The Works Glossary

The glossary is an attempt to cover all the concepts mentioned in other sections of The Works archive, and to provide contextual references for bizzare terms being bandied about. It intentionally strays off the subject, so that a basic sort of history will emerge.

AE Lines

AE stands for "Ascii Express", a popular telecommunications for the Apple ][ series of computers created by Vision Systems, Inc. This software had many of the "standard" features of the day for a terminal program (dialing directory, word wrap, etc.), but included an easy-to-use, configurable, highly intuitive remote file access mode. In this mode, anyone dialing into the Apple ][ would be asked for a password (optionally) and then given direct access to the file system of that computer (configurable on the part of the operator). While no doubt the intended use of this system was for nebulous business and personal access of one's own files from a remote location, this program provided an effective, secure, universal network of pirated software distribution across the world.

AE lines, devoid of message bases and other amenities of BBS's, were distilled down to raw displays of supply and demand; users downloading the newest in "warez", or pirated programs, and pirating groups uploading their latest "cracks" of programs for others. These programs would often show up on AE lines before the product would arrive at stores. Leaks within software companies were legion; beta-testers, computer store employees, whoever could get their hands on a "ware" first could get bragging rights and upload the programs to the nearest AE.

Following the current state of the AE network was an art in itself; some AE's would only be up part-time (kids would put the computers on at night and turn off the ringer on their parents' line), and others would only stick around a week or two before disappearing forever.

Jason used many of these AE lines, although he never owned an Apple ][ and would instead connect to grab whatever text files were being uploaded. Being what they were, the text files uploaded to AE lines would usually be related to bomb-making or vandalism. Among Jason's favorite AE lines were Demon Roach Underground and The Dark Side of the Moon.

Bioc Agent 003
Also: Bioc Agent's Basic Guide to Telecommunications

In an era mostly dominated by illiterate, half-baked attempts to learn more about the telephone networks and electronics at large, Bioc Agent 003 rose like a giant over the fledging 80's "phreaking" scene. Instead of just writing small treatises and paragraphs about individual discoveries or collected information, BA instead collected dozens of specific facts and pieces of knowledge gained by others before him (most markedly TAP/YIPL magazine, as well as electronic journals) and presented it for the edification of phone phreaks in a clear, concise, expansive manner.

At the time of his writings, the quality of text files were generally poor (spell checkers were rare and rarely used) hard to read (many computer users tended to use all-uppercase writing, sometimes in 40 columns) and were often collections of rumors and innuendo collected directly from the message bases of the many hacker BBSs rising and falling around the country. Computer users, as a whole, were not illiterate by any means, but the general hacker populace was young, and with youth came great energy and little attention to such mundanities as grammar or spelling (or even, perhaps, actual technical accuracy). With his 80 column, upper/lowercase text, all written in an easy-to-understand technical voice, Bioc's files caught the eye of the young phreak eager for information and held it as he "delivered the goods" throughout.

His most famous creations were the Basic Telecommunications Series, a set of essays about specific aspects of the Bell Telephone System and of telephone electronics in general. Pulling from many sources (which, in another rare show of the time, he would often cite), Bioc would write out the until-then forbidden fruits of knowledge that only a few learned or lucky phreaks had previously traded among themselves. Starting with the true basics (what long-distance services existed out there) and working up to the "tough stuff" (blue boxing, switching system specifics, pay phone electronics), he raised the bar of what amount of work would be put into "g-philes" from the time of his "BIOCs" on forward.

Bioc Agent was a frequent contributor to the Sherwood Forest series of BBS' in the New York State area, most notably Sherwood Forest II. Jason did once write to him, and learned that at the time of writing these files, Bioc was roughly seventeen years old.

The Dark Side of the Moon BBS
Also: Darqueside, The Dark Side, Dark Side AE, Waffle

More than any other single aspect of the BBS world, the Dark Side of the Moon stands as the major influence of The Works, and Jason himself. As much a product of the group of friends who hung out on it as of the BBS culture at large, the Darqueside was (and is!) a unique experience, providing a sly sense of irony and humor on top of a strong helping of technical whimsy.

The BBS started out as a mere Ascii Express line, transferring programs and text files for users in the San Jose area and area codes beyond. However, even then the system had a unique flavor, as users would "upload" messages in the form of text files, with the long file names (you could put spaces in the names of Apple ][ files) providing the "subject" of the message. This extremely rudamentary system of communication was sufficent for inside jokes, bizzare references, and unique opinions to arise. The Dell brothers, as the system operators of the Dark Side, eventually rewrote the AE interface themselves, so that it looked exactly the same, although it contained bizzare new features that only the curious or insane would find.

