES NEVER USE TEXT GRAPHICS IN THEIR MESSAGES. ------------- Text Graphics sounds like an oxymoron, but it's the use of text characters in a message or textfile to look more like a pictogram than just letters. To illustrate, I'll point to the signature of the great Count Nibble: /\/oo\/\ Count Nibble /\/oo\/\ Obviously, as time has gone on text graphics have gotten much more elaborate, and a small "ASCII Scene" still exists wherein different groups of text artists try to outdo themselves and others with 'Art Packs' of collected works. ------------- REAL PIRATES DON'T CARE ABOUT THE CURSE BBS'S "K-K00L M0DS". ------------- The idea of "Mods" is explained in further detail a few paragraphs below, after the description of GBBS software. The Curse BBS appears to be a BBS that has implemented a very large amount of "Mods", none of which, in Rabid Rasta's mind, have improved the quality of the Board itself. There was a Curse BBS which hosted Hot Rod of the Black Bag Apple pirate group, located in Minnesota, and is very likely the BBS Rabid Rasta is referring to. ------------- REAL PIRATES DON'T SEARCH FOR NEW WAYS TO SPELL "WARES". ------------- Regardless, this search has continued to this day, nearly two decades later. ------------- REAL PIRATES DON'T USE THE LAST 5 LINES OF THEIR MESSAGES BRAGGING ABOUT THE 8 MEANINGLESS ORGANIZATIONS THAT THEY BELONG TO. COROLLARY: REAL PIRATES DON'T BELONG TO SWAPP, DOS/NPG, OR NASCOMP. ------------ Rabid Rasta is referring to the interesting situation of "Pirate Groups", which were (usually short-lived) clubs consisting of pirates, who would brand all the releases and text by its members. Some groups have survived over a decade, but most barely made it past the first couple of months. Sadly, SWAPP, DOS/NPG, and NASCOMP have all faded into obscurity, leaving very little trace of their existence beyond Rabid Rasta's mention. Ironically, Rabid Rasta helped these organizations to perpetuate their names for decades be giving them as examples of groups not worth being a part of. NPG very likely stands for "New Pirates' Guild". A good number of "Guilds", "Brotherhoods", "Societies", "Alliances" and "Exchanges" existed, containing groups of youths who either knew each other in person, or only through BBSes. Some groups might actually acquire software (by working at computer stores or even at some development firms) and then make it available to the public, while others would simply take what was already out and being traded and put their own names on it. ------------- REAL PIRATES WHO ARE GBBS SYSOPS ARE PROUD TO HAVE STOLEN FROM GREG SCHAEFER. ------------- It's not entirely clear why one would be proud to steal software from Greg Schaefer in particular; perhaps Rabid Rasta is simply saying that someone who would write this software is deserving of being stolen from. I've been informed that Greg Shaefer was particularly anti-piracy and spoke out against it; but it's not clear if Rabid Rasta knew this. GBBS was one of several BBS programs for the Apple II that came out in the early 1980's; it was popular because of its easy setup, and more importantly, that it was partially written in BASIC, allowing people to make all sorts of modifications, or "mods", to the software. The subculture of "mods" is an entire chapter in itself; suffice to say that many budding SysOps would make many good (and bad) modifications to their BBS software to try and get more users. For his part, Mr. Schaefer never lost his interest in the Apple II: In the late 1980's, working for InSync software, he created "Proterm", an Apple II telecommunications program still for sale in the present day. InSync changed its name to InTrec software and created a version of Proterm for the Apple Macintosh. ------------- REAL PIRATES ARE SATISFIED WITH ONE EXCLAMATION POINT. ------------- This belief has continued through to today; putting many exclamation points after your statements (I HAVE INCREDIBLE NEWS!!!!!!!!) impresses no-one and makes the person writing it seem overly excitable and perhaps a bit flaky. One off-shoot of this bad habit should be mentioned: If you are typing a lot of exclamation points and your hand comes off the shift key for a moment (perhaps because you're an excitable youth who is typing something too quickly), then you suddenly put a "1" down instead of a "!". Hence, there are many, many references in many textfiles of the era to losers or other undesirables writing things like: I HAVE INCREDIBLE WAREZ TO TRADE!!!11!!!!!1!!!!1! This quickly became an in-joke among the "elite" of BBSes, to show how far they'd come, by acting like they hadn't come anywhere at all, in an ironic fashion. -------------- REAL PIRATES DON'T CALL