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Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

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Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#91

Post by joelwilliamson »

happyopossum wrote: post #64
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 Not sure where you’re from, but at least in the countries where I’ve lived (Canada and the US) your address was not in the phone book. It was a book of phone numbers - nothing more.

I grew up in Ontario in the 90s, and addresses were in the phonebook.

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#92

Post by atombender »

spinningarrow wrote: post #90
atombender wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the yellow pages, not the phone book. And also not an actual book . 1881.no also exists for "white pages", but it's useless because most people with mobile phones are not in the database.

What is the practical difference? I was responding to the reference in GP’s comment that “…your name, address, and phone number would published…” which is the case with gulesider. Their comment was about pre-internet, mine was referring to the post-internet version. Apologies if there was confusion. Additionally, the Wikipedia page on ‘Telephone directory’ [0] states: > A telephone directory, commonly called a teleph…

I don't think I'm splitting hairs here. The difference is that your name isn't in "gule sider", since it's a directory of businesses.

"Telefonkatalogen" was what other countries call "white pages", which is a directory of individuals.

The GP comment was indeed about the pre-Internet, but the whole point is that nobody publishes a big, widely distributed book with everyone's names in it anymore. You could literally get a book with every living adult in Norway listed. Sure, you have online services like 1881.no and gulesider.no that are the successors to this directory, but they're not at all the same thing.

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#93

Post by mbirth »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #30
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…

There were "reverse" directories published by non-telco publishers indexed by telephone number and/or street address. Those were a lot more difficult to get your hands on. When I was a kid I remember thinking about how cool it would have been to somehow scan the entire telephone book and have that data indexed differently. (I also thought it would make wardialing s ton easier since you could knock out all the known-r…

Oh god, yes, I remember we’ve got D-Info (German/“D”eutsches phone book) which had that feature. And because the phone books were copyrighted by the phone company’s publisher, the creators of that app hired cheap workers to manually read the phone books and type everything into a database. Similar to clean room design in software development.

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#94

Post by lozf »

aaron695 wrote: post #18
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…

> if you were a big celebrity, you could get an "unlisted" number Or like a teacher? There was nothing uncommon about being unlisted. The phonebook was your only one way searchable link to the outside world. It was LinkedIn and Facebook all in that one line in a physical book. So most people had it. There was no way with a phonebook to reverse search using an address to know what the phone number and persons name was…

> You couldn't even rewatch the program unless you got lucky and recorded it.

And even then, the "pause" function on the majority of domestic VCRs would invariably obscure the interesting parts of the frame with "noise bars".

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#95

Post by spinningarrow »

atombender wrote: post #92
spinningarrow wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the practical difference? I was responding to the reference in GP’s comment that “…your name, address, and phone number would published…” which is the case with gulesider. Their comment was about pre-internet, mine was referring to the post-internet version. Apologies if there was confusion. Additionally, the Wikipedia page on ‘Telephone directory’ [0] states: > A telephone directory, commonly called a teleph…

I don't think I'm splitting hairs here. The difference is that your name isn't in "gule sider", since it's a directory of businesses . "Telefonkatalogen" was what other countries call "white pages", which is a directory of individuals. The GP comment was indeed about the pre-Internet, but the whole point is that nobody publishes a big, widely distributed book with everyone's names in it anymore. You could literally g…

> The difference is that your name isn't in "gule sider", since it's a directory of businesses.

I must be missing something; I can find pretty much every person I know in Norway in there by looking up their name (unless they have explicitly opted out).

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#96

Post by thejazzman »

kid64 wrote: post #88
cbsks wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some had custom numbers that could be dialed by pressing the “mem” key followed by a number key. There would be a little slip of paper which you would write in “1: Grandma, 2: Dad work…”. Simpler times.

This is called "speed dial" and it's still a standard feature on desk phones.

You know, in the year 2000, we'll all be on speed dial.

https://amphetamem.es/meme?id=seinfeld_08_20_145&timestamp=0...

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#97

Post by canadianfella »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #72
gregmac wrote: post #25

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.

> It almost seems like extortion 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…

[dead]

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#98

Post by EricE »

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…

A huge pop-culture example: The Simpsons with Bart and Moe going back and forth

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#99

Post by EricE »

adsteel_ wrote: post #65
Forgeties79 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The author says he scrolled past it quickly, so it "may have been an honest mistake," ie not malicious. Unwanted? There's been a big cultural shift over the past 100 years about addresses. Papers used to print subjects' addresses alongside the subject. In the 80s addresses were still considered public knowledge via phone books. So maybe Douglas Adams didn't want his to be public, but he would have been in the minorit…

Indeed. Heck even VCRs were rare back then - how many people happened to record that and then thought to go back frame by frame to pick the address up?

It was an entirely different time indeed!

Re: Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987

#100

Post by rightbyte »

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…

> Yes I realize "heavy breathing" calls are more akin to sexual harassment

Really? I was quite sure we were ghosts or other monsters when we did it. Did adults do that to get off?

Just making sounds was the 'coward' way to do prank calls, anyways.

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