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Post by Doc on May 27, 2016 2:47:09 GMT -5
Beepers... How about that? No cell phones or texting. This was the early form of texting. I had quite a few of them.
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Post by Doc on May 27, 2016 3:02:29 GMT -5
Think this was my first cell phone. 23 years ago, back in 1993. I was 15/16. I was the first of many people I knew to have one. Didn't even make sense for me to have one at that time. It was pretty much for bragging rights. It was "chipped". That cost $100 dollars to do a month back then. Had it for a month, as my parents didn't pay for it, lol.
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Post by Doc on May 27, 2016 3:19:17 GMT -5
Old cable "box".... Think this is the one I can remember seeing. People in Philly used to get "Chipped" boxes to get ALL the channels for free, and pay a one-time fee. Problem was, whenever there was a big "pay-per-view" event to take place, comcast was known to send out a signal that would destroy your television if you had such a device. Before inventory of cable boxes was easily traceable, and the cable boxes couldn't 'phone home' many employees would just take boxes that could decode everything and sell them. It would phone home and figure out that it wasn't being paid for anymore and put up a message "please call your provider". Two way communication killed the black market for boxes. The scrambling codes are changed every 15 seconds now, and these new codes are delivered to the box heavily encrypted. Older encryption systems were cracked, current ones are much tougher. Back in the 90's, cable was analog. It came into your house through a coax cable in the wall with a scrambled signal. That's why you could watch the distorted green and blue porn on channel 99 when your parents weren't home; the signal was coming through, but your cable box didn't unscramble it unless you payed for it. The black box (cost about $100 in the classifieds) would unscramble the signal for you and display it like normal without having to pay the cable company. No clue how the scrambled signal got decoded, though.
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Post by packdog on May 27, 2016 7:35:11 GMT -5
Old cable "box".... Think this is the one I can remember seeing. People in Philly used to get "Chipped" boxes to get ALL the channels for free, and pay a one-time fee. Problem was, whenever there was a big "pay-per-view" event to take place, comcast was known to send out a signal that would destroy your television if you had such a device. Before inventory of cable boxes was easily traceable, and the cable boxes couldn't 'phone home' many employees would just take boxes that could decode everything and sell them. It would phone home and figure out that it wasn't being paid for anymore and put up a message "please call your provider". Two way communication killed the black market for boxes. The scrambling codes are changed every 15 seconds now, and these new codes are delivered to the box heavily encrypted. Older encryption systems were cracked, current ones are much tougher. Back in the 90's, cable was analog. It came into your house through a coax cable in the wall with a scrambled signal. That's why you could watch the distorted green and blue porn on channel 99 when your parents weren't home; the signal was coming through, but your cable box didn't unscramble it unless you payed for it. The black box (cost about $100 in the classifieds) would unscramble the signal for you and display it like normal without having to pay the cable company. No clue how the scrambled signal got decoded, though. i had one of those. we got it after paying for tyson/holyfield and felt we got jipped. we figured why spend that kinda money on a single event when for 4-5 times as much we could get everything for a one time cost. it was top of the line one. when we got scrambled it took a few mins to fix itself. never harmed the television
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