DIAL-YOUR- MATCH. -------------- Dial-Your-Match (or DYM) was a BBS program that had many of the standard features of Bulletin Boards, that is, message bases, private e-mail (within the userbase of the board) and file sections. But its key feature was a questionaire that you were required to fill out, asking you all sorts of personal questions (many of which were configurable by the BBS operator). Having filled out this questionaire, you could then choose to see who else on the BBS you were a great "match" with. Assuming you found someone who was very compatible with you, you could elect to send them e-mail or arrange for a date. The prospect of using the computer to meet people was apparently a popular one, because Dial-Your-Match BBSes flourished in the early 1980s. This was a particularly interesting piece of software because the BBS world was extremely male-dominated, and many times there would be 200+ male users vying for the attention of less than a dozen female users. If they were in fact female users. It must have been a unique experience for all involved. -------------- REAL PIRATES NEVER GET INTO "BITCH WARS" UNLESS, OF COURSE, THEY ARE GRINDING SOME 13 YEAR OLD TI USER INTO THE DUST. TRANSFERS --------- REAL PIRATES DON'T DFX. REAL PIRATES NO LONGER BUY MICROMODEM II'S, SSM MODEMCARDS, OR NETWORKER MODEMS. COROLLARY: REAL PIRATES BUY APPLE CATS. ------------ "Bitch Wars" are more often known as "Flame Wars", where two people, shielded from each other via keyboard and modem, begin to harass and insult each other way beyond the normal course of human conversation. After a while, these attacks were entertaining enough for others that some BBSes specifically created sub-boards (discussion groups) called "Bitch Boards" or "Bitchwar Boards" that users were invited to start vicious debates on. "TI User" means someone who owned a Texas Instruments 99/4A. This ill-fated entry into the personal computer market, while in some ways a relatively powerful and worthwhile machine, was itself ground into the dust when Texas Instruments insisted on controlling all distribution of software for it and demanded licensing fees for the rights to make cartridges or sell programs for it. After they began litigating several companies that had ignored this admonition, support dried up and TI exited from the business. Ironically, this caused a massive dumping of TI 99/4A machines into the market, which gained a large and ready audience happy to grab a personal computer and peripherals for less than $200. A small boom occured afterwards in software for the machine, but it never got away from its constrictive, cheap reputation. If there was the slightest doubt that this file is Apple-Centric, it's all dispelled by the time Rabid Rasta starts discussing file transfers via modem. He quickly mentions a good portion of the competing Apple modem hardware available in 1984. The Hayes Micromodem II was created by the Hayes corporation, which had started the home computer modem market in 1977 with the creation of a modem for the S-100 bus, and soon after the Apple II. The Micromodem II's speed was 110 baud and 300 baud. In fact, it appears that Rabid Rasta is referring to a group of 300 baud modems that had been out on the market for a while. The SSM Modemcard was also 110/300 baud, as was the Zoom Telephonics Networker. The Novation Apple Cat, on the other hand, was one of those pieces of hardware that sounds almost too good to be true. Created by Novation, Inc. to be a powerful and flexible modem, it soon turned out to be VERY powerful and ALL TOO flexible for some tastes. It was possible to have two 300 baud Apple Cats communicate with each other and work at 1200 baud. The Apple Cat's tone generators were programmable and it was possible to program the modem to do four-part music down the phone line. The ability to recognize tones coming down the phone line meant the "Cat" could know if it was getting a fast busy, slow bust, disconnect message, or a ring; besides the advantages of knowing to a better extent what was wrong with the BBS you were calling, the modem could take your voice if you spoke through it and modify it as you spoke. Needless to say, this was one incredible piece of technology. As for Real Pirates and "DFX": DFX is short for "DOS File Exchange", a program written in 1982 by Blacksmith of Arrow Micro Software. This was a terminal program that allowed users to transfer DOS 3.3 disks using the Micromodem II. This program also allowed users to chat at the same time that these disk images were being transferred. One can infer that the adherence to the inferior Micromodem II as opposed to the Apple Cat Modem insured that this program was not the choice of "Real" Pirates. ------------ COROLLARY TO THE COROLLARY: REAL PI- RATES ACCEPT THE REALITY THAT 300 BAUD IS DEAD. ------------ Of all the battles that were fought over status, none were as clearly defined along cost lines than the baud wars. 300 baud, the standard for modems, in the early 1960's, had been around since the late 1960's. But with the demand for faster speeds from the growing home computer market, 1200 baud modems started to proliferate. It's somewhat difficult to put down a time to say "At this year, 1200 baud modems were introduced to consumers." In fact, 2400 baud modems were available as early as 1982-3, but they cost in the range of $500, well beyond the means of many families. 