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 <html>
 <title>T E X T F I L E S</title>
 <BODY BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#00FF00" LINK="#00FF00" ALINK="#00FF00" VLINK="#00FF00">
 <CENTER>
 <TABLE WIDTH=80%>
 <TR><TD VALIGN=TOP ALIGN=RIGHT>
 <FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#33FF33">
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="index.html"><B>>INTRODUCTION<</B></A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="jason.html">THE BBS YEARS</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="internet.html">THE INTERNET</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="textfiles.html">TEXTFILES</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="today.html">10 YEARS</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 </FONT>
 <TD BGCOLOR="#00FF00">&nbsp;
 <TD>
 <blockquote>
 <FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00" size=+2>
 <b>THE 10 YEARS OF TEXTFILES</b>
 </font>
 <br>
 <font face="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00">
 <small><i>In which a general welcome is extended, and the ground rules are laid out</small></i>
 <p>
 Welcome to the textfiles.com tenth anniversary celebration section, a 
 collection of artifacts, essays and links composed for the textfiles.com
 family of sites by its creator, Jason Scott.
 <p>
 In October of 1998, this website was created, and for the last decade has provided
 history, nostalgia, reference, controversy, hilarity, and enjoyment for millions
 of users around the world. As we round this important milestone, I thought it a fun
 idea to look back on the beginnings of the site, history and trivia of both it and
 the era it was meant to capture, and a tour of some of the more interesting bumps and
 heights along the way.
 <p>
 The sections on the menu to the left can be clicked to directly, or you can follow
 section by section through all of them as one large tour and essay. 
 <p>
 Thanks for the memories.
 <p>
 - Jason Scott<br>
  TEXTFILES.COM
 <p>
 <i>Now, let's see <a href="jason.html">see where it all began</a>....</i>
 <P>
 </FONT>
 </blockquote>
 </TD></TR>
 </TABLE>
 </CENTER>
 </BODY>
 </HTML>
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 <html>
 <title>T E X T F I L E S</title>
 <BODY BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#00FF00" LINK="#00FF00" ALINK="#00FF00" VLINK="#00FF00">
 <CENTER>
 <TABLE WIDTH=80%>
 <TR><TD VALIGN=TOP ALIGN=RIGHT>
 <FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#33FF33">
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="index.html">INTRODUCTION</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="jason.html">THE BBS YEARS</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="internet.html">><B>THE INTERNET</B></A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="textfiles.html">TEXTFILES</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="today.html">10 YEARS</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 </FONT>
 <TD BGCOLOR="#00FF00">&nbsp;
 <TD>
 <blockquote>
 <FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00" size=+2>
 <b>THE INTERNET</b>
 </font>
 <br>
 <font face="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00">
 <small><i>In which it all starts happening too fast</small></i>
 <p>
 College happened for me in 1988, when I graduated from three wonderful years at <a href="http://hg.ccsd.ws/">Horace Greeley High
 School</a> and got into <a href="http://www.emerson.edu">Emerson College</a> in Boston, Massachusetts. I moved up there for my freshman year
 and never went back; I live in that state to this day. With this move came a dorm room, no home 
 computer the first semester (my father thought it would be distracting) and, of course, the end of
 the Works BBS. I closed it up, and in one of those situations that smacks of utter irony, my father 
 disposed of the hard drive of the computer, losing that part of my history permanently.
 <p>
 <hr width=100 color="#00FF00">
 <p>
 At Emerson, I came to eventually use the occasional bulletin board system, but the day to day living
 on them ceased. Instead, I learned about what we now think of as the Internet, that globally connected
 set of machines that allow people to be sitting at one computer and connect to many others. But in 1989
 it was a very different place. For someone who'd come up through bulletin boards, the discussions of
 Usenet, the speed of file transfer, the depth of UNIX, the instantaneous connections, were mind blowing.
 BBSes didn't have a chance; I was on the Internet to stay.
 <p>
 <a href="http://album.textfiles.com/index.cgi?d=2002.05.19.MITFLEA&id=p1010047.jpg"><img src="images/works.jpg" border=0 vspace=10 hspace=10 align=right></a>
 As I turned away from BBSes, one or two still stayed in my sights. A chance meeting on a computer
 bulletin board put me in touch with one Dave Weinstock, later Dave Ferret, who offered to bring The Works
 BBS back from the dead. I gave him my floppy backups of the BBS and he did so, running the BBS for
 years and years, bringing it a fame and putting me in the initially uncomfortable position of emeritis
 administrator. I watched a new generation live the amazing life I had, but ten years later and
 with much better equipment. And a massive multi-line BBS in the Boston area called Argus, with its
 dozens of phone lines and conferencing rooms, gave me a local place to hang out with the knowledge
 that everyone there was probably in the city as well. For all its miracles, the Internet was never quite
 so good at that side of things.
 <p>
 But it was good at so much more, and as the years went by, I watched it stun me further and further 
 with what so many great minds could produce. I used a protocol named Gopher that allowed you to traverse
 computers as easily as a menu, and then watched this upstart called The World Wide Web stumble in years
 later and eat Gopher's lunch. I gained accounts on computers all over, posted to message bases, and
 watched the Web grow from a stack of grey pages into multi-colored sound and graphic extravaganzas.
 Where once a night of calling bulletin boards would yield me a handful of paragraphs, I was heading
 through what seemed like endless growing collections at a rate that put my previous years to shame.
 <p>
 By 1998, I'd been on the Internet for about 10 years. I'd used computers of one sort or another
 for something like 20. I was, as people sometimes feel at that age, a hardened veteran and world-weary
 traveler, wishing he could go back to simpler times when just seeing text moving slowly across the
 screen opened a world. I missed the BBS years. I missed my BBS. I decided to go see what this massive
 world wide web had to say about that time.
 <p>
 It didn't have much to say at all.
 <p>
 <i>Learn about the <a href="textfiles.html">website</a> I put up....</i>
 <P>
 </FONT>
 </blockquote>
 </TD></TR>
 </TABLE>
 </CENTER>
 </BODY>
 </HTML>
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 <html>
 <title>T E X T F I L E S</title>
 <BODY BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#00FF00" LINK="#00FF00" ALINK="#00FF00" VLINK="#00FF00">
 <CENTER>
 <TABLE WIDTH=80%>
 <TR><TD VALIGN=TOP ALIGN=RIGHT>
 <FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#33FF33">
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="index.html">INTRODUCTION</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="jason.html">><B>THE BBS YEARS</B><</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="internet.html">THE INTERNET</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="textfiles.html">TEXTFILES</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="today.html">10 YEARS</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 </FONT>
 <TD BGCOLOR="#00FF00">&nbsp;
 <TD>
 <blockquote>
 <FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00" size=+2>
 <b>THE BBS YEARS</b>
 </font>
 <br>
 <font face="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00">
 <small><i>In which a kid is handed the world, and holds it for safekeeping</small></i>
 <p>
 My name is Jason Scott Sadofsky. I was born in 1970 in Hopewell Junction, NY, a very small suburb
 located near the not-so-small town of Fishkill and next to the not-at-all-small city of Poughkeepsie.
 My parents lived in a subdivision very near an <a href="http://www.fishkillfarm.com/">apple orchard</a> and surrounded by hills, some distance
 from the IBM Fabrication plant my father was employed at, first as an engineer and later as a manager.
 I'm the oldest of three children, and found myself in a pretty idyllic life in a beautiful location,
 surrounded by friends, family and all the time in the world. I had it good.
 <p>
 <a href="http://album.cow.net/0000.SADOFSKY/.lowres/Jason%20Scott%20Sadofsky,%204%20and%20a%20Half%20Months.jpg"><img align=right src="images/4months.jpg" vspace=5 hspace=5 border=0></a>
 To be born in 1970 means I am younger than Woodstock, UNIX, moon landings, multi-track recording, 
 radio, and jukeboxes. I am older, however, than Saturday Night Live, Cell Phones, MTV, 
 VHS Videotape, the FOX television network, and compact discs. And what I was born at just the right
 time for was what is now thought of as the Home Computer Revolution. Now ubiquitous, the idea of the
 computer in the home, as an appliance or tool in the hands of anyone who wanted them, was an idea
 that had a lot of people throwing their best efforts into making a reality. But it wasn't a reality yet.
 Computers of any sizeable processing power were massive, expensive, specialized, and primarily the
 realm of the forces most powerful and/or armed.  It was not in the realm of families living in 
 pleasant suburbs, even if a member of the household worked at the world's largest semiconductor plant.
 <p>
 Somewhere in the late 1970s, however, life changed both outside and inside my home; my parents divorced
 and I became one of those kids shuttled between two homes and with no single place to call my
 own. Because of this I began a process of attending multiple schools and living in various places in
 the New York Hudson Valley, depending on finances and opportunities out of my control. Outside my 
 now-changed home life was the reality of the home computer coming to life. Companies like Commodore,
 Apple, Atari and dozens of others began producing electronic machines that could do all sorts of tasks
 and produce all sorts of interest and entertainment to the type of people that would find such things
 interesting and entertaining. I became the member of the family who connected with them, and my father,
 eager to nourish any such interest, began bringing home computers from work for me to try.
 <p>
 My first home computer was a <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20120331155921/http://www.commodorepet.org/">Commodore PET</a>, a machine with 8 kilobytes of memory, less than the size of
 this document. It had a small, attached screen, black and white, providing 40 columns of fixed text
 and the ability to program it in the BASIC computer language. I was absolutely fascinated with it, a
 love that has continued to the present day. My siblings were not quite as interested but for me this
 was a true connection, something I really enjoyed playing with and learning on. And in what perhaps
 indicates where my own history would take me, I still have this Commodore PET.
 <p>
 As the Commodore PET gained new friends over the years (my Atari 800 and IBM PC, Commodore Amiga,
 and others), I gained a real interesting perspective on these machines. I saw them as they were when
 they were new, young, hungry and fighting for market share, promising the universe for a few hundred
 dollars and using all the marketing muscle they could to prove it. The <a href="http://digitize.textfiles.com">advertisements</a> they printed
 were amazing, the magazine articles were fascinating, and I soaked it all in. This was a wondrous
 time to be so young, a pre-teen learning about machines that would, with a few typed characters
 (OK, a TON of typed characters) sing, dance, play games, and do amazing stuff for me. Having seen what
 was before, I was always up for what was next.
 <p>
 <hr width=100 color="#00FF00">
 <p>
 On one of my visits to my father, he had to go into work for part of the day at his new position in the
 <a href="http://www.watson.ibm.com/overview.shtml">Thomas J. Watson Research Center</a> in Yorktown Heights, and took me along. To keep his son occupied, he
 set me up in front of a terminal called the 3279x, a powerful and amazing machine that connected deep
 into the IBM network and computing facilities. In comparison to what the home computers I owned had, this
 was like taking someone who'd only ever ridden a bicycle and handing them the keys to a supersonic jet.
 Naturally, I played games on it, games I couldn't ever hope to see on my machines at home, <a href="http://www.getlamp.com">text adventures</a> that challenged me intellectually, and even the engineering in-jokes of the programmers
 at IBM, always looking for the next best place to eat or writing hilarious essays about life at IBM
 or the engineering life. It was heavenly, but I knew when we logged out I'd never see anything like
 that outside of my occasional visit to this amazing building.
 <p>
 Luckily, I was wrong.
 <p>
 <hr width=100 color="#00FF00">
 <p>
 I still remember the day, when I was visiting my friend <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/5/a52/605">Chris Boufford</a> at the house he shared with his
 grandparents, that he told me I had to check out what his grandfather had brought home.
 <p>
 It was a 300 baud <a href="http://www.imsai.net/images/war_image/coupler.jpg">acoustic modem</a>, a strange little device with a couple strange pads on the top
 and a wire going to the home computer his grandfather owned. Chris called a number he had written
 down, placed the screaming telephone handset into the pads, and on the screen, text started to appear.
 Text, I realized, that was coming from somewhere else. Text that was <i>coming from another machine
 to this one over the phone</i>. I was 12. Nothing would be the same.
 <p>
 We were connecting to another person's home computer via this modem and phone line, and using software
 that provided you with the ability to leave messages, read up on information, even acquire programs
 you could run on your own computer without having to go to someone's house and copy their floppy disk
 collection. It was a Computer Bulletin Board System, or BBS. There weren't many, but there were enough
 that we could call into a bunch of places and get hooked. Naturally, I went home with visions of having
 one of these modems and all this access into these computers from my own house.
 <p>
 Dad was accomodating, as he's always been. Through his connections I became the owner of a 2400 baud
 Hayes Modem, a card that sat inside our IBM PC and let me call all over the county, state, and the
 world and connect to all these BBSes. I was in heaven...
 <p>
 ...for about a month, and then the $300 phone bill came in. Dad invented new ways to scream, and I 
 learned that I was going to have to do something about this if I wanted to continue to use these
 bulletin board systems, so I started reading up and asking the right questions and found myself able
 to get around the whole problem of paying large phone bills by stealing phone codes. I became what
 I thought of as a <a href="http://www.textfiles.com/phreak/">"Phone Phreak"</a>, although the years hence have taught me that I was barely more than
 a bottom-feeding leech, tracking down and gaining free telephone calls just to avoid paying money.
 Learning and exploration was the last thing on my mind.
 <p>
 Or was it? As I started calling dozens and then hundreds of bulletin board systems, I found myself
 constantly drawn to the strange conversations, the ability to download software, and the information
 that was being presented in various menus. While the phone system (and these codes) were a tool to
 get to the bulletin boards, on the boards themselves I began finding myself capturing, collecting
 and saving on floppy disks all the information I could. Eventually, I had a lot of them indeed.
 <p>
 <hr width=100 color="#00FF00">
 <p>
 I've been asked at various times over the years why I started collecting these information files,
 and I've hazed over various answers depending on the audience or the reason I was being asked. To be
 honest, I'm still not sure, but perhaps the splitting of the family home, the lack of control as a
 teenager in general, and the ability I was developing to read and sort information quickly all 
 combined into this instinct to collect, collect, collect. I would save everything I could to floppy
 disks. If I didn't have a spare floppy disk, I'd turn on the printer and print out sheet after
 form-fed sheet of the messages and writings of people. I would save up my money and buy more floppy
 disks and trick cheaper single-sided floppy disks into using both sides, and off I'd go. I'd do it
 for so long, that my father would wake up early in the morning and find his son hunched over the 
 computer, dawn light breaking into the computer room, and start screaming. (Luckily, his phone bill
 didn't increase for all this use.)
 <p>
 The life I lived on the bulletin boards was full, rich, intellectual, and amazing. I met lifelong
 friends, learned amazing things, and learned more about the world at large than the average teenager
 of my time. I could recite area codes and where they were with ease. I'd hang out at the local mall
 with people I'd met online. And when the time came, when I was ready, I started helping out with
 a BBS in New Jersey as a co-sysop, an assistant administrator. This just whetted my appetite for the
 ultimate goal - to run my own BBS. I knew what I'd call it: The Works. I even started labelling my
 floppy disks with the name "The Works" to indicate where they'd one day end up.
 <p>
 <img src="images/works87.jpg" align=right vspace=5 hspace=10>
 This dream happened in 1986, when The Works BBS joined the online world. I needed to make my mark 
 and show how I was different from the now thousands-strong collection of BBSes out in the world,
 so I declared myself a "textfile BBS", a place where programs wouldn't be allowed, only pure text
 and writings. I used my collection of files from my years-saved floppies and offered my now-massive
 archive to the world. 
 <p>
 It was 5 megabytes.
 <p>
 <hr width=100 color="#00FF00">
 <p>
 <img src="images/theworks.jpg" align=right vspace=15 hspace=15>
 My adventures of this time were many, and I wouldn't have traded my time with The Works for anything.
 To talk about my own history with BBSes would fill a book - but the theme is clear: I had a 
 spectacular time, like a carnival and party everlasting, a sense of power and of happiness I've known
 since then as one knows an old song. I'd do it all again, the delight, the tears, the discoveries,
 the depressions. It was a part of what makes me what I am. It was who I was. It was my time with the
 BBSes.
 <p>
 Naturally, it couldn't last forever.
 <p>
 <i>See how the <a href="internet.html">Internet</a> changed me and everything else....</i>
 <P>
 </FONT>
 </blockquote>
 </TD></TR>
 </TABLE>
 </CENTER>
 </BODY>
 </HTML>
--- a/textfiles.com/10/textfiles.html
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@@ -0,0 +1,153 @@
 <html>
 <title>T E X T F I L E S</title>
 <BODY BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#00FF00" LINK="#00FF00" ALINK="#00FF00" VLINK="#00FF00">
 <CENTER>
 <TABLE WIDTH=80%>
 <TR><TD VALIGN=TOP ALIGN=RIGHT>
 <FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#33FF33">
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="index.html">INTRODUCTION</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="jason.html">THE BBS YEARS</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="internet.html">THE INTERNET</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="textfiles.html">><B>TEXTFILES</B><</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="today.html">10 YEARS</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 </FONT>
 <TD BGCOLOR="#00FF00">&nbsp;
 <TD>
 <blockquote>
 <FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00" size=+2>
 <b>TEXTFILES</b>
 </font>
 <br>
 <font face="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00">
 <small><i>In which a Website is Born</small></i>
 <p>
 Perhaps it seems strange considering how long ago this was, but to someone who'd come up through
 BBSes and had spent five years watching the World Web Grow, it really felt like there wasn't anything
 not on the Internet at that point. While archives were considered beyond belief if they measured in the
 dozens of megabytes and search engines were the party of research projects and tech demos, I did feel
 like everything was now online and I could find it.
 <p>
 I couldn't.
 <p>
 I couldn't find my old favorite BBS (Sherwood Forest II, 914-359-1517). I couldn't find any old text
 files like the classics I'd considered BBS canon. In fact, I couldn't find much mention of BBSes as
 a subject. I didn't find lists, or software, or any sort of hint that they'd ever been around anywhere
 but in my own mind. It felt, to me, like they were lost, a part of history not lucky enough to be
 around when the Internet hit its stride, and were going to be forgotten. That was a horrible thought.
 <p>
 (I must say, of course, that this would never have been the case; people would certainly have continued
 to add computer history of all stripe to the Internet and time has borne out amazing collections of
 computer and bulletin board system history for all to find. Work was being done before 1998 in this
 area, but I, for all my belief in my abilities, could not find it. I felt alone, but was not, actually,
 alone.) 
 <p>
 <hr width=100 color="#00FF00">
 <p>
 At the time, registering domains that included nouns was a bit more trivial than the present day; I
 decided a website that would collect some of these old textfiles I'd kept on floppies all these years,
 from the days before The Works and post-dating the life of my own BBS. Because it was available, I
 registered <b>TEXTFILES.COM</b>. In one of those strange bits of history that hindsight would have
 benefitted, I also registered <b>TEXTFILES.ORG</b> but chose to let that one lapse, thinking it wouldn't
 have much purpose. I do regret that choice. TEXTFILES.COM it was, and I set to work finding my old 
 collection of textfiles to put online.
 <p>
 <hr width=100 color="#00FF00">
 <p>
 Why green? Why long file directories? Why these strange classifications, this eclectic set of 
 categories? What's up with a blinking GIF?
 <p>
 <a href="http://artscene.textfiles.com/intros/APPLEII/bpgsm.gif"><img src="images/bpgsm.gif" align=right vspace=10 hspace=10 border=0></a>
 Good questions, all. Not all of them I can answer with definition, of course, but good questions. 
 Green, of course, was trying to harken back to a time of green monitors and lack of color, an era
 I experienced via Apple II computers at my various schools and at friend's homes. The monitors that
 Apple used had a quality to them, a glowing and sharp green, that has always struck me as pleasant.
 Why I continue to think of this as a useful interface to the present day is beyond me, other than
 how it tells you, in one swift glance, that you are seeing something from history, a history that is
 limited technology compared to what you are now used to. It can predate variable-length text. It 
 predates nearly unlimited columns on the screen. It definitely predates multi-user experiences that
 we now consider mundane and the realm of the majority of computer entertainment. I feel it's a 
 signifier, and it stays. 
 <p>
 The classifications and sometimes strange filenames are the products of a twelve year old. I came
 up with my own classifying approach, out of my head, and that was what these files were placed
 under. Over time, I allowed myself to think this was more effective than it was, and by the time
 textfiles.com had come along, it seemed too much work to redo. So when a file's name ends in HUM
 (humor) or PHK (Phreak), bear in mind that a very young upstart was behind them.
 <p>
 Advertising had not truly and completely infected the online experience, so I can't lay claim to
 being ahead of my time or particularly principled in regards to access to the files. I simply
 never liked banner ads when they were tacked onto the commercially-oriented sites and didn't have
 an interest in adding them to my own site. I definitely didn't think much of Google Adsense when it
 started providing text-based ads, even if I thought they had the potential to be less intrusive. I
 guess it comes down to never wanting to make use of people as nickels and dimes, instead of just
 letting them enjoy the place.
