mirror-textfiles.com/100/.realpira.hum

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The Annotated Real Pirate's Guide:
A Cultural Guidepost, with notes from
Jason Scott, TEXTFILES.COM                                       01/04/2002
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How This Came About:

In early 2001 I was asked to add to a music project by reading from whatever 
I considered to be a "classic" textfile. I chose an old, early 1980's file 
called "The Real Pirate's Guide", by "Rabid Rasta". I figured that this 
example of textfile writing would stand out in everyone's mind as the best
type of Pirate Hubris and harken back to the days when 300 baud modems 
ruled the earth and no one really dreamed that people would have more speed
going to their homes than once existed as the entire ARPAnet's backbone.

As I browsed over the file and began reading it as if anew, however,
I found that I was straining to understand all the references that Rabid 
Rasta was making, and that if it was giving ME trouble, with all the recent
studying I'd been doing of BBS-era textfiles, then a whole generation of 
computer users were going to have the historical text available at a single
mouseclick or URL, but lose the full meaning of what the text referred to. 

I decided to try, as a sort of experiment, to annotate the Real Pirate's
Guide, and give some context to the lines in the file. This is not the
best way to read this file for the first time; you should read the 
unaltered original, and then come back to this version. (A copy of the
original file exists at http://www.textfiles.com/100/realpira.hum)

To my surprise, this file has touched on many different aspects of the 
1980's BBS era, much more than an instruction guide for "Real Pirates"
would be expected to, and the effort has been well worth it.

I've tried to be as complete as possible about a subject being touched on
by this file. In some cases, I go completely overboard, but I'd rather have
the maximum amount of information about a piece of history than not enough.

Any entries and comments that I'm making are couched in a bunch of ----- 
lines, and be upper and lowercase, 80 columns. The original text is 40 
columns, all uppercase.

I invite any comments and additions to improve this file.

- Jason Scott
  TEXTFILES.COM

============================================================================

The following file, "The Real Pirate's Guide", was a file distributed on 
computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) in the early 1980's. Dated as 1984,
this file was probably written as a parody of specific figures within the
author's local calling area. It was then "uploaded" (sent) to a number of
BBSes, where its entertaining nature and easy accessibility as a humor piece
encouraged users to "download" (retrieve) it and send it to other Bulletin
Board Systems around the country, and later the world. Its popularity and
quality show in the fact that a search of the Internet in 2001 finds copies
of the file still accessible from at least two dozen sites, and it is likely
buried in archives at even more, 17 years after it was first written.

By 1984 there were thousands of BBSes connected to single phone lines 
throughout the country, running on microcomputers and using modems to 
answer calls coming in from all over. While most BBSes of the time could be
considered "above-board" and focusing on computer tips, political discussion
and generally "acceptable" conversation, there were also a large amount of
"underground" BBSes, which contained information on computer hacking, phone
phreaking, and software piracy. Lacking the space for large-scale program
storage, very few BBSes actually contained pirated software for download
(or would only have one or two programs available on a rotating basis)
but they were often used as meeting places to arrange trade between two
otherwise unlikely-to-meet users. This environment of piracy brought
with it the usual baggage of a subculture composed of young teens: Hubris,
One-Upmanship, wild claims, and most interestingly, unique and shifting
language meant to leave nonparticipants in the dust. In this environment,
an author calling himself "Rabid Rasta" created a humorous/instructive
textfile about the world of online software piracy called "The Real Pirate's
Guide."

The idea of the "Textfile" or "G-Phile" was that aside from the messages and
writing that users posted to a BBS, some essays and thoughts were considered
important or entertaining enough to be given a separate section to read from.
A number of BBS programs called this section the "General Files" section,
reachable from their main menu with a "G" command, and these writings were
soon referred to as "G Files", later "G Philes". At first just a random
selection of textfiles, a small subset of the BBS world formed into groups
who would produce a series of text; these serials soon became hot items for
some BBSes as the newest installments would come out. The "Real Pirate's 
Guide" did spawn a large amount of sequels and homages (over 20), but Rabid
Rasta's involvement with them seems minimal.

Here, then, is the "Real Pirate's Guide", with my additional notes. I 
have tried to be as accurate as possible and kept my opinions to myself,
focusing instead on why certain phrases are said the way they are, and to
try to give context to Rabid Rasta's work.

The file has undergone a number of edits and changes over time, making 
determination of what it originally looked like somewhat difficult, but I
believe the file being annotated in this document is the "canonical" 
text, which I downloaded from a BBS around late 1984.
-------------------

[/] [\] [/] [\] [/] [\] [/] [\] [/] [\]
[\]                                 [/]
[/]     THE REAL PIRATE'S GUIDE     [\]
[\]                                 [/]
[/]           COMPILED BY           [\]
[\]           RABID RASTA           [/]
[/]                                 [\]
[\] [/] [\] [/] [\] [/] [\] [/] [\] [/]

-------------------
This file was originally written in 40 columns, all uppercase. Why? Because
the Apple II, one of the more popular home computers of the early 1980's,
did not originally come with the ability to do 80 columns, or lowercase.
This was later remedied, and for those who paid the money, a chip could be
installed to give older Apples these missing features.

BBS programs would often ask you how many columns you wished to see the BBS
in. This normally only came into play in the message bases, where you might
see the same message others were seeing, but converted back down to 40
columns.

To a very small amount, the 40 column/80 column difference was used as a
sign of eliteness or status, although Apple computers were already on the
high end of the cost scale for most people and focusing on such a minor
thing was not ultimately that relevant. Then again, the social strata
around the speed of one's modem persisted for well over a decade.

The use of 40 columns/uppercase helps the historian to locate the time of 
a file, although some people continued to use their 40 column computers 
well into the late 1980's.  Additionally, as more and more BBSes became 
purely 80 columns, many older textfiles were converted to 80 columns 
upper/lower by later authors, who sometimes took this opportunity to put 
their own name on the works. This unfortunately muddles the vintage of a 
given file.

In this particular case, Rabid Rasta was kind enough to give the date of
his work as 1984, which helps indicate where things stood historically.
Apples were now on the market for roughly 7 years, BBSes were in the
middle of a huge explosion of computer users, and a reasonably popular
file (like this one) could be expected to be distributed around the 
country, if not worldwide.

Note that Rabid Rasta has put [/] characters around the title of his file.
It's not currently known where exactly this habit started, but the use of
minimal "text graphics" to surround the title and author of a textfile has
continued to the present day. Even back then, the graphics could get
somewhat elaborate, although nothing like it ended up becoming in the 90's.
-------------------

[SIMULATION]

FROM-> JHONNY THE AVENGER
DATE-> SAT AUG 4   10:21 PM

I SAW YOUR MESSAGE ON THE PIRATE BOARD
ABOUT YOU HAVEING SIDE 2 OF SUMMER GAM
ES!MY CONNECTIONS MR.ZEROX AND CHEIF S 
URGEN BLACK BAG ARE'NT AROUND TO MAIL 
IT 2 ME SO WANNA DO SOME SERIUS TRADEI 
NG?I HAVE GRAFORTH ,CHOPLIFTER ,MARS 
CARS,DISK MUNCHER AND SOME K00L OTHER

STUFF AND GAMES.CALL ME AT 312-323- 
3741.IF YOU NEED PHREAK CODES I HAVE 
THEM TO AND BOX PLANS.BYE

  ***	   *****     **
   *	     *	    *  *
*  *	     *	   ******
 ** HONNY    * HE  *	* VENGER



*THE KNIGHTS OF MYSTERIOUS KEYBOARDS*!

