From: Matthew Dornquast (Matthew@Fallon.com) Subject: Re: meaning of k-rad View this article only Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions, alt.2600 Date: 1994-11-15 15:48:28 PST In article <39vpkk$oeq@scratchy.reed.edu>, jkeroes@reed.edu (spork de plastique) asked: > What does the "k" of k-rad stand for? Jeff Miller's reply came the closest to reality thus far, writing: >In the apple "scene" there was a group called MPG (Midwest Pirates Guild). >One of the members of that group (who's handle I forget) used to talk really >quick, and instead of saying stuff like "Ok, cool", he'd say, "'K, Cool". >Thus begat "k-cool", which later spawned into "k-rad", "k-k00l", etc. Where do I come in? Well, I'm one of the original 4 MPG members. And yes, we did start the K-craze (Spontaneously without inspiration from outside sources) Disclaimer: It started spontaneously for us in 1982, it certainly could have elsewhere at any time. No, it didn't come from K as in Kilobytes. The "K" concept originated from our style of saying "Okay, bye" on the phone. One late night in a hurry to hack the latest ware before anyone else did, we hung up with a "k-bye". It just happened, without thinking. It sounded cool. (Back then, we were on the phoen A LOT. Folks called all the time. Wanting BBS access, software, etc. We tended to work while we talked, stream of conciousness kinda stuff.) We hung out, ate pizza, cracked warez. I believe Sinbad (one of the 4) was the first to go "k-cool" dude. It sounded Kool. From there we all went nuts. For months it was K-this, K-that, we made ourselves sick--Eventually settling down to our original K-cool & K-bye. We had several BBSs. The most popular and well known was the Safehouse. It wasn't surprising how it spread. We had over 10,000 users on our systems combined and habitually wrote "kbye" and "k-cool" on our messages. Heck, I think we even put it on a few title pages. (Those pages designating who hacked the software) Anyway, for what it's worth, that's how it started for us. I find it funny that folks use it in the "k/thousands" sense. It makes sense, though we never thought of it in that way ourselves. So in a way, I'm sure many contributed. Hope that helps. More than you wanted to know eh?