 <p>
 The site itself was (and is) a mass of directories, files by the <a href="http://www.textfiles.com/100">hundred</a>, selections and descriptions
 written by myself over the course of months when I was in my late 20s. I began composing scripts
 and <a href="http://www.textfiles.com/tools">tools</a> to assist me in describing them, and so I continued for a long, long time. When the site
 opened, the files numbered in the thousands, an amazing size for the time and all of it was right
 there, ready to be found. I wanted the feeling that people had when they came to my site to be the
 same when I logged onto a BBS at 12: a sense of wonder, of opportunity, of so much to know that I
 could never know it all but would instead dive into and soak in what I could. I've been given some
 indication over the years that for at least a few people I was successful.
 <p>
 <hr width=100 color="#00FF00">
 <p>
 The website started getting attention almost immediately - people were excited to have all these
 old BBS artifacts so easily found online. I got <a href="http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1999/03/18175">interviewed in the press</a>, was asked to <a href="http://audio.textfiles.com/speeches/">speak</a> at
 the DEFCON security conference, and found myself in demand as a speaker. And then, as if this wasn't
 enjoyable enough, people started contacting me about collections of textfiles they had been holding all
 these years, and that they'd like to contribute to my archive. Thus began the process of collecting
 at an even greater rate than I had before, and the journey I continue to this day.
 <p>
 <a href="http://album.textfiles.com/index.cgi?d=2007.03.15.APPLE&id=IMG_3728.JPG"><img src="images/stuff.jpg" vspace=10 hspace=10 border=0 align=left></a>
 I've been sent stacks of disks, CD-ROMs, even entire old computer systems. I've been mailed printouts,
 advertisements, magazines, and hard drives. Folks who had been holding into this stuff for reasons they
 couldn't quite explain had finally found someone who would respect and maintain their childhoods
 and earlier lives. I started adding both these files (growing to tens of thousands of textfiles) and
 began splitting off the site into even more subjects. First 
 <a href="http://web.textfiles.com">web.textfiles.com</a> (textfiles after 1995), then collections
 like <a href="http://artscene.textfiles.com">artscene.textfiles.com</a> and
 <a href="http://audio.textfiles.com">audio.textfiles.com</a>. History wasn't just ASCII and textfiles,
 after all: there were so many things to save, so much to keep. The site has grown exponentially, 
 upwards of hundreds of gigabytes. Hard drive technology is keeping ahead of it, but sometimes I
 wonder if it's a race to see how much I can save versus how much I can store.
 <p>
 As many as a half-million people visit a textfiles.com site in a given month. They never meet me, may
 not know I'm the person behind it, may not even know why this file is where it is. They probably never
 used a BBS, and probably don't care. But they come to this site and they're happy to pull from it
 what they need at that point in their life, and I'm happy to provide it.
 <p>
 While many might not be aware, a percentage are more than aware of the history of the BBS and they
 kneel at the pool of files and just lose themselves in them, clicking from memory to touchpoint to
 surprising new perspective. I know this because of the thousands of fan letters I've gotten; the thank
 yous, the questions, the testimonials to this era of the BBS.
 <p>
 <a href="http://album.textfiles.com/index.cgi?d=2003.01.CACHESWITCH&id=p1010012.jpg"><img src="images/dreamcom.jpg" vspace=5 hspace=5 border=0 align=right></a>
 I've naturally moved between a lot of different hosting providers over the years. They include the
 Thomson Corporation, <http://www.dreamcom.net/">Dream Communications</a>, and currently <a href="http://www.tqhosting.com">TQ Hosting</a>. I've also kept it in my own basement when times have gotten rough, and I can assure you, they've
 sometimes gotten rough indeed. When 800 gigabytes of data is in one place, something on there will
 insult or offend somebody, somewhere, somehow. It's all part of the game, and a decade hasn't killed
 me or the site yet.
 <p>
 <hr width=100 color="#00FF00">
 <p>
 <a href="http://www.bbsdocumentary.com"><img src="http://ascii.textfiles.com/bbsdocumentary.jpg" hspace=15 vspace=15 align=left border=0"></a>
 Probably the most radical change to my life was the bright idea in 2002 to capture even more of the
 history of the BBS by doing a documentary. The 
 <a href="http://www.bbsdocumentary.com">BBS Documentary</a> was a four year project that is still 
 paying off, between friends made, things learned, and history saved. Hundreds of people were interviewed
 and hundreds of hours filmed for it, and the resulting work has been downloaded or bought by thousands.
 How could I have known how much would come of putting up my collection of textfiles back in 1998?
 <p>
 It has been a great life, so far.
 <p>
 <i>A toast to <a href="today.html">10 years</a> ....</i>
 <P>
 </FONT>
 </blockquote>
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 </TABLE>
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 <title>T E X T F I L E S</title>
 <BODY BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#00FF00" LINK="#00FF00" ALINK="#00FF00" VLINK="#00FF00">
 <CENTER>
 <TABLE WIDTH=80%>
 <TR><TD VALIGN=TOP ALIGN=RIGHT>
 <FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#33FF33">
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="index.html">INTRODUCTION</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="jason.html">THE BBS YEARS</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="internet.html">THE INTERNET</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="textfiles.html">TEXTFILES</A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 <nobr><A style="text-decoration: none" HREF="today.html"><b>>10 YEARS<</b></A>&nbsp;</nobr><BR>
 </FONT>
 <TD BGCOLOR="#00FF00">&nbsp;
 <TD>
 <blockquote>
 <FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00" size=+2>
 <b>10 YEARS</b>
 </font>
 <br>
 <font face="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00">
 <small><i>In which a curator rests, but only for a moment, and looks ahead</small></i>
 <p>
 So that's what ten years of running a website is like! Pretty cool, if you ask me. From my humble
 days in the beginnings of the home computer revolution to standing in front of hundreds and talking
 about this passion of mine, I've had a great time. The site is running well, the history is brought
 to a new generation, and the generation that grew up with these files are living those days again.
 <p>
 I've had people write me and tell me that they started using the web in 2000 and that now, in 2008,
 they find themselves inspired by my site to go into a field of study. The fact that I would have 
 something online for all of a person's computing life blows my mind. It's a point of pride, to be
 this dependable thing, for so many, across all this time. It has been a privilege, it has been an
 honor.
 <p>
 Thank you, every one of you.
 <p>
 <i>Now, get back to <a href="../index.html">browsing</a>!</i>
 <P>
 </FONT>
 </blockquote>
 </TD></TR>
 </TABLE>
 </CENTER>
 </BODY>
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 <TITLE>T E X T F I L E S</TITLE>
 <BODY BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#00FF00" LINK="#00FF00" ALINK="#00AA00" VLINK="#00AA00">
 <H1>Jason Scott's Top 100 Textfiles</H1>
 <P>
 It's perfectly understandable that someone finding textfiles.com for the first
 time wouldn't be interested in sifting through thousands of textfiles to get an
 idea of what the site is about.  For this reason, I've selected a "best of"
 collection of one hundred textfiles that I think capture the spirit of this site
 and the unique culture that it attempts to preserve. <P>
 While in many cases, there are slicker or longer examples of these files, I felt
 that these specific examples best captured the genre they belonged to. I invite
 you to browse through this section, read up, and if you find something that
 intrigues you, to read more about it in the bulk of the site.
 <P>
 These files are arranged alphabetically, not in any order of importance.
 <P>
 <TABLE WIDTH=100%>
 <TD BGCOLOR=#00FF00><FONT COLOR=#000000><B>Filename</B><BR></FONT></TD></TD>
 <TD BGCOLOR=#00DD00><FONT COLOR=#000000><B>Size</B><BR></FONT></TD></TD>
 <TD BGCOLOR=#00AA00><FONT COLOR=#000000><B>Description of the Textfile</B><BR></TD></TR>
 <tab indent=60 id=T><br>
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/914bbs.txt">914bbs.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3968<BR><TD> <B>914 Area Code BBS List, by Dan Gelman (January 15, 1984)</B><BR><I>A snapshot of the typical BBSes you might find in an area code, in this case, mine. A good portion of the "General" boards you see listed were in fact Phreak or Pirate boards. Keeping an active account on all your local systems could be quite time-consuming.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/actung.hum">actung.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 332<BR><TD> <B>Relaxen und watch das blinkenlights...</B><BR><I>This sort of small, quaint humor file could be found lurking across many different kinds of BBSes and mainframes. Origin: Unknown, although it very likely could date back to the 60's or 70's.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/ad.txt">ad.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 1664<BR><TD> <B>Call The Upside Down BBS!</B><BR><I>A typical "Tag File" for a Bulletin Board System, in this case a classic Apple II with 64k of memory. To entice you over, the BBS offers you everything up to and including the two floppy disks located in the floppy drives. Besides being an interesting approach for a BBS ad, this short file also shows the variety of devices you could hook to an Apple II, including devices you could hook to other devices.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/adventur.txt">adventur.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 7758<BR><TD> <B>Adventure: Solving it in Easy Steps, by The Rom Raider and Doctor Digital</B><BR><I>Don't read this file if you haven't played Crowther and Wood's original classic "Adventure"! This file is a solid example of a "Walk-through", where the goal was to present an easy, no-thinking solution to the classic thinking person's game: text adventures. While these games could present hours (or days or weeks) of fun trying to solve the puzzles and pitfalls, many people were content to just be given the answer and go through the game blindly, watching as every step they made was the exact right one. To a smaller degree, there was a constant one-upsmanship with Walkthroughs, where whoever could come out with the "solve" for a game the soonest after it was released (or even before) was the King of the Hill.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/angela.art">angela.art</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 6656<BR><TD> <B>ASCII Art of "Angela"</B><BR><I>A solid, classic example of an ASCII Nude, brimming with joy and text-based sexiness. Some of these were hand-drawn, while others used primitive digitizers and software that translated graphics to text to give surprisingly realistic photos when seen from a distance. Naturally, these files were a hot trade online.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/anonymit">anonymit</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 34657<BR><TD> <B>The Joy of Handles, by Mahatma Kane Jeeves and David Lescohier</B><BR><I>This series of articles attacks the issue of anonymity and handles from a completely different set of perspectives; that is, the protection of the writer from general harassment and investigation, and not necessarily that of promoting unwelcome or illegal ideas. An informative read.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/applemaf.hum">applemaf.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 21388<BR><TD> <B>The Apple Mafia Story, as told to Red Ghost, 1986</B><BR><I>This interesting insight into the comings and goings of the Apple piracy world of the early-mid 80's shows the battle between the older class of pirates and the new breed of "r0dentz" that has been waged for the last 20 years. This file also gives a history (and hardware list) of the Sherwood Forest BBSes, which were among my all-time favorite boards, and probably a pretty darn influential force in the world that textfiles.com presents.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/apples.txt">apples.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 8960<BR><TD> <B>Typical Apple Piracy Message Base, circa 1984</B><BR><I>This pristine capture of a 14-message apple "warez" message base shows a gamut of user types converging in one place to trade boasts, information, and programs. From Sherlock Apple's boast of "I have em all!!!!!!" to Creative Cracker and Key Master's BBS ads, you can see how these places became hotbeds of activity and information. Key master and I traded textfiles back then; I thought nothing of calling a BBS called "The 4th Reich".</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/arttext.fun">arttext.fun</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4020<BR><TD> <B>The Art of Writing Textfiles, by The Bronze Rider</B><BR><I>Bronze rider weighs in with his opinions on how to write proper textfiles, probably in response to some lack of quality in files up to that point. (This file is incomplete for the moment, but you'll get the idea.)</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/b00g!.hum">b00g!.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 6623<BR><TD> <B>B00g and the Art of Zen, by Anarchy Incorporated</B><BR><I>This file started a weird "b00g" craze that perpetuated itself for a number of years across a lot of BBSes that I was on/involved in. Then again, Anarchy Inc. was one of those groups you could depend on for some really excellent writing no matter what the subject was about.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/balls.txt">balls.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2845<BR><TD> <B>Mouse Balls Available as a Field Replacement Unit</B><BR><I>A classic example of a somewhat plausible file making the rounds for years and years. This likely-true file discussing how to wash the balls from Computer Mice took on a life of its own and still shows up occasionally. Surely a giggle, if not a guffaw.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/basicom4.phk">basicom4.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 17717<BR><TD> <B>Bioc Agent's Telecommunications Series, Part IV</B><BR><I>BIOC Agent 003 was one of those rare phone phreaks who could both assimilate information around him and present it in a well-written, forthright manner. Often, many of the phreaking textfiles of the time were poorly written, hastily formatted, and lacking in any perspective beyond how to break or get freebies from a computer or network. Bioc got a lot of attention with his clear writing and informative series "The Basics of Telecommunications", which appeared in the summer of 1984. This example from the series, part 4 (of 7) covered both the hierarchy and electronic network of the Bell Telephone System. Groundbreaking.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/basicom5.phk">basicom5.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 18867<BR><TD> <B>Bioc Agent's Telecommunications Series, Part V</B><BR><I>Another example of BIOC's writing in the Basics of Telecommunications Series, this section dealt entirely with the basic telephone, including the wiring and the electronic aspects. Notably, BIOC gives a bibliography where he got a lot of his information (something pretty much not done beforehand) and additionally covers the theory of operation of the infamous "Black Box", as well. Excellent.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/bbsdeath.pro">bbsdeath.pro</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 7639<BR><TD> <B>Whatever Happened to REAL Bulletin-Board Systems?</B><BR><I>What strikes me about this file was that it was written around 1982 and decries how out-of-touch, vicious, and impersonal the BBS world has grown for the writer. Note the interesting reasons he gives for the downturn of BBS's.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/bc760mod.ham">bc760mod.ham</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 1408<BR><TD>  <B>Modification of the Uniden Bearcat BC950XLT for Cellular Frequencies, by John Stover (March 29, 1988)</B><BR><I>The problem was major: Cellular phones could be listened to by any ham radio scanner being made. The normal solution: Produce better cell phones, that did a better job of encrypting/scrambling transmissions. The solution the government took: Force all creators of any ham radio scanners to remove the capability of ham radios to listen to the frequencies chosen for the cellular phones. Naturally, the companies did this in the cheapest way possible, often just running a short-circuiting wire such that attempts to go to those frequencies would be unsuccessful. And naturally, files such as this one made themselves available, where you were told how to take out that wire and restore the machine to full functionality. Was the point to listen in on people? No. The point was crippling technology to hide things from people flies in the face of the spirit of technology. 5 short lines, and the efforts from the unknowing are thwarted. The power of textfiles.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/beefstar.hum">beefstar.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2965<BR><TD> <B>"Hey how much for someone to, you know, screw with the beef?"</B><BR><I>This is the only beef pornography I've ever seen. Sexual Surrealism at its best.<BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/bhbb1.hac">bhbb1.hac</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9837<BR><TD> <B>Better Homes and Blue Boxing, Part I, by Mark Tabas (January 7, 1985)</B><BR><I>Mark Tabas came along in 1985 and wrote a series of chatty, friendly files about all the fun you could have with the mysterious Blue Box, the most famous of all the Phreak Boxes that rose out of the 1970's and 1980's. This box, when used in conjunction with a 2600hz tone across a phone line, allowed you to seize control a telephone line as if you were an operator and do all sorts of neat, crazy stuff. By 1985 these boxes were becoming obsolete (with the advent of Electronic Switching System, or ESS) but this file harkens back to this interesting era. A sign of the great works LOD would create for the next decade.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/billrights.fun">billrights.fun</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3746<BR><TD> <B>The Bill of Rights "Lite", by John Perry Barlow</B><BR><I>This re-tooled Bill of Rights, rephrased to reflect most of the constitutional issues arising in cyberspace and in general everyday life, hit the nail on the head as to how far the government had strayed from its original plan. Barlow, a co-founder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, makes his beliefs about the modern world known in just a couple screenfuls of slashed-up constitutional law.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/black.box">black.box</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4460<BR><TD> <B>To All Who Dare -- The Black Box</B><BR><I>For many people, this simple little text file was the opening door into the world of the Phone Phreak, a world where a simple application of technology meant a subversion of the great and powerful Bell System. In this case, the Black Box would convince the telephone company that your phone was still ringing, even though you'd picked the phone up and were chatting happily through the buzzing rings. With its name owing to the 1970's era "Blue Box", the Black Box was the final spark to ignite a stream of steady "box" files, each one a more flamboyant and wild color and each promising the world.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/bofh.1">bofh.1</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3854<BR><TD> <B>The Bastard Operator From Hell #1, by Simon Travaglia</B><BR><I>As the BBS kids of the world grew into full-fledged System Operators, they found that no textfile out there caught the frustrations and issues of a computer hacker saddled with responsibility more than the BOFH (Bastard Operator from Hell) series. Stretching through many files and continuing to this day as a magazine column, these textfiles set out an alternate-world Simon the Sysadmin who would torture and ruin his users in the pursuit of more free time and lager. The initials BOFH have become one of the better-kept inside jokes of the System Admin trade, and these files have become immortal.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/cDc-0200.txt">cDc-0200.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 124155<BR><TD> <B>The cDc #200 Higgledy-Piggledy-Big-Fat-Henacious-Mega-Mackadocious You-Can't-Even-Come-Close-So-Jump-Back-K-BOOMIDY-BOOMIDY-BOOM File, by Swamp Ratte'</B><BR><I>The Cult of the Dead Cow continues to be a prominent force in the online world, but when they started in the late 1980's they were just another text-file writing group, copying heavy metal lyrics and printing bomb ingredient lists. Swamp Ratte's perseverance and leadership caused cDc to break out of that mode, however, and by the time they'd released their 200th textfile (In December of 1992) they'd been around for over 6 years, forever by BBS standards. To celebrate, Swamp Ratte' wrote this file, which I consider to be an all-time classic not only because of the dead-on parodies of the BBS world of the 1980's that run through it, but for the way these parodies perfectly capture a lot of the cultural forces that ran through that time. (The warez vs. textfiles debate, the self-aggrandizement of older hackers, the completely bizzare spelling styles, etc.) This file truly goes above and beyond in every way. A great reference file to see if you can get all the jokes when reading other files here.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/captain.phk">captain.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2759<BR><TD> <B>An Apple for the Captain, by Steven Wozniak (October 1, 1984)</B><BR><I>BIOC Agent 003 transcribes an Infoworld article that mentions a funny story about Captain Crunch (John Draper), an employee of Apple, reprogramming an Apple II so that it would dial up PBX lines to get free phone codes. In a few short paragraphs, Steven Wozniak describes Phone Phreaking with an innocent sense of fun and exploration, using common technology. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/captmidn.txt">captmidn.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 24394<BR><TD> <B>The Story of Captain Midnight</B><BR><I>This textfile, source unknown, tells the story of Captain Midnight, a lone satellite operator who overrode HBO's signal with a warning against charging $12.95 a month and scrambling their signal. This sudden seizure of the HBO signal caught the media (and the government)'s attention, and he was soon caught. This textfile saves the memory of a fellow who took matters into his own hands, and blew out a showing of Pee Wee's Big Adventure as a bonus. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/catstuff.app">catstuff.app</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9818<BR><TD> <B>Expanding Your Apple Cat II, by The Ware-Wolf</B><BR><I>The Novation Apple Cat Modem was one of those pieces of technology that you just can't believe ever got out into the market, and which stands as a straight example of the creativity that lives in this world. Built simply to be a flexible modem, this piece of technology contained 4 digital to analogue converters and several other unexpected ports and switches that caused it to be used as a clock, answering machine/voice mailbox, hold button, voice changer, and music player. Simply put, this modem was beyond belief. This textfile helps show some of the amazing modifications to this modem that were devised by its users. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/codegeek.txt">codegeek.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 20841<BR><TD> <B>Robert Hayden's Code of the Geeks v1.01</B><BR><I>The Geek Code is one of those bizzare Internet-only phenomenons that would only rise up among a culture dominated by the intelligensia: a code that, through an application of letters with plus or minus modifications, would indicate the hobbies, desires, or public aspects of that person, easily machine-readable, but to anyone who didn't know the code, completely indecipherable. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/copyprot.pro">copyprot.pro</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 11392<BR><TD> <B>Copy Protection: A History and Outlook</B><BR><I>Dt writes a quick overview (intended for publication, and therefore a little more balanced than it normally would have been) about the history of copy protection and some of the methods used on both sides in the war over software. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/crossbow">crossbow</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 29200<BR><TD> <B>From Crossbows to Cryptography: Thwarting the State Via Technology</B><BR><I>Chuck Hammill of the Libertech Project comes out with a jaw-dropping defense of technology as a liberating force, through the use of cryptography and communication, and applies it to his (cynical) view of history and the nature of Governments. A speech given at the Future of Freedom Conference that is at once balanced, intruiging, revolutionary, bitter, hopeful, and inspiring. All around, ahead of its time and relevant to this very minute.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/dec.wars">dec.wars</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 31839<BR><TD> <B>DEC WARS: The Continuing Saga of the Adventures of Luke Vaxhacker</B><BR><I>One of the earlier and one of the best cross-cultural fan fiction files, combining the world of Digital's VAX series of computers with the Star Wars movies. Peppered throughout this file, tons of inside VAX jokes combine with Star Wars references, making it one of the geekiest, nerdiest files you could come across online. This genre has exploded out of control since then, but at the time, it was something really new, and a ton of fun.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/diskgone.ana">diskgone.ana</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 627<BR><TD> <B>When He Boots It, It Boots Him! From Ziggy Stardust</B><BR><I>This explosive device sticks in the mind because of both the pure nastiness of the situation (booby trapping a floppy disk to turn it into a bomb) and the reason given for a person to risk someone else's life: they didn't trade pirated programs honestly.<BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/dodontae.hum">dodontae.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9385<BR><TD> <B>The Do's and Don'ts of Ascii Express, by Quasimoto</B><BR><I>The story of Ascii Express is one of a telecommunications company adding a small feature to allow remote downloads, that spread into a massive underground network of pirated applications throughout the Apple II community. These "AE Lines" provided quick, simple access to other floppy drives across the country, and became a subculture all their own. This file purports to give some suggested etiquette for AE lines, only to be deflated quite humorously by Count Nibble at the end.<BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/easymony.ana">easymony.ana</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 6709<BR><TD> <B>A Guide to Easy Money, by The Flash (January 4, 1986)</B><BR><I>Even a cursory read of this file shows that the Flash knew not one molecule of what he was talking about. This complete lack of knowledge in the dark arts of Street Economy obviously didn't stop him from publishing a series of files on how to succeed in them. At this no-man's land between fact and fantasy, you get a great insight into the author's idea of how the world works, and how easy he thought the world of crime was. (Ostensibly, the Flash has gone on to a nice, quiet life somewhere.)<BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/eatingmsh.drg">eatingmsh.drg</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2028<BR><TD> <B>Can You Put Psychedelic Mushrooms on Pizza?</B><BR><I>A pretty funny example from a Usenet posting in alt.drugs. Somehow, I can imagine this happening. And oh, he's the MANAGER! While a lot of drug files tend to be boring chemical lists or long and drawn-out philosophical discussions, this file makes you think twice about who's working the cash register.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/eel_bye.txt">eel_bye.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 7680<BR><TD> <B>The Eel Says Goodbye to the Pirate World</B><BR><I>What really strikes me about The Eel's farewell to the piracy world of 1992 is that while he says that one of his primary motivations for leaving is his current circle of "real" friends, the rest of the file goes to show he has dozens of other "real" friends as well. No doubt in the years after his break away from life on the modem he's built even more circles of friends, but one can't help wondering if he doesn't read this file and think of what else he threw away besides his collection of "warez".</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/elite.cmd">elite.cmd</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 5946<BR><TD> <B>The Elite Commandments</B><BR><I>As the word "Elite" came to be bandied about in BBSes, people started to separate themselves between the "Elite" and "Unelite". Specifically, this was just another way to look down on others based on completely arbitrary, meaningless reasons. This file skewers that attitude in a list of "commandments" that best represent the mindset of the self-named "elite". As a bonus, several inside jokes from the era are presented in a "gossip weekly" parody at the end.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/elites.txt">elites.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3113<BR><TD> <B>Someone Completely Blows Up</B><BR><I>A young BBS user (I don't know where this came from) suddenly begins ranting about everything that bothers him about being on BBSes. His complaints take on a heartwarming quirkiness, looking back.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/ethics.txt">ethics.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 8140<BR><TD> <B>Ethics for BBS Users</B><BR><I>A well-written, nicely-formatted, completely pedantic file that lectures you on every aspect of being a BBS user. This file was part of a trend of Sysops explaining to users how great they had it for having BBSes to call, and to appreciate the work behind them. They were rarely successful, but you do what you can. The invitation to download the file and display it on other BBSes meant that some new users would be subjected to this file automatically. The "wearing a tie to school" side of the BBS world.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/famous.bug">famous.bug</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 52609<BR><TD> <B>Famous Computer Bugs, compiled by Dave Curry and John Shore</B><BR><I>This ARPAnet-compiled lists of computer glitches through history shows some wonderful perspective on disasters and screw-ups through history (mostly the 60's and 70's) and shows you the interesting vulnerabilities that have cropped up over time. Some of them, such as a probe suddenly losing contact with earth, are scarily sobering, but others, such as the Multics bug (the swapper-out process would swap out the swapper-in process!) make you just want to snort, assuming you snort at that sort of thing. Geeky, and cute.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/feh-1">feh-1</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 54625<BR><TD> <B>Fuckin' Eleet Haxor Issue #1, July 1st 1995</B><BR><I>As the World Wide Web really started to take hold in the middle of the 1990s, textfiles became a rarer and rarer entity, usually leaning instead to HTML pages and graphics to get the information (and the point) across. In the case of FEH, indicative of the textfiles of the time, it is sometimes very hard to tell where the parody and where the seriousness lay within the issue. While a lot of it seems to be a thought-out send-up of the badly-spelling hacking community, some serious and researched information is included as well. This magazine went on to several additional issues, each of them a little more serious than the last. For better or worse, this is how things came to be in the culture.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/gems.txt">gems.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 75172<BR><TD> <B>GEMS: The Untold Story, by the Video Vindicator (February 1, 1992)</B><BR><I>The Video Vindicator came late into the game (early 1990's) but produced some of the most wonderful files from that time period. This file caught my attention because he chose a subject that would normally be of very little interest to the BBS crowd (Gemology) and takes it to a completely new level by turning it into both a wonderful history lesson about Gems (I learned a lot in this file) and twisting it into yet another way to scam the planet for some extra bucks. Breathtaking in his audacity, and completely slick in his delivery. One to watch.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/groupass.phk">groupass.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 1809<BR><TD> <B>An Unforgettable Telephone Service Call, from Pat Routledge</B><BR><I>This breed of textfile tends to be short, amusing, and perpetuated endlessly. Often the story is hard to track back, and is even more often a paraphrase of what actually happened, but it never fails to be humorous, especially if it lasted this far. A classic "urban legend", even if it's true.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/hack1.hac">hack1.hac</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 7960<BR><TD> <B>The Basics of Hacking: Introduction, by The Knights of Shadow</B><BR><I>The Knights of Shadow produced a collection of Hacking How-Tos that instructed users how to get around a variety of mainframes, including Digital and Data General Machines. While the information in these texts might not be as relevant, this introduction stands apart for its preaching the idea of hacking for knowledge, and leaving no footprints and destroying nothing in the process. Their definition of "Hacker" is rather interesting, as well. A clever set of files.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/hack11a.txt">hack11a.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 692945<BR><TD> <B>The Project Gutenberg E-Text of Bruce Sterling's Hacker Crackdown</B><BR><I>In 1993, Science Fiction author Bruce Sterling aimed his considerable writing talents to dissecting and understanding all the forces at work between Hackers, Police, and the people they've had an effect on. He does a very admirable job. While no book (so far) has captured the 1980's computer hacker experience perfectly, this book makes you come away with a feeling that the major issues were touched on and that no-one (on either side) got the short shaft. (This is a major accomplishment in itself.) Sterling is an excellent writer, and while compared to other works in this directory this textfile is a bit on the mammoth side, it's worth it. This file also highlights the work of the great Project Gutenberg, which for 20 years has endeavored to transcribe as many classic works to electronic texts as their staff of volunteers will let them. There's an entire directory of these important and breathtakingly huge projects on textfiles.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/hack7.txt">hack7.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3988<BR><TD> <B>The Conscience of a Hacker, by The Mentor (January 8, 1986)</B><BR><I>The Mentor's angry scream against the authorities he saw as trying to crush his spark and the spark of people like him. For some reason, this file became the flashpoint that a number of books (including Bruce Sterling's) used as an example of the oppression of the intelligent and the motivations behind the fine art of hacking. Whether it stands up to this sort of light or not, it's a clear statement from someone who feels a lot of pain; and that's what communication is all about.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/hack_ths.txt">hack_ths.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 148109<BR><TD> <B>The Social Organization of the Computer Underground, The Thesis of Gordon Meyer</B><BR><I>Mr. (Probably Dr.) Meyer's Sociology paper on the social structure in Hacking, Phreaking, and Pirating groups is interestingly dedicated to George Hayduke (writer of the "Get Even" series of revenge books) and Barry Freed (The pseudonym taken by Abbie Hoffman when he was a fugitive from the FBI). This indicates not a little leaning on the side of the groups he's analyzing. He goes over impressions that the media have about hackers, what being a hacker, phreak or pirate consists of as he sees it, and then tries to draw conclusions of what this all means. Written in 1989, this file takes on the subculture with a non-hysterical point of view that makes it very easy to read. Worth the time.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/highdoc.ana">highdoc.ana</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 1408<BR><TD> <B>How to get Really Soaring High on Gatorade, by Max Madd</B><BR><I>Some of the most entertaining textfiles are the ones where the writer is obviously hot to write one, but has no actual information to report on. Instead, they pull up a in-the-rough concept, like getting high off a fruit drink, and create a short file around it. In this case, the key is to get high off the thirst-quenching Gatorade, by merely drinking it as fast as possible. Nearly a third of the entire file is a legal disclaimer, a typical gesture that is very likely meaningless in the long run.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/howtobbs.txt">howtobbs.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9216<BR><TD> <B>How to Become an Unsuccessful, Burned-Out SysOp</B><BR><I>From the perspective of 24-hour, super-high-speed internet connections, it's refreshing to read this list of tips telling people how they can improve their single-line, often 2400 baud BBS lines. The hundreds of bulletin boards popping up every month during the early 80's ensured that general guideline files actually had a large target audience. Of course, the comment about free software being inherently bad doesn't seem as relevant anymore...</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/iaad.txt">iaad.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 71551<BR><TD> <B>How Pirate BBSes Impact on the Entire Atari Community, by D.A. Brumleve</B><BR><I>This serious report, tracking the theoretical impact of piracy on the Atari ST publishing community, has an unintended secondary effect of documenting and providing an excellent picture of the typical "Pirate" BBS in the early 90's. Besides capturing interesting quotes and entire file directories, this report gives a solid overview of this underanalyzed social phenomenon. Interesting reading, if a bit heavy-handed in some places.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/icegun.ana">icegun.ana</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 11253<BR><TD> <B>A Step by Step Guide to Making a Dry Ice Gun by The Voice Over</B><BR><I>Please don't follow the instructions in this file; I can't vouch for its truthfulness or safety. This file is a typical weaponry/anarchy file, inviting you to build some dangerous thing for the purposes of destruction or entertainment. Unlike many such files, The Voice Over can spell, and he warns you how much you can injure yourself. These files comprise a massive subset of the textfiles of the 1980's; why people dedicate such effort to proving they can blow up more than anyone else is an interesting outcropping of the one-upmanship prevalent in other parts of the culture. An unusually academic file from Metal Communications.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/infobugs.adv">infobugs.adv</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3930<BR><TD> <B>A Collection of Infocom Bugs, from the New Zork Times</B><BR><I>I'm not entirely sure this file comes from the New Zork Times, but the "we" tense of the description of the bugs and the invitation to try new things on the end smacks of it. Infocom was a text adventure game company - by pretty much any measure, the best. They had some of the most evocative games to come out at the time, and few game companies today even come close to the experiences that Infocom provided. Because the games were so detailed, the types of bugs that people would encounter were strange indeed, and this file chronicles some of them. Neat.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/intohell.hum">intohell.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 11233<BR><TD> <B>Hacking Into Hell, by The Raver</B><BR><I>The Raver serves up a very odd blend of heavy-metal/satanic imagery, geek humor, and suspense in this story of a hapless user hacking into Lucifer's Mainframe. The Metal AE, where this file originated from, was host to a whole gang of Heavy Metal blasting computer geeks, and that weird matchup shows in nearly every textfile that came out of them. An evocative file, to say the least.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/intro.hum">intro.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 5827<BR><TD> <B>The Utopia BBS Login Screen: "Pansy's Homemade Mainframe"</B><BR><I>The first of two login screens from the Utopia BBS on this top 100 list. The Utopia BBS was one of hundreds of Apple II GBBS boards out there, written in BASIC and therefore completely modifiable (the additions were called 'mods') by the Sysop or Co-Sysops. In the case of this particular board, you could log on each day and see a completely different board, with different menus, login screens, and the rest. This time, they make you type your password in several times, only to show they were completely kidding with you. The long message about whether to create a Utopia II and the odd logoff screen (after I was ejected for not being "validated" yet) only add to the fun. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/jihad.nfo">jihad.nfo</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 17260<BR><TD> <B>The JiHAD Courier Information File</B><BR><I>This particular file doesn't hold any particular historical significance; I pretty much chose it at random because it was a good example of a Tag file, and one of a Courier Group at that. Tag files are little pieces of text usually attached to a pirated piece of software, that tells you information about the group that cracked file, or what kind of program you'd gotten, or even whatever news had gone on it that group recently. Courier groups were an interesting phenomenon of the past decade, where the process of cracking software and distributing it separated and separate groups formed for each function. Crackers could then merely send a program to the contact for the Courier group, and the file would be spread along to the "usual channels" within a day or two. Interesting scene. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/k-k00ld.hum">k-k00ld.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 5158<BR><TD> <B>The History of Real K-K00L D00DS, by The Edge</B><BR><I>While the still-common habit of bad spelling (replacing U for You, 0 for O, Z for S, and similar gunk) in communication might seem a somewhat new fad, in fact it goes back for over a decade. In this file (circa 1985), you can already see that it's been around long enough to be made fun of in a parody text. The Edge engages in a pretty amusing sample "chat" session in the middle of the file, that really makes me laugh, because I really did get users like that. And people think talking like this is still cutting edge?</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/killsant.hum">killsant.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3497<BR><TD> <B>How to Kill Santa Claus Dead! by the Outland</B><BR><I>The Outland (of the Neon Knights) ran the first board I was ever a Sysop of, Milliways. You would never know it if you met him, but when the Outland sat down to write files for Metal Communications and the Neon Knights, he would just spew forth some of the most violent, anarchistic, nihilist text to come out of any file-writing group. Besides Santa Claus, other targets of his files included the Easter Bunny, mailboxes, the local neighborhood, and in one case, I recall, the entire planet. He was certainly in character with the other members of the Neon Knights, where violence was the main driving force in the writing, but knowing him personally gave me insight that for him, it was actually just all fiction, another neat thing to do. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/killshco.ana">killshco.ana</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 16886<BR><TD> <B>The SchoolStoppers' Textbook</B><BR><I>The Yippies, or "Youth International Party" were a political group from the late 60's and early seventies that were really the grandfathers of a lot of the computer "underground" that flourishes today. They staged protests, wrote interesting books and articles, and published the Youth International Party Line (YIPL) which later became TAP, a predecessor of the currently famous 2600 magazine. Among their famous members were Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. This reprinted article is essentially a checklist for causing utter anarchy at your local school, so as to completely disrupt the learning process. Angry but witty, this was where a lot of later "anarchy" files took their style from, knowing it or not.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/krckwczt.app">krckwczt.app</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 137510<BR><TD> <B>Kracowicz' Kracking Korner: The Basics of Kracking Parts 1-9</B><BR><I>The world of Apple II Copy Protection was a hot battlefield throughout the Apple II's production life, with commercial developers spending thousands on new copy protection schemes and crackers rising out of the woodwork to "crack" these programs, make them copyable, and distribute them. With Krakowicz, you had a Software Company's worst nightmare: A literate, intelligent crackist who made a supreme effort to teach others. What is most striking about this series of files is not just the amount of detail and research that Kracowicz put into his writing to make it understandable to others, but his unique hardware-based solutions to the software that was being piped through his Apple II. By creating boards, switches, and hot-wiring his chips, he could exert incredible control over the programs he was attempting to crack. The companies didn't have a chance. Kracowicz stands alone.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/lay-girl.txt">lay-girl.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 16308<BR><TD> <B>The Complete Guide of Laying a Girl v1.1, from John Smith</B><BR><I>Probably the most amusing textfiles I occasionally stumbled across were those attempting to teach you the birds and the bees, or at least how to get laid. Usually in the form of "how-to" guides, these textfiles were usually completely out of left field, totally lacking in any accuracy or truly helpful information, and more likely than not someone's complete fantasy from watching too many teen exploitation flicks. In the case of this particular specimen, Mr. Smith seems to have as weak a grasp on the English language as he does on the particulars of intercourse or romance. Such stunning phrases as "Stack you hand gently under her trousers and move your hand more deeply evert time" guarantee that you're going to take this file with an oven-sized grain of salt. Sadly, this file is among the best of the bunch -- many of the others indicated rape or kidnapping as appropriate means to seduction. A fountain of ignorance.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/leeches!.hum">leeches!.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 11312<BR><TD> <B>The Society of "Leeches" in the Telecommunications World, by Mister I/O</B><BR><I>"Mister I/O" was the first name of The Outland, who later went on to join the Neon Knights and Metal Communications. In this file, he skewers the world of "Leeches", users who connect to systems and take all the files without donating any of their own. This particular kind of file (ridiculing other groups within the subculture) were plentiful by this time, but I think his stands out for that completely bizzare chart of the lineage of Leeches. Additionally, he even throws in some mathematical equations to determine your "leechiness". This file was written before his files took on a much more violent (but still witty) turn, as mentioned previously.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/lod-1">lod-1</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 213571<BR><TD> <B>The Legion of Doom/Hacking Technical Journal Volume 1, by the LOD</B><BR><I>I can remember when the Legion of Doom was just one of a group of punk kids hanging around on some of the same BBSes that I frequented. But someone or several someones within the group threw a ton of energy into the LOD, and they quickly rose to the forefront of Hacker/Phreaking groups of the time. The advantage of years of hindsight and a number of books have brought the group much more fame and regard historically, but even the most cynical or skeptical observer had to admit; this group produced. A prime example are these Legion of Doom/Hacker Technical journals, an indirect response to Phrack and other hacker magazines. The LOD/H Tech Journal was heavy, meaty stuff for the time (1987) with schematics, statistics, and even attributions to the files that had come before it. The series is worth reading as a prime example of the "highbrow" hackers, who put on the airs of having the knowledge to share, while raising the ire of those who didn't.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/lozers.hum">lozers.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 24778<BR><TD> <B>The Official 1984 Lozerlist, by The Atom (March 3, 1985)</B><BR><I>The Atom's bile-spewing, gossip-heavy "Loser List" comes in as one of the best examples of an all-around "Rag File" that I've seen, where the writer takes everyone on and attempts to completely slam them into the ground on all sides. Personal info, analysis of the groups they belong to, rumors and innuendo are all up for grabs as he decimates a lot of the "big names" in the 914/212/718 BBS world (as well as a few from the midwest). It appears a lot of his hatred comes from the Richard Sandza articles (also in the top 100), but more than that, he has it in for nearly anyone who has become in some way "famous" or "legendary" in the Phreak and Piracy world. Quite a piece of work. I never found a 1985 list or anything since. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/ludeinfo.hum">ludeinfo.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9298<BR><TD> <B>Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Luding, by Sinbad Sailor</B><BR><I>While calling an interesting BBS called the 1985 BBS (the last four digits were 1985, it came up on January 1st of 1985 and went down December 31st, 1985), I stumbled upon this small social phenomenon called "Luding". The board was reeking with it; there was a Luding sub-board filled with messages and there were a good number of instructional "Luding" files, not to mention some Luding poetry and fiction. Naturally, this really threw me for a loop, and while the actual idea of "Luding" is somewhat tame, these set of files stand out to me as excellent examples of how just writing about a small little fad in your hometown could blow the entire thing out of proportion to the point that you thought you were really missing out on something big.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/mathimp.txt">mathimp.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4177<BR><TD> <B>Impure Mathematics: The Story of Polly Nomial</B><BR><I>What we have here is probably the all-time marathon-running Usenet humor file. A collection of mathematic inside jokes used to tell a running set of sexual innuendo, this story of the hapless Polly Nomial and Curly Pi was the kind of file you'd trip over time and time again in different file directories. There are a good amount of sequels, but you can't beat the original. Math Geek humor; what beats that?</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/miami.hum">miami.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 8107<BR><TD> <B>Go Bare, by Captain Goodnight (August 25, 1986)</B><BR><I>Captain Goodnight's fictional short story is worth reading for the somewhat accurate feeling it gives of living a life primarily through a computer. There's some bad spelling and weird images mixed into the paragraphs, but on the whole, you'll come away from it either remembering memories from your own childhood or feel like you're peering into someone's life. A real gas of a story. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/mindvox">mindvox</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 66115<BR><TD> <B>Voices in My Head: The Mindvox Overture by Patrick Kroupa</B><BR><I>Mr. Kroupa's announcement of the creation of his new ISP caught a lot of people off guard. The tack from which he made his announcement was to harken back to the 1980's, and all the unique cultural forces at work then, that expressed themselves on the modem. In many ways, he saw a lot of what I've seen in terms of a need to preserve or maintain that time in some fashion. He additionally saw a need to make those times come back by creating Mindvox, his ISP by way of his company Phantom Technologies. I know that mindvox was wildly successful for a time, but the full story of its downfall escapes me. Meanwhile, this text still survives and shows an amazing breadth of insight into the BBS world of the preceding decade. This document was reprinted everywhere, so it definitely hit a nerve. I just wish we had a little more in our hands to show for it.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/modemlif.hac">modemlif.hac</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 11074<BR><TD> <B>The Modem Life: Is it Worth it? By Bryan Nomad (May 26, 1985) [<A HREF="100/.modemlif.hac">?</A>]</B><BR><I>Bryan, frustrated by downed BBSes, busy signals, abuse and hatred in message bases, and the financial drain of being s SysOp, takes a different tack. He writes this heartfelt message to the BBS world at large to ask people to remember that they're all people, they're all part of a community, and it's not about how much abuse you can spew into the air, but about getting to know one another and maybe make some friends. How effective is this file at getting into a cynical heart? Who knows. One can always hope it did some good. Thank you, Bryan.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/nighhack.omn">nighhack.omn</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9225<BR><TD> <B>The Night of the Hackers, by Richard Sandza, transcribed by The Reflex</B><BR><I>There are two notable angles to this file. The more simpler one is that it was transcribed by The Reflex of Omnipotent Incorporated, a regular on The Works BBS and an all-around prolific and intelligent writer. He chose as an important addition to his body of work this article from Newsweek, published in 1984. The second angle is this article, "Night of the Hackers", which brought right to the forefront a lot of those mysterious terms that hung in the air as private knowledge and secrets for only those "in the know" in the BBS world. Sherwood Forest, Blottoland, Plovernet, tele-trials all got (unwanted) national exposure in this article, and things just weren't the same afterwards. The aftermath of Richard Sandza's life is documented in "Revenge of the Hackers", also in this collection. Studied with the span of years from it, the article is solid, interesting, and pretty accurate. </I><BR>&nbsp 
