
#3200 n00w:
Annatar:
Edit: funny handle you have here. I bet you already know this and the rest also ..
What do you mean by “funny handle”?
2. I bet you were in a country where they didn’t care at all, or at least they didn’t while you were using this.
I was in a country where Blueboxing came late – like thirty years late. We used Soundblaster cards inside of PC-buckets and some DOS-based software to generate the frequencies… our country went through MCI in Canada, actually it hit a satellite and we nabbed that trunk.
We spent some time on Accession and PRESTiGE boards, but this all came way, way too late. It was the sunset of an era. Most BBS’es were shutting down and things were moving to FTP servers on the Internet. Commodore was already in liquidation, but we, being isolated and behind-the-times didn’t know it.
Rapid catch-up will come by getting exposed to Sun equipment and Solaris, but that was the beginning of a new era. On UNIX, it was not necessary to crack protections because that was not a consumer world. It was a high-end world.
3. Today. Well today is another story. Free unlimited calls to 40+ countries through fixed lines/VoIP have been common offers by phone companies for years. Otherwise use Skype, Google Talk or whatever. Today is another story for software too, so your pro-open source rants are funny reading (the more so as they are now a bit dated with cloud applications, pay-per-use, etc.). And what about the corporate software like ERP, CRM, whatever? Again, funny reading, completely out of the subject.
What about corporate software? That is high-end software, if one wants to play in that space, sooner or later one has to register one’s own company and go legit. Once one goes legit, it’s either pay for licenses, or invest time & effort and build everything yourself with free & open source software.
Some software is so specialized and requires such high level of knowledge (like a masters or doctorate) that even when cracked is unusable or so niche that even with cracked copies floating around, they don’t make a dent in the software company’s bottom line. I worked for a few of those companies, so I know first hand.
Edit: the network is the computer was already buzz at the end of the 90’s. Today ubiquitous/pervasive computing is where we stand. We could discuss somewhere about what will come next. Interesting discussions.
It was the buzz, but most people didn’t get it. Now when everything is fully networked, people finally get it, like 30 years later. And now when they get it, nobody wants a PC-bucket on their desk any more, except for the likes of us. The ordinary consumer is done, done, done with desktop computers. Done with that type of software. Done installing crap. All the ordinary consumer has to do is fire up a web browser, and the entire network becomes a throve of free applications, no OS needed. The network is the OS platform, the web browser machine of execution.
Ok that’s life, we can say that we do not care, or we can endorse responsibilities for our deeds. Also we could have dealt drugs, or trafficked human beings, which would have been far worse. We didn’t do that, so let’s keep it in the right proportions.
They “come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
Who?