   THE AWESOMEST HACK GROUP IN TOWN

-------------------
Rabid Rasta is parodying a particularly geeky software pirate's message
on a BBS. Besides the intentionally bad spelling (as opposed to the 
unintentional bad spelling RR has in the rest of the file), he also tries
to touch on some of the more annoying aspects of "pirates" from the era.

This file is very Apple-centric, and all the software packages mentioned
were available on the Apple II. A few were ported to other platforms, but
only the Apple had every package. "Choplifter" was a top-selling game of 
1982, "Mars Cars" was never a top seller but was made in roughly 1983, 
and "Disk Muncher" was a disk copy program that was as ubiquitous as you 
could get, with its ability to copy a disk in four passes. "GraForth"
was a graphics-oriented Forth language interpreter for the Apple II.
(FORTH, the computer language, was created by Charles Moore in 1968.)
The inclusion of a programming language disk in a listing of games is
likely an intentional jab at "Jhonny"'s lack of computer savvy.

As for "Side 2" of "Summer Games" (created by Epyx Software in 1983),
this is a reference to the fact that floppy disks at the time could be
double-sided, with each side holding 140k of information. If a game or
program was particularly large, a company would put information on both
sides of a disk, requiring the user to flip over the disk when prompted
to by the program. This could be a headache for pirates who would get a
copy of a game, only to find that what they had was a copy of just one
side of the disk. Begging for "Side 2" would then commence, which made
you look particularly foolish, since you hadn't even been able to pirate
a complete program.

"Jhonny" also makes reference to several prominent pirates and one
pirating group in his message. Many pirates would band together into
groups, under which they would all distribute their pirated games. Like
any such culture, groups which made prominent, popular releases would
gain positive reputations, while others that came off as a bunch of
kids who were just giving themselves a big name would not.

"Mr. Xerox" was not a member of the "Black Bag" pirating group as far
as I can determine, but "Chief Surgeon" most certainly was. Obviously,
these are both misspelled in the example.

The "Knights of Mysterious Keyboards" is probably a reference to the 
"Knights of Shadow", a somewhat prominent phreaking group of the time
whose most famous member was Bioc Agent 003, who wrote the "Basics
of Telecommunications" series of phreaking files.

As for the phone number in the example, I've gone through the trouble
of tracking its history and it was in fact the phone number of a BBS
called "The Chipmunk BBS", running in the Chicago area on an Apple II,
that dates back to the early 1980's. This points strongly to Rabid 
Rasta making a not-so-veiled reference to an actual user of BBSes.
-------------------

IS THE AUTHOR OF THE ABOVE MESSAGE A 
TRUE PIRATE?  SINCE THE BEGINNING OF 
TIME THERE HAS BEEN AN IMPLICIT CODE 
OF ETIQUETTE GOVERNING THE ACTIONS OF 
SOFTWARE PIRATES, BUT AS MANY OF YOU 
MAY HAVE NOTICED AS OF LATE, THAT CODE 
HAS BEEN KNOCKED AROUND A BIT. ALTHOUGH 
IT'S NOT DIFFICULT TO DIFFERENTIATE A 
TRUE PIRATE FROM ONE OF THESE POOR IMI 
TATIONS, I BELIEVE THAT, WITH THE NUM- 
BER OF TRUE PIRATES DECREASING AT SUCH 
AN ALARMING RATE, THIS CODE SHOULD BE 
SET STRAIGHT.  AFTER ALL, ALTHOUGH 
"JHONNY" IS ADMITTEDLY A MORON, IT'S 
NOT HIS FAULT THAT HE NEVER RECEIVED 
PROPER GUIDANCE.

--------------------
The entire idea of "Real" guides (as this file spawned dozens and dozens
of imitations) stems from a humor book written in 1982 called "Real Men
Don't Eat Quiche", by Bruce Feirstein. In this book, you're told what
makes a real man, with rule after rule accompanied by illustrations. This
simple approach was easy for Rabid Rasta to use for this file, and for
others to use when they made copy-cat files.

Essentially, the structure is this: Line after line of "Real XXX do..."
and "Real XXX don't...", with an occasional Corollary to make things
clearer (or funnier, whichever was better). How well this worked depended
on the talent of the writer. In the case of this first file, he did very
well indeed, although as we'll see, the jokes are very "inside" and often 
haven't stood the test of time.

By 1984 personal computers were becoming more ubiquitous, and with these 
computers came modems, and with the modems came more and more users of 
BBSes (and BBSes, as well). The cycle of the "January Losers" was now 
underway, where each January the local BBSes were filled with all the 
young kids who'd been given shiny new modems for Christmas and had hit 
up all their friends for BBS numbers to call. If you'd started calling
BBSes from 1981 or 1982, it wouldn't be hard to feel like the barbarians
were at the gates, and the special community you'd built up and good
reputation you had was now on the verge of being worthless. To some
extent, this is where the concept of "elite" came from, as you had to
have some way to differentiate yourself from all the new unwashed
masses that were keeping every BBS line busy well into the night.

Eventually, of course, came a January that Never Ended (on the Internet
the was called the September that Never Ended) when the number of people 
who now had modems arrive was so great than their flooding of the BBS 
world would never subside again until the 1990s.
--------------------

ONE OF THE FIRST AND FOREMOST RULES OF 
PIRACY:REAL PIRATES ARE OVER 15 YEARS
OLD!  EXCEPTIONS TO THIS RULE ARE EX- 
TREMELY RARE AT BEST.

--------------------
In 1984, anyone 15 or older would have been born in 1969 or earlier.
--------------------

COROLLARY:  YOU NEVER HAVE TO WONDER 
WHO BREEDED MICKEY MOUSE WITH A 2600 HZ
TONE TO PRODUCE A REAL PIRATE'S VOICE.

---------------------
The 2600hz tone had meaning in the context of blue boxing, where sending
that frequency down a phone line in certain situations would cause the Bell
telephone system equipment to suddenly start treating you as an operator.
By sending additional signals (with the assistance of a blue box or other
such phreaking device) you would then be able to do all sorts of interesting
tricks.

This number, chosen because it was unlikely to be a sound that would 
otherwise come over a phone line, is the source of the title of 2600 
Magazine, the Hackers' Quarterly.

For all that, Rabid Rasta is merely saying that a real pirate does not have
a high, squeaky voice. Mentioning phone phreaking terminology in such an 
offhand manner was just showing off.
----------------------

ALIASES
-------

REAL PIRATES ARE MORE IMAGINATIVE THAN TO
USE THE WORD "COPY" IN THEIR ALIAS.

COROLLARY:  REAL PIRATES AREN'T NAMED 
"MR. COPY" BECAUSE REAL PIRATES DON'T 
BRAG ABOUT CRACKING DUNG BEETLES.

THE WORD "CRACK" (OR "KRACK") IS FOUND
NOWHERE IN A REAL PIRATE'S NAME...UN-
LESS HE REALLY KNOWS HOW TO.

---------------
An "Alias" was basically the name used by a user on a BBS, to shield their 
identity and give them more room to express themselves, or theoretically
stop the law from tracking them down. Other terms for an alias were 
"handles" and "screen names". Often, an alias was an unintentional insight
into the personality of the individual behind it. 

"Mr. Copy" appears to be local to Rabid Rasta, or at least someone who called
to the same BBSes. He's attacked several times in the file, and is painted as
an example of someone who is not a "Real Pirate" but who wishes he was one.

