Post #1831143
2026-04-30 15:52 UTC
Replies (6)
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@zarfeblong@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-30 16:01
@peterb@mathstodon.xyz Same degree as “the machine doesn’t come with a single text editor installed and a word processor app costs $160 in 2026 dollars.”
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@zeank@mastodon.social 2026-05-01 05:39
@peterb@mathstodon.xyz @Gurre@mastodon.nu my little town’s electronics store had a catalogue of software in the public domain and you could just borrow diskettes with those on it for little money.
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@funkula@goblin.camp 2026-05-01 06:51
@peterb@mathstodon.xyz my town's librarian was just like "here's a cool educational game, here's a Xerox of the copy protection page from the manual"
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@Anke@social.scribblers.club 2026-05-01 09:33
@peterb@mathstodon.xyz I blew a younger colleague's mind last week by telling him that downloading a not-great-quality mp3 took like 15 minutes, and the Windows installer was ~13 MB and came on 9 disks... (obviously later than 80s, but still, it was funny)
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@Virginicus@universeodon.com 2026-05-01 11:21
@peterb@mathstodon.xyz Keep alive the tales of the time when we were free.
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@cks@mastodon.social 2026-05-01 16:15
@peterb@mathstodon.xyz @gnomon@mastodon.social My theory about what is perhaps my most successful program ever is that it became so successful partly because it let people pretend that they weren't pirating the software that made it unnecessary. (I only found out about its success years and years after the fact. Someday I will write the full story for my techblog.)