The Dark Side initially served as the main distribution point for Anarchy Inc., a textfile writing group that produced treatises on vandalism, humor, and the occasional dark fiction by an extremely talented young writer named Tristan A. Farnon. His stories, often extremely deep or horrific, were particularly popular on the Works in later years.

Eventually, the Dark Side announced it would be converted to a Bulletin Board System by the operators, much to the consternation of Jason and others who were worried that fragile bubble of uniqueness in the AE line would be lost in the complexity of a BBS. No-one needed to worry, though; the BBS they eventually put up became known as Waffle BBS Software, and was every bit of a joy to use as the file transfer program that came before it.

Waffle is an extremely flexible prompt-based BBS program, which has enormous expandiblity as well as a strong bent towards creativity and customization by the operator (and, to some level, the users). It is still in use around the world today. At the time, of course, the program only ran on the Apple ][. The users of Dark Side quickly settled into their new home, and strange and bizzare messages became the theme of the place, as well as the entertaining complexities built in by the Dell brothers themselves.

An example of the demeanor of the place: The clock card on the Apple ][ the Darqueside ran on was broken, and as a result each and every message entered into the message bases was done so at 6:29pm. Eventually, it was decided that the world would end at 6:30. When the clock card was finally fixed, some users complained about the loss of this feature, so Tom Dell added the command BATMAN, which would turn the system clock back to 6:29pm for you. This is either amazingly entertaining to you, or it's not.

When he started The Works, Jason originally tried several shareware BBS programs available for the PC, including PCBOARD and Fido. (Others too, assuming their names can be resurrected.) For a while, these different software products were programed to switch off at 6 hour intervals, meaning The Works was essentially 3 or more BBS's at once! This wasn't extremely popular with the users for some reason....

Inspired by the Dark Side when Waffle BBS software came out, Jason decided to write his own (IBM PC) version of the software. His programming expertise was (and is) on the amateurish side, but somehow a working prototype was created and put up, and Ferret BBS or FBBS software was born. This software was written in BASIC and ran the BBS for a significant portion of its time under Jason as System. When The Works changed hands to Dave Ferret (named for the Software) FBBS was still in use until Waffle was ported to the PC platform, at which point The Works switched over to the software it was doing a poor job of imitating. (Not to indicate that FBBS didn't have its moments; see FBBS for more.)

The Dark Side has continued to flourish as a BBS, and runs to this day. Its phone number has always been 408-245-SPAM.

Dave Ferret
Sysop of The Works, 1989-1995

As mentioned in other sections of this glossary, Jason lost permission to run the Works in Chappaqua in the summer of 1988, after his high school graduation. That summer and fall he began to attend Emerson College in Boston, MA, studying Mass Communications. The theory on the part of his father was that the addition of a computer into his college lifestyle would cripple him socially and academically, so Jason attended Emerson for his freshman year with no computer at all.

During his sophmore year of college, Jason got a computer again, and with his new roommate lived in a studio apartment along Beacon Street, down a few blocks from Emerson. From this new vantage point, Jason returned to the world of BBS's, enjoying the different flavor of Boston BBS's. One of these was the Emerson Wall, a BBS being run out of one of the dorms of Emerson for the use of Emerson students. Jason became friends with the Sysop and started hanging out at The Wall and posting messages.

David Weinstock also started appearing on the Wall, and some time later Jason and David got to talking about The Works. As it turned out, Dave had been a caller on The Works in the past, and had really enjoyed it. Jason proposed that Dave become a new Sysop of The Works and the Works could then be resurrected. Dave heartily agreed. He was 14 years old.

Through no small effort, Dave convinced his parents to let him run The Works on the family computer, and dedicate a special phone line to it. This took the better part of a year, and The Works came up, in Lexington, MA, at (617)-861-8976. It would run a this location for the next 6 years, greatly overshadowing the original Works run, and giving it the bulk of its famous reputation.

Jason's role in the second Works was officially co-sysop, but more accurately a sort of elder statesman position, tipping into BBS messages and giving a more "historical" position on matters being discussed. (On the average, Jason was 5 years older than other members of the administration crew). The bulk of duties fell on Dave's shoulders. Given the FBBS software to work with, Dave modified a good portion of the code and converted the program from BASIC to QuickBASIC, an easier to compile version of the original PC BASIC. Dave brought in features where he could, and upgraded the Works machine as needed. Because the software was called Ferret BBS, his name came to be Dave Ferret.