"Cracking" in the context of this file means to completely remove the copy
protection of a software product. It has been a major headache and project for
Software companies since the beginning of the industry to prevent users from
simply making a digital copy of a purchased (or borrowed) piece of software 
and distributing it to all their friends. To combat this happening, a 
company might invest many thousands of dollars in research and programming to
make a program stop functioning once it was duplicated. In response, pirates
with just as much talent as the companies would piece together how the 
protection had been added, strip it out, and modify the software code to no 
longer pay attantion to the protection. The result would be a "cracked"
piece of software, which could be copied with ease, as if it were a standard
disk (which it had not been before). In some cases, pirates would be talented 
enough to reduce an entire disk to a single file, making it possible to put 
several programs on a single disk accessible by a menu where previously only 
one program had been before. This made it easier to transfer the program over 
modems (as it was smaller and took less time to do so) and it earned you the 
right to brag about your ability as a "Cracker".  Most crackers were pirates, 
but not many pirates were crackers.

In recent times, "Cracker" has taken on additional meanings within computers.
While nearly everyone would agree that the process of removing complicated
disk protection from a commercial game is at the very least a formidable task
requiring a lot of (misused) talent, the new meaning denotes an almost
slack-jawed use of pre-made tools to cause trouble. To people who saw the
first usage of the word as applied to computers, the new use of the term
is especially onerous.

The game "Dung Beetles" is a Pac-Man clone where your character goes through
a maze leaving dots while a number of creatures (the Dung Beetles of the title)
try to find you. The gimmick of this game was that the maze was actually very
large, and a magnifying glass would follow your character as it moved around,
letting you have a very clear view of the maze directly around you, but not
so great a knowledge of the entire maze. By the time this file was written,
the "Dung Beetles" game was over 3 years old, so either Rabid Rasta is 
insulting Mr. Copy because he has cracked a very old game, or he's claiming
that Mr. Copy did no such cracking at all.
---------------

REAL PIRATES' ALIASES DON'T SOUND AS 
IF THEY WERE EXTRACTED FROM THE LYRICS 
OF AN OZZY OZBOURNE SONG (I.E.  
PROVISIONER OF SATAN, BLACK AVENGER, 
DARK PHANTOM, ETC.).

REAL PIRATES DON'T NAME THEMSELVES AF- 
TER HEAVY METAL GROUPS.

---------------
Around this time was the rise of the Neon Knights and Metal Communications,
who most certainly named themselves after Heavy Metal themes and kept up both
the Metal theme and references to Satan and Hell wherever they could. Metal
in 1984 was yet another major genre playing on the radio, so it would make
sense that it would inspire some kids to base their handles and group names
on those themes.

It wasn't rare to see some people sticking upside-down crosses and 666s all
over their messages or files, or some variation of "HAIL SATAN". But like a 
lot of the Heavy Metal of the 1980's, this wasn't all that serious a call to 
the powers of darkness. 
----------------

REAL PIRATES, IF NAMED AFTER SOME AS-
PECT OF PIRATE LEGEND (I.E.  JOLLY ROGER,
CAPTAIN HOOK, EYE PATCH, ETC.) DON'T SAY, 
"AVAST YE SCURVY DOGS," OR ANYTHING
OF THE LIKE.

-----------------
While pirates generally didn't use the words "Avast Ye Scurvy Dogs", there
was a definite Days-of-Yore theme that went through a lot of Pirate BBSes.
Some boards from the time were named "The Pirates' Cove", "The Treasure 
Chest", "The Pirates' Corner", etc.  While in some ways it was unwise to
advertise the true, illegal nature of your board, giving it a mysterious
name would guarantee a greater amount of callers, which was the lifeblood
of a BBS.

A common calling card of pirates who had "cracked" a game was adding code
to display a graphic "splash screen" or "intro screen" to the front of the
program, giving credits to the pirates who had cracked the software, and
the BBSes they called! In these little graphic displays, there was often
a solid "pirates" theme, with the Jolly Roger or english lettering making
an appearance. Often, after pressing a key while looking at this screen,
the user would then be able to use the actual game. 

In a few cases, the "intro screen" code written by the pirates was better
written code than the program itself, loading an image within a fraction
of a second or doing a neat graphic trick. Occasionally, this code would
itself be "pirated" by other pirate groups for use in THEIR cracks!
-----------------

REAL PIRATES' NAMES AREN'T PARODIES OF
OTHER REPUTABLE PIRATES (I.E.  RESIDENT
OF LAVENDER BAG, MR.  PAC MAN, FRANKLIN 
BANDIT, ETC.).

-----------------
"Lavender Bag" is a parody of the previously mentioned "Black Bag" Pirating
group.

"Mr. Pac Man" is a reference to "Mr. Krac-Man", whose name was probably most
seen on a cracked version of the Electronic Arts game "Hard Hat Mack".

The "Franklin" was a runalike version of the Apple II that was, in some ways,
quite superior (the disk drive was internal, for example), which was among the
Apple clones that were all sued by Apple for patent infringement. A prominent
pirate of this time was "Apple Bandit", hence "Franklin Bandit".
-----------------

REAL PIRATES DON'T NAME THEMSELVES AF- 
TER ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES (I.E.  JACK
DANIELS, HARVEY WALLBANGER, JIM BEAM, 
ETC.) ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY'VE NEVER HAD
ONE.

REAL PIRATES SPELL THEIR ALIASES COR- 
RECTLY (UNLIKE "THE POENIX").

REAL PIRATES AREN'T NAMED SAM HOUSTON, 
SIR SPANKY, THE GAMEMASTER, LORD FAGEN,
NIKKI SIX, (INSERT YOUR OWN LOSERS 
HERE), OR MR. COPY.

---------------
Again, these appear to be local pirates who Rabid Rasta doesn't like,
especially Mr. Copy. Ironically, the appearance of their names in this file
has guaranteed some amount of fame/persistence of their handles that otherwise
would have never been. In insulting them, Rabid Rasta saved knowledge of them.
---------------

WARES
-----

REAL PIRATES WOULD NEVER THINK OF DE- 
LETING "SABOTAGE".  IT'S TOO MUCH FUN
IMAGINING THOSE LITTLE MEN ARE ACTUAL- 
LY SIR KNIGHT.

---------------
The term "wares" is most likely a contraction of the word "software", as
in "I have some software to trade with others" being shortened into "I
have software" or "I have softwares" and finally "wares". This sort of
corruption happens frequently in social groups, as commonly done activities
and terms for them are repeated over and over until a new clever term
arrives. If the term makes a perverse sort of sense, enough people will
use it until newcomers assume it has always been that way, and things
perpetuate. A good example of this is the "-gate" suffix to mean "scandal",
(Contra-gate, Monica-Gate) even though the original Watergate Scandal 
simply referred to the name of a hotel.

"Sabotage" is a program that is probably still stuck in the mind of anyone 
who originally played it on an Apple II, even if the name itself has faded 
from memory. This was a simple game on one level: You had a gun on the 
bottom of the screen that you could aim left and right with two keys. On 
the top of the screen, planes would drift by, dropping men with parachutes, 
who would float towards the ground. If five men landed, they would gang up 
on your gun and blow it up.  Your task was to destroy the men before they 
landed. Occasionally, a plane would come by and drop a bomb on your gun 
that you had to shoot away quickly, but this was just to keep your attention.

