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Or in every other case they'd blindly hit "yes" to "Do you want unlimited porn, just accept this! (and we'll dial your modem to Madagascar!)" In many cases it snuck through the deluges of pop-ups or fake Javascript prompts where both "Ok" and "Cancelled" were rigged. I think the first spyware I discovered was some "Web-accelerator" that was activated by a clueless family member who was proud of what they'd thought they'd done. It caused enough of a mess that I ended upgrading their box to Windows XP. However there were legitimate "accelerators" that either were ad blockers or filtered images to be at a lower resolution. Some ISPs started routing data though proxy servers that would compress images.
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Jan 4, 2015 06:14
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Google even released one, although it was pulled fairly quickly since it cached password protected content on sites that didn't use HTTPS and presented it to other people.
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Jan 4, 2015 06:27
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The_Franz posted:They died off rapidly as the world moved into the 21st century due to the fact that cell phones never supported 1-900 calling and network operators just stopped supporting them because of the massive amount of scams out there. AT&T halted 1-900 service in 2002 and Verizon finally cut off billing for them on their terrestrial networks a couple of years ago. I can't even imagine that any were (are?) actually still in service outside of maybe some weird psychic hotlines that catered to Luddites. I still see ads for psychic hotlines all the time. When I was at university (~2006) I worked at a hotel where we regularly hosted the flight staff of a major airline. One morning one of the flight attendants came down to fix up her room service bill. She'd spent about two hours chatting to a psychic on the hotel phone (which has its own ridiculous markup). The bill was about $2000 and, amazingly, she paid without complaint.
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Jan 4, 2015 07:16
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WebDog posted:Cash Converters in Australia got stung for having an interest rate of 633%. They're just not trying. Wonga, a payday lender over here, got stung for not mentioning the actual interest rate in one of its ads. To be fair, that rate was 5,853%
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Jan 4, 2015 12:01
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DigitalRaven posted:They're just not trying. Wonga, a payday lender over here, got stung for not mentioning the actual interest rate in one of its ads. To be fair, that rate was 5