I read "Bill Watterson" instead of "Bill Atkinson", and for a brief moment, the story in my head was pretty wild.
Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987
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Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987
#52I read "Bill Watterson" instead of "Bill Atkinson", and for a brief moment, the story in my head was pretty wild.
I misread two names. Bill Waterson doxxing Scott Adams. Because they're both comic strip authors, I suppose.
But reading TFA and seeing hypercard set me straight.
Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987
#53pre 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…
Still very much a thing in Norway
In Norway, the phone book hasn't been published since 2012. What are you referring to?
Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was literally no other way to get in contact with anyone, other than ringing their doorbell if you already knew where they lived, or asking around. Getting unlisted was unusual, and for most, would defeat the point of having a phone in the first place. At least where I was from, early 90s, exchanging contacts was not something people did casually either, only for business or love (email/ICQ changed this when th…
My experience was people having little notebooks, made-for-purpose, usually called address books, where you had everyone alphabetical by last name.
That reminds me of how things I considered mandatory previously (carrying small notebook + pen). They weren't mandatory, and most people won't do the manual thing. Don't get me wrong, you'd keep important addresses, say, your grandma out of town. And of course, professionally. But by and large, people just expected you to be in the phone book and vice versa. It also meant calling someone you knew without explicitly being given their number wasn't a faux pas. Now that I think about it, a lot of things were easier. Sigh
Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was literally no other way to get in contact with anyone, other than ringing their doorbell if you already knew where they lived, or asking around. Getting unlisted was unusual, and for most, would defeat the point of having a phone in the first place. At least where I was from, early 90s, exchanging contacts was not something people did casually either, only for business or love (email/ICQ changed this when th…
My experience was people having little notebooks, made-for-purpose, usually called address books, where you had everyone alphabetical by last name.
Some phones had a slot where you could insert made to fit cards with common numbers.
Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987
#56>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 lik…
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Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987
#57It was a different time. Let's not forget Douglas Adams himself doxxed a man in the earliest versions of The Hitchhikers's Guide for being the worst poet in the universe.
Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987
#58>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…
IIRC, he wrote some of his books on a PowerBook.
And it's been 30 years since I read them, but I think I recall lots of mentions of Macintosh (IIs in particular, I think?) in the Dirk Gently series.
Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987
#59Everyone knows his number anyways.... 424242424242....
Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987
#60pre 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, the entire world could not access that phone book effortlessly, nor F with your life effortlessly and by remote control and without even being detected. Both sides of every such silly observation changed, not just one.
Not mess with your life so easily, but even being in Europe, I knew I could call 411 in the US to get information at least a decade before the first time I visited and actually used it.