On the surface, this may sound repetitive, but the program was really 
well-done. While you could shoot the men and make them explode, it was 
possible to aim your shots just right and blow away a man's parachute, 
leaving him to plummet to the ground and explode on his own. You could 
also shoot a man who was above another man, making him plummet into his 
comrade and sending both to their deaths. Ship debris cascading on 
parachutists, needless torture of characters, and the simplicity of the 
controls added up to a really fun game. 

As for the resemblance to Sir Knight, I have the memory of having heard
from others that Sir Knight was a somewhat unpleasant personality to be
around, but this wouldn't make him unusual around the sub-culture. More
likely, Rabid Rasta or a friend had a poor experience with Sir Knight and
it transmuted itself into a less-than-positive mention in this file. Sir
Knight created a file called "Making Your Phone Into a Cheesebox", which
is neither informative nor inspiring. Perhaps he doesn't need a parachute,
after all.
----------------

REAL PIRATES PLAY "BILESTOAD".

----------------
"The Bilestoad" was a unique and spectacular game for the Apple II that
came out in 1982. It won the 1983 Golden Floppy award for excellence from 
Electronic Fun with Computers and Games Magazine, and quickly became a 
must-have for anyone with an Apple II or access to one. Pirates considered
it an especially sweet plum in their collection.

In the game, you controlled one of two "meatlings", humanoid figures who
were put on a large map with lots of different disks, or "shyben". The
view was from above, and you had a complicated (but learnable) set of keys
to make your Meatling walk around the map and swing weapons. If the two
meatlings were not in the same area, the game would flip between the
two players until they came together, a multi-screen concept that doesn't
really make another major appearance until the 1990s.. You could attack 
your opponent with amazing ferocity, and the game had a relatively large 
amount of blood and gore (although at graphics levels that wouldn't raise 
an eyebrow today).

The game is credited to "Mangrove Earthshoe", who in fact was a Georgia
Institute of Technology student named Marc Goodman. Mr. Goodman created a
number of games for the Apple, and has since gone on to do much research
and work in data mining and projective visualization, as well as gain a
doctorate. Dr. Goodman went on to create a Macintosh version of The
Bilestoad, which he still maintains and sells.
-----------------

REAL PIRATES HAVE LONG SINCE DELETED 
"SNEAKERS", "E.T.", "ALIEN MUNCHIES", 
"BUG BATTLE", "SNACK ATTACK", AND 
EVERYTHING FROM SSI, AVALON HILL, AND 
SCOTT ADAMS.

------------------
Rabid Rasta throws out a few examples of "Old Wares" in this paragraph, 
showing that if a game isn't recent, it's probably not worth your time or
even space on your floppy disks. His list actually cuts through a large
variety of computer game companies for the Apple II, and it's worth delving
a bit into their histories.

"Sneakers" was a somewhat straightforward Space Invaders clone for the Apple
from Sirius Software that was published in 1981. It had multiple waves of
unique characters and was popular when it first came out, although by three 
years later it was probably losing a bit of its sheen. It was written by a 
16-year old Mark Turmell, who went on to co-create such later arcade games 
as "NFL Blitz", "NBA Jam", "Smash TV" and "Wrestlemania" for Midway. Sirius
Software went out of business in 1984, and some of their games were then 
sold to Broderbund and other rival game companies.

"Bug Battle" was a clone of "Centipede", the arcade game by Atari. Very
little else could be found about it; it's an almost exact duplicate of the
original, and was pirated by "The Untouchables". As the original Centipede
came out in 1980, it was likely that this clone came out in 1981 or 1982.

"E.T." is very likely a reference to "E.T. Comes Back", an adventure game
by Alliance Software that arrived in 1984. Obviously, it didn't leave much
of a positive impression on Rabid Rasta. The game was cracked by "The Nut
Cracker" and has a very strong similarity to the work of the Sierra On-Line
Adventures such as "The Dark Crystal", with simple drawings of locations and
two-word commands. Some of this genre was memorable indeed, but not this
particular game.

"Alien Munchies" was a game that consisted of pulling a propane barbeque
back and forth along the bottom of the screen to capture aliens falling
from the sky.  As an interesting side note, the cracked, file-based version 
of this game includes the following message: "Re-kraked by the disk jockey. 
Learn to krak right, freeze. Also, if you take out the author's name again 
to put in yours, I'll break all your arms and legs. No kidding. Sincerely, 
the disk jockey." 

"Snack Attack" by Dan Illowsky of Datamost Software was a Pac-Man clone from
1982 that was one of the Softalk top 10 Apple II games for that year. Datamost
software was also the publisher of the aforementioned "Bilestoad", as well
as several computer-related books. The company went under in 1984, although
it apparently resurfaced in 1986 until 1989 to produce another set of games.

SSI (Strategic Simulations International) and Avalon Hill were both leaders
in Turn-Based Roleplaying games for the Apple II (and many other platforms)
in the early 1980's. The focus of these roleplaying games would be on famous
armed conflicts from history, although games based on sports, famous books,
or medieval times/witchcraft also made their appearance.

Avalon Hill was founded in 1958 and had been involved in actual board games
of conflict simulations, also known as "turn-based roleplaying", where you
had advancing armies and troops that moved in rounds towards a goal. With
pieces, maps, and historical background of the conflict being portrayed, 
this sort of game was very popular with a subset of the gaming audience.

The first forays by Avalon Hill into computer games were, needless to say, 
rather sedate in terms of gameplay, with the focus being on "porting" the 
board games into a computer version without much regard for the advantages
a computer may bring. Many were text-based, and all were still turn-based, 
requiring a set of commands and then telling you where to move. This did not
impress a generation of Apple Users who had seen the potential of the 
computer in games like Broderbund Software's "Choplifter" and Electronic 
Arts' "Skyfox", where graphics were starting to come into their own and the 
rewards in terms of gameplay were immediate and spectacular. To be given a 
game from Avalon Hill meant that you weren't exactly getting the greatest 
computer-based experience on a floppy. 

Strategic Simulations International was a little less staid than Avalon Hill,
having been formed in 1979 and better focused towards the potential of the
computer. Starting from their first game, "Computer Bismarck", they were 
soon a major challenger to Avalon Hill's market, and they had a much better 
grip on using graphics and sound to enhance the experience.  After 1984, the 
company continued to expand upon its games and had a number of successes 
with many different types of genres, with role-playing being just a part 
of their entire outlay.

Both companies were later bought out, and are part of other, larger firms
at this point: SSI is a division of The Learning Company, which also bought
out such diverse firms as Broderbund Software, Softkey, and Compton's. 
Avalon Hill is now a division of Hasbro, and continues to focus on Turn-based
games for computer, albeit with much flashier graphics and interfaces.

The Learning Company itself was purchased by Mattel, but later sold to "Gores
Technology Group", and parts of it were spun off to other firms. Suffice to
say, the story is rather depressing if you attach any sort of nostalgia to
the products from these firms and try to track down where they are now. 

As an aside, if you're seeking happy endings, it's much more effective (and 
rewarding) to follow the lives of the programmers who made the actual games. 
For example, Joel Billings, who founded SSI out of college in 1979, has gone
on to continue his work with computer gaming to this day with a company 
called "2by3 Games" (World War 2 By Three Guys) and has held to his initial 
love of wargames.