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/noise.ana">noise.ana</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3679<BR><TD> <B>Variable-Pitched Frequency Generator, or How to Annoy Your Teachers, by Captain Quieg</B><BR><I>The Captain provides you with an accurate (I had one built), inexpensive, and mostly harmless prank electronic toy that would emit an extremely high-pitched noise, such that many people could get headaches from prolonged exposure. Not exactly a gentle diversion, but unforgettable. While this particular diagram worked, it was a relatively rare thing to come away from an electronics document and have everything function as claimed. Educational. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/paging_g.ame">paging_g.ame</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4275<BR><TD> <B>The Paging Game, by Jeff Berryman</B><BR><I>Trying to explain this one to anyone who doesn't know the concept of "memory paging" is a little bit of a losing battle. Essentially, a machine with memory that pages will throw out unused parts of programs or files onto a disk drive, ready to bring it back if you really use it. If you think MY explanation's a little choppy, wait'll you real THIS file. A golden piece of work from 1981.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/peat.hum">peat.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 532<BR><TD> <B>The Peat Moss Incident</B><BR><I>The best size-reaction ratio of the textfiles collection. Surreal.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/pezrambl.oct">pezrambl.oct</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 20975<BR><TD> <B>Mr. Pez's Rambling About Textfiles and Leeching, by Mr. Pez (March 13, 1987)</B><BR><I>Mr. Pez was another Works regular, always there with a quick wit and a really snooty attitude. Besides being on The Works, he also graced several other 914 boards and The Dark Side of the Moon (408) with his acidic attitude. In this file, he decided to just turn on his word processor and talk about whatever for as long as he could. To our advantage, the subject he chooses is Textfiles, which gives us insight into the type of world a teenager lived through in 1987 BBS terms. Most amusingly to me, he recounts the time I sat there copying all my textfile collection onto his hard drive trying to convince me to have his guitar and some cash. (The attempt was unsuccessful, and Donna married some other guy.) A personal trip down memory lane, but relevant to get some insight into where my editorial bent is as well. <I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/phrack.01.phk">phrack.01.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 29195<BR><TD> <B>Phrack Magazine Volume One, Issue One, edited by Taran King (November 17, 1985)</B><BR><I>The Phreaking/Hacking magazine that changed everything. While other electronic magazines existed before Phrack, none took the voice of the underground and presented itself as such a dominating, matter-of-fact entity as the Phracks have. Through the years, Phrack has always been dependable as a solidly-written, interest-gathering, packed-with-talent compilation of hot topics going throughout the Hacker Underground as most people have come to understand it. Electronic zines as a general force were usually created so that individual writers' work wouldn't get lost in the wash of sites; by hooking up with a dozen other articles, relatively monstrous 50k-100k files could stand out from the endless grouping of 2k and 15k files that others were putting out. It worked.. very few people don't remember Phrack in some fashion if they were involved in BBSes in the late 80's. This brings us to the other example issue...</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/phrack.29.phk">phrack.29.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 235777<BR><TD> <B>Phrack Magazine 4th Anniversary Issue, Volume Three, Issue 29 (November 17, 1989)</B><BR><I>By the fourth year of publication, Phrack is an institution. The issue opens with a profile of Emmanuel Goldstein, the enigmatic and steadfast editor of 2600 Magazine (which has gone on to become a major institution itself) and progressing into deeply technological discussions involving money transfer and Internet protocols.  By this time the Phrack World News, an overview of the social and legal scene around the culture had become a staple of the issues. Unstoppable.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/pokelist.app">pokelist.app</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 19769<BR><TD> <B>The Wizard's Call, Peek and Poke list for the Apple ][ (May 1984)</B><BR><I>Part of the immense charm of the Apple II series of computers was how they would encourage their users to learn everything they could about the system, to reprogram, modify, hardwire, and otherwise mess with all aspects of the machines. What this meant was that people were getting a knowledge of the Apples that could far outstrip almost all the other personal computers of the time. Evidence of the depth of this knowledge shows in files like this one, where a good portion of the total memory locations have been mapped and all sorts of neat features make themselves known. By the end run of the Apple II's main life (late 80's) this machine could accomplish a breathtaking amount of tasks. Geeky, but a lot of fun.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/purity.txt">purity.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 58845<BR><TD> <B>The Unisex, Omnisexual Purity Test v4.00 (April 23, 1988)</B><BR><I>One of the interesting things that arose out of the ARPAnet and Internet was the way that an unbelievable amount of energy could be focused on a single project, causing it to turn into a Wonder Of The World in a very short period of time. In the case of this file, the goal became to determine a person's "purity" by creating a list of questionable non-innocent acts that they could perform in life, and whatever percentage they had not yet done, was their purity. Of course, after dozens of entries into this document, it's become this complete other world, with every degrading, exciting, bizzare thing that someone could do with someone else (or themselves, or a group of people, or food) is listed. There are actually divergent, unrelated versions of this idea up on this site, but I chose this file because it lists out a great pedigree that goes back to 1982, and it's particularly well-written. Head-swimmingly sick.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/real.pgmrs">real.pgmrs</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 23955<BR><TD> <B>Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal</B><BR><I>One of the most interesting fads to hit the online world were the "Real" files.  Based loosely on the  pop culture book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche", these files presented a framework where others could just list their idea of what a "real" hacker or golfer or restaurant or whatever. It's an addictive way to describe things, and this explains the dozens and dozens of "real" files that pervaded BBSes throughout the decade. In the case of the "Real Programmers" file, the writing style of the author is particularly well-crafted (although I can't really judge the accuracy of his assertions) and it therefore has a very large distribution. Geeky humor.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/realpez.oct">realpez.oct</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 16384<BR><TD> <B>Real PEZ Devotees, by Mr. Pez</B><BR><I>The Works BBS's own Mr. Pez makes his own contribution to the "Real" files canon with this file about the followers of his BBS, "Pez Devotees". In the case of this file, the combination of his mention of all the different things he personally liked (including clothes, bands, sports and writing style) combined with his edging into nearly all aspects of a person's life to provide guidelines to be one of his devotees, makes this one of my favorite files. It should be noted that this file is a derivative of the original, the "Real Pirate's Guide", below. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/realpira.hum">realpira.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 6529<BR><TD> <B>The Real Pirate's Guide by Rabid Rasta [<A HREF="100/.realpira.hum">?</A>]</B><BR><I>Seizing the opportunity to make a humor file based on the now-popular "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" idea, Rabid Rasta made what is generally agreed upon to be the first of the BBS world's "Real" files, files which explain what the difference between "Real" and "Fake" was. In the case of his file, he puts down what makes a "Real" pirate, including assertions about computer and modem speed, writing style, and spelling. With the exception of "The Real Programmer's Guide" (which shows up a little earlier than this file, although only on ARPAnet and not on the BBS/AE world), this file seems to have been the one that started it all. The observations he makes are both humorous, and insightful into where the world was in 1984 if you were living your life through a modem. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/revhack.omn">revhack.omn</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 6266<BR><TD> <B>Revenge of the Hackers, by Richard Sandza, Transcribed by The Reflex</B><BR><I>The writer of "Night of the Hackers" for Newsweek revealed in this followup article that his life became quite a living hell for him after the original article was published. His credit cards were hacked, phone calls came 24 hours a day, and, to a lesser relevance, he went on "tele-trial". Tele-trial appears to mean that he had a message base fill up with messages about him. Either way, his article shows the kind of full-on attack that the hacker community was capable of pulling off at the time, completely unorganized and out for blood. The Reflex, as always, does an impeccable transcription job.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/revolt.dj">revolt.dj</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2358<BR><TD> <B>Dick and Jane Instigate a Popular Revolution, by The Deth Vegetable and Iskra</B><BR><I>Deth Vegetable and Iskra were both co-sysops of The Works way back when, before they both joined the Cult of the Dead Cow and moved on to greener pastures. (Actually, Iskra then came back and became the SysOp of the most recent incarnations of the Works, so it's all kind of circular in a way.) In any event, they got their heads together in the early 1990's and wrote this file, a parody of the "Dick and Jane" books that my generation lightly heard of. Short, sweet, and funny. Oh, and political. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/safeinfo.fun">safeinfo.fun</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2176<BR><TD> <B>The Safehouse Blueprints, from the Safehouse BBS</B><BR><I>The Safehouse BBS was one of the mid-80's "Super" BBSes that were pushing not only that they were the places to be, but that the technology and pure computing power at their disposal made them inherently irresistible. Now, looking back over the years with a more solid technical knowledge, some of the claims in this BBS information file are questionable (It's a modular program? What does that matter!) But you can see an example of how technology presented its own inherent sexiness to the BBS user.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/sexsatan.hum">sexsatan.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 8979<BR><TD> <B>Sex with Satan, by Psychoe</B><BR><I>Ah, where do you begin with "Sex with Satan". Psychoe's tale of murder, sexual mayhem, the Lord of Darkness and overactive babysitters never fails to floor me with its perfect blend of comic rant and erotic literature. You come away from reading it completely dazed and unsure what you just read. While you begin to read the file thinking you're to be subjected to another set of poorly spelled pseudo-erotic scribblings, you quickly realize as the character dies that something is quite amiss. After a short time you can't keep track of who is who and why the poor guy keeps getting lit on fire. Another great example of the Heavy Metal/Geek combination that showed up in a small number of AE lines in the 80's. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/spock.art">spock.art</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 5904<BR><TD> <B>Digitized Picture of Star Trek's Mr. Spock</B><BR><I>One of the nicer ASCII Art Files out there, this appears to have been some sort of program output that looked at a graphics file of Mr. Spock and then mapped it to different ASCII characters based on how "dark" those letters and numbers and characters were. If you print it out so that it's black letters on a white background, it looks pretty darn impressive. Of course, actually printing it out and putting it on a wall would immediately tap you as a geek, so be careful, and have a shredder at hand.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/stupidki.hac">stupidki.hac</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4942<BR><TD> <B>The Destructiveness of the "Kids", from an Anonymous Source</B><BR><I>A writer reaches out to the community to lament the loss of the days of the Open System and the unprotected BBS, and gives some (occasionally gleeful) descriptions of the steps he's been forced to take to protect himself. The exact tone of this missive is a little hard to track: in some places he's nostalgic and out of sorts about the way the world has changed, and in others he's the first to the forefront of implementing clampdowns of security and creating traps for any hapless hackers attacking his BBS. Definitely makes you think, if not too hard.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/suicide">suicide</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 10438<BR><TD> <B>Getting Others to Commit Suicide, by The Blade of the Neon Knights</B><BR><I>The Blade was one of the leaders of the Neon Knights, who themselves were an elite portion of the Metal Communications team, purveyor of textfiles throughout the BBS world, but mostly through AE lines. With their unique blend of Heavy Metal, Satanism, and Geek Chic, the group put out some of the odder files out there. In the case of this file, The Blade tells you how to drive others to self-destruction, so as to make it easier to get into college or a well-paying job.  A graphic collection of sick suggestions; just the soft of thing you could expect from this group. Are people really afraid of this sort of thing?</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/taoprogram.pro">taoprogram.pro</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 27266<BR><TD> <B>The Tao of Programming, by Geoffrey James</B><BR><I>Mr. James' gentle and intelligent retelling of the idea of the Tao redone for programming, hardware, and software. This soft of file, meant to be a light parody of another, more famous work, ends up standing up pretty well on its own. There's one for documentation as well, and there's other more pop-culture books expounding on the Tao you can purchase these days. A good read if you believe in it or you don't.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/taping.hum">taping.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 5117<BR><TD> <B>The Taping I, by Underwarez</B><BR><I>A particularly virulent example of a "Rag File", a file whose entire purpose was to tease, slander, or otherwise ridicule another member of the same (usually pirating or phreaking) subculture. In this particular rag, a hapless user named Jeff Spicolli is subject to implications of incest, lack of technical knowledge, bestiality, and other similar traits, ending with his voice telephone number. This type of file would start showing up on local AE lines or BBSes and while most of these rants would disappear about a week or two after the Sysops took them down, a few still hung around. The most involved set of rag files to my knowledge would be the Matt Ackeret chronicles from Anarchy Incorporated. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/tencoms.pro">tencoms.pro</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 1029<BR><TD> <B>The Ten Commandments of RBBS</B><BR><I>I was never a big fan of RBBS software, mostly because a lot of the sysops I ran into had the attitude put forward in this file. Reading over the commandments, we find that the SysOp is God, that you must not use handles or speak of things not involving computers, that profanity is unwelcome, and that a full three commandments dictate what kind of advertising you may post. This file is a great example of how attitude could turn a BBS from a place of fun to a stuffed-shirt, bland, unenjoyable piece of cardboard. Then again, posting this kind of file told people what kind of administrator you were right off the bat, enabling easy and quick escape. Run. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/top10.news">top10.news</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4272<BR><TD> <B>The Top 10 Media Errors about the Steven Jackson Games Raid</B><BR><I>This 1992 document from Steve Jackson games responds to some of the most blatant factual errors about the infamous "Raid" on that role-playing game company. In the course of an investigation, the US Secret Service raided Steve Jackson games and confiscated all the materials of a role-playing game called GURPS CYBERPUNK, which was played with dice and cards, and didn't even involve a computer. SJ Games were unable to have their game back for 7 months, during which time it was described as some sort of "hacking manual" that the country had to be protected from. Naturally, when all was said and done, the game was harmless and nothing what the Secret Service claimed it was. A true insight into ignorance on a massive scale. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/tr823.txt">tr823.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 106655<BR><TD> <B>The Internet Worm Program: An Analysis, by Eugene H. Spafford</B><BR><I>The Internet Worm changed a lot of minds about how interconnected and insecure the Internet was at that time. Using a combination of weaknesses and back doors in common  programs, the Worm wended its way throughout the then-small Net and succeeded in crippling it. This document, written during the Aftermath, presents a well-thought-out analysis of all the methodology used by the worm, as well as a general oversight of the state of the Internet of the time. Long, but worth it.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/upc.txt">upc.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 6726<BR><TD> <B>Cracking the Universal Product Code, by Count Nibble</B><BR><I>Count Nibble makes a second appearance in the top 100 files with his steady, thoughtful explanation of exactly how those silly black lines on every product in the supermarket work. What possible use this knowledge could have in one's day to day existence is pretty darn irrelevant; the point was, it was THERE, we WANTED TO KNOW, and Nibble FOUND IT OUT. That's the spirit of learning. Read and find out too.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/urine.box">urine.box</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4141<BR><TD> <B>Urine Box Plans, by Wolfgang von Albatross (March 2, 1986)</B><BR><I>By the time this file appeared on AE lines across the country, "Box" files had proliferated to the point that it was hard to tell who came up with with idea first. As might be expected, parodies began appearing, including the "Blotto Box" (which would supposedly destroy an entire telephone central switching office) and this specimen, which purports to cause the headset on the other end of the line to injure or kill the user. Naturally, this file is complete fiction, but constructed with enough of a straight face to make the unsuspecting collector think they have some sort of accurate textfile. An excellent awareness test.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/utopia.hum">utopia.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3193<BR><TD> <B>Login Screen for the Utopia BBS: "May I take your Order Please?"</B><BR><I>Taking advantage of the easily modifiable source code of their BBS, the Sysops of Utopia BBS constantly (and I do mean constantly) retooled all menus, messages, login and logoff screens, and even system functions. One result of this was that you always had a surprise the next time you connected to the BBS, and you always felt like you were part of a party. Note that the system actually made me type in my password, only to ignore me and continue its merry blather for a few more paragraphs.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/vaxen.jok">vaxen.jok</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 15163<BR><TD> <B>VAXen, My Children, Just Don't Belong Some Places, by Mike O'Brien</B><BR><I>Mr. O'Brien's ode to the misunderstood, mistreated VAX has achieved quite a large distribution; I keep finding it buried everywhere, in joke files and computer information sites and just generally all over. Through his sad tale of VAX abuse, Mike keeps you interested to the very end. How much of it is true is left up to the reader, of course, but somehow, it just rings enough with me to consider it real. Interesting.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/violence.txt">violence.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 11481<BR><TD> <B>Fun! With Random Senseless Violence, by Count Nibble (August 2, 1985)</B><BR><I>Count Nibble was one of the most literate of all the Apple II-era textfile writers, pre-dating similarly styled groups like Metal Communications and the Cult of the Dead Cow by years with his musical quotes, proper spelling and formatting, and choosing all sorts of esoteric subjects to write about. In the case of this file, he lists out his suggestions for causing mayhem and destruction on a boring summer's night. Through browsing his web presence, an interesting fact about Nibble made itself known to me: He was college-age when this and other files were written, bringing a maturity to both his spelling and general perspective, if not his general outlook on personal property. A pioneer.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/warbitch.txt">warbitch.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9225<BR><TD> <B>The Code of the Verbal Warrior, or Barney's Bitch Manual</B><BR><I>Barney Badass, co-sysop of The Glue Ball and heady influence on a number of Chicago BBSes, rants forth with a set of instructions on how to conduct a proper "bitch war". In the vernacular of the Internet, this has come to be known as a "flame war", but the same idea holds: Long after the intended subject has dropped out of debate, two (or more) sides begin a verbal assault on each other that fills the message base with dozens of personal attacks, insinuations, libel, and slander. After a while, everyone not personally involved in the bitchwar is driven away, posting messages on other sub-boards, which causes them to be insulted for not posting on the right sub-board, possibly leading to another bitchwar. Barney Badass, himself, was a true character and the instigator of some of my finest on-line memories.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/warning.hum">warning.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2537<BR><TD> <B>Warning: This Machine Breaks Down During Periods of Critical Need!</B><BR><I>Another light chuckle from the textfiles of the 1970s, this file warns you that the machine is more likely to break down the more you need it. The attempt to parody industrial labelling as well as the attention to clever turns of phrase marks a lot of the "big iron" humor in textfiles from professionals and college students of this time, showing they were looking for a little lightness in their otherwise stressful and highly-taxing occupations.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/warnings.ufo">warnings.ufo</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 1031<BR><TD> <B>THE FOLLOWING ARE COMMON SENSE WARNINGS WHEN DEALING WITH A UFO</B><BR><I>Yes, in the event that you do come across a classic lights-flashing UFO, just follow these simple hints and you probably won't be abducted, garrotted, or experimented on. A must for overseas travellers!</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/watchem.phk">watchem.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3635<BR><TD> <B>Watching the Watcher Watching You, by Sir Knight (1985)</B><BR><I>Besides the very memorable title, Sir Knight's file stands out for his call to mistrust others in the subculture as being potential enemies and agents, and to think twice before revealing information about yourself. Most noticeably, his automatic dismissal of anyone asking "how do I do this?" on public boards shows the beginnings of a trend that continues to this day. (Note also, that his portrait of the most trustable phreakers/hackers are anyone jewish, middle-upper-class, and under 19.)</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/whytext.oct">whytext.oct</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2223<BR><TD> <B>Why I Prefer Textfiles, by Jason Scott (February 27, 1987)</B><BR><I>I make a cameo appearance! This file came out of my mind one summer in my 16th year while I was home sick with the flu. As my BBS was dedicated to textfiles, I thought it would be fun to write one of my own about why textfiles were better. This file was parodied by a few of my friends at the time, but I think, looking back, my heart was in the right place. (It's still there.)</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="100/yipl.phk">yipl.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 15312<BR><TD> <B>The Youth International Party Line #1, Transcribed by BIOC Agent 003</B><BR><I>BIOC, besides being particularly good at writing textfiles of his own composition, was dedicated to preserving knowledge of the foundation that he and others were building on top of. In the case of Phone Phreaks and later Phreak Magazines, this foundation was YIPL, the house organ of the Yippies, who were a revolutionary youth group of the 1960's. YIPL provided one of the first radical magazines dedicated to learning more about technology. While the first issues (under the influence of Abbie Hoffman and others) merely called upon its readers to use this knowledge as a crowbar to smash the state, later issues (when the magazine renamed itself to the Technological Assistance Party, or TAP) brought forth a love of learning and understanding how technology affected all our lives, and a need to know who was pulling the strings. BIOC does his best to transcribe this issue as close to what it looked like when hastily-scrawled copies were sent out to a few dozen people in June of 1971. Good show.</I>
 </TABLE><P><TABLE WIDTH=100%><TR><TD ALIGN=RIGHT><SMALL>There are 100 files for a total of 2,853,285 bytes.</SMALL></TABLE><P>
 </BODY>
 </HTML>
 <P>If you wish to have the entire directory conveniently archived and compressed into one file, please download
 either <A HREF="http://archives.textfiles.com/100.tar.gz"><B>100.tar.gz</B></A> (1101660 bytes) or <A HREF="http://archives.textfiles.com/100.zip"><B>100.zip</B></A> (1135379 bytes) instead of all the files separately. <P>
--- a/textfiles.com/100/.modemlif.hac
+++ b/textfiles.com/100/.modemlif.hac
@@ -0,0 +1,312 @@
 <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
 <html>
 <head>
 <title>The Modem Life</title>
 </head>
 <body>
 <TABLE WIDTH=600>
 <TR><TD>
 &nbsp;
 <p><i>On an average October lunch break in 2001 I fired up my web browser
 to do my daily surfing of one of my favorite news sites, slashdot.org-
 one of the featured stories included a link to the textfile.com web site.