300 baud modems at the same time, however, were in the $100 range. Prices varied wildly, and under any circumstance it was hard to justify to parents the added advantage of a 1200 baud modem that could be in the range of $300. This led some desperate types to start dabbling in credit card fraud, to be able to acquire the hardware needed to stay ahead of the curve. Credit card fraud, incidentally, was often what brought down a BBS or AE Line, more than having pirated games; once you started going into the thousands of dollars of fraudulently acquired hardware, you got the attention of some pretty heavy law enforcement. In 1984, the price had started to come down enough for 1200 baud to proliferate, but 300 baud modems could still be seen. Since the faster speed was available, there came into place the "1200 only" board, that would no longer allow collections from the lower speeds. When 2400 proliferated, "2400 only" started to appear. To some extent, this elitism on the part of pirates was understandable; with the process of transferring floppies taking beyond an hour for 300 baud users and time being cut to 25 percent for 1200 baud users, this meant more distribution, more users, and more uploads. ------------ REAL PIRATES AREN'T AROUND TO TRADE ON FRIDAY OR SATURDAY NIGHTS. COROLLARY: REAL PIRATES HAVEN'T WATCHED LOVE BOAT SINCE THEY WERE 13. ------------ The "Love Boat" Television Series on ABC ran from 1977 until 1986, so when this file was written there were still two more excruciating years to go. The reference in this case is that "Love Boat" ran on Saturday nights, meaning if you were watching Love Boat, you were not exactly having a real exciting party or social life. ------------ REAL PIRATES TYPE "BRUN AE" WITHOUT THE SPACEBAR IN BETWEEN. ------------ A rather obscure reference to a parsing trick on Apple IIs where only the first 4 letters of a keyword (internal command) were looked at, and you could put the next piece of information (the filename) right after the 4 letters, with no space. For example, LOADPROGRAM was the same as typing LOAD PROGRAM. In this case, typing BRUNAE is the same as typing BRUN AE. AE is the filename for the aforementioned ASCII Express telecommunications program, one of the most popular modem programs on the Apple II. "BRUN" is a command that means "Binary Run", as opposed to RUN, which means "Run this text program". There were similar differences in the commands for LOAD/BLOAD. Perhaps in conjunction with other learned shortcuts, it would be impressive to see someone typing the absolute least amount of commands to get the job done. Or maybe this is just meant to be a quick showoff, to demonstrate that Rabid Rasta knows all the right moves. ------------ REAL PIRATES CAN GET DISKFER/CATSEND TO WORK RIGHT THE FIRST TIME. --------------- Catsend and Diskfer were one of a legion of programs written to support the Novation Apple Cat modem. In this case, these two programs were meant to make disk distribution much easier. To understand what need they were filling, it helps to know that terminal software usually geared itself towards the transfer of individual files and then only as a side feature for the program, not as its main driving force. Telecommunications programs also tended to be more general purpose, and not designed to work with specific modems. The Apple Cat programs, meanwhile, only worked with one specific modem, and as previously discussed, a powerful modem indeed. "Diskfer", written by The Redheaded Freak, Checksum, and The Black Hole of the Independents, greatly optimized the process of sending floppies by allowing the automation of sending an entire disk. It was actually possible to set up a session where two disks on the sending machine were being recieved at the same time on the destination machine. This sped up the process greatly. CatFur, by the Night Owl and the Micron, was a similar sort of disk transfer program as well, although it had a different set of features. It included a utility to set all unused portions