Finally, Scott Adams sits a bit apart from these other programs. Founding
his software company "Adventure International" in 1979, Scott Adams created
a series of adventure games (text adventures, where you entered two word
commands to move around in locations and solve puzzles) that garnered much
praise from magazines and reviewers of the time. Adventure International
expanded in scope, creating games and other programs not only for the Apple
II but a wide variety of other plaforms, including the Atari 400/800, 
Commodore 64, TRS-80, and Texas Instruments TI/99. Ultimately, however, the
games business took a downturn and Adventure International went out of
business in 1984. Scott Adams has since worked for Avista Inc. as a senior
programmer. It is likely that his dozen adventure programs that were 
written for the Apple II were distributed far and wide and were pretty
hard to consider "exclusive" wares, and therefore the subject of Rabid
Rasta's scorn.
-------------------

REAL PIRATES UPLOAD.  THEY REALIZE 
THAT LEECHING IS THE #2 SIN (BEHIND, OF
COURSE, BEING 13 YEARS OLD).

----------------
Setting aside the moral and legal issues of pirating software, there were
and are a lot of aspects to the sub-culture that are worth noting. When you
have a rough alliance of hundreds of people dealing in copying and 
distributing commercial games, certain interesting conventions and issues
arose and continue to make themselves known.

A major issue when trading in copied software is that people tend to just 
take all the software being offered and not actually give anything back 
in return.  This process, often called "leeching" (and recently, 
"freeloading") is a natural human tendency and efforts have been made 
for decades to counterract it, with varying results.

One solution that presented itself was the "Ratio", where people could only
download a certain amount of files before they were forced to upload.  Ratios 
could be somewhat lax, like requiring an upload for every 99 downloads (which 
wasn't really a ratio at all) or extremely strict, like requiring one (or
two!) uploads for every download.

Other variations have included "validation", where users could browse the site
and see what it had to offer, but they couldn't download any files or post
messages until they were given a higher level by the System Operator (SysOp).
On some sites, especially pirate boards, you might be required to fill out
an application to join, not unlike an exclusive school or club, which in some
ways this was.

Obviously, if you knew the right people, you got everything anyway; this was
just a set of walls set up so that the principles of spreading files far and
wide were upheld, but a board wasn't completely taken advantage of.
----------------

REAL PIRATES REALIZE THAT PENGUIN AREN'T 
REALLY "THE GRAPHICS PEOPLE".

----------------
Penguin Software (renamed after legal issues to "Polarware" in 1987) were
the creator of a number of graphics programs for the Apple II. Among their
more famous products were "The Graphics Magician" and a game called "The
Spy's Demise".  They had a large number of game companies license graphics
routines from them, and they gave themselves the motto "The Graphics People".
Obviously, Rabid Rasta did not agree.
----------------

REAL PIRATES FEEL GUILTY WHEN PIRATING 
BEAGLE BROTHERS.  OF COURSE, THAT NEVER
STOPS THEM.

------------
Pirates would feel guilty about pirating Beagle Brothers because they were 
one of several companies that took the risk of releasing their software with 
absolutely no copy protection on it, and then imploring people to make the 
best judgement and not make copies of their software except for backups. This
approach was also taken by Penguin Software, with similar success.

Beagle Brothers were also reknown for making absolutely fantastic software;
they had a special talent for cramming as many goodies and hacks onto every
disk they sold. You might be buying a word processor or programming tips disk
and find a whole plethora of fascinating code buried within the disk as well.

You could definitely feel bad about ripping off the Beagle Brothers.
------------

REAL PIRATES DON'T BELIEVE THE MORONS 
WHO SAY THEY HAVE ULTIMA IV AND POLE
POSITION.

------------
In the modern day, where Ultima now means "Ultima Online", it should be 
mentioned that the Ultima series by Lord British (Richard Garriott) was 
created in 1980 for several platforms, including the Apple II. The object
of the game was to guide your player (named "Avatar") through a series of
adventures in the land of Britannia. Ultimately, there have been nine 
Ultima Games (and then Ultima Online), with each new chapter over the last
20 years being more anticipated than the last. This game had a major cult 
following even in its early years, and promises by pirates that they had 
the next version of Ultima became a constant, shrill joke on BBSes. Ultima 
III had been released in 1983, and this file was written in 1984. Ultima 
IV did not make an appearance until 1985, although it was theoretically 
possible that someone could have had an early copy of Ultima IV in 1984. 
This was a very unlikely prospect, though.

"Pole Position", the Namco-Produced Arcade Game that was licensed by Atari and 
brought to the United Stated under their name, was in fact announced for the 
Apple II by Atarisoft in April of 1984. This indicates that either Rabid Rasta
had assumed that Pole Position, an Atari game, would never come out for 
non-Atari computers, or the file was written before April of that year. As
it turned out, however, Atari never did release Pole Position (although it
did release a number of other programs for the Apple II) and the program
joined the legion of "vaporware" that has accompanied the history of the
computer since its beginning.
------------

COROLLARY:  REAL PIRATES REALIZE THAT 
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FORMULA I
RACER AND POLE POSITION.

------------
I am unable to find any direct information about a game called "Formula I" 
for the Apple II, but it wouldn't be that hard to assume that Formula I was 
a racing game that, if one convinced oneself with great effort, might be 
similar to Pole Position, minus the graphics and sound. 
------------

BOARDS
------
REAL PIRATES AREN'T THE FIFTH TO POST 
THE SAME "I HAVE..." MESSAGE.

CORROLARY:  REAL PIRATES DON'T POST 
"I HAVE..." MESSAGES WHEN THEY REALLY DON'T
HAVE.

------------
"Boards" in this case refer to message sub-boards, sections on a BBS that
are dedicated to one subject that users could post to. In this case, the 
subject is trading games.

The "I Have" messages being referenced here are messages that would be posted
on the "Trading" sub-board of a BBS, where users would announce what disks 
or programs they had available, and others would send them mail asking to
trade for other programs. Messages that were just asking for programs were
"I Want" messages. 

In this way, BBSes provided a way for disparate groups of people to get 
together to trade files, because otherwise things came down to the same
dozen disks within a social group. Alliances and friendships would be struck
over these trades.
------------

REAL PIRATES DON'T DOWNLOAD PROGRAMS 
FROM PUBLIC AE'S AND THEN POST "I KNOW
IT'S OLD, BUT I HAVE...TOO" MESSAGES 
ON PIRATE BOARDS.

-------------
The term "AE" is used only twice in this file, It stands for "Ascii Express", 
which was a terminal program for the Apple II that changed the face of 
Apple II piracy forever. While the use-the-modem-to-connect-to-BBSes side 
of the Ascii Express program was uneventful, it had a second feature, whereby 
it could run as a sort of file server, allowing anyone who dialed in and 
typed the password to browse the operator's disks.

This changed everything. People could put up Ascii Express on their phone
lines with absolutely no difficulty or preparation, and just start offering
copies of programs out to anyone who called. Obviously they would also hope
that others would upload to their "AE Line" as well. 

AE Lines were among the best way to distribute files and disk images on a 
previously-unknown scale, requiring only one of the two users involved in
the trade to do the work. This was also a situation where "cracks" into a 
single file from a full disk worked to a great advantage, as a maximum amount
of programs could be made available on a single or double-disk system.
-------------

REAL PIRATES DON'T POST THEIR HIGH SCORES.

COROLLARY:  REAL PIRATES DON'T KEEP SCORE.

REAL PIRATES DON'T SAY "K-K00L", 
"K-AWESOME", "X10DER", "L8R0N", OR 
ANYTHING OF THE SORT.

