] RAGS
One of the more interesting aspects of the hacking / cracking world was the competition between the Hacking groups to be the first to get a particular package cracked and made available to the pirate BBS's. This was problematic due to the availability of some packages being available in some locations earlier than others but the end result was that often times a package was brought to the pirate BBS's by multiple groups simultaneously. This in turn caused problems between groups, one accusing the other of just replacing their crack page and re-distributing the program.
While this did happen in some cases, the more likely scenario was that the cracks were accomplished at the same time. While most people would have figured that hackers were a brotherhood, there were obvious rifts in the brotherhood due to the competition that tended to play out on the pages of the crack screens in the form of Rag Pages.
One of the most famous rags was that by The Hitman. While most rag pages were a single page, The Hitman took to making a three page rage.
Another showing of animosity among hacker groups was the rag pages which would put down others. One such example was the Tri State Pirates Rage Page.
While it is one thing to rag on people by putting their BBS numbers on a page, it is more likely that this only led to more traffic to these sites.
Other hackers took more extravagant means to which they would demonstrate their disdain for another group of hackers.
One thing that is obvious from these pages is that no love was lost among these groups and any small issue between them was a reason to lambaste the other group with colorful language. And of course, this ragging did not stop at ragging about other groups. It also went into the methodology in which a particular crack was presented. Such was the rag presented in Black Bag's re-crack of Killer Klams.
The heat of the battle in bringing a product to the BBS's also brought about expressions of sympathy for others who were not as quick on the draw were also drawn as in the case of the crack screen fro Flak in which The Burgler says "Sorry about this Kilroy Wuzhere".
While most Rags were harmless banter, the rag by Disk-Jockey in Alien Munchies went above and beyond with actual threats of physical harm. Obviously something Freeze had done in an early crack particularly perturbed him.
Even more amusing was The Nibbler's message to Avant-Garde about their programmer Brad Rosen. Obviously the idea that the program had used a cracked version of a commercial program to write software for Avant-Garde was not lost on him. Considering the climate at the time and the idea that companies would pursue hackers, his message was to start cleaning your own house first.