Under Dave's watchful eye, The Works blossomed as never before. The sense of community was returned and strengthened, as users from all over Massachusetts and the world downloaded textfiles and posted messages, brought suggestions or made asses of themselves to the delight of others. He also brought in co-sysops to help him run things, including a tall teenager from Tewksbury named Skeeve, and a youth from Wellesley who named himself Grendel. Both of these fellows would eventually get new handles; Skeeve became The Deth Vegetable, and Grendel became Iskra.

It was suggested, as in previous years that The Works members assemble somewhere in Boston to hang out and get to know each other. The most formal of these were Works Gatherings, which would take place in the patio of the large Au Bon Pain restaurant in Harvard Square. These meetings would eventually become more associated with 2600 Magazine, and eventually were co-opted by them altogether.

Over time, of course, Dave went from early to late teens and his priorities changed. The Works software at this point could basically run itself or be run remotely, and his day-to-day involvement in the running of it ceased to exist. The board started to suffer measurably, although this lack of direct administration allowed a lot of different voices to make themselves known, and perhaps prepared the rest of the Krew for an inevitable passing of the reins.

Finally, preparing to leave home and attend Northeastern University, Dave announced that he was going to take the Works down. This was met with no small amount of sadness on the part of the membership, but there seemed little that could be done about it. In a final, desperate move, Jason Scott, now almost fully immersed in the running of cow.net, offered to put The Works up on a spare line in his ISP office. Unfortunately, some time after that, Jason took a look at his priorities, realized that he would be providing even less attention to the health of The Works than Dave had in recent months, changed his mind and decided instead that The Works had might as well go down. This time was marked by a large amount of confusion: without The Works itself to pass information, users couldn't find out where the Works was heading or what was to become of it, if anything.

14th hour rescue, however, reared its head. Iskra, having been with the BBS for many years, opted instead to put together an extra PC and revive The Works again. He acquired a copy of the software from Dave, and brought The Works back up again at his apartment in Cambridge. The Works would accompany him when he moved to Boston, where he brought The Works up yet again in the apartment he shared with... Dave Ferret.

Hardware Wars
Also: 40 Columns, 300/1200/2400/9600 Baud, Hard Drives

Computers, by their nature, are extremely expensive to buy and maintain, and the eternal quest for the fastest and most powerful equipment among the young users of the 1980's meant that money talked, and lack of hardware walked. With the advent of so much relatively powerful computing machinery into the homes of users across the country, and the ever-changing nature of the "cutting edge", users could spend thousands upon thousands of dollars buying hardware and software, only to find their prized system obsolete, out of date, and the company that manufactured it bankrupt. Buying a home system was a calculated risk, based on heresay and whatever ideas could be garnered from magazines and their ads.

Often, different computer platforms of the time (Atari, Commodore, Apple, IBM) adhered to general standards among the industry, such as the ASCII code for transferring text. But just as often, each computer company would have their own ideas for how a new standard would be implemented, and additionally have differing ideas of how much a new innovation would cost. This meant that a feature that was standard on one machine would be an expensive proposition to add to another, and users would often find themselves left behind. This discrepancy could be very glaring if the user in question was a 12-year-old using their family's computer late into the night. These young users would log on one evening and find the hottest new features were not supported by what system they currently owned, and, lacking the political know-how to convince the adults of the need for new packages or upgrades for a perfectly working system, would have to resort to hanging around rich friends' homes or try and trade up themselves, through whatever means they had at their disposal.

In the context of the early BBS's of the 1980's, this discrepancy manifested itself in Baud Rate. Modems at the time were largely acoustic; you took the handset of your phone, plugged it into the cups (that resembled headphones) of a modem, and dialed the telephone number of a BBS. This was a shaky method of communication at best; talking too loudly near an acoustic modem would sometimes cause it to hang up. The speed of these first commercial modems were 300bps, or bits per second. (There were earlier, slower modems, but 300bps was the standard of the time-frame of this glossary.) 300bps is roughly 30 characters per second, allowing for line noise, or slower than most people could type.