REAL PIRATES KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BE- 
TWEEN "F" AND "PH" (I.E."PHILES",
"PHUCK", "FONE", ETC.).

--------------
The use of the spelling "fone" for "telephone" stems back from the days of
the Technological Assistance Party (or Youth International Party Line), 
which preceeded 2600 magazine in bringing deep-hidden secrets about the 
phone company (the once-invincible Ma Bell) to an eager audience. There is
a very good likelihood that this F-PH switching goes back to the 60's and 
even beyond; people who really got into the technology of the phone company 
might be referred to as "freaks", and it would be a logical step that they 
would playfully call themselves "Phone Phreaks". It's known that Phone 
Phreaking started at least as far back as the 1950's, but compared to today's 
level of organization within this sub-culture, it was probably a very 
loosely-knit and disparate group of people who took the term to refer to 
themselves, possibly independent of each other.

(The History of Phone Phreaks and Phreaking in general is far beyond the
scope of this file, but is a subject worth exploring. A number of books
have gone into more recent groups of Phone Phreaks, and they make an 
excellent start for the historian trying to understand this fascinating
culture.)

It is entirely a guess on my part, but made from observation of hundreds
of textfiles, that the "K-" prefix is an abbreviation for "OK," as in
"OK, Cool" becoming "K-Kool". This quickly mutated into forms for "K-Rad",
"K-Awesome", and the like.  

The origins of the word "OK" itself comes from an abbreviation fad in 
the late 1830s, where it stood for "Oll Korrect", and was part of a family
of silly abbreviations that newspapers were using at the time. This 
abbreviation was later grabbed by Martin "Old Kinderhook" Van Buren in 
his presidential campaign, and it fell into common use some time later as
a result of that publicity. So, one could argue that "K-Rad" has a history 
of more than a century and a half, which is both breathtaking and depressing 
in one swoop.

Finally, the use of 1 for "I", "0" for "O" and the like are traditions
going very far back and are also worthy of a treatise in themselves. There
is a belief that these alternate spellings are the result of a Usenet
phenomenon called "B1FF", but "B1FF" was created by Joe Talmadge in 1988,
and is in fact an homage to the already-existent spellings that were on BBSes
for years before.
--------------

REAL PIRATES DON'T WASTE EVERYONE'S TIME 
BACKSPACING OVER THEIR ALIAS 50 TIMES.

COROLLARY:  REAL PIRATES DON'T USE
BACKSPACING IN FEEDBACK TO SYSOPS.
(SYSOPS DON'T READ FEEDBACK AT 300 BAUD)

-------------
This was the reference that first inspired me to write this file; the concept
of "backspacing" is almost completely lost in the modern world, where DSL and
cable modems can download at the rate of an entire Apple II disk in a SECOND.

This is far past the concept of "baud" as a speed measurement; we now use
kilobits or kilobytes per second, instead of thinking of something as 128,000
baud or the like. A good percentage of the country in this new century can
connect at between 33,600 baud and 56,000 baud. But once, the best you could
do was 300.

In the era of 300 baud, text would crawl along the screen; it was very 
possible for a talented typist to type as fast as 300 baud, and reading at
that speed was just as easy. This meant that the BBS experience, when you
weren't downloading a file, was a matter of watching the cursor leak across
the screen, line by line, sentence by sentence. This could be very exciting
or extremely boring, depending on what was happening at the time. For example,
typing "?" for a menu at the BBS prompt when you meant to type something else
would mean another 15-30 seconds sucked out of your life. 

Besides all the standard alphanumeric characters, some BBS programs would
let you enter unusual key sequences in your keyboard to add deletes or cursor
moves to your message.

Imagine, then, that when signing your name, for extra emphasis, you enter
it into the message system like this:

THE WYVERN<delete><delete><delete><delete><delete><delete><space><space>
<space><space><space><space><delete><delete><delete><delete><delete><delete>
WYVERN

...and so on. What anyone reading your message at 300 baud would see, as
they got to the end of your message, was your name, and then the name 
reversing and erasing itself, and then the name appearing again. This little
text trick would give your name a sort of shimmer, and then the message 
would be finished. 

Obviously, if someone mistyped as they entered these sequences, it would leave
half-finished lines and words scattered throughout their message, which was
an unintentional joke in itself.

A more involved concept was the spinning cursor, where you would add a
sequence to look like a spinning line after your name:

-<delete>\<delete>|<delete>/<delete>-

As the message constantly printed characters and then deletes, it would look
a little like a line spinning in place. (Trust me on this.) A remnant of this
trick exists in the boot-up sequence of Sun Microsystem's Solaris Operating
System, where the cursor spins for you, like the old days, as your system
loads.

The tricks and oddities of backspaces began to fade with 1200 baud, where
they would spin ludicrously fast, and came to a complete death with 2400 and
9600 baud, where you couldn't make out what was being done. And as Rabid 
Rasta indicates, reading these messages locally (on the same computer as
the BBS, which the System Operator would be) was an exercise in frustation
as these little keyboard tricks made the screen a mess.

"Feedback", by the way, was the general term for messages sent directly to
the System Operator, or Sysop.
-------------

REAL PIRATES NEVER USE TEXT GRAPHICS IN 
THEIR MESSAGES.

-------------
Text Graphics sounds like an oxymoron, but it's the use of text characters
in a message or textfile to look more like a pictogram than just letters.
To illustrate, I'll point to the signature of the great Count Nibble:

/\/oo\/\  Count Nibble  /\/oo\/\

Obviously, as time has gone on text graphics have gotten much more 
elaborate, and a small "ASCII Scene" still exists wherein different groups
of text artists try to outdo themselves and others with 'Art Packs' of
collected works.
-------------

REAL PIRATES DON'T CARE ABOUT THE CURSE 
BBS'S "K-K00L M0DS".

-------------
The idea of "Mods" is explained in further detail a few paragraphs below,
after the description of GBBS software. The Curse BBS appears to be a 
BBS that has implemented a very large amount of "Mods", none of which,
in Rabid Rasta's mind, have improved the quality of the Board itself.
There was a Curse BBS which hosted Hot Rod of the Black Bag Apple pirate
group, located in Minnesota, and is very likely the BBS Rabid Rasta is
referring to.
-------------

REAL PIRATES DON'T SEARCH FOR NEW WAYS 
TO SPELL "WARES".

-------------
Regardless, this search has continued to this day, nearly two decades later.
-------------

REAL PIRATES DON'T USE THE LAST 5 LINES 
OF THEIR MESSAGES BRAGGING ABOUT THE 8
MEANINGLESS ORGANIZATIONS THAT THEY BELONG TO.

COROLLARY:  REAL PIRATES DON'T BELONG 
TO SWAPP, DOS/NPG, OR NASCOMP.

------------
Rabid Rasta is referring to the interesting situation of "Pirate Groups",
which were (usually short-lived) clubs consisting of pirates, who would 
brand all the releases and text by its members. Some groups have survived
over a decade, but most barely made it past the first couple of months.

Sadly, SWAPP, DOS/NPG, and NASCOMP have all faded into obscurity, leaving
very little trace of their existence beyond Rabid Rasta's mention. Ironically,
Rabid Rasta helped these organizations to perpetuate their names for 
decades be giving them as examples of groups not worth being a part of.

