Another interesting fact I remember back in the day was being able to type faster than the 300 baud modems could send.
There were some BBSs and serial drivers that would allow "overclocking" a 300 bps modem up to 450 or so. Whoo, what a rush of power!:^) In a way, it's a shame that I'll never again experience the same WOW factor as when I went to 1200 and then 14400+. (ADSL was nice, but I'd already been spoiled by connections at work.)
When BBSs started dying, I did try converting it to a web based system in 1996, but got caught in the squeeze that either (a) PPP was too hard to configure for some users, (b) They already has Internet access, so why call some single line BBS? (At the time, being on the Internet was not an option.) Heh, from the Linux BBS across the LAN to the Windows WebSite server, that was a goofy setup!
Rather than getting email "business offers" from Nigerian cybercafes, I'll get them from Everest. I can see it now:
Dear Sir.
Your contact information was referred to me by one of my trusted contacts, whose name I am not at liberty to compromize. I would like to approach you with reguards to a profitable Business Proposal, reguarding the transfer of TEN MILLION ($10000000) U.S. Dollars into your Bank Account. For reasons I am sure you will appreciate, I ask that you keep this commucation confidential, and avoid it falling into the hands of any agents of the Royal Nepal Yak Mounted Police that may be operating in Your area.
My name is Tsering Gyaltsen Sherpa, and I am the grandson of Gyalzen Sherpa, the recently Deceased Serpa of Nepal. If you have been following the events in my country over the last few years, you will remember the big scandal that took place when Gyalzen was found dead in an alley, from an alledged overdose of Tylenol Flu. [snip]
I swear those Nigerian 419 scammers must use a page like this one to generate their scam letters.
The several home console/home computer variants were just the original Dragon's Lair cut up into pieces. (The conversion of the graphics from laser to computer graphics was an ugly manual process.)
The really nasty part was that Dragon's Lair used up most of the supply of industrial laser disk players. A few of the following games used home units. Those tended to drop like flies. (The amount of seeking for the "plot" segments couldn't have been good for them.)
Laser disk games had a $5000 price tag, which was more than twice what even a top-earner conventional arcade game went for. The laser games after Dragon's Lair were lucky to break even.
While the original DL was nice eye candy, the game play reminded me of those experiments where they train rodents to pull a lever at the right time to get a food pellet. (Maybe if it'd had food pellets it would have been better?) It cost twice as much as the other games of the time, and when you finally got good enough to finish it, the game ended.
Perhaps I'm just saturated with DL because I got to play it for free as part of work. (Had to analyze laser-disk games to see if we could do one.) And then I briefly worked on the MPEG version for Readysoft. (I didn't quite run screaming into the night from that place -- oh wait, I did..)
but instead forged the whole thing so the send from is my email address
Including the Received lines? Learning how to read those, backstepping from the last (trusted) one takes a bit of practice, but will get you to the spammer or the open proxy that he's hijacking.
The main thing to track is the web site that most spammers have as the "payload" of their spam. Disposable accounts to send the spam are easy to replace, but getting the web site killed hurts the spammer. (Alas, too many ISPs are wearing the Enormous Foam Helm of Stupidity about spam-support web sites.)
You're welcome. I can hear Keith saying that. Heh.
Jerking the chain of $cientology is always fun. I had one alt.religion.scientology handler threaten me with legal action unless I immediately took down my site.. hisname.isgay.com, ah my! Another time, I contacted a number of critics by email and we started the rumour of a phantom web site called Umbra Xenu, home of the ARSCC [wdne]. (The joke is that I do have a phantom web site with a dynamic IP and weird ports. I'll have to scan my logs some day.)
One thing you should definitely do if it looks like you're going to get a flood of bounces/complaints is to give your ISP a heads-up. You wouldn't want some drone cancelling your account because of this.
It doesn't really matter. Each retailer will have their own internal SKU to keep track of things. The SKU record will have the UPC/GRid of the product(s). (It might be a package deal with more than one product attached to the SKU.) It's no biggie to keep track of arbitary product codes, UPC or GRid. (With a physical object you do have to be able to look up the scanned UPC and find the SKU. That's why God invented DBs with multiple indexes.)
Why yes, I have worked on retail Point Of Sale and inventory systems...
Regardless if asteroid impacts helped or hindered life on Earth (no so good for the dinosaurs, good for our proto-mice ancestors) I don't think that an asteroid impact would be a good thing today, thank you. Any future life forms that would be helped by an impact can kiss my grits.
Yes I did, and their explaination smells like week-old tuna. How is the GRid going to stop a retailer from selling more copies than they report back to the record companies? Why does the GRid have to be incorporated as part of the music file? Retailers will have to manage track ids externally to the music file to handle all the companies that don't use GRid. How does the GRid help track sales in any way?
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, we had it rough!
