71–80 of 104 posts
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. 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…
> 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. Anyone could do it. It almost seems like extortion: "pay us $$ or we'll publish your name, address and number in a huge book that we'll deliver to everyone in the city!" I guess you probably agree when you get a phone line hooked up, though.
The instincts you have about privacy today are inappropriate for back then. It's hard to get to your mind around the difference sending an email, or making a phone call, or sending an SMS to anyone in the world being nearly free makes.
Back then in most countries even a local phone call cost a couple of dollars in today's money. Interstate and international phone calls had background 30 second beeps to remind you dollars were being poured down the phone line.
The effect of spam is obvious - there wasn't any. But you probably aren't thinking about the other end of the scale - what was an upcoming phone call worth to you? The answer to that is almost unimaginable in today's world - receiving a random international phone call is almost certainly worth the interruption many times over. That meant having your name, address and phone number published in a directory was definitely worth it. It was worth it to the phone company too, of course, because it increased the usage their network. So they provided the listing for free. It was a win, win for everyone.
To get a feel for how much it's changed consider the yellow pages. Businesses paid huge sums to the phone companies to get their phone numbers listed in other places in addition to the free one. The value of every phone call they got made it worth the money. Now I struggle to get to find the the phone numbers of many companies. It seems they go out of their way to hide it. That's the difference the price of a phone call feeling to zero makes.
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…
For what it’s worth, seems like it was indeed his address: https://www.housebeautiful.com/uk/lifestyle/property/news/a1...
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
("doxxing" directors, particularly in the UK, is pretty straight forward.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The Apricot PC [1] was not an IBM PC compatible, it was a Victor 9000/Sirius 1 compatible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apricot_PC
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> not for fear of "stalkers", it was for fear of potential "heavy breathing" annoyance calls late at night. That's a weird distinction you're attempting to make.
It wasn't a weird distinction at all back then. One was a real-world threat. The other was a nuisance that likely didn't care where you lived. One was rare. The other was fairly common.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Anyone could do it. It almost seems like extortion: "pay us $$ or we'll publish your name, address and number in a huge book that we'll deliver to everyone in the city!" I guess you probably agree when you get a phone line hooked up, though.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Anyone could do it. It almost seems like extortion: "pay us $$ or we'll publish your name, address and number in a huge book that we'll deliver to everyone in the city!" I guess you probably agree when you get a phone line hooked up, though.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The Apricot PC [1] was not an IBM PC compatible, it was a Victor 9000/Sirius 1 compatible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apricot_PC
Original reason for buying them was of course because they were "British". This was in the late 1980s - luckily things have changed since.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.