NPG very likely stands for "New Pirates' Guild". A good number of "Guilds",
"Brotherhoods", "Societies", "Alliances" and "Exchanges" existed, containing
groups of youths who either knew each other in person, or only through BBSes.
Some groups might actually acquire software (by working at computer stores
or even at some development firms) and then make it available to the public,
while others would simply take what was already out and being traded and put
their own names on it. 
-------------

REAL PIRATES WHO ARE GBBS SYSOPS ARE 
PROUD TO HAVE STOLEN FROM GREG SCHAEFER.

-------------
It's not entirely clear why one would be proud to steal software from Greg
Schaefer in particular; perhaps Rabid Rasta is simply saying that someone who
would write this software is deserving of being stolen from. I've been
informed that Greg Shaefer was particularly anti-piracy and spoke out against
it; but it's not clear if Rabid Rasta knew this.

GBBS was one of several BBS programs for the Apple II that came out in the
early 1980's; it was popular because of its easy setup, and more importantly,
that it was partially written in BASIC, allowing people to make all sorts of
modifications, or "mods", to the software. The subculture of "mods" is an
entire chapter in itself; suffice to say that many budding SysOps would make
many good (and bad) modifications to their BBS software to try and get more
users.

For his part, Mr. Schaefer never lost his interest in the Apple II: In the
late 1980's, working for InSync software, he created "Proterm", an Apple II
telecommunications program still for sale in the present day. InSync changed
its name to InTrec software and created a version of Proterm for the Apple
Macintosh.
-------------

REAL PIRATES ARE SATISFIED WITH ONE 
EXCLAMATION POINT.

-------------
This belief has continued through to today; putting many exclamation points
after your statements (I HAVE INCREDIBLE NEWS!!!!!!!!) impresses no-one and
makes the person writing it seem overly excitable and perhaps a bit flaky.

One off-shoot of this bad habit should be mentioned: If you are typing a lot
of exclamation points and your hand comes off the shift key for a moment 
(perhaps because you're an excitable youth who is typing something too
quickly), then you suddenly put a "1" down instead of a "!". Hence, there are
many, many references in many textfiles of the era to losers or other
undesirables writing things like:

I HAVE INCREDIBLE WAREZ TO TRADE!!!11!!!!!1!!!!1!

This quickly became an in-joke among the "elite" of BBSes, to show how far
they'd come, by acting like they hadn't come anywhere at all, in an ironic
fashion.
--------------

REAL PIRATES DON'T CALL DIAL-YOUR- 
MATCH.

--------------
Dial-Your-Match (or DYM) was a BBS program that had many of the standard
features of Bulletin Boards, that is, message bases, private e-mail (within
the userbase of the board) and file sections. 

But its key feature was a questionaire that you were required to fill out,
asking you all sorts of personal questions (many of which were configurable
by the BBS operator). Having filled out this questionaire, you could then
choose to see who else on the BBS you were a great "match" with.

Assuming you found someone who was very compatible with you, you could 
elect to send them e-mail or arrange for a date. The prospect of using the
computer to meet people was apparently a popular one, because Dial-Your-Match
BBSes flourished in the early 1980s.

This was a particularly interesting piece of software because the BBS world
was extremely male-dominated, and many times there would be 200+ male users 
vying for the attention of less than a dozen female users. If they were in 
fact female users. It must have been a unique experience for all involved.
--------------

REAL PIRATES NEVER GET INTO "BITCH WARS"
UNLESS, OF COURSE, THEY ARE GRINDING
SOME 13 YEAR OLD TI USER INTO THE DUST.

TRANSFERS
---------

REAL PIRATES DON'T DFX.

REAL PIRATES NO LONGER BUY MICROMODEM 
II'S, SSM MODEMCARDS, OR NETWORKER
MODEMS.

COROLLARY: REAL PIRATES BUY APPLE CATS.

------------
"Bitch Wars" are more often known as "Flame Wars", where two people, shielded
from each other via keyboard and modem, begin to harass and insult each other
way beyond the normal course of human conversation. After a while, these
attacks were entertaining enough for others that some BBSes specifically 
created sub-boards (discussion groups) called "Bitch Boards" or "Bitchwar
Boards" that users were invited to start vicious debates on.

"TI User" means someone who owned a Texas Instruments 99/4A. This ill-fated
entry into the personal computer market, while in some ways a relatively
powerful and worthwhile machine, was itself ground into the dust when Texas
Instruments insisted on controlling all distribution of software for it
and demanded licensing fees for the rights to make cartridges or sell 
programs for it. After they began litigating several companies that had
ignored this admonition, support dried up and TI exited from the business.
Ironically, this caused a massive dumping of TI 99/4A machines into the
market, which gained a large and ready audience happy to grab a personal
computer and peripherals for less than $200. A small boom occured afterwards
in software for the machine, but it never got away from its constrictive,
cheap reputation.

If there was the slightest doubt that this file is Apple-Centric, it's all
dispelled by the time Rabid Rasta starts discussing file transfers via modem.
He quickly mentions a good portion of the competing Apple modem hardware 
available in 1984.

The Hayes Micromodem II was created by the Hayes corporation, which had
started the home computer modem market in 1977 with the creation of a 
modem for the S-100 bus, and soon after the Apple II. The Micromodem II's
speed was 110 baud and 300 baud.

In fact, it appears that Rabid Rasta is referring to a group of 300 baud
modems that had been out on the market for a while. The SSM Modemcard was
also 110/300 baud, as was the Zoom Telephonics Networker. 

The Novation Apple Cat, on the other hand, was one of those pieces of 
hardware that sounds almost too good to be true. Created by Novation, Inc.
to be a powerful and flexible modem, it soon turned out to be VERY
powerful and ALL TOO flexible for some tastes. It was possible to have
two 300 baud Apple Cats communicate with each other and work at 1200
baud. The Apple Cat's tone generators were programmable and it was 
possible to program the modem to do four-part music down the phone
line. The ability to recognize tones coming down the phone line meant
the "Cat" could know if it was getting a fast busy, slow bust, disconnect
message, or a ring; besides the advantages of knowing to a better extent
what was wrong with the BBS you were calling, the modem could take
your voice if you spoke through it and modify it as you spoke. Needless
to say, this was one incredible piece of technology.

As for Real Pirates and "DFX": DFX is short for "DOS File Exchange", a 
program written in 1982 by Blacksmith of Arrow Micro Software. This was a 
terminal program that allowed users to transfer DOS 3.3 disks using the 
Micromodem II. This program also allowed users to chat at the same time 
that these disk images were being transferred.  One can infer that the 
adherence to the inferior Micromodem II as opposed to the Apple Cat Modem 
insured that this program was not the choice of "Real" Pirates.
------------

COROLLARY TO THE COROLLARY:  REAL PI- 
RATES ACCEPT THE REALITY THAT 300 BAUD 
IS DEAD.

------------
Of all the battles that were fought over status, none were as clearly defined
along cost lines than the baud wars.

300 baud, the standard for modems, in the early 1960's, had been around since
the late 1960's. But with the demand for faster speeds from the growing home 
computer market, 1200 baud modems started to proliferate.

It's somewhat difficult to put down a time to say "At this year, 1200 baud 
modems were introduced to consumers." In fact, 2400 baud modems were 
available as early as 1982-3, but they cost in the range of $500, well 
beyond the means of many families. 300 baud modems at the same time, 
however, were in the $100 range. Prices varied wildly, and under any
circumstance it was hard to justify to parents the added advantage of
a 1200 baud modem that could be in the range of $300.

