Nah the 50% left would quickly replace what was snapped away to the limits of their environment. They multiply fast.

I know. A sucker is born every minute. Paying to win is how some of them are able to win.

They know what we want. A game where any dlc is cosmetic only. A game where there are no micro transactions at all. Something that will run on a older PC without any performance problems. Something without an online requirement.

They know what we want but that is something they are unwilling to build.

Its all mostly moot to me. I have a windows 10 drive in my computer. Its full of old games I might move back over and play again. I haven’t booted it at all this year. I work on winblows at work and come home to Linux. Its been that way since for twenty years.

At work I block a lot of ‘telemetry’ including microsoft. I’ve considered a full asn block of microsoft for user machines since I use WSUS. Microsoft has decided to depreciate it. Probably due to me stopping them from installing office 365 trials and copilot garbage. I’m sure I’m not the only one doing that. Far too much garbage for me to trust them at home.

For a period of time in the 90’s you could get access to phone systems remotely. Kids and some adults were using them as hangouts of a sort and there was a lot of them that were used to jump into the net for free. I read about it more than experiencing it. Like I said I had grown up and it was no longer the draw it once was.

The 17th anniversary of vistas release is coming up in January of next year.

I’m pretty sure you mean the right but yeah.

Windows ME was the original mistake edition. It was terrible.

I was kinda sad I was an adult when the hacking PBX’s were a thing in the 90’s. I kept up with that culture and those kids were having a great time taking over corporate phone systems and night and socializing. I still have a habit every now and then of picking up a random courtesy phone and finding the paging extension. I know it marks me as a huge nerd but I had a small handheld dtmf tone generator in my pocket everywhere I went up until I got married. I know a lot of default passwords used by systems. Most library PC’s and hotel business centers are depressingly easy to get into to. All due to a fear many tiny techs have of changing a default password.

Good old mars wrigley. Always giving lip service to helping the environment.

Its amazing I didn’t end up in jail. I built a few of the descramblers and worst of all ended up with a 300 baud modem when the local chevrolet place Threw out a bunch of ‘junk’. It was a non hayes bell modem and a pain in the ass to use but I would have taken a bullet for it. I built a blue box and later a black box. Then I got busy with free phone calls. Phreaking BBS’s all over with great plans on taking control of the world around you. I still remember the date that they replaced the old analog switch in my town.

Should have bought a subscription to Radio and Electronics. I built a descrambler using their schematics.

Holy crap some of it still exists. https://schematicsforfree.com/files/Video/Circuits/Descrambling/1984-02 Analog Cable TV Descramblng .pdf

Yes but with age they stop pretending.

When these weirdos get older they always stop giving a shit about anyone but themselves or more to the point they stop pretending they ever cared for anyone else.

Trumps been here a while so its nothing new.

Its a variation on this

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/117021-soon

You should probably read that wikipedia link. I built some of the blockers or stabilizers as Wikipedia article describes them. You could see the pulses described in the output of a scope that messed up the AGC in the VCR. All the blocker did was blank out the pulses and that was enough to prevent macrovision from working on the VCR when making a copy.

Jumps out the window.

I came here to banish reddit but this thing wont leave my feed. I guess I’m going to have to take the time to filter the word.

My windows 10 installation hasn’t been booted this year. I’ve considered just getting rid of it. Right now its storing game backups that I don’t currently play.