Hot Rod was a cracker on the Apple II

Briefly, I was an independent pursuing cracking locally, so I could teach myself assembly language. I met up with Incognito and the MPG. Then I met Warezird and talked a lot with Apple Rebel (I still have not met him). A few of my cracks filtered around, I called boards like the Safehouse and the Curse and generally got introduced to the pirate world. We had real pirate parties back in those days. Trading done in person! This was back in late 1983 and into 1984. Then I joined MPG for a brief stay. I bailed out into the Racketeers before MPG died completely (I could see it coming). The Racks were founded by Apple Rebel, not me, as I've seen written before. This went on into early 1985. After Archon II, the Racks broke up, mainly due to differences between Time Lord and Apple Rebel. I joined Black Bag at that time, and I guess that's where I'm at.

And that's roughly 170 cracks, to answer another common question.

I've always tried to maintain that undoing a protection scheme is far more interesting than the program it's protecting. (This is the case more than you'd think). And I tried to remember that what was going on was not important in any way. I look upon cracking as much the same as working crossword puzzles. It's all mind exercise. And I wanted to learn programming. Now that I feel confident in that respect, I can gain more satisfaction from creating my own programs instead of destroying someone else's. Pirating has had both positive and negative effects on the Apple computer, but I don't want to lecture on those. Pirating is dead. The 'rock star/group' (pirates/groups) attitude is what finished it off.