 Me being a BBS user of the 1980s I began to remiss of my computing days
 of past and after some browsing I found myself speechless as I sat face
 to face with my past- words that I had written sixteen years prior had
 been preserved and to some degree, celebrated on this site. I remained
 stunned for days and felt like I had just made contact with a long lost
 brother as the message that I wrote all that time ago had some special
 meaning to me. After a few e-mail exchanges with Jason (the webmaster)
 he ask that I write some companion text to my original message to help
 solidify the context of the message and to further the celebration of the
 special times when it was written- times that proved to be the infancy
 of the modern online community. I have included the added companion text
 in this version of my letter which is written in italics and contained
 in brackets.</i>
 <br>&nbsp;
 <br>&nbsp;
 <p>The Modem Life. Is it Really Worth it?
 <br>======================================
 <br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Written by The Nomad, for
 <br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; all BBS's that wish it.
 <p>Note/Warning:
 <br>===============
 <br>The author of this file will go detailed into his life and will explain
 his feelings quite openly.&nbsp; If you are not mature enough to handle
 what the author is going to say and wish to insult him for his beliefs,
 I suggest you read no further.
 <p><i>[Users often focused much of their online time to systems that were
 within their local calling zone for cost issues, multiplied with the fact
 that there was a significantly smaller users community and it meant that
 the same users would often converse on a number of local systems. As well,
 with such a small home computer user base within the country many people
 didn<EFBFBD>t have immediate contacts to share their passion for computers with
 which often lead them to reach out to others they found in the online world
 for friendship. I personally had arranged a number of meetings with others,
 attended several mid-size user group parties and even, along with a few
 others went to the funeral of an online friend that I had who I had never
 meet. I wrote this disclaimer since many people that would be reading this
 message had met me or had some idea of who I was and to let potential abusers
 and our peers know that I considered the use of this message as ammunition
 for abuse to be of extremely poor taste. Today, this might seem silly but
 I felt it worthwhile as abuse was gaining popularity as an online activity.]</i>
 <br>&nbsp;
 <p>Well, another typical day in the modem world.&nbsp; Doesn't it just
 make you want to throw-up all over the keyboard?
 <p>Recently I thought I would call the numbers on the Megaterm 3.0 Famous
 Systems phone book&nbsp; <i>[Megaterm was a terminal program used to dial-up
 and communicate with BBSs, it<69>s distribution came with a list of BBSs that
 were favorites of the author.]&nbsp;</i> thinking these would be the "Top
 of the line" BBS's.&nbsp; As the Megaterm began to dial with Safehouse
 I kicked back and watched.&nbsp; Busy.&nbsp; Not surprising.&nbsp; It then
 proceeded to dial other BBS's, most of which I never have heard of.&nbsp;
 After about two more tries the program started to freeze.&nbsp; Not sure
 what was going on I picked up the phone only to hear the recording "We're
 sorry but the number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer
 in service...".&nbsp; I then hit [U] to unmark the number and continue
 the Megaterm dialing.&nbsp; Not too worried that that board was down the
 Megaterm continued to dial as I again kicked back and watched.&nbsp;&nbsp;
 <i>[Obtaining a connection to a board often seemed like a ritual to many
 online users of the day since access to most systems was limited to one
 user at a time. Of course, the most popular systems were always the hardest
 to get on to. The notation of using the brackets as in <20>[M]essage<67> was
 sometimes used as a courtesy to identify valid system prompt commands (in
 this case the letter <20>M<EFBFBD>), this is somewhat analogous to providing key
 words.]</i> The very next number that was opening message and the prompt
 for my password or 'NEW'.&nbsp; Being a new user I typed 'NEW'.&nbsp; To
 my displeasure the system told me it was a private BBS that allowed no
 new users and hung me up.&nbsp; Very displeased I kicked back in my chair
 and started to listen a little closer to the TV in the other room as the
 Megaterm began to start dialing again.&nbsp; After two more welcome busy
 signals the Megaterm started to flip from 'Click' to 'Busy' and back and
 forth.&nbsp; Confused, I picked up the phone and again heard that dreadful
 recording "Were sorry...".&nbsp; Very uneasy I pressed [U] to unmark the
 number.&nbsp; After a small welcome string of busy signals I got a ring.&nbsp;
 The phone was answered and a carrier was sent.&nbsp; The Megaterm then
 connected for me only to find that it was a Pixboard.&nbsp; Very pleased
 (I love pixboards!) I called back and loaded up Pixterm. <i>[Pixboards
 were special BBS<42>s that were capable of transmitting images to the caller,
 this technology was quite revolutionary for the average online user of
 the day who was accustom to viewing just plain old text.&nbsp; Pixterm
 was the custom terminal program required to interact and view the images
 on a Pixboard.]&nbsp;</i> Once connected, pleased to see some nice graphics
 in the opening message I then typed in 'NEW'.&nbsp; Only to find out that
 a $10 validation fee was required to access ANYTHING but the main menu
 and [M]essage to SysOp. <i>[Most boards of the day offered a number of
 different levels of user access and most systems required the SysOp to
 validate a new user before they were granted privileges beyond reading
 messages. Validated users could post messages to these boards and were
 allowed to stay online for a longer period of time before being forced
 to log-off. Higher levels of access, which were acquired either by purchase,
 favor or personal contact, often provided benefits like allowing access
 to restricted boards, longer online times and access to a BBSs<53> textfile
 database. Some boards also had hidden levels of access which, if obtained,
 allowed access to hidden message boards, allowed the user to know the identity
 of otherwise anonymous posters and provided moderation capabilities to
 delete messages.]</i>&nbsp; After messing around for a few minutes I got
 bored and typed "OFF" to leave the system.&nbsp; I then returned to Megaterm
 and it continued to dial.&nbsp; After another busy signal the numbers sequence
 started over.&nbsp; And I got a ring, before I knew it, the words:
 <p>&nbsp;&nbsp; THE SAFEHOUSE MEGANET - PORT #02
 <br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "WHERE YOU'RE ALWAYS WELCOME!"
 <p>were printed across the screen, me being a regular caller to the board
 entered my name and password only then to be logged off due to the fact
 the that port was being reserved for a level 5 user. <i>[The Safehouse
 was one of the few systems that had multiple phone line capabilities but
 reserved one of those lines for a user with higher-level access, which
 I sadly didn<64>t have.]</i>
 <p>&nbsp;Very discouraged and then realizing that some day, The Safehouse
 would die too such as others favorite systems like Sherwood Forest II,
 The Outpost, The World of Cryton, and Sherwood Forest ///. I then quietly
 went to bed.
 <p>&nbsp; [Extra Note:&nbsp; No offense Safehouse Manager]
 <p>&nbsp;A day or two later I decided to give a few of the local boards
 a call, only to find that the most active sub-boards around were abuse!&nbsp;
 After reading a dozen or so messages I came across a message that was insulting
 my personal favorite BBS, The Digital Dimension, on-line since Aug. 1983,
 a VERY nice system.&nbsp; The post was saying how bad the board was because
 the SysOp wouldn't give him high access, and never answered [F]eedback,
 or [C]hats. <i>[Feedback was a simple e-mail letter to the SysOp. The chat
 function was a request that could be invoked by an online user for the
 SysOp to engage in a real-time conversation while the user was online.
 Once activated, the user could then continue with their online session
 while a message was displayed on the SysOp<4F> monitor indicating the function
 had been activated. It was always fun when a SysOp would break in on your
 session (particularly if the chat function was never invoked). To add to
 the fun, many SysOps had a message automatically displayed as a prelude
 to the chat that often included some overtones of a Godly entrance before
 the chat began.]</i> I was pretty upset, the SysOp is a personal friend
 so I naturally [P]osted about the matter and explained how he is a very
 busy person and tries to do as much as he can, after all there are over
 750 users!&nbsp; <i>[The number of registered users for a BBS was always
 analogous to a tigers<72> stripes and a point of great pride to a SysOp.]</i>&nbsp;
 Feeling satisfied I logged off and observed a few other local boards only
 to find more abuse, hatred, and destruction.&nbsp; I then decided I would
 go outside and get some fresh air and live a normal life, after all I don't
 want to take the image of a 'computer freak'.&nbsp; <i>[Many people of
 school age that had a computer were considered a computer freak by default
 since the concept and benefits of why anyone would want a computer was
 totally alien to the average person.]</i> A day later, very concerned,
 I again auto-dialed to same board with Matthew Dornquast's beloved Megaterm.&nbsp;
 After about a half an hour of dialing I heard the computer in the other
 room signal that a ring was detected.&nbsp; I came in the room and went
 through the logon procedures and went straight to the abuse board to find
 about 10 new messages after mine!&nbsp; I began to read them; more of the
 same hatred.&nbsp; I then came to a post about 4 after mine by the person
 that I posted about.&nbsp; He told me off and posted my number.&nbsp; I
 was very uneasy, I have never heard of the guy before and he posted my
 number!&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>[Much like what will possibly always be, not all
 online users of the day were cordial and some were even looking for trouble.
 Posting an individuals<6C> phone number on a BBS&nbsp; was often used as a
 method of attack against a person in an attempt to destroy that persons<6E>
 anonymity of using an alias. It also attempted to demonstrate ones<65> resourcefulness
 as personal information was often highly guarded from the general online
 public.]</i> Not sure to post or not I sat there for a minute and said
 why not.&nbsp; Not bothering to read the other new messages I [P]osted.&nbsp;
 I then told him how everyone had their own right to say what they want
 and that posting number solved nothing.&nbsp; Of course later that week,
 for about three days I received prank calls, I would pick up the phone
 with a "Hello?" Nothing.&nbsp; He would just sit there, hoping that I would
 get upset with his deed.&nbsp; This will make him happy.&nbsp; I then started
 to tell him how much of a man he was by prank calling, he was probably
 expecting to here "We have a trace on our line blah blah blah!" I then
 hung up.&nbsp; He never called back. <i>[These of course were all days
 prior to Caller ID and related technologies. As phone abuse was often a
 method of attack against another online user many people either did or
 claimed to of declared to the phone company that they were receiving harassing
 phone calls and worked out arrangements to have a call trace placed on
 their line.]</i>&nbsp; Later on that day my very good SysOp friend of The
 Digital Dimension called me.&nbsp; He started to explain how he was told
 earlier today that he was going to be moving at the end of this school
 year.&nbsp; He then asked me very seriously 'Bryan, will you please run
 a copy of the board in Houston while I take a copy to Iowa.' I thought
 long and hard, being a SysOp required a lot of work, time, and devotion.
 A whole lot.&nbsp; I agreed.&nbsp; Many things were now needed to be done.&nbsp;
 Now realizing that I didn't have the hardware to support the system, that
 weekend I started a buying spree.&nbsp; I first bought my Sider 10 Megabyte
 hard drive, $695. <i>[Can you believe 10MB for $700? The scary part is
 that was considered cheap- the Sider was the first hard disk widely available
 for under a $1000.]</i>&nbsp; Then bought a Thunderclock, another $110.&nbsp;
 <i>[Apple II computers did not come equipped with a system clock, which
 was necessary to keep track of users login times. The Thunderclock was
 an expansion card that plugged into the system bus and provided this basic
 function.]</i> I of course needed a firmware chip for my cat, $30.&nbsp;
 <i>[This firmware EPROM plugged into a socket on an Applecat brand modem
 and enhanced the functionality of the modem to allow it to answer phone
 calls.]</i>&nbsp; And so my computer won't overheat, a System Saver, $70.&nbsp;
 <i>[The <20>System Saver<65> was an encased fan that attached to the outside
 air vents of the Apple II to provide increased airflow though the otherwise
 fanless unit.]</i>&nbsp; I then realized that I would need my own phone
 line so I called the phone company and got it installed, $120.&nbsp; Realizing
 how many callers I would loose if the number changed, I would have to pay
 an additional $60 to get the same number, 713/497-4633 but that will have
 to wait <20>till he moves.&nbsp; After realizing I just spent over a thousand
 dollars just to get the board started I began to get use to the software.&nbsp;
 It was a home brew. <i>[custom written.]</i>&nbsp; Nevertheless, a very
 nice one.&nbsp; I started to write new "mods" <i>[modifications]</i> and
 features for the board.&nbsp; I only had a print out of the board then
 so the SysOp could get his software copyrighted. <i>[More specifically,&nbsp;
 the SysOp&nbsp; was ultimately wanting to get his software published and
 was advised by his agent to not distribute electronic versions of the source
 code for it.]</i> Knowing that in order to keep the high quality of the
 system it would require many long nights over the keyboard, more night
 then ever before.&nbsp; Typing...&nbsp; thinking... working...&nbsp; programming.&nbsp;
 After showing the SysOp my progress, he was quite pleased.&nbsp; I rewrote
 many functions.&nbsp; Many features were now more efficient and faster
 then before.&nbsp; I also started the beginning of our soon to be enormous
 [L]ibrary on our new 'baby' the 10 Meg Sider. <i>[It was often in the mind
 of an individual to better understand ones computers and how to control
 it. As well, me being the person I am, couldn<64>t leave good enough alone.]</i>
 <p>&nbsp;After a month or so, with the same old BBS abuse and programming,
 I took a look at all the work I had done.&nbsp; Over 200 files in the [L]ibrary
 so far, many new features which have never appeared on a board in the U.S.&nbsp;
 (to my knowledge) have been thought up, organized, and programmed.&nbsp;
 I then thought, when I take the board over I will be the victim all this
 major abuse on these other boards.&nbsp; What an honor.&nbsp; God, what
 an honor!&nbsp; I then began to wonder, why, why does everyone abuse everyone
 else so much?&nbsp; Are they insecure?&nbsp; Are they really that upset?&nbsp;
 Are they just blowing off a little steam?&nbsp; Do they enjoy making enemies?&nbsp;
 Do they feel superior to insult others?&nbsp; I don't know.&nbsp; I really
 don't know.&nbsp; I myself like to make friends.&nbsp; Not only just friends
 that I will talk to on the phone, but ones that come over on weekends,
 go out partying on Friday nights, play sports, and just about anything
 else a true friend does.&nbsp; Without knowing that I went to the same
 school as Shadow's Pawn for almost a year I meet him at the SysOps house
 and am now good friends with him.&nbsp; Despite the fact that I am two
 years older then him, he is on the football team, I am in band and enjoy
 playing the trumpet, and we had almost no common interests became good
 friends because of similar interests, the computer.&nbsp; But I still came
 back to the same question "Why do they abuse?" Why?&nbsp; Life is bad enough
 as it is, and then there are the feds who are after all us pirates, phreakers,
 and hackers.&nbsp; <i>[I had to laugh some when I read this. Pirates are
 individuals that distribute copyrighted software. Phreakers are individuals
 who acquire and use long distance PIN access numbers that don<6F>t belong
 to them. Hackers are individuals who attempted to penetrate computer systems
 that they weren<65>t granted access to. (The modern definition of this activity
 has changed and is now referred to as cracking. Crackers of this day were
 individuals that found methods to circumvent software copy protection schemes,
 if someone was successful in a particular pursuit they would say they <20>Cracked
 it<EFBFBD>.) While I<>ve never been one to not give people their due and don<6F>t
 condone these activities I found that many people did them out of necessary
 to further their knowledge of computers given their limited resources.
 At that, many were minors and knew there was a limited recourse that could
 be taken against them at that time. I laugh because the fear of the feds
 was something that was often the buzz on different message boards while
 the reality showed that they typically had little interest in what was
 going on.]</i>&nbsp; Who needs more enemies?&nbsp; While we can all be
 helping each other the "good old" traditional computer activities like
 helping others get up to date "wares", even if they have a Networker modem
 and not that "excepted" Applecat? <i>[Wares are the items of trade for
 a software pirate. The Networker modem was capable of transferring data
 at 300 baud while the Applecat could do 1200 so the bias was obvious.]</i>&nbsp;
 I remember back when I first got my modem.&nbsp; I couldn't remember one
 abuse board. Not one.&nbsp; Then suddenly one by one, slowly but surely,
 they started coming up with the demand of them due to the large amount
 of hatred from two users.&nbsp; Now, the abuse board is just as common
 as the public board.&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; Then somewhere, some one
 person had a grand idea.&nbsp; The same thing that happened over two hundred
 years ago.&nbsp; This genius said, that order in the modem society is a
 must and some form of government must be formed.&nbsp; Thus came Tele-Trial,
 with this new concept came new constitutions, new sub-boards, and an incensement
 of tele-conferencing phreaking.&nbsp; The constitutions would set the laws
 of the BBS. The sub-boards would provide a special meeting place for matters
 of the tele-trial and the tele-conference for the often called "court room"
 for the trial of the defendant.&nbsp; This system worked in many places.&nbsp;
 Punishments were often deletion from that board or even to the great extent
 of credit card information being released, and abused.&nbsp; But for many,
 deleting ones password would not keep them off the system.&nbsp; They would
 just call back with a new handle and abuse more people till he was deleted
 again.&nbsp; And the process goes on and on.&nbsp; Believe me, I have seen
 it happen.&nbsp; So I came to the conclusion that this method is not full
 proof.&nbsp; I then came upon a crazy idea of mine.&nbsp; Not so sure of
 myself I begin my think more in-depth.&nbsp; One hope for me remained,
 and I then walked to my computer, put in Apple Writer and began to type.
 <i>[Apple Writer was the de facto standard word processor for Apple II
 users of the day.]</i> Now, I have completed my work.&nbsp; My task is
 finished at this moment of Sunday May 26 1985 at 12:55 in the morning.&nbsp;
 I thank you for you time and am sorry for any and all errors.
 <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sincerely,
 <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Bryan Nomad
 <p><i>In Jason's comments about my letter he said that this was a plea
 to the online community of 1985, in retrospect I have to concur that he
 is right. What<61>s sad however is that you could change a small amount of
 this message and make it meaningful to an online world that exists years
 later- sufficient&nbsp; to say that it<69>s hard to imagine some aspects of
 the online community ever changing so long as people can operate with some
 degree of anonymity. Throughout the decades that I<>ve spent online I<>ve
 found that, from a human perspective the modem lifes<65> greatest tool is
 to allow people the freedom to express what they really want and be the
 person they want to be- no excuses, no limits, no regrets.&nbsp; Some people
 that appear as kind individuals in person live in shadows online where
 their true self can run free without fear of retribution. Others however&nbsp;
 prove themselves noble and dignified without reward and are often brighter
 gems then what the eye beholds. The choices come from within, the freedom
 is yours. In the end, I think you just have to ask yourself "What kind
 of world do you want?"</i><i></i>
 <p><i>Respectfully,</i><i></i>
 <p><i>-Bryan (bpnomad@yahoo.com)</i>
 <p>&nbsp;
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 <TITLE>T E X T F I L E S</TITLE>
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 <H1>Jason Scott's Top 100 Textfiles</H1>
 <P>
 It's perfectly understandable that someone finding textfiles.com for the first
 time wouldn't be interested in sifting through thousands of textfiles to get an
 idea of what the site is about.  For this reason, I've selected a "best of"
 collection of one hundred textfiles that I think capture the spirit of this site
 and the unique culture that it attempts to preserve. <P>
 While in many cases, there are slicker or longer examples of these files, I felt
 that these specific examples best captured the genre they belonged to. I invite
 you to browse through this section, read up, and if you find something that
 intrigues you, to read more about it in the bulk of the site.