This led some desperate types to start dabbling in credit card fraud, to be
able to acquire the hardware needed to stay ahead of the curve. Credit card
fraud, incidentally, was often what brought down a BBS or AE Line, more
than having pirated games; once you started going into the thousands of 
dollars of fraudulently acquired hardware, you got the attention of some
pretty heavy law enforcement.

In 1984, the price had started to come down enough for 1200 baud to 
proliferate, but 300 baud modems could still be seen. Since the faster speed 
was available, there came into place the "1200 only" board, that would no 
longer allow collections from the lower speeds. When 2400 proliferated, 
"2400 only" started to appear.

To some extent, this elitism on the part of pirates was understandable; with
the process of transferring floppies taking beyond an hour for 300 baud 
users and time being cut to 25 percent for 1200 baud users, this meant more
distribution, more users, and more uploads.
------------

REAL PIRATES AREN'T AROUND TO TRADE ON 
FRIDAY OR SATURDAY NIGHTS.

COROLLARY:  REAL PIRATES HAVEN'T 
WATCHED LOVE BOAT SINCE THEY WERE 13.

------------
The "Love Boat" Television Series on ABC ran from 1977 until 1986, so when
this file was written there were still two more excruciating years to go. 
The reference in this case is that "Love Boat" ran on Saturday nights,
meaning if you were watching Love Boat, you were not exactly having a
real exciting party or social life.
------------

REAL PIRATES TYPE "BRUN AE" WITHOUT 
THE SPACEBAR IN BETWEEN.

------------
A rather obscure reference to a parsing trick on Apple IIs where only the
first 4 letters of a keyword (internal command) were looked at, and you 
could put the next piece of information (the filename) right after the
4 letters, with no space. For example, LOADPROGRAM was the same as typing
LOAD PROGRAM. In this case, typing BRUNAE is the same as typing BRUN AE.

AE is the filename for the aforementioned ASCII Express telecommunications
program, one of the most popular modem programs on the Apple II. "BRUN" is
a command that means "Binary Run", as opposed to RUN, which means "Run this
text program". There were similar differences in the commands for LOAD/BLOAD.

Perhaps in conjunction with other learned shortcuts, it would be impressive 
to see someone typing the absolute least amount of commands to get the job
done. Or maybe this is just meant to be a quick showoff, to demonstrate
that Rabid Rasta knows all the right moves.
------------

REAL PIRATES CAN GET DISKFER/CATSEND 
TO WORK RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.

---------------
Catsend and Diskfer were one of a legion of programs written to support the
Novation Apple Cat modem. In this case, these two programs were meant to
make disk distribution much easier.

To understand what need they were filling, it helps to know that terminal
software usually geared itself towards the transfer of individual files and
then only as a side feature for the program, not as its main driving force.
Telecommunications programs also tended to be more general purpose, and not
designed to work with specific modems. The Apple Cat programs, meanwhile,
only worked with one specific modem, and as previously discussed, a powerful
modem indeed.

"Diskfer", written by The Redheaded Freak, Checksum, and The Black Hole of
the Independents, greatly optimized the process of sending floppies by 
allowing the automation of sending an entire disk. It was actually possible
to set up a session where two disks on the sending machine were being 
recieved at the same time on the destination machine. This sped up the 
process greatly. 

CatFur, by the Night Owl and the Micron, was a similar sort of disk transfer 
program as well, although it had a different set of features. It included a
utility to set all unused portions of a disk to $00 (Null) so that the disk
would compress to a greater degree, making a major difference in a 300 baud
transfer. It also had an "unattended" mode that functioned very similarly to
Ascii Express.

What this meant, was that you could set your Apple up as an optimized disk
disk distribution node, and others (running the right program) would then 
be able to get full copies of your offered disks, unattended, with the 
machines closing down after they were done. This was especially useful if you
were doing your transfers on your parents' phone line late at night and 
wanted the lines clear the next morning.
---------------

CONCLUSION
----------

THAT'S IT...FOR NOW.  SINCE LOSERS IN- 
VENT NEW WAYS TO BE LOSERS EVERY DAY,
EXPECT A "REAL PIRATE'S GUIDE, VOLUME 
2" VERY SOON.

---------------
A "Real Pirate's Guide Part 2" did make an appearance (as well as Parts 3, 4, 
and the dozens of other "Real" files) but it was not written by Rabid Rasta.
It's mentioned in the Real Pirate's Guide Volume Two that Rabid Rasta had 
gone off to college, which indicates that his age at the time of writing this
file was between 17 and 19. Unfortunately, this is only a guess.
---------------

IF ANY OF YOU WERE TERRIBLY OFFENDED 
BY ANYTHING IN THIS FILE, THAT'S YOUR 
CLUE TO RETIRE FROM THE PIRATE WORLD.  
AFTER ALL, REAL PIRATES DON'T GET 
OFFENDED BY THINGS WRITTEN IN 
TEXTFILES.

THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING FOR THEIR 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THIS FILE:

OTTO SHINEFLUG, CTRL RESET, 
BIT O'NASTY, LORD CHAOS, 
NILONIEL I, AND WHATEVER
CON MAN CALLS HIMSELF OUT OF STATE.

--------------
CTRL RESET was the author of The Real Pirate's Guide Volume Two. He claimed
to have worked closely with Rabid Rasta on this file, which might have meant
a number of suggestions for rules and corollaries. The second file, suffering
from the same problems that many sequels do, uses many of the same jokes and
follows the same formula.

The other names mentioned don't show up in my research, probably because they
posted no files of their own. This actually happened a lot; people would join
a BBS because they thought it was a fun place to play around in, and they 
would be asked for a handle. They'd put down whatever silly name they wanted,
and posted a few messages under that name, and maybe hung out with other
friends on and off the BBS who used handles, and that was that. It was only
those who then took those handles and created textfiles or programs with
them that have had their names persist to this day.
--------------

(C)1984 RABID RASTA;
UBANGI JUNGLE PUBLISHING

--------------
The Ubangi is a river in Africa, roughly 1,400 miles long, that is formed
by the union of the Mbomu and Uele rivers, and is the main northern tributary
of the Congo. What this might have to do with a textfile writing group is
left up to the reader.

Some Final Notes;

No person directly associated with the Real Pirate's Guide was consulted
in the creation of this file, meaning that there might always be alternative
and completely viable explanations for why things were written the way they
were. However, I have taken my best educated guesses based on the information
and research available to me. The purpose of this document was to give 
context and hopefully get some history right; history is a funny thing, and
can be radically different based on who you're interacting with at that 
moment. It would be a wonderful thing if someone associated with this file
would speak up and let their side of the story be heard.

The story of OK was based on the work of Professor Allen Walker Read,
and is gone into a more helpful and simpler detail in a book by Cecil
Adams called "More of the Straight Dope", where I picked it up. If 
etymology is of great interest to you, you will find the story of OK 
to be fascinating indeed.

The clarification of B1FF comes from several sources, notably the Hacker
Jargon File, edited by Eric S. Raymond among others, and from several
messages posted on Usenet about the date of B1FF's arrival.

While I knew in my mind that the Novation Apple Cat modem was powerful and
could do many magic things (I still remember the night in 1986 that 
someone played "The Entertainer" to me over the phone with it), it was
the web page of James W. Abendschan that allowed me to easily recount
some of the specific tricks it was capable of.

Information about different gaming companies came from many sources, including
the remaining home pages of the companies under their new ownership, but one
other source that shone brightly was the Giant List of Classic Game 
Programmers, maintained by James Hague, which allowed me to determine what 
company manufactured a given game. 
---------------