There were some BBSs and serial drivers that would allow "overclocking" a 300 bps modem up to 450 or so. Whoo, what a rush of power! :^) In a way, it's a shame that I'll never again experience the same WOW factor as when I went to 1200 and then 14400+. (ADSL was nice, but I'd already been spoiled by connections at work.)
When BBSs started dying, I did try converting it to a web based system in 1996, but got caught in the squeeze that either (a) PPP was too hard to configure for some users, (b) They already has Internet access, so why call some single line BBS? (At the time, being on the Internet was not an option.) Heh, from the Linux BBS across the LAN to the Windows WebSite server, that was a goofy setup!
Could be a movie in that: "Warclimbing Everest!" I doubt they'd have to carry much chalk, maybe a few Pringles cans.
Dear Sir.
Your contact information was referred to me by one of my trusted contacts, whose name I am not at liberty to compromize. I would like to approach you with reguards to a profitable Business Proposal, reguarding the transfer of TEN MILLION ($10000000) U.S. Dollars into your Bank Account. For reasons I am sure you will appreciate, I ask that you keep this commucation confidential, and avoid it falling into the hands of any agents of the Royal Nepal Yak Mounted Police that may be operating in Your area.
My name is Tsering Gyaltsen Sherpa, and I am the grandson of Gyalzen Sherpa, the recently Deceased Serpa of Nepal. If you have been following the events in my country over the last few years, you will remember the big scandal that took place when Gyalzen was found dead in an alley, from an alledged overdose of Tylenol Flu. [snip]
I swear those Nigerian 419 scammers must use a page like this one to generate their scam letters.
Hey! Next you're going to say that those fairy pictures were fakes too!
We should only support Open Source killer asteroids.
And thinks they may be roaming.
They haven't fled,
They just dropped dead,
From imperfections in cloming.
What? It rhymes .. sort of..
I'm suprised that Readysquishy ever got a Jaguar version finished. When the Jaguar came in, it sat in a box for the longest time.
The several home console/home computer variants were just the original Dragon's Lair cut up into pieces. (The conversion of the graphics from laser to computer graphics was an ugly manual process.)
Laser disk games had a $5000 price tag, which was more than twice what even a top-earner conventional arcade game went for. The laser games after Dragon's Lair were lucky to break even.
Perhaps I'm just saturated with DL because I got to play it for free as part of work. (Had to analyze laser-disk games to see if we could do one.) And then I briefly worked on the MPEG version for Readysoft. (I didn't quite run screaming into the night from that place -- oh wait, I did..)
Including the Received lines? Learning how to read those, backstepping from the last (trusted) one takes a bit of practice, but will get you to the spammer or the open proxy that he's hijacking.
The main thing to track is the web site that most spammers have as the "payload" of their spam. Disposable accounts to send the spam are easy to replace, but getting the web site killed hurts the spammer. (Alas, too many ISPs are wearing the Enormous Foam Helm of Stupidity about spam-support web sites.)
Jerking the chain of $cientology is always fun. I had one alt.religion.scientology handler threaten me with legal action unless I immediately took down my site .. hisname.isgay.com, ah my! Another time, I contacted a number of critics by email and we started the rumour of a phantom web site called Umbra Xenu, home of the ARSCC [wdne]. (The joke is that I do have a phantom web site with a dynamic IP and weird ports. I'll have to scan my logs some day.)
But for the love of God don't look at the nudish photos of Rodentia if you value your last meal!
One thing you should definitely do if it looks like you're going to get a flood of bounces/complaints is to give your ISP a heads-up. You wouldn't want some drone cancelling your account because of this.
Keith Henson, during a deposition. It's all over the place, but definitely here
So use Clippy. "I see you're trying to use our software, EULA be soorry!" He's just a Microsoft Agent with no text-to-speech capability.
You've never pounded out some code?
They might have a case for that one. :^)
And that probably owes inpiration to the USCD p-Code and p-Machine. Which probably owes something to something else... More begats than the Bible!
Why yes, I have worked on retail Point Of Sale and inventory systems...
Regardless if asteroid impacts helped or hindered life on Earth (no so good for the dinosaurs, good for our proto-mice ancestors) I don't think that an asteroid impact would be a good thing today, thank you. Any future life forms that would be helped by an impact can kiss my grits.
Yes I did, and their explaination smells like week-old tuna. How is the GRid going to stop a retailer from selling more copies than they report back to the record companies? Why does the GRid have to be incorporated as part of the music file? Retailers will have to manage track ids externally to the music file to handle all the companies that don't use GRid. How does the GRid help track sales in any way?
What retailers? Why would they need retailers to sell electronic copies?
Why would they need to tag the files to track sales?
Take credit card number
Person downloads file
Confirm transaction
Sales++
Profit!
So each copy is going to have a unique tag? That sounds more like a method to track sold copies rather than sales.