"SHONNER" <shonner@hotmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:
>"Xocyll" <Xocyll@kingston.net> wrote in message
>news:e67ltu0fm1cqhi7ocrgdq1iqlip03l424k@4ax.com...
>> "SHONNER" <shonner@hotmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
>> >"Large Scale" in my mind means using WAN software to distribute pirated
>> >CD's to those that have the bandwidth. Not many people pirated MS Office
>> >Pro 4.3 and Windows95B when they were on 23+ floppy disks.
>>
>> Bullshit! You can be damn sure that the minute somebody wanted it and
>> knew someone who had it and would let them copy it, they copied it.
>
>Copying 23+ floppy disks onto 23+ perfectly error-free and working disks
>takes longer than a minute. I'm sure it's still longer than copying a CD at
>4x-speed.
Since when does a pirate NOT pirate something that can't be copied
instantly? When disks were all there were, that's what got used.
4x-speed? You were talking about when cd-r's FIRST became available,
they didn't burn at 4x.
Now recall that those first generation CD burners didn't have buffering
protection and often failed to burn the cd properly.
At least with the floppy you can reformat it and try again, the CD is a
coaster.
Here's a quick test for you; Go burn a cd at 1x and see how long it
takes. Bet the difference between burning that and copying 23 floppies
isn't anywhere _near_ as long as you thought.
Burning a CD is a linear process, copying floppies can be done in
parallel on multiple machines in, for example, a school computer lab.
>> >But the CD versions were
>> >pirated starting on the day CD-R drives came out. Downloading floppy
>> >versions of pirated software from PC's running RBBS's back in 1988 using
>> >2400 baud modems was peanuts compared to what software like LimeWire
>>allows these days.
>>
>> Carefully sidestepping the fact that in 1988 nothing was that big.
>> The big games the pirates would be copying around would fit on 1 high
>> density disk.
>
>Did you ever try downloading a 1.44MB file at 2400 baud?
Dozens of them. And Gigabytes more with a 14.4 modem.
You seem to be forgetting that in the days of slow modems, files were
available for download in multiple smaller pieces instead of one
monolithic chunk.
Most BBS' with a 2400baud modem would split that 1.44 meg file into 3-6
smaller archives for exactly that reason.
>The more popular
>BBS's typically allowed up to 3 -5 users at a time signed on. But they
>didn't allow for sessions longer than 60 minutes a day most of the time.
>And you were probably kicked off from line noise before then.
3 little points:
1. We have pretty good phone lines here, not once have I ever been
"knocked off by line noise"
2. There were lots of BBS' here, some of them were paid access, so you
could stay connected 23.5 hours a day if you wanted.
3. You're ignoring the ultimate high bandwidth solution of the time
_sneakernet_.
A favorite in workplaces and schools for decades, even Hollywood knows
this.
>> MS Office now might need a whole cd (or several) but back then
>> Wordperfect required 2-3 low density 5 1/4 disks.
>> Dad used to run it on his XT that had no harddrive at all, just 2 5 1/4
>> floppies.
>> 1 disk for the program, 1 for the spellchecker, 1 for the thesaurus.
>
>Good for him. He probably couldn't download WordPerfect from someone with
>that machine if he wanted to.
Well since his machine didn't have a modem he couldn't download
anything, but there's nothing to stop him getting a copy from work, or
from a friend or ...
>Without bandwidth back then, copied software
>moved around much slower than pirating does now.
Right, sure, it was SOOOOO hard for little Johnny to copy the floppy
disk and give it to his pal Joey.
Fast foreward 15 years and change "floppy disk" to "compact disc".
Floppy sized programs over modem, CDs over broadband,
relatively speaking, size/bandwidth is about the same.
>> Hell all of ID's Castle Wolfenstien (registered) fit on 1 disk in the
>> early 90's, and you can be damn sure it got pirated.
>
>You must be a liberal. You're justifying that it was ok to pirate software
>because CW fit on one disk.
What's the matter SHONNER, you don't have any facts, so you're starting
with name calling and putting words in my mouth?
Where did I "Justify" anything, I simply stated a fact.
Simple fact,
it was a popular game,
it got pirated,
it fit on one disk so it wasn't hard to copy.
It was all over the place when I was in college, getting installed on
the lab PCs all the time (and removed daily by the staff.)
Exactly the same thing happened with massive trading going on in High
School with 160k disks and cassettes for TRS-80 games, or Apple 2 games,
or Commodore 64 games.
Anywhere you put a bunch of kids, a bunch of games and a means to copy,
there will be piracy.
Bandwidth has exactly ZERO to do with it.
>> >I would say pirating is far more widespread now. Just count
>> >the number of burned CD's that are in your collection and figure out how
>> >many floppies and zip disks you avoided having to use.
>>
>> Oops, I used to download game demos and shareware in the early 90's.
>> I probably still have some old disks with some of them on them, 3-10
>> games on average per 1.44 meg disk.
>
>And your point is...
Replying to your point above, didn't you understand?
>> Now game demos are 100+Meg.
>>
>> The game/App size has increased right alongside the storage media.
>
>No shit, Sherlock.
I guess you didn't understand since you broke the statement into
multiple pieces.
Here i'll spell it out for you.
Old days: 1 floppy held between 3-10 game demos
1 big business app took 1-3 floppies.
What would the equivalent to MS office have been back then?
Something like PFS First CHoice, with word processor, spreadsheet etc
1 Floppy disk.
Now: 1 CD can hold up to 6-7 game demos
1 big business app takes 1-4+ CDs
1 game can take up to _8_ CDs (Wing Commander 4)
So your statement of "Just count the number of burned CD's that are in
your collection and figure out how many floppies and zip disks you
avoided having to use" is completely bogus, since one CD _NOW_ would
hold hundreds of games and apps from THEN.
The storage media at the time, couldn't do that.
Here's another quick clue for you. I have a zip drive and multiple zip
disks. Until I got a burner and could back up my data to cd directly, I
backed up to zip disk and when I had 650 meg worth, I paid to have it
backed up to cd.
Included in that fee was pick up of my zip disks, a burn done, and
verified, then the return of both. If a burn failed it wasn't my
problem.
Originally I didn't even have the zip drive, the service brought one to
me (parallel port), backed up the data to zip disk, then went off and
burned the cd.
Smaller stuff STILL got copied to floppy, since that was the only way to
take the data with me unless I wanted to cart around the zip drive and
risk damaging it.
arj a -r -vv a:bigfile.a00
combined with a lot of floppy swapping got the job done.
Slow? yes.
Tedious? yes.
Worked? Yes.
Read a book and switch out the disks when it beeps.
Ditto for installing. Not a big deal.
>> Piracy hasn't increased at all.
>
>Ya, that's right -- not. It's only become more convinient and quicker to do
>by more and more people like yourself online everyday.
More name calling and innuendo.
I can only assume you're one of those sad little people who attribute to
others what they do themselves.
Here's another clue for you: I don't have broadband.
Without the use of download managers like GetRight, I can't download
game demos at all, since it will take 6hrs or more for the 100Mb chunk,
if their server isn't heavily loaded.
Now imagine I'd like to play the new MMORPG Neocron, which hasn't been
released in North America yet.
I can buy a cd-key online and download the client.
Whoops - the client is 1.2 GB, guess not.
Obviously since they offer this option, they KNOW it's going to be used.
Also obviously, they feel it's a realistic alternative to offer a 1.2GB
download in terms of the bandwidth widely available today.
File sizes, storage media and bandwidth availability has kept pretty
much 1:1:1 the whole time.
Your bandwidth causes piracy herring is looking a little sunburned.
Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
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