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Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

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Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#31

Post by asta123 »

nervousvarun wrote: post #14
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

haha was not aware "heavy breathing" calls were a thing

I'm an old and your comment made me realize "prank calls" basically no longer exist. This was an enormous cultural phenomenon that existed for decades (at least in America) and somewhat quietly has completely died off. For anyone who might know, were prank calls as much of thing in 50s-90s Europe? Asia? Honestly don't know but it was sortof ever-present in the background of American teenage life (it was pretty likely…

My mate was good at extending a conversation when someone dialled a wrong number, pretending he is the kid of whoever they called :)

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#32

Post by zabzonk »

jhbadger wrote: post #4

>I read somewhere that Douglas Adams (writer of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) was the first person in Europe to own an Apple II computer. Not the 1977 Apple II, but the 1984 Macintosh. Adams owned a variety of computers from the obscure DEC Rainbow, to the also-obscure Apricot, to the BBC Micro, but as far as I know he never owned an Apple II, but he was a fan of the Macintosh from the first time he saw it an…

For those of you that might be interested, the Rainbow was an attempt by DEC to make an IBM-compatible AND a CP/M compatible in one box - it was a very nice box, and made a great VT200 terminal, but the compatibility was just not there.

The Apricot was another attempt at an IBM PC compatible, this time from a UK company. It was awful. You could not fit an Ethernet card into it without using an expansion box, much like the RAM pack on a Sinclair ZX81, and with similar reliability.

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#33

Post by actionfromafar »

nervousvarun wrote: post #14
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

haha was not aware "heavy breathing" calls were a thing

I'm an old and your comment made me realize "prank calls" basically no longer exist. This was an enormous cultural phenomenon that existed for decades (at least in America) and somewhat quietly has completely died off. For anyone who might know, were prank calls as much of thing in 50s-90s Europe? Asia? Honestly don't know but it was sortof ever-present in the background of American teenage life (it was pretty likely…

Definitely a thing on the other side of the pond.

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#34

Post by anjel »

fsckboy wrote: post #5

pre internet, your name, address, and phone number would published in the widely distributed telephone book. if you were a big celebrity, you could get an "unlisted" number (I think you had to pay for it), but that was relatively rare. you might recall, the opening of the original Terminator film (1984, same time period) hinges on this idea: the robot has a name and a city, he tears that page out of a phone book in a…

Back in the day, you had to pay to get an unlisted number but you could get a listed number listed in another name at no added cost.

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#35

Post by anjel »

jockm wrote: post #7
fsckboy wrote: post #5

pre internet, your name, address, and phone number would published in the widely distributed telephone book. if you were a big celebrity, you could get an "unlisted" number (I think you had to pay for it), but that was relatively rare. you might recall, the opening of the original Terminator film (1984, same time period) hinges on this idea: the robot has a name and a city, he tears that page out of a phone book in a…

Anyone could pay to have an unlisted number, it wasn’t crazy expensive in the US at least

IIR it was $1.50 month for NY Tel in the mid 80s, about the same cost as a hamburger for this times.

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#36

Post by op7 »

mikeyinternews wrote: post #22
nervousvarun wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an old and your comment made me realize "prank calls" basically no longer exist. This was an enormous cultural phenomenon that existed for decades (at least in America) and somewhat quietly has completely died off. For anyone who might know, were prank calls as much of thing in 50s-90s Europe? Asia? Honestly don't know but it was sortof ever-present in the background of American teenage life (it was pretty likely…

Prank calling was definitely still alive and strong in the 90s. At least they were we me and my friends. And not the "heavy breathing" kind, just silliness. In middle school I spliced a phone cord so my friend and I could prank from the same room. When we got 3-way calling, we would be able to prank with each other from afar AND we could each call another (unsuspecting) party and get them on a you-called-me call toge…

They were a thing well into the early 2010s until people began doing increasingly cruel “pranks” for Youtube views and wound up going to prison.

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#37

Post by Forgeties79 »

fsckboy wrote: post #5

pre internet, your name, address, and phone number would published in the widely distributed telephone book. if you were a big celebrity, you could get an "unlisted" number (I think you had to pay for it), but that was relatively rare. you might recall, the opening of the original Terminator film (1984, same time period) hinges on this idea: the robot has a name and a city, he tears that page out of a phone book in a…

Ok but it’s still a jerk move that none of us would want to experience, right? Like can we at least agree it was malicious and unwanted?

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#38

Post by segfaultbuserr »

In 1987, doxxing yourself was the norm. ~80% of the Usenet messages from the 1980s (to early the 1990s) had names, institutions, office addresses, and phone numbers attached to them too. Most were universities, governments, or corporate R&D addresses, but there were many small businesses and home users as well. Some phone numbers are probably still valid today. In fact, an Usenet archive (UTZoo) has already been taken down from the Internet Archive due to an alleged legal threat made by an individual (despite that this archive was indispensable if anyone wants to find any historical information from this era, and that it had been available online for the last ~20 years before it was taken down, with multiple copies still online). I suspect the legal status of these kinds of early online community archives will be increasingly problematic over time.

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#39

Post by foobar1962 »

fsckboy wrote: post #5

pre internet, your name, address, and phone number would published in the widely distributed telephone book. if you were a big celebrity, you could get an "unlisted" number (I think you had to pay for it), but that was relatively rare. you might recall, the opening of the original Terminator film (1984, same time period) hinges on this idea: the robot has a name and a city, he tears that page out of a phone book in a…

> pre internet, your name, address, and phone number would published in the widely distributed telephone book

This is used as a plot point in Steve Martin's movie "The Jerk". The titular character proudly sees their name and number in a phone book; the scene changes to a crazed gunman randomly choosing their next victim from a phone book and landing on the same name and number. Hilarity ensues.

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#40

Post by dcminter »

"...the chances of being picked up by another craft within those seconds are two to the power of two-hundred-and-sixty-seven-thousand, seven-hundred-and-nine to one against. Which, by a staggering coincidence, was also the telephone number of an Islington flat, where Arthur once went to a very good party and met a very nice girl, whom he entirely failed to get off with." -- The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

This one was, on a similar note and by a not so staggering coincidence, the phone number of friends of Adams who didn't mind getting oddball phonecalls (if I remember the lore from Don't Panic accurately).

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