 <P>
 These files are arranged alphabetically, not in any order of importance.
 <P>
 <TABLE WIDTH=100%>
 <TD BGCOLOR=#000000><FONT COLOR=#FFFFFF><B>Filename</B><BR></FONT></TD></TD>
 <TD BGCOLOR=#002200><FONT COLOR=#FFFFFF><B>Size</B><BR></FONT></TD></TD>
 <TD BGCOLOR=#004400><FONT COLOR=#FFFFFF><B>Description of the Textfile</B><BR></TD></TR>
 <tab indent=60 id=T><br>
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="914bbs.txt">914bbs.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3968<BR><TD> <B>914 Area Code BBS List, by Dan Gelman (January 15, 1984)</B><BR><I>A snapshot of the typical BBSes you might find in an area code, in this case, mine. A good portion of the "General" boards you see listed were in fact Phreak or Pirate boards. Keeping an active account on all your local systems could be quite time-consuming.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="actung.hum">actung.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 332<BR><TD> <B>Relaxen und watch das blinkenlights...</B><BR><I>This sort of small, quaint humor file could be found lurking across many different kinds of BBSes and mainframes. Origin: Unknown, although it very likely could date back to the 60's or 70's.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="ad.txt">ad.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 1664<BR><TD> <B>Call The Upside Down BBS!</B><BR><I>A typical "Tag File" for a Bulletin Board System, in this case a classic Apple II with 64k of memory. To entice you over, the BBS offers you everything up to and including the two floppy disks located in the floppy drives. Besides being an interesting approach for a BBS ad, this short file also shows the variety of devices you could hook to an Apple II, including devices you could hook to other devices.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="adventur.txt">adventur.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 7758<BR><TD> <B>Adventure: Solving it in Easy Steps, by The Rom Raider and Doctor Digital</B><BR><I>Don't read this file if you haven't played Crowther and Wood's original classic "Adventure"! This file is a solid example of a "Walk-through", where the goal was to present an easy, no-thinking solution to the classic thinking person's game: text adventures. While these games could present hours (or days or weeks) of fun trying to solve the puzzles and pitfalls, many people were content to just be given the answer and go through the game blindly, watching as every step they made was the exact right one. To a smaller degree, there was a constant one-upsmanship with Walkthroughs, where whoever could come out with the "solve" for a game the soonest after it was released (or even before) was the King of the Hill.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="angela.art">angela.art</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 6656<BR><TD> <B>ASCII Art of "Angela"</B><BR><I>A solid, classic example of an ASCII Nude, brimming with joy and text-based sexiness. Some of these were hand-drawn, while others used primitive digitizers and software that translated graphics to text to give surprisingly realistic photos when seen from a distance. Naturally, these files were a hot trade online.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="anonymit">anonymit</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 34657<BR><TD> <B>The Joy of Handles, by Mahatma Kane Jeeves and David Lescohier</B><BR><I>This series of articles attacks the issue of anonymity and handles from a completely different set of perspectives; that is, the protection of the writer from general harassment and investigation, and not necessarily that of promoting unwelcome or illegal ideas. An informative read.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="applemaf.hum">applemaf.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 21388<BR><TD> <B>The Apple Mafia Story, as told to Red Ghost, 1986</B><BR><I>This interesting insight into the comings and goings of the Apple piracy world of the early-mid 80's shows the battle between the older class of pirates and the new breed of "r0dentz" that has been waged for the last 20 years. This file also gives a history (and hardware list) of the Sherwood Forest BBSes, which were among my all-time favorite boards, and probably a pretty darn influential force in the world that textfiles.com presents.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="apples.txt">apples.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 8960<BR><TD> <B>Typical Apple Piracy Message Base, circa 1984</B><BR><I>This pristine capture of a 14-message apple "warez" message base shows a gamut of user types converging in one place to trade boasts, information, and programs. From Sherlock Apple's boast of "I have em all!!!!!!" to Creative Cracker and Key Master's BBS ads, you can see how these places became hotbeds of activity and information. Key master and I traded textfiles back then; I thought nothing of calling a BBS called "The 4th Reich".</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="arttext.fun">arttext.fun</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4020<BR><TD> <B>The Art of Writing Textfiles, by The Bronze Rider</B><BR><I>Bronze rider weighs in with his opinions on how to write proper textfiles, probably in response to some lack of quality in files up to that point. (This file is incomplete for the moment, but you'll get the idea.)</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="b00g!.hum">b00g!.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 6623<BR><TD> <B>B00g and the Art of Zen, by Anarchy Incorporated</B><BR><I>This file started a weird "b00g" craze that perpetuated itself for a number of years across a lot of BBSes that I was on/involved in. Then again, Anarchy Inc. was one of those groups you could depend on for some really excellent writing no matter what the subject was about.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="balls.txt">balls.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2845<BR><TD> <B>Mouse Balls Available as a Field Replacement Unit</B><BR><I>A classic example of a somewhat plausible file making the rounds for years and years. This likely-true file discussing how to wash the balls from Computer Mice took on a life of its own and still shows up occasionally. Surely a giggle, if not a guffaw.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="basicom4.phk">basicom4.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 17717<BR><TD> <B>Bioc Agent's Telecommunications Series, Part IV</B><BR><I>BIOC Agent 003 was one of those rare phone phreaks who could both assimilate information around him and present it in a well-written, forthright manner. Often, many of the phreaking textfiles of the time were poorly written, hastily formatted, and lacking in any perspective beyond how to break or get freebies from a computer or network. Bioc got a lot of attention with his clear writing and informative series "The Basics of Telecommunications", which appeared in the summer of 1984. This example from the series, part 4 (of 7) covered both the hierarchy and electronic network of the Bell Telephone System. Groundbreaking.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="basicom5.phk">basicom5.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 18867<BR><TD> <B>Bioc Agent's Telecommunications Series, Part V</B><BR><I>Another example of BIOC's writing in the Basics of Telecommunications Series, this section dealt entirely with the basic telephone, including the wiring and the electronic aspects. Notably, BIOC gives a bibliography where he got a lot of his information (something pretty much not done beforehand) and additionally covers the theory of operation of the infamous "Black Box", as well. Excellent.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="bbsdeath.pro">bbsdeath.pro</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 7639<BR><TD> <B>Whatever Happened to REAL Bulletin-Board Systems?</B><BR><I>What strikes me about this file was that it was written around 1982 and decries how out-of-touch, vicious, and impersonal the BBS world has grown for the writer. Note the interesting reasons he gives for the downturn of BBS's.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="bc760mod.ham">bc760mod.ham</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 1408<BR><TD>  <B>Modification of the Uniden Bearcat BC950XLT for Cellular Frequencies, by John Stover (March 29, 1988)</B><BR><I>The problem was major: Cellular phones could be listened to by any ham radio scanner being made. The normal solution: Produce better cell phones, that did a better job of encrypting/scrambling transmissions. The solution the government took: Force all creators of any ham radio scanners to remove the capability of ham radios to listen to the frequencies chosen for the cellular phones. Naturally, the companies did this in the cheapest way possible, often just running a short-circuiting wire such that attempts to go to those frequencies would be unsuccessful. And naturally, files such as this one made themselves available, where you were told how to take out that wire and restore the machine to full functionality. Was the point to listen in on people? No. The point was crippling technology to hide things from people flies in the face of the spirit of technology. 5 short lines, and the efforts from the unknowing are thwarted. The power of textfiles.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="beefstar.hum">beefstar.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2965<BR><TD> <B>"Hey how much for someone to, you know, screw with the beef?"</B><BR><I>This is the only beef pornography I've ever seen. Sexual Surrealism at its best.<BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="bhbb1.hac">bhbb1.hac</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9837<BR><TD> <B>Better Homes and Blue Boxing, Part I, by Mark Tabas (January 7, 1985)</B><BR><I>Mark Tabas came along in 1985 and wrote a series of chatty, friendly files about all the fun you could have with the mysterious Blue Box, the most famous of all the Phreak Boxes that rose out of the 1970's and 1980's. This box, when used in conjunction with a 2600hz tone across a phone line, allowed you to seize control a telephone line as if you were an operator and do all sorts of neat, crazy stuff. By 1985 these boxes were becoming obsolete (with the advent of Electronic Switching System, or ESS) but this file harkens back to this interesting era. A sign of the great works LOD would create for the next decade.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="billrights.fun">billrights.fun</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3746<BR><TD> <B>The Bill of Rights "Lite", by John Perry Barlow</B><BR><I>This re-tooled Bill of Rights, rephrased to reflect most of the constitutional issues arising in cyberspace and in general everyday life, hit the nail on the head as to how far the government had strayed from its original plan. Barlow, a co-founder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, makes his beliefs about the modern world known in just a couple screenfuls of slashed-up constitutional law.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="black.box">black.box</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4460<BR><TD> <B>To All Who Dare -- The Black Box</B><BR><I>For many people, this simple little text file was the opening door into the world of the Phone Phreak, a world where a simple application of technology meant a subversion of the great and powerful Bell System. In this case, the Black Box would convince the telephone company that your phone was still ringing, even though you'd picked the phone up and were chatting happily through the buzzing rings. With its name owing to the 1970's era "Blue Box", the Black Box was the final spark to ignite a stream of steady "box" files, each one a more flamboyant and wild color and each promising the world.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="bofh.1">bofh.1</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3854<BR><TD> <B>The Bastard Operator From Hell #1, by Simon Travaglia</B><BR><I>As the BBS kids of the world grew into full-fledged System Operators, they found that no textfile out there caught the frustrations and issues of a computer hacker saddled with responsibility more than the BOFH (Bastard Operator from Hell) series. Stretching through many files and continuing to this day as a magazine column, these textfiles set out an alternate-world Simon the Sysadmin who would torture and ruin his users in the pursuit of more free time and lager. The initials BOFH have become one of the better-kept inside jokes of the System Admin trade, and these files have become immortal.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="cDc-0200.txt">cDc-0200.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 124155<BR><TD> <B>The cDc #200 Higgledy-Piggledy-Big-Fat-Henacious-Mega-Mackadocious You-Can't-Even-Come-Close-So-Jump-Back-K-BOOMIDY-BOOMIDY-BOOM File, by Swamp Ratte'</B><BR><I>The Cult of the Dead Cow continues to be a prominent force in the online world, but when they started in the late 1980's they were just another text-file writing group, copying heavy metal lyrics and printing bomb ingredient lists. Swamp Ratte's perseverance and leadership caused cDc to break out of that mode, however, and by the time they'd released their 200th textfile (In December of 1992) they'd been around for over 6 years, forever by BBS standards. To celebrate, Swamp Ratte' wrote this file, which I consider to be an all-time classic not only because of the dead-on parodies of the BBS world of the 1980's that run through it, but for the way these parodies perfectly capture a lot of the cultural forces that ran through that time. (The warez vs. textfiles debate, the self-aggrandizement of older hackers, the completely bizzare spelling styles, etc.) This file truly goes above and beyond in every way. A great reference file to see if you can get all the jokes when reading other files here.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="captain.phk">captain.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2759<BR><TD> <B>An Apple for the Captain, by Steven Wozniak (October 1, 1984)</B><BR><I>BIOC Agent 003 transcribes an Infoworld article that mentions a funny story about Captain Crunch (John Draper), an employee of Apple, reprogramming an Apple II so that it would dial up PBX lines to get free phone codes. In a few short paragraphs, Steven Wozniak describes Phone Phreaking with an innocent sense of fun and exploration, using common technology. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="captmidn.txt">captmidn.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 24394<BR><TD> <B>The Story of Captain Midnight</B><BR><I>This textfile, source unknown, tells the story of Captain Midnight, a lone satellite operator who overrode HBO's signal with a warning against charging $12.95 a month and scrambling their signal. This sudden seizure of the HBO signal caught the media (and the government)'s attention, and he was soon caught. This textfile saves the memory of a fellow who took matters into his own hands, and blew out a showing of Pee Wee's Big Adventure as a bonus. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="catstuff.app">catstuff.app</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9818<BR><TD> <B>Expanding Your Apple Cat II, by The Ware-Wolf</B><BR><I>The Novation Apple Cat Modem was one of those pieces of technology that you just can't believe ever got out into the market, and which stands as a straight example of the creativity that lives in this world. Built simply to be a flexible modem, this piece of technology contained 4 digital to analogue converters and several other unexpected ports and switches that caused it to be used as a clock, answering machine/voice mailbox, hold button, voice changer, and music player. Simply put, this modem was beyond belief. This textfile helps show some of the amazing modifications to this modem that were devised by its users. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="codegeek.txt">codegeek.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 20841<BR><TD> <B>Robert Hayden's Code of the Geeks v1.01</B><BR><I>The Geek Code is one of those bizzare Internet-only phenomenons that would only rise up among a culture dominated by the intelligensia: a code that, through an application of letters with plus or minus modifications, would indicate the hobbies, desires, or public aspects of that person, easily machine-readable, but to anyone who didn't know the code, completely indecipherable. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="copyprot.pro">copyprot.pro</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 11392<BR><TD> <B>Copy Protection: A History and Outlook</B><BR><I>Dt writes a quick overview (intended for publication, and therefore a little more balanced than it normally would have been) about the history of copy protection and some of the methods used on both sides in the war over software. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="crossbow">crossbow</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 29200<BR><TD> <B>From Crossbows to Cryptography: Thwarting the State Via Technology</B><BR><I>Chuck Hammill of the Libertech Project comes out with a jaw-dropping defense of technology as a liberating force, through the use of cryptography and communication, and applies it to his (cynical) view of history and the nature of Governments. A speech given at the Future of Freedom Conference that is at once balanced, intruiging, revolutionary, bitter, hopeful, and inspiring. All around, ahead of its time and relevant to this very minute.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="dec.wars">dec.wars</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 31839<BR><TD> <B>DEC WARS: The Continuing Saga of the Adventures of Luke Vaxhacker</B><BR><I>One of the earlier and one of the best cross-cultural fan fiction files, combining the world of Digital's VAX series of computers with the Star Wars movies. Peppered throughout this file, tons of inside VAX jokes combine with Star Wars references, making it one of the geekiest, nerdiest files you could come across online. This genre has exploded out of control since then, but at the time, it was something really new, and a ton of fun.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="diskgone.ana">diskgone.ana</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 627<BR><TD> <B>When He Boots It, It Boots Him! From Ziggy Stardust</B><BR><I>This explosive device sticks in the mind because of both the pure nastiness of the situation (booby trapping a floppy disk to turn it into a bomb) and the reason given for a person to risk someone else's life: they didn't trade pirated programs honestly.<BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="dodontae.hum">dodontae.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9385<BR><TD> <B>The Do's and Don'ts of Ascii Express, by Quasimoto</B><BR><I>The story of Ascii Express is one of a telecommunications company adding a small feature to allow remote downloads, that spread into a massive underground network of pirated applications throughout the Apple II community. These "AE Lines" provided quick, simple access to other floppy drives across the country, and became a subculture all their own. This file purports to give some suggested etiquette for AE lines, only to be deflated quite humorously by Count Nibble at the end.<BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="easymony.ana">easymony.ana</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 6709<BR><TD> <B>A Guide to Easy Money, by The Flash (January 4, 1986)</B><BR><I>Even a cursory read of this file shows that the Flash knew not one molecule of what he was talking about. This complete lack of knowledge in the dark arts of Street Economy obviously didn't stop him from publishing a series of files on how to succeed in them. At this no-man's land between fact and fantasy, you get a great insight into the author's idea of how the world works, and how easy he thought the world of crime was. (Ostensibly, the Flash has gone on to a nice, quiet life somewhere.)<BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="eatingmsh.drg">eatingmsh.drg</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2028<BR><TD> <B>Can You Put Psychedelic Mushrooms on Pizza?</B><BR><I>A pretty funny example from a Usenet posting in alt.drugs. Somehow, I can imagine this happening. And oh, he's the MANAGER! While a lot of drug files tend to be boring chemical lists or long and drawn-out philosophical discussions, this file makes you think twice about who's working the cash register.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="eel_bye.txt">eel_bye.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 7680<BR><TD> <B>The Eel Says Goodbye to the Pirate World</B><BR><I>What really strikes me about The Eel's farewell to the piracy world of 1992 is that while he says that one of his primary motivations for leaving is his current circle of "real" friends, the rest of the file goes to show he has dozens of other "real" friends as well. No doubt in the years after his break away from life on the modem he's built even more circles of friends, but one can't help wondering if he doesn't read this file and think of what else he threw away besides his collection of "warez".</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="elite.cmd">elite.cmd</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 5946<BR><TD> <B>The Elite Commandments</B><BR><I>As the word "Elite" came to be bandied about in BBSes, people started to separate themselves between the "Elite" and "Unelite". Specifically, this was just another way to look down on others based on completely arbitrary, meaningless reasons. This file skewers that attitude in a list of "commandments" that best represent the mindset of the self-named "elite". As a bonus, several inside jokes from the era are presented in a "gossip weekly" parody at the end.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="elites.txt">elites.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3113<BR><TD> <B>Someone Completely Blows Up</B><BR><I>A young BBS user (I don't know where this came from) suddenly begins ranting about everything that bothers him about being on BBSes. His complaints take on a heartwarming quirkiness, looking back.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="ethics.txt">ethics.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 8140<BR><TD> <B>Ethics for BBS Users</B><BR><I>A well-written, nicely-formatted, completely pedantic file that lectures you on every aspect of being a BBS user. This file was part of a trend of Sysops explaining to users how great they had it for having BBSes to call, and to appreciate the work behind them. They were rarely successful, but you do what you can. The invitation to download the file and display it on other BBSes meant that some new users would be subjected to this file automatically. The "wearing a tie to school" side of the BBS world.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="famous.bug">famous.bug</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 52609<BR><TD> <B>Famous Computer Bugs, compiled by Dave Curry and John Shore</B><BR><I>This ARPAnet-compiled lists of computer glitches through history shows some wonderful perspective on disasters and screw-ups through history (mostly the 60's and 70's) and shows you the interesting vulnerabilities that have cropped up over time. Some of them, such as a probe suddenly losing contact with earth, are scarily sobering, but others, such as the Multics bug (the swapper-out process would swap out the swapper-in process!) make you just want to snort, assuming you snort at that sort of thing. Geeky, and cute.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="feh-1">feh-1</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 54625<BR><TD> <B>Fuckin' Eleet Haxor Issue #1, July 1st 1995</B><BR><I>As the World Wide Web really started to take hold in the middle of the 1990s, textfiles became a rarer and rarer entity, usually leaning instead to HTML pages and graphics to get the information (and the point) across. In the case of FEH, indicative of the textfiles of the time, it is sometimes very hard to tell where the parody and where the seriousness lay within the issue. While a lot of it seems to be a thought-out send-up of the badly-spelling hacking community, some serious and researched information is included as well. This magazine went on to several additional issues, each of them a little more serious than the last. For better or worse, this is how things came to be in the culture.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="gems.txt">gems.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 75172<BR><TD> <B>GEMS: The Untold Story, by the Video Vindicator (February 1, 1992)</B><BR><I>The Video Vindicator came late into the game (early 1990's) but produced some of the most wonderful files from that time period. This file caught my attention because he chose a subject that would normally be of very little interest to the BBS crowd (Gemology) and takes it to a completely new level by turning it into both a wonderful history lesson about Gems (I learned a lot in this file) and twisting it into yet another way to scam the planet for some extra bucks. Breathtaking in his audacity, and completely slick in his delivery. One to watch.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="groupass.phk">groupass.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 1809<BR><TD> <B>An Unforgettable Telephone Service Call, from Pat Routledge</B><BR><I>This breed of textfile tends to be short, amusing, and perpetuated endlessly. Often the story is hard to track back, and is even more often a paraphrase of what actually happened, but it never fails to be humorous, especially if it lasted this far. A classic "urban legend", even if it's true.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="hack1.hac">hack1.hac</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 7960<BR><TD> <B>The Basics of Hacking: Introduction, by The Knights of Shadow</B><BR><I>The Knights of Shadow produced a collection of Hacking How-Tos that instructed users how to get around a variety of mainframes, including Digital and Data General Machines. While the information in these texts might not be as relevant, this introduction stands apart for its preaching the idea of hacking for knowledge, and leaving no footprints and destroying nothing in the process. Their definition of "Hacker" is rather interesting, as well. A clever set of files.