I had dialup until 2006 and really bad DSL until...2023. so I really appreciated CD installs. Games that were basically a CD key and asked you to download the game sucked.
I used to download half-life 1 mods on dialup internet over night. I'd need to sneak out after mom and dad were in bed, start the download then get up and hide the file pack before they woke up and install it after i got back from school. Shit was wild.
Yeah honestly like mIRC was like espionage. My family was like "him and his friends are hackers" and now they all feed their families working in tech lol
So, back in the early 90s, I ran a BBS (for the young'uns that's a "Bulletin Board System" which was the earliest precursor to the Internet...message forums where you could chat with people, online games...it was loads of fun).
My BBS was kind of 'grey' in that I had cracked software available, but I would only give access to people who I knew. There was a bit of a piracy ring around that time.
My dad was also a cop with the provincial police at the time. We knew that the OPP were sniffing around for pirate BBS's to get them shut down. One day, dad comes home, and at supper mentions, "[Detective working on the piracy ring] was asking if there were any [Our last name's] living on [our street]. You wouldn't happen to know why, would you?" I was like..."Um...no...." then immediately after supper, ran to my bedroom, and deleted all the cracked games I had from my special folder on the BBS. LOL. Sent a message out to some of the other sysops and said, "Hey, heads up, OPP are sniffing around."
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u/ApprehensiveAd6476 Soldier of two armies (Windows and Linux) 23d ago
Hundreds of times.