of a disk to $00 (Null) so that the disk would compress to a greater degree, making a major difference in a 300 baud transfer. It also had an "unattended" mode that functioned very similarly to Ascii Express. What this meant, was that you could set your Apple up as an optimized disk disk distribution node, and others (running the right program) would then be able to get full copies of your offered disks, unattended, with the machines closing down after they were done. This was especially useful if you were doing your transfers on your parents' phone line late at night and wanted the lines clear the next morning. --------------- CONCLUSION ---------- THAT'S IT...FOR NOW. SINCE LOSERS IN- VENT NEW WAYS TO BE LOSERS EVERY DAY, EXPECT A "REAL PIRATE'S GUIDE, VOLUME 2" VERY SOON. --------------- A "Real Pirate's Guide Part 2" did make an appearance (as well as Parts 3, 4, and the dozens of other "Real" files) but it was not written by Rabid Rasta. It's mentioned in the Real Pirate's Guide Volume Two that Rabid Rasta had gone off to college, which indicates that his age at the time of writing this file was between 17 and 19. Unfortunately, this is only a guess. --------------- IF ANY OF YOU WERE TERRIBLY OFFENDED BY ANYTHING IN THIS FILE, THAT'S YOUR CLUE TO RETIRE FROM THE PIRATE WORLD. AFTER ALL, REAL PIRATES DON'T GET OFFENDED BY THINGS WRITTEN IN TEXTFILES. THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING FOR THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THIS FILE: OTTO SHINEFLUG, CTRL RESET, BIT O'NASTY, LORD CHAOS, NILONIEL I, AND WHATEVER CON MAN CALLS HIMSELF OUT OF STATE. -------------- CTRL RESET was the author of The Real Pirate's Guide Volume Two. He claimed to have worked closely with Rabid Rasta on this file, which might have meant a number of suggestions for rules and corollaries. The second file, suffering from the same problems that many sequels do, uses many of the same jokes and follows the same formula. The other names mentioned don't show up in my research, probably because they posted no files of their own. This actually happened a lot; people would join a BBS because they thought it was a fun place to play around in, and they would be asked for a handle. They'd put down whatever silly name they wanted, and posted a few messages under that name, and maybe hung out with other friends on and off the BBS who used handles, and that was that. It was only those who then took those handles and created textfiles or programs with them that have had their names persist to this day. -------------- (C)1984 RABID RASTA; UBANGI JUNGLE PUBLISHING -------------- The Ubangi is a river in Africa, roughly 1,400 miles long, that is formed by the union of the Mbomu and Uele rivers, and is the main northern tributary of the Congo. What this might have to do with a textfile writing group is left up to the reader. Some Final Notes; No person directly associated with the Real Pirate's Guide was consulted in the creation of this file, meaning that there might always be alternative and completely viable explanations for why things were written the way they were. However, I have taken my best educated guesses based on the information and research available to me. The purpose of this document was to give context and hopefully get some history right; history is a funny thing, and can be radically different based on who you're interacting with at that moment. It would be a wonderful thing if someone associated with this file would speak up and let their side of the story be heard. The story of OK was based on the work of Professor Allen Walker Read, and is gone into a more helpful and simpler detail in a book by Cecil Adams called "More of the Straight Dope", where I picked it up. If etymology is of great interest to you, you will find the story of OK to be fascinating indeed. The clarification of B1FF comes from several sources, notably the Hacker Jargon File, edited by Eric S. Raymond among others, and from several messages posted on Usenet about the date of B1FF's arrival. While I knew in my mind that the Novation Apple Cat modem was powerful and could do many magic things (I still remember the night in 1986 that someone played "The Entertainer" to me over the phone with it), it was the web page of James W. Abendschan that allowed me to easily recount some of the specific tricks it was capable of. Information about different gaming companies came from many sources, including the remaining home pages of the companies under their new ownership, but one other source that shone brightly was the Giant List of Classic Game Programmers, maintained by James Hague, which allowed me to determine what company manufactured a given game. ---------------