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="hack11a.txt">hack11a.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 692945<BR><TD> <B>The Project Gutenberg E-Text of Bruce Sterling's Hacker Crackdown</B><BR><I>In 1993, Science Fiction author Bruce Sterling aimed his considerable writing talents to dissecting and understanding all the forces at work between Hackers, Police, and the people they've had an effect on. He does a very admirable job. While no book (so far) has captured the 1980's computer hacker experience perfectly, this book makes you come away with a feeling that the major issues were touched on and that no-one (on either side) got the short shaft. (This is a major accomplishment in itself.) Sterling is an excellent writer, and while compared to other works in this directory this textfile is a bit on the mammoth side, it's worth it. This file also highlights the work of the great Project Gutenberg, which for 20 years has endeavored to transcribe as many classic works to electronic texts as their staff of volunteers will let them. There's an entire directory of these important and breathtakingly huge projects on textfiles.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="hack7.txt">hack7.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3988<BR><TD> <B>The Conscience of a Hacker, by The Mentor (January 8, 1986)</B><BR><I>The Mentor's angry scream against the authorities he saw as trying to crush his spark and the spark of people like him. For some reason, this file became the flashpoint that a number of books (including Bruce Sterling's) used as an example of the oppression of the intelligent and the motivations behind the fine art of hacking. Whether it stands up to this sort of light or not, it's a clear statement from someone who feels a lot of pain; and that's what communication is all about.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="hack_ths.txt">hack_ths.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 148109<BR><TD> <B>The Social Organization of the Computer Underground, The Thesis of Gordon Meyer</B><BR><I>Mr. (Probably Dr.) Meyer's Sociology paper on the social structure in Hacking, Phreaking, and Pirating groups is interestingly dedicated to George Hayduke (writer of the "Get Even" series of revenge books) and Barry Freed (The pseudonym taken by Abbie Hoffman when he was a fugitive from the FBI). This indicates not a little leaning on the side of the groups he's analyzing. He goes over impressions that the media have about hackers, what being a hacker, phreak or pirate consists of as he sees it, and then tries to draw conclusions of what this all means. Written in 1989, this file takes on the subculture with a non-hysterical point of view that makes it very easy to read. Worth the time.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="highdoc.ana">highdoc.ana</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 1408<BR><TD> <B>How to get Really Soaring High on Gatorade, by Max Madd</B><BR><I>Some of the most entertaining textfiles are the ones where the writer is obviously hot to write one, but has no actual information to report on. Instead, they pull up a in-the-rough concept, like getting high off a fruit drink, and create a short file around it. In this case, the key is to get high off the thirst-quenching Gatorade, by merely drinking it as fast as possible. Nearly a third of the entire file is a legal disclaimer, a typical gesture that is very likely meaningless in the long run.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="howtobbs.txt">howtobbs.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9216<BR><TD> <B>How to Become an Unsuccessful, Burned-Out SysOp</B><BR><I>From the perspective of 24-hour, super-high-speed internet connections, it's refreshing to read this list of tips telling people how they can improve their single-line, often 2400 baud BBS lines. The hundreds of bulletin boards popping up every month during the early 80's ensured that general guideline files actually had a large target audience. Of course, the comment about free software being inherently bad doesn't seem as relevant anymore...</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="iaad.txt">iaad.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 71551<BR><TD> <B>How Pirate BBSes Impact on the Entire Atari Community, by D.A. Brumleve</B><BR><I>This serious report, tracking the theoretical impact of piracy on the Atari ST publishing community, has an unintended secondary effect of documenting and providing an excellent picture of the typical "Pirate" BBS in the early 90's. Besides capturing interesting quotes and entire file directories, this report gives a solid overview of this underanalyzed social phenomenon. Interesting reading, if a bit heavy-handed in some places.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="icegun.ana">icegun.ana</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 11253<BR><TD> <B>A Step by Step Guide to Making a Dry Ice Gun by The Voice Over</B><BR><I>Please don't follow the instructions in this file; I can't vouch for its truthfulness or safety. This file is a typical weaponry/anarchy file, inviting you to build some dangerous thing for the purposes of destruction or entertainment. Unlike many such files, The Voice Over can spell, and he warns you how much you can injure yourself. These files comprise a massive subset of the textfiles of the 1980's; why people dedicate such effort to proving they can blow up more than anyone else is an interesting outcropping of the one-upmanship prevalent in other parts of the culture. An unusually academic file from Metal Communications.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="infobugs.adv">infobugs.adv</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3930<BR><TD> <B>A Collection of Infocom Bugs, from the New Zork Times</B><BR><I>I'm not entirely sure this file comes from the New Zork Times, but the "we" tense of the description of the bugs and the invitation to try new things on the end smacks of it. Infocom was a text adventure game company - by pretty much any measure, the best. They had some of the most evocative games to come out at the time, and few game companies today even come close to the experiences that Infocom provided. Because the games were so detailed, the types of bugs that people would encounter were strange indeed, and this file chronicles some of them. Neat.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="intohell.hum">intohell.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 11233<BR><TD> <B>Hacking Into Hell, by The Raver</B><BR><I>The Raver serves up a very odd blend of heavy-metal/satanic imagery, geek humor, and suspense in this story of a hapless user hacking into Lucifer's Mainframe. The Metal AE, where this file originated from, was host to a whole gang of Heavy Metal blasting computer geeks, and that weird matchup shows in nearly every textfile that came out of them. An evocative file, to say the least.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="intro.hum">intro.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 5827<BR><TD> <B>The Utopia BBS Login Screen: "Pansy's Homemade Mainframe"</B><BR><I>The first of two login screens from the Utopia BBS on this top 100 list. The Utopia BBS was one of hundreds of Apple II GBBS boards out there, written in BASIC and therefore completely modifiable (the additions were called 'mods') by the Sysop or Co-Sysops. In the case of this particular board, you could log on each day and see a completely different board, with different menus, login screens, and the rest. This time, they make you type your password in several times, only to show they were completely kidding with you. The long message about whether to create a Utopia II and the odd logoff screen (after I was ejected for not being "validated" yet) only add to the fun. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="jihad.nfo">jihad.nfo</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 17260<BR><TD> <B>The JiHAD Courier Information File</B><BR><I>This particular file doesn't hold any particular historical significance; I pretty much chose it at random because it was a good example of a Tag file, and one of a Courier Group at that. Tag files are little pieces of text usually attached to a pirated piece of software, that tells you information about the group that cracked file, or what kind of program you'd gotten, or even whatever news had gone on it that group recently. Courier groups were an interesting phenomenon of the past decade, where the process of cracking software and distributing it separated and separate groups formed for each function. Crackers could then merely send a program to the contact for the Courier group, and the file would be spread along to the "usual channels" within a day or two. Interesting scene. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="k-k00ld.hum">k-k00ld.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 5158<BR><TD> <B>The History of Real K-K00L D00DS, by The Edge</B><BR><I>While the still-common habit of bad spelling (replacing U for You, 0 for O, Z for S, and similar gunk) in communication might seem a somewhat new fad, in fact it goes back for over a decade. In this file (circa 1985), you can already see that it's been around long enough to be made fun of in a parody text. The Edge engages in a pretty amusing sample "chat" session in the middle of the file, that really makes me laugh, because I really did get users like that. And people think talking like this is still cutting edge?</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="killsant.hum">killsant.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3497<BR><TD> <B>How to Kill Santa Claus Dead! by the Outland</B><BR><I>The Outland (of the Neon Knights) ran the first board I was ever a Sysop of, Milliways. You would never know it if you met him, but when the Outland sat down to write files for Metal Communications and the Neon Knights, he would just spew forth some of the most violent, anarchistic, nihilist text to come out of any file-writing group. Besides Santa Claus, other targets of his files included the Easter Bunny, mailboxes, the local neighborhood, and in one case, I recall, the entire planet. He was certainly in character with the other members of the Neon Knights, where violence was the main driving force in the writing, but knowing him personally gave me insight that for him, it was actually just all fiction, another neat thing to do. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="killshco.ana">killshco.ana</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 16886<BR><TD> <B>The SchoolStoppers' Textbook</B><BR><I>The Yippies, or "Youth International Party" were a political group from the late 60's and early seventies that were really the grandfathers of a lot of the computer "underground" that flourishes today. They staged protests, wrote interesting books and articles, and published the Youth International Party Line (YIPL) which later became TAP, a predecessor of the currently famous 2600 magazine. Among their famous members were Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. This reprinted article is essentially a checklist for causing utter anarchy at your local school, so as to completely disrupt the learning process. Angry but witty, this was where a lot of later "anarchy" files took their style from, knowing it or not.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="krckwczt.app">krckwczt.app</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 137510<BR><TD> <B>Kracowicz' Kracking Korner: The Basics of Kracking Parts 1-9</B><BR><I>The world of Apple II Copy Protection was a hot battlefield throughout the Apple II's production life, with commercial developers spending thousands on new copy protection schemes and crackers rising out of the woodwork to "crack" these programs, make them copyable, and distribute them. With Krakowicz, you had a Software Company's worst nightmare: A literate, intelligent crackist who made a supreme effort to teach others. What is most striking about this series of files is not just the amount of detail and research that Kracowicz put into his writing to make it understandable to others, but his unique hardware-based solutions to the software that was being piped through his Apple II. By creating boards, switches, and hot-wiring his chips, he could exert incredible control over the programs he was attempting to crack. The companies didn't have a chance. Kracowicz stands alone.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="lay-girl.txt">lay-girl.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 16308<BR><TD> <B>The Complete Guide of Laying a Girl v1.1, from John Smith</B><BR><I>Probably the most amusing textfiles I occasionally stumbled across were those attempting to teach you the birds and the bees, or at least how to get laid. Usually in the form of "how-to" guides, these textfiles were usually completely out of left field, totally lacking in any accuracy or truly helpful information, and more likely than not someone's complete fantasy from watching too many teen exploitation flicks. In the case of this particular specimen, Mr. Smith seems to have as weak a grasp on the English language as he does on the particulars of intercourse or romance. Such stunning phrases as "Stack you hand gently under her trousers and move your hand more deeply evert time" guarantee that you're going to take this file with an oven-sized grain of salt. Sadly, this file is among the best of the bunch -- many of the others indicated rape or kidnapping as appropriate means to seduction. A fountain of ignorance.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="leeches!.hum">leeches!.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 11312<BR><TD> <B>The Society of "Leeches" in the Telecommunications World, by Mister I/O</B><BR><I>"Mister I/O" was the first name of The Outland, who later went on to join the Neon Knights and Metal Communications. In this file, he skewers the world of "Leeches", users who connect to systems and take all the files without donating any of their own. This particular kind of file (ridiculing other groups within the subculture) were plentiful by this time, but I think his stands out for that completely bizzare chart of the lineage of Leeches. Additionally, he even throws in some mathematical equations to determine your "leechiness". This file was written before his files took on a much more violent (but still witty) turn, as mentioned previously.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="lod-1">lod-1</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 213571<BR><TD> <B>The Legion of Doom/Hacking Technical Journal Volume 1, by the LOD</B><BR><I>I can remember when the Legion of Doom was just one of a group of punk kids hanging around on some of the same BBSes that I frequented. But someone or several someones within the group threw a ton of energy into the LOD, and they quickly rose to the forefront of Hacker/Phreaking groups of the time. The advantage of years of hindsight and a number of books have brought the group much more fame and regard historically, but even the most cynical or skeptical observer had to admit; this group produced. A prime example are these Legion of Doom/Hacker Technical journals, an indirect response to Phrack and other hacker magazines. The LOD/H Tech Journal was heavy, meaty stuff for the time (1987) with schematics, statistics, and even attributions to the files that had come before it. The series is worth reading as a prime example of the "highbrow" hackers, who put on the airs of having the knowledge to share, while raising the ire of those who didn't.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="lozers.hum">lozers.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 24778<BR><TD> <B>The Official 1984 Lozerlist, by The Atom (March 3, 1985)</B><BR><I>The Atom's bile-spewing, gossip-heavy "Loser List" comes in as one of the best examples of an all-around "Rag File" that I've seen, where the writer takes everyone on and attempts to completely slam them into the ground on all sides. Personal info, analysis of the groups they belong to, rumors and innuendo are all up for grabs as he decimates a lot of the "big names" in the 914/212/718 BBS world (as well as a few from the midwest). It appears a lot of his hatred comes from the Richard Sandza articles (also in the top 100), but more than that, he has it in for nearly anyone who has become in some way "famous" or "legendary" in the Phreak and Piracy world. Quite a piece of work. I never found a 1985 list or anything since. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="ludeinfo.hum">ludeinfo.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9298<BR><TD> <B>Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Luding, by Sinbad Sailor</B><BR><I>While calling an interesting BBS called the 1985 BBS (the last four digits were 1985, it came up on January 1st of 1985 and went down December 31st, 1985), I stumbled upon this small social phenomenon called "Luding". The board was reeking with it; there was a Luding sub-board filled with messages and there were a good number of instructional "Luding" files, not to mention some Luding poetry and fiction. Naturally, this really threw me for a loop, and while the actual idea of "Luding" is somewhat tame, these set of files stand out to me as excellent examples of how just writing about a small little fad in your hometown could blow the entire thing out of proportion to the point that you thought you were really missing out on something big.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="mathimp.txt">mathimp.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4177<BR><TD> <B>Impure Mathematics: The Story of Polly Nomial</B><BR><I>What we have here is probably the all-time marathon-running Usenet humor file. A collection of mathematic inside jokes used to tell a running set of sexual innuendo, this story of the hapless Polly Nomial and Curly Pi was the kind of file you'd trip over time and time again in different file directories. There are a good amount of sequels, but you can't beat the original. Math Geek humor; what beats that?</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="miami.hum">miami.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 8107<BR><TD> <B>Go Bare, by Captain Goodnight (August 25, 1986)</B><BR><I>Captain Goodnight's fictional short story is worth reading for the somewhat accurate feeling it gives of living a life primarily through a computer. There's some bad spelling and weird images mixed into the paragraphs, but on the whole, you'll come away from it either remembering memories from your own childhood or feel like you're peering into someone's life. A real gas of a story. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="mindvox">mindvox</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 66115<BR><TD> <B>Voices in My Head: The Mindvox Overture by Patrick Kroupa</B><BR><I>Mr. Kroupa's announcement of the creation of his new ISP caught a lot of people off guard. The tack from which he made his announcement was to harken back to the 1980's, and all the unique cultural forces at work then, that expressed themselves on the modem. In many ways, he saw a lot of what I've seen in terms of a need to preserve or maintain that time in some fashion. He additionally saw a need to make those times come back by creating Mindvox, his ISP by way of his company Phantom Technologies. I know that mindvox was wildly successful for a time, but the full story of its downfall escapes me. Meanwhile, this text still survives and shows an amazing breadth of insight into the BBS world of the preceding decade. This document was reprinted everywhere, so it definitely hit a nerve. I just wish we had a little more in our hands to show for it.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="modemlif.hac">modemlif.hac</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 11074<BR><TD> <B>The Modem Life: Is it Worth it? By Bryan Nomad (May 26, 1985) [<A HREF=".modemlif.hac">?</A>]</B><BR><I>Bryan, frustrated by downed BBSes, busy signals, abuse and hatred in message bases, and the financial drain of being s SysOp, takes a different tack. He writes this heartfelt message to the BBS world at large to ask people to remember that they're all people, they're all part of a community, and it's not about how much abuse you can spew into the air, but about getting to know one another and maybe make some friends. How effective is this file at getting into a cynical heart? Who knows. One can always hope it did some good. Thank you, Bryan.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="nighhack.omn">nighhack.omn</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9225<BR><TD> <B>The Night of the Hackers, by Richard Sandza, transcribed by The Reflex</B><BR><I>There are two notable angles to this file. The more simpler one is that it was transcribed by The Reflex of Omnipotent Incorporated, a regular on The Works BBS and an all-around prolific and intelligent writer. He chose as an important addition to his body of work this article from Newsweek, published in 1984. The second angle is this article, "Night of the Hackers", which brought right to the forefront a lot of those mysterious terms that hung in the air as private knowledge and secrets for only those "in the know" in the BBS world. Sherwood Forest, Blottoland, Plovernet, tele-trials all got (unwanted) national exposure in this article, and things just weren't the same afterwards. The aftermath of Richard Sandza's life is documented in "Revenge of the Hackers", also in this collection. Studied with the span of years from it, the article is solid, interesting, and pretty accurate. </I><BR>&nbsp 
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="noise.ana">noise.ana</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3679<BR><TD> <B>Variable-Pitched Frequency Generator, or How to Annoy Your Teachers, by Captain Quieg</B><BR><I>The Captain provides you with an accurate (I had one built), inexpensive, and mostly harmless prank electronic toy that would emit an extremely high-pitched noise, such that many people could get headaches from prolonged exposure. Not exactly a gentle diversion, but unforgettable. While this particular diagram worked, it was a relatively rare thing to come away from an electronics document and have everything function as claimed. Educational. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="paging_g.ame">paging_g.ame</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4275<BR><TD> <B>The Paging Game, by Jeff Berryman</B><BR><I>Trying to explain this one to anyone who doesn't know the concept of "memory paging" is a little bit of a losing battle. Essentially, a machine with memory that pages will throw out unused parts of programs or files onto a disk drive, ready to bring it back if you really use it. If you think MY explanation's a little choppy, wait'll you real THIS file. A golden piece of work from 1981.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="peat.hum">peat.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 532<BR><TD> <B>The Peat Moss Incident</B><BR><I>The best size-reaction ratio of the textfiles collection. Surreal.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="pezrambl.oct">pezrambl.oct</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 20975<BR><TD> <B>Mr. Pez's Rambling About Textfiles and Leeching, by Mr. Pez (March 13, 1987)</B><BR><I>Mr. Pez was another Works regular, always there with a quick wit and a really snooty attitude. Besides being on The Works, he also graced several other 914 boards and The Dark Side of the Moon (408) with his acidic attitude. In this file, he decided to just turn on his word processor and talk about whatever for as long as he could. To our advantage, the subject he chooses is Textfiles, which gives us insight into the type of world a teenager lived through in 1987 BBS terms. Most amusingly to me, he recounts the time I sat there copying all my textfile collection onto his hard drive trying to convince me to have his guitar and some cash. (The attempt was unsuccessful, and Donna married some other guy.) A personal trip down memory lane, but relevant to get some insight into where my editorial bent is as well. <I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="phrack.01.phk">phrack.01.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 29195<BR><TD> <B>Phrack Magazine Volume One, Issue One, edited by Taran King (November 17, 1985)</B><BR><I>The Phreaking/Hacking magazine that changed everything. While other electronic magazines existed before Phrack, none took the voice of the underground and presented itself as such a dominating, matter-of-fact entity as the Phracks have. Through the years, Phrack has always been dependable as a solidly-written, interest-gathering, packed-with-talent compilation of hot topics going throughout the Hacker Underground as most people have come to understand it. Electronic zines as a general force were usually created so that individual writers' work wouldn't get lost in the wash of sites; by hooking up with a dozen other articles, relatively monstrous 50k-100k files could stand out from the endless grouping of 2k and 15k files that others were putting out. It worked.. very few people don't remember Phrack in some fashion if they were involved in BBSes in the late 80's. This brings us to the other example issue...</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="phrack.29.phk">phrack.29.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 235777<BR><TD> <B>Phrack Magazine 4th Anniversary Issue, Volume Three, Issue 29 (November 17, 1989)</B><BR><I>By the fourth year of publication, Phrack is an institution. The issue opens with a profile of Emmanuel Goldstein, the enigmatic and steadfast editor of 2600 Magazine (which has gone on to become a major institution itself) and progressing into deeply technological discussions involving money transfer and Internet protocols.  By this time the Phrack World News, an overview of the social and legal scene around the culture had become a staple of the issues. Unstoppable.