It is worth mentioning, as an aside, that this lack of speed was highly influential in the nature of BBS users of the time. Since it would take minutes for a message to download if it were more than a few paragraphs, messages would generally be short and to the point, lacking grammar and completeness in favor of quick, hit-and-run sentences to give additional information to a line of discussion. File transfers, once initiated, could take hours on end if a program was involved, and setting your modem to the wrong parameters (7-E-1 vs. 8-N-1, for instance) would mean that what appeared to be a perfect download would in fact produce unusuable garbage. Bloated, inefficient programs would be ignored, and short, tightly assembled ones would be popular.

Time moved at a snail's pace as users would watch words crawl across the screen; lack of memory meant that things such as scroll-back buffers were small and unmanageable, meaning you had to be there to watch the information go by, or it would be lost to you forever. On the other hand, users could write narratives and know that their every word was being watched, as any average person could read text many times faster than the computer was providing it.

When the first 1200 baud modems made their appearance on the BBS scene, this 4-times jump in speed made logging in at 300bps almost unbearable for someone who had tasted "the fast lane". On the user side, this meant great expense in purchasing the faster modem (which, luckily, was downward compatible with 300 baud), but could be a matter or life or death for a BBS that didn't upgrade fast enough and who would soon find their calls-per-day count dropping like a rock.

In the rough-and-tumble hacker BBS world, of course, this discrepancy was quickly shoved firmly and brusquely in the faces of kids who hadn't upgraded when BBS's started going "1200 Baud Only". If you had a 300bps modem and attempted to connect to one of these systems, the machine would hang up on you, or worse, print a message not dissimilar to "Come back when you're ready to play.". Once the line had been drawn, of course, it would take all the efforts of the young outcast to convince his family that they needed a new modem, and that they had to buy one as soon as possible. With the price of a 1200 baud modem starting at $300 for some systems, this was a hefty challenge.

After 1200 baud, there soon came 2400 baud, 9600 baud, and 19,200 Baud. Each time the bar was raised, the same process would start over again; elitism vs. monetary fact, access to powerful technolgy vs. dealing with yesterday's system. The issue of baud reached near-frenzy proportions in the world of AE Lines and Pirate Boards, since the main purpose of these boards was transfer of data, and baud rate discrepancies could mean the difference between 20 minutes allocated per user to several hours to grab the same "warez". 19,200k-only boards were the final elite stronghold, before the advent of the Internet and the rapidly-dropping price of powerful hardware meant speed wasn't a matter of life and death.

Baud was just one aspect of it. A more aesthetic battle was waged over 40 Column vs. 80 Column. In the case of the Apple ][, many of the machines came with 40 column cards, uppercase only, and the machine could only display 40 columns across the monitor, which made it look perfectly fine. 80 columns was available, as a separate card that could be installed in the Apple, at which point the whole aspect ratio of the screen would change. To the 80-column user logging into a BBS, the 40 column users would seem to be wasting valuable screen space, especially considering the slow speed of the modems and the lack of scrollback. If the user had not installed a lowercase chip (or worse, didn't use the shift key out of a learned habit), that user would quickly be branded of sub-par intelligence and unworthy of participation in the board's activities.

Finally, Hard Drives, and the space within, became an issue in the mid 80's as price dropped to a level that some moderately well-off users could afford to spend. Up to that time, a BBS would often have to live with the BBS program, support files, and message bases all residing on one or two 160k floppy drives. Memory and number of floppy drives varied, of course, but the overall scale of most Bulletin Board was extremely small. The Works, when it started in 1986, had a 10 Megabyte Hard drive, and this was considered on the large side even then, for a home system. As Hard Drives proliferated, the file sections of BBSs would expand, and eventually, as time went on, space stopped being an issue, or at least an overriding one.

The L00ZER-B-G0NE Button

The Works BBS was located in one of two rooms that together comprised Jason's singular "Bedroom". One room had everything computer-oriented; disks, hardware, print-outs, etc. The other had Jason's bed, stereo, TV, all the amenities of a upper-middle-class suburban teenager. Because the machine that the Works ran on had two video cards (CGA and Mono), it was possible for Jason to run a second connection for the Mono port out to his bedside. This allowed him to sit in his room while watching TV and reading or whatever, and see what was going on on the Works.

This was amusing enough in itself, but eventually it came to pass that Jason would witness a user being troublesome on his system, either hacking into it or downloading too many files (leeching) or in some way being a pest. This would require Jason to get out of bed, stumble over to the computer, turn on the screen, wait for it to warm up, and then do whatever needed to be done, most often disconnecting or booting the user. So, the problem presented itself: How could a "remote control" be used so that Jason could get rid of these users from his bedside?

