Ahh, that makes sense. I remember my friends (in Stuttgart) having shitloads
of software for his Amiga. Yet I never really heard of it other than in
passing here in the US. By that time, everything was pretty much Macintosh
vs. DOS for the home user. (I was on Vax and Mac systems at school.)
Yeah, all the software my buddies had (and traded) was either supplied by
pirate bbs' or they copied directly from unwitting software stores.
(Remember software stores?)
Back in the day I got most of my software from schools, often directly
out of machines it was already installed on. It was real easy back
then to track all the parts of the program, its registry entries, etc
in order to install an installed copy. Of course a lot of software
back then was liak Agent, in that it made no changes at all to the
system outside of its own folder and was therefore super easy to copy
and distribute.
Pirating software is actually one of the things that really got me
initially interested in computers, later it became the drive for
multimedia that fueled my interest (and still does today)
I also remember the twilight years of the floppy, right before the
CD-ROM was the norm. Windows 3.11 was only liak 8 disks for the
standard US install, DOS 6.22 was something liak 3 I think, Office, I
can't recall the version, was some monstrous 40 some odd disks, Win95
was 13 I think...heh, I kinda miss floppies, as craptastic as they
were they were fun, much moar "personality" than CDs and flash drives.
I think a lot of software makers would benefit from distributing their
stuff on flash drives rather than CD/DVDs if it's not too bloaty,
getting a free flash drive with your software would be a good
marketing gimmick to get people to buy yer stuff.
Speaking of floppies and everything though, I find it kind of sad that
there isn't even *ONE* resource online that has historical data on the
number of floppies that software came on (at least not one I can find
and I spent a good two hours in Google).
I suppose we could start one here. Here's what I've gathered in my
searching:
5.25" floppies
=============
Windows 1.0 - 5 disks (40 track disks)
Windows 2.0 - 8 disks (WinWrite on Disk 9)
Windows 2.1 - 4 disks (80 track disks)
3.5" floppies
=============
Windows 3.1 - 6 disks (international printer drivers on Disk 7)
Windows 3.11 - 8 disks ( extra junk on Disk 9 )
Windows 95 - 13 disks
Of course a lot of these numbers are relative, I'm going by the
standard US versions here, international versions often had extra
disks for language chit and the liak.
I might set this up as site, where people can submit photos they have
of the installation disks and the site will keep track of the number
of floppies, what kind of floppies they are and what encoding format
was used. This could be a fun project.
--
Onideus Mad Hatter
mhm ¹ x ¹
http://www.backwater-productions.net
http://www.backwater-productions.net/hatter-blog
Hatter Quotes
-------------
"When I listen to people I don't really listen to what it is they're
saying, so much as what they're saying it for."
"Don't ever **** with someone who has more creativity than you do."
"You're only one of the best if you're striving to become one of the
best."
"I didn't make reality, Sunshine, I just verbally bitch slapped you
with it."
"I'm not a professional, I'm an artist."
"Usenet Filters - Learn to shut yourself the **** up!"
"Drugs killed Jesus you know...oh wait, no, that was the Jews, my
bad."
"The more I learn the more I'm killing my idols."
"Is it wrong to incur and then use the hate ridden, vengeful stupidity
of complete strangers in random Usenet froups to further my art?"
"Freedom is only a concept, like race it's merely a social construct
that doesn't really exist outside of your ability to convince others
of its relevancy."
"Next time slow up a lil, then maybe you won't jump the gun and start
creamin yer panties before it's time to pop the champagne proper."
"Reality is directly proportionate to how creative you are."
"People are pretty ****ing high on themselves if they think that
they're just born with a soul. *snicker*...yeah, like they're just
givin em out for free."
"How sad that you're such a poor judge of style that you can't even
properly gauge the artistic worth of your own efforts."
"Those who record history are those who control history."
"I am the living embodiment of hell itself in all its tormentive rage,
endless suffering, unfathomable pain and unending horror...but you
don't get sent to me...I come for you."
"Ideally in a fight I'd want a BGM-109A with a W80 250 kiloton
tactical thermonuclear fusion based war head."
"Tell me, would you describe yourself more as a process or a
function?"
"Apparently this group has got the market cornered on stupid.
Intelligence is down 137 points across the board and the forecast
indicates an increase in Webtv users."
"Is my .sig delimiter broken? Really? You're sure? Awww,
gee...that's too bad...for YOU!" `, )