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="pokelist.app">pokelist.app</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 19769<BR><TD> <B>The Wizard's Call, Peek and Poke list for the Apple ][ (May 1984)</B><BR><I>Part of the immense charm of the Apple II series of computers was how they would encourage their users to learn everything they could about the system, to reprogram, modify, hardwire, and otherwise mess with all aspects of the machines. What this meant was that people were getting a knowledge of the Apples that could far outstrip almost all the other personal computers of the time. Evidence of the depth of this knowledge shows in files like this one, where a good portion of the total memory locations have been mapped and all sorts of neat features make themselves known. By the end run of the Apple II's main life (late 80's) this machine could accomplish a breathtaking amount of tasks. Geeky, but a lot of fun.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="purity.txt">purity.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 58845<BR><TD> <B>The Unisex, Omnisexual Purity Test v4.00 (April 23, 1988)</B><BR><I>One of the interesting things that arose out of the ARPAnet and Internet was the way that an unbelievable amount of energy could be focused on a single project, causing it to turn into a Wonder Of The World in a very short period of time. In the case of this file, the goal became to determine a person's "purity" by creating a list of questionable non-innocent acts that they could perform in life, and whatever percentage they had not yet done, was their purity. Of course, after dozens of entries into this document, it's become this complete other world, with every degrading, exciting, bizzare thing that someone could do with someone else (or themselves, or a group of people, or food) is listed. There are actually divergent, unrelated versions of this idea up on this site, but I chose this file because it lists out a great pedigree that goes back to 1982, and it's particularly well-written. Head-swimmingly sick.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="real.pgmrs">real.pgmrs</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 23955<BR><TD> <B>Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal</B><BR><I>One of the most interesting fads to hit the online world were the "Real" files.  Based loosely on the  pop culture book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche", these files presented a framework where others could just list their idea of what a "real" hacker or golfer or restaurant or whatever. It's an addictive way to describe things, and this explains the dozens and dozens of "real" files that pervaded BBSes throughout the decade. In the case of the "Real Programmers" file, the writing style of the author is particularly well-crafted (although I can't really judge the accuracy of his assertions) and it therefore has a very large distribution. Geeky humor.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="realpez.oct">realpez.oct</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 16384<BR><TD> <B>Real PEZ Devotees, by Mr. Pez</B><BR><I>The Works BBS's own Mr. Pez makes his own contribution to the "Real" files canon with this file about the followers of his BBS, "Pez Devotees". In the case of this file, the combination of his mention of all the different things he personally liked (including clothes, bands, sports and writing style) combined with his edging into nearly all aspects of a person's life to provide guidelines to be one of his devotees, makes this one of my favorite files. It should be noted that this file is a derivative of the original, the "Real Pirate's Guide", below. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="realpira.hum">realpira.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 6529<BR><TD> <B>The Real Pirate's Guide by Rabid Rasta [<A HREF=".realpira.hum">?</A>]</B><BR><I>Seizing the opportunity to make a humor file based on the now-popular "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" idea, Rabid Rasta made what is generally agreed upon to be the first of the BBS world's "Real" files, files which explain what the difference between "Real" and "Fake" was. In the case of his file, he puts down what makes a "Real" pirate, including assertions about computer and modem speed, writing style, and spelling. With the exception of "The Real Programmer's Guide" (which shows up a little earlier than this file, although only on ARPAnet and not on the BBS/AE world), this file seems to have been the one that started it all. The observations he makes are both humorous, and insightful into where the world was in 1984 if you were living your life through a modem. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="revhack.omn">revhack.omn</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 6266<BR><TD> <B>Revenge of the Hackers, by Richard Sandza, Transcribed by The Reflex</B><BR><I>The writer of "Night of the Hackers" for Newsweek revealed in this followup article that his life became quite a living hell for him after the original article was published. His credit cards were hacked, phone calls came 24 hours a day, and, to a lesser relevance, he went on "tele-trial". Tele-trial appears to mean that he had a message base fill up with messages about him. Either way, his article shows the kind of full-on attack that the hacker community was capable of pulling off at the time, completely unorganized and out for blood. The Reflex, as always, does an impeccable transcription job.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="revolt.dj">revolt.dj</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2358<BR><TD> <B>Dick and Jane Instigate a Popular Revolution, by The Deth Vegetable and Iskra</B><BR><I>Deth Vegetable and Iskra were both co-sysops of The Works way back when, before they both joined the Cult of the Dead Cow and moved on to greener pastures. (Actually, Iskra then came back and became the SysOp of the most recent incarnations of the Works, so it's all kind of circular in a way.) In any event, they got their heads together in the early 1990's and wrote this file, a parody of the "Dick and Jane" books that my generation lightly heard of. Short, sweet, and funny. Oh, and political. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="safeinfo.fun">safeinfo.fun</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2176<BR><TD> <B>The Safehouse Blueprints, from the Safehouse BBS</B><BR><I>The Safehouse BBS was one of the mid-80's "Super" BBSes that were pushing not only that they were the places to be, but that the technology and pure computing power at their disposal made them inherently irresistible. Now, looking back over the years with a more solid technical knowledge, some of the claims in this BBS information file are questionable (It's a modular program? What does that matter!) But you can see an example of how technology presented its own inherent sexiness to the BBS user.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="sexsatan.hum">sexsatan.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 8979<BR><TD> <B>Sex with Satan, by Psychoe</B><BR><I>Ah, where do you begin with "Sex with Satan". Psychoe's tale of murder, sexual mayhem, the Lord of Darkness and overactive babysitters never fails to floor me with its perfect blend of comic rant and erotic literature. You come away from reading it completely dazed and unsure what you just read. While you begin to read the file thinking you're to be subjected to another set of poorly spelled pseudo-erotic scribblings, you quickly realize as the character dies that something is quite amiss. After a short time you can't keep track of who is who and why the poor guy keeps getting lit on fire. Another great example of the Heavy Metal/Geek combination that showed up in a small number of AE lines in the 80's. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="spock.art">spock.art</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 5904<BR><TD> <B>Digitized Picture of Star Trek's Mr. Spock</B><BR><I>One of the nicer ASCII Art Files out there, this appears to have been some sort of program output that looked at a graphics file of Mr. Spock and then mapped it to different ASCII characters based on how "dark" those letters and numbers and characters were. If you print it out so that it's black letters on a white background, it looks pretty darn impressive. Of course, actually printing it out and putting it on a wall would immediately tap you as a geek, so be careful, and have a shredder at hand.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="stupidki.hac">stupidki.hac</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4942<BR><TD> <B>The Destructiveness of the "Kids", from an Anonymous Source</B><BR><I>A writer reaches out to the community to lament the loss of the days of the Open System and the unprotected BBS, and gives some (occasionally gleeful) descriptions of the steps he's been forced to take to protect himself. The exact tone of this missive is a little hard to track: in some places he's nostalgic and out of sorts about the way the world has changed, and in others he's the first to the forefront of implementing clampdowns of security and creating traps for any hapless hackers attacking his BBS. Definitely makes you think, if not too hard.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="suicide">suicide</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 10438<BR><TD> <B>Getting Others to Commit Suicide, by The Blade of the Neon Knights</B><BR><I>The Blade was one of the leaders of the Neon Knights, who themselves were an elite portion of the Metal Communications team, purveyor of textfiles throughout the BBS world, but mostly through AE lines. With their unique blend of Heavy Metal, Satanism, and Geek Chic, the group put out some of the odder files out there. In the case of this file, The Blade tells you how to drive others to self-destruction, so as to make it easier to get into college or a well-paying job.  A graphic collection of sick suggestions; just the soft of thing you could expect from this group. Are people really afraid of this sort of thing?</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="taoprogram.pro">taoprogram.pro</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 27266<BR><TD> <B>The Tao of Programming, by Geoffrey James</B><BR><I>Mr. James' gentle and intelligent retelling of the idea of the Tao redone for programming, hardware, and software. This soft of file, meant to be a light parody of another, more famous work, ends up standing up pretty well on its own. There's one for documentation as well, and there's other more pop-culture books expounding on the Tao you can purchase these days. A good read if you believe in it or you don't.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="taping.hum">taping.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 5117<BR><TD> <B>The Taping I, by Underwarez</B><BR><I>A particularly virulent example of a "Rag File", a file whose entire purpose was to tease, slander, or otherwise ridicule another member of the same (usually pirating or phreaking) subculture. In this particular rag, a hapless user named Jeff Spicolli is subject to implications of incest, lack of technical knowledge, bestiality, and other similar traits, ending with his voice telephone number. This type of file would start showing up on local AE lines or BBSes and while most of these rants would disappear about a week or two after the Sysops took them down, a few still hung around. The most involved set of rag files to my knowledge would be the Matt Ackeret chronicles from Anarchy Incorporated. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="tencoms.pro">tencoms.pro</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 1029<BR><TD> <B>The Ten Commandments of RBBS</B><BR><I>I was never a big fan of RBBS software, mostly because a lot of the sysops I ran into had the attitude put forward in this file. Reading over the commandments, we find that the SysOp is God, that you must not use handles or speak of things not involving computers, that profanity is unwelcome, and that a full three commandments dictate what kind of advertising you may post. This file is a great example of how attitude could turn a BBS from a place of fun to a stuffed-shirt, bland, unenjoyable piece of cardboard. Then again, posting this kind of file told people what kind of administrator you were right off the bat, enabling easy and quick escape. Run. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="top10.news">top10.news</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4272<BR><TD> <B>The Top 10 Media Errors about the Steven Jackson Games Raid</B><BR><I>This 1992 document from Steve Jackson games responds to some of the most blatant factual errors about the infamous "Raid" on that role-playing game company. In the course of an investigation, the US Secret Service raided Steve Jackson games and confiscated all the materials of a role-playing game called GURPS CYBERPUNK, which was played with dice and cards, and didn't even involve a computer. SJ Games were unable to have their game back for 7 months, during which time it was described as some sort of "hacking manual" that the country had to be protected from. Naturally, when all was said and done, the game was harmless and nothing what the Secret Service claimed it was. A true insight into ignorance on a massive scale. </I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="tr823.txt">tr823.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 106655<BR><TD> <B>The Internet Worm Program: An Analysis, by Eugene H. Spafford</B><BR><I>The Internet Worm changed a lot of minds about how interconnected and insecure the Internet was at that time. Using a combination of weaknesses and back doors in common  programs, the Worm wended its way throughout the then-small Net and succeeded in crippling it. This document, written during the Aftermath, presents a well-thought-out analysis of all the methodology used by the worm, as well as a general oversight of the state of the Internet of the time. Long, but worth it.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="upc.txt">upc.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 6726<BR><TD> <B>Cracking the Universal Product Code, by Count Nibble</B><BR><I>Count Nibble makes a second appearance in the top 100 files with his steady, thoughtful explanation of exactly how those silly black lines on every product in the supermarket work. What possible use this knowledge could have in one's day to day existence is pretty darn irrelevant; the point was, it was THERE, we WANTED TO KNOW, and Nibble FOUND IT OUT. That's the spirit of learning. Read and find out too.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="urine.box">urine.box</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 4141<BR><TD> <B>Urine Box Plans, by Wolfgang von Albatross (March 2, 1986)</B><BR><I>By the time this file appeared on AE lines across the country, "Box" files had proliferated to the point that it was hard to tell who came up with with idea first. As might be expected, parodies began appearing, including the "Blotto Box" (which would supposedly destroy an entire telephone central switching office) and this specimen, which purports to cause the headset on the other end of the line to injure or kill the user. Naturally, this file is complete fiction, but constructed with enough of a straight face to make the unsuspecting collector think they have some sort of accurate textfile. An excellent awareness test.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="utopia.hum">utopia.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3193<BR><TD> <B>Login Screen for the Utopia BBS: "May I take your Order Please?"</B><BR><I>Taking advantage of the easily modifiable source code of their BBS, the Sysops of Utopia BBS constantly (and I do mean constantly) retooled all menus, messages, login and logoff screens, and even system functions. One result of this was that you always had a surprise the next time you connected to the BBS, and you always felt like you were part of a party. Note that the system actually made me type in my password, only to ignore me and continue its merry blather for a few more paragraphs.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="vaxen.jok">vaxen.jok</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 15163<BR><TD> <B>VAXen, My Children, Just Don't Belong Some Places, by Mike O'Brien</B><BR><I>Mr. O'Brien's ode to the misunderstood, mistreated VAX has achieved quite a large distribution; I keep finding it buried everywhere, in joke files and computer information sites and just generally all over. Through his sad tale of VAX abuse, Mike keeps you interested to the very end. How much of it is true is left up to the reader, of course, but somehow, it just rings enough with me to consider it real. Interesting.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="violence.txt">violence.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 11481<BR><TD> <B>Fun! With Random Senseless Violence, by Count Nibble (August 2, 1985)</B><BR><I>Count Nibble was one of the most literate of all the Apple II-era textfile writers, pre-dating similarly styled groups like Metal Communications and the Cult of the Dead Cow by years with his musical quotes, proper spelling and formatting, and choosing all sorts of esoteric subjects to write about. In the case of this file, he lists out his suggestions for causing mayhem and destruction on a boring summer's night. Through browsing his web presence, an interesting fact about Nibble made itself known to me: He was college-age when this and other files were written, bringing a maturity to both his spelling and general perspective, if not his general outlook on personal property. A pioneer.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="warbitch.txt">warbitch.txt</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 9225<BR><TD> <B>The Code of the Verbal Warrior, or Barney's Bitch Manual</B><BR><I>Barney Badass, co-sysop of The Glue Ball and heady influence on a number of Chicago BBSes, rants forth with a set of instructions on how to conduct a proper "bitch war". In the vernacular of the Internet, this has come to be known as a "flame war", but the same idea holds: Long after the intended subject has dropped out of debate, two (or more) sides begin a verbal assault on each other that fills the message base with dozens of personal attacks, insinuations, libel, and slander. After a while, everyone not personally involved in the bitchwar is driven away, posting messages on other sub-boards, which causes them to be insulted for not posting on the right sub-board, possibly leading to another bitchwar. Barney Badass, himself, was a true character and the instigator of some of my finest on-line memories.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="warning.hum">warning.hum</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2537<BR><TD> <B>Warning: This Machine Breaks Down During Periods of Critical Need!</B><BR><I>Another light chuckle from the textfiles of the 1970s, this file warns you that the machine is more likely to break down the more you need it. The attempt to parody industrial labelling as well as the attention to clever turns of phrase marks a lot of the "big iron" humor in textfiles from professionals and college students of this time, showing they were looking for a little lightness in their otherwise stressful and highly-taxing occupations.</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="warnings.ufo">warnings.ufo</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 1031<BR><TD> <B>THE FOLLOWING ARE COMMON SENSE WARNINGS WHEN DEALING WITH A UFO</B><BR><I>Yes, in the event that you do come across a classic lights-flashing UFO, just follow these simple hints and you probably won't be abducted, garrotted, or experimented on. A must for overseas travellers!</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="watchem.phk">watchem.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 3635<BR><TD> <B>Watching the Watcher Watching You, by Sir Knight (1985)</B><BR><I>Besides the very memorable title, Sir Knight's file stands out for his call to mistrust others in the subculture as being potential enemies and agents, and to think twice before revealing information about yourself. Most noticeably, his automatic dismissal of anyone asking "how do I do this?" on public boards shows the beginnings of a trend that continues to this day. (Note also, that his portrait of the most trustable phreakers/hackers are anyone jewish, middle-upper-class, and under 19.)</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="whytext.oct">whytext.oct</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 2223<BR><TD> <B>Why I Prefer Textfiles, by Jason Scott (February 27, 1987)</B><BR><I>I make a cameo appearance! This file came out of my mind one summer in my 16th year while I was home sick with the flu. As my BBS was dedicated to textfiles, I thought it would be fun to write one of my own about why textfiles were better. This file was parodied by a few of my friends at the time, but I think, looking back, my heart was in the right place. (It's still there.)</I><BR>&nbsp
 <TR VALIGN=TOP><TD ALIGN=TOP><A HREF="yipl.phk">yipl.phk</A>  <tab to=T><TD> 15312<BR><TD> <B>The Youth International Party Line #1, Transcribed by BIOC Agent 003</B><BR><I>BIOC, besides being particularly good at writing textfiles of his own composition, was dedicated to preserving knowledge of the foundation that he and others were building on top of. In the case of Phone Phreaks and later Phreak Magazines, this foundation was YIPL, the house organ of the Yippies, who were a revolutionary youth group of the 1960's. YIPL provided one of the first radical magazines dedicated to learning more about technology. While the first issues (under the influence of Abbie Hoffman and others) merely called upon its readers to use this knowledge as a crowbar to smash the state, later issues (when the magazine renamed itself to the Technological Assistance Party, or TAP) brought forth a love of learning and understanding how technology affected all our lives, and a need to know who was pulling the strings. BIOC does his best to transcribe this issue as close to what it looked like when hastily-scrawled copies were sent out to a few dozen people in June of 1971. Good show.</I>
 </TABLE><P><TABLE WIDTH=100%><TR><TD ALIGN=RIGHT><SMALL>There are 100 files for a total of 2,853,285 bytes.</SMALL></TABLE><P>
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 <P>If you wish to have the entire directory conveniently archived and compressed into one file, please download
 either <A HREF="http://archives.textfiles.com/100.tar.gz"><B>100.tar.gz</B></A> (1101660 bytes) or <A HREF="http://archives.textfiles.com/100.zip"><B>100.zip</B></A> (1135379 bytes) instead of all the files separately. <P>
--- a/textfiles.com/100/914bbs.txt
+++ b/textfiles.com/100/914bbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
 67  7
 THIS FILE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON OSUNY (914)428-7216,
 UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. SUFFICIENT CREDIT SHOULD BE GIVEN***************************************************************
 ***            Extended 914 Area Code List                 ***
 ***              Updated January 15th 1984                  ***
 ***************************************************************
 / Number / Name           /Type  /Baud rate /Type of BBS       
 ---------------------------------------------------------------
 221-0774 /CCIS Hopewell   / IBM  / 300/1200 /General BBS
 221-2248 /Hopewell JCT    / IBM  / 300/1200 /General BBS
 225-2471 /EL Trading Place/Atari / 300/1200 /General BBS
 234-6530 /Temple of Doom  /Apple /   300    /General BBS
 238-3160 /The Cemetary    /Apple /   300    /D & D Board
 246-7605 /IBBS Saugerties / IBM  / 300/1200 /General BBS
 297-0665 /Bullet Plus     /TRS-80/ 300/1200 /General BBS
 343-0475 /Socraties       / IBM  / 300/1200 /General BBS
 343-1031 /CEBBS Middletown/ IBM  / 300/1200 /General BBS
 343-5016 /TI BBS          / T.I. /   300    /General BBS
 352-3814 /Bear Works      / C-64 /   300    /General BBS
 352-6543 /Sherwood Forest3/Apple /   300    /Phreak Board
 357-8791 /Satan's Hollow  /Apple /   300    /Private Pirate
 358-8879 /IBBS Rockland   / IBM  / 300/1200 /General BBS
 359-1517 /Sherwood Forest2/Apple / 300/1200 /General BBS
 362-1422 / Telemation     / CoCo /   300    /One of a kind BBS
 365-0180 /MNEMATICS Net   /MNFRME/ 300/1200 /Network costs $$$
 425-2060 /The DST Dungeon /Atari / 300/1200 /Phreak Board
 428-7216 /  OSUNY         / OSI  / 300/1200 /**Soon:Multuser **
 429-5616 /The Crusifiction/Apple /   300    /General BBS
 471-7605 /PC Poughipsie   / IBM  / 300/1200 /General BBS
 472-7956 /The Outer Limits/Atari /   300    /General BBS
 485-3393 /Bullet Plus #2  /TRS-80/ 300/1200 /General BBS
 496-4155 /Penetentary     / C-64 /   300    /Phreak Board
 528-0104 /Crystal Caverns /Apple /   300    /Apple Users ONLY
 528-5259 /Adventureland   /Atari / 300/1200 /General BBS
 562-3187 /CEBBS #2        / IBM  / 300/1200 /General BBS
 623-1939 /Camalot         /Atari /   300    /Atari Users ONLY!
 624-8692 /The Lair        /Apple /   300    /Temporairly Down
 634-8385 /D.A.T.A. RBBS   / IBM  / 300/1200 /Great D/L 's
 634-8590 /Lancelot'sCastle/Atari /   300    /Atari Users ONLY
 636-0649 /DOCS 'R' US #2  / C-64 /   300    /Documentation BBS
 638-4248 /Apple Orchard   /Apple /   300    /** General BBS **
 638-1493 /   ECS          / ???  /   300    /War Board
 668-3664 /DOCS 'R' US     / C-64 /   300    /Documentation BBS
 679-6559 /SJBBS Bearsville/ IBM  / 300/1200 /General BBS
 679-8734 /Woodstock RBBS  /Z-100 / 300/1200 /Genaral BBS
 733-4766 /S & K Telex     /TRS-80/   300    /TELEX SERVICE 
 733-4410 /-------------Help Line For Above--------------------
 735-9362 /Computer Dating /TRS-80/ 300/1200 /Computer Matches
 738-6015 /Altered Arena   /Apple /   300    /Open 1/20/85
 738-6857 /M & M Pelham    /LNW-80/ 300/1200 /***General BBS ***
 769-0148 /The Medow       / C-64 /   300    /Decent C-64 Board
 786-3705 /MuMPs (ubbs)    /TRS-16/300/1200  /For UNIX users
 843-4259 /RC/PM Woodstock /S-100 / 300/1200 /General CP/M Sys
 942-0386 /RMN Comp Comm   /TRS-80/ 300/1200 /*** X-Rated ***
 942-2638 /RACS III        /TRS-80/ 300/1200 /Phreak Board
 961-8049 /Westchester #2  / CoCo / 300/1200 /General BBS
 965-2355 /WstchsterBBS 1  / CoCo / 300/1200 /General BBS
 965-7600 /Colorama        / CoCo / 300/1200 /General BBS
 969-2632 /New York BBS    /Atari /   300    /Phreak Board
 This List is compiled By Daniel Gelman, BUT with help from
 Pinball Wizard, Gimly Gnarly, Bill the Cat,and The Archnoid.
 If you find ANY of these telephone Numbers out of date (I.E.
 Name Change,# Change,Disconnected & New BBS's), Please leave me
 a message on THIS System.
 This List Is updated Monthly
 Enjoy The list!
 Bulletin to print, <L> for list, or <RETURN> to exit?