The solution was amazingly simple: Hook a switch up to the phone line, and then run this switch over to the bed. Logic dictates that this should have been a moment switch of some fashion, but logic wasn't a very good dictator, and this switch was simply an on-off switch. It was a Radio Shack switch mounted on the top of a plastic canister usually used for storing exposed film. It was taped onto the table that the remote monitor was sitting on, and from that time on, Jason had to merely press this switch to cut off the phone line and boot the user. Unfortunately, this switch was sometimes left in the "off" position, disallowing incoming calls until it was pressed again. These situations were kept to a minimum, but they did occur on several occasions.

The switch became known to Jason's friends and users who would stop by and ask about the switch; the name "L00ZER-B-G0NE" started to be applied to it shortly thereafter.

Leeching

Leeching is the act of connecting to a Bulletin Board System and downloading as many files as you can in as short a period as possible with your modem, for the sake of hoarding massive amounts of files. This practice was looked down upon, because:

In the case of The Works, at least on one occasion a user connected and downloaded every file in every file section causing Jason to call the user at home and say "You are now the official backup of The Works." This user's name has been lost to the ages.

In the rest of the BBS world, Leeches were dealt with a variety of ways. In some cases, the BBS would apply "call/post" ratios, which meant that for every X times you called, you had to post at least once or you would lose access to the file sections. This usually resulted in "blah blah" posts, as in "blah blah I'm posting to get more files blah blah". In other cases, there would be a complicated "validation" process, where the user had to write a comment to the Sysop to describe how they would be a productive user of the BBS, and then they would get access to the file sections. Obviously, this didn't keep out each and every leech, but it would certainly cut things down.

The importance of downloading vs. uploading became a life or death issue on AE Lines and Warez Boards, since the most up-to-date pirated programs or written text files were the stock and trade for that BBS. Users who wouldn't upload recently cracked warez were summarily locked out when the validation or login password was changed, and this sort of control would become defacto towards the mid-80's. Pirating groups would maintain a tight-fisted hold on who could use their distribution sites, and often would only let a select group of friends download the latest warez. Most distribution to non-connected users would take place in arenas like schools or get-togethers of modem friends.

The Works' own policy about validation morphed and changed over the years, but generally strayed toward the "open system approach", for the good or bad this brought things.

Octothorpe Productions

As far back as computers have existed, operators and users of computers have felt the need to band together into whimsically named "groups" and consider the whole to be greater than the sum of their parts. This practice leaked over into the world of Textfile writing, and resulted in a number of Textfile Groups, which is the focus of this glossary entry. The reasons for starting a group are myriad, but can probably be summarized by these advantages:

Groups that have come into contact with The Works include Anarchy Inc., Cult of the Dead Cow, The Neon Knights, Metal Communications and the Phido Phreaks.

Not to be outdone, Jason created a text-file writing group that would be associated with The Works and provide more publicity for the fledging BBS. He named it after the AT&T term for the pound sign on a telephone keypad: The Octothorpe. Thus Octothorpe Productions was born.

To create textfiles for Octothorpe Productions, you merely had to pass two criteria: You must have been a user of the Works, and you had to have written a text file. Because of this lax set of rules, a good number of Octothorpe Productions textfiles were created, and they comprised a collection within the Works file libraries.

Terror Ferret

Inspired by reasons that totally escape memory now, Jason bought a pet Ferret in 1986. Ferrets are small, long rodents that resemble minks or weasels, domesticated for possibly thousands of years and bred for docility and in many cases albinoism. They are also known to have a very strong vicious streak if not disciplined at an early age. In the case of Jason's ferret, his reticence to hitting the ferret when she bit or attacked him or others (mostly because she was a runt female, and therefore extremely small for a ferret) caused her to be a pure ball of anger 24 hours a day. She would attack people, walls, and anything else she percieved as a threat, including her own shadow. For this her original name (Ferrah) became overshadowed by her nickname, "Terror Ferret".

When The Works was put up, Jason listed Terror Ferret as his co-sysop, and indeed, she lived right next to the machine The Works resided on, in the Computer Half of Jason's Bedroom.

Sadly, Terror Ferret's overbreeding (she was bought in a pet store) contributed to her catching pneumonia a year and a half after she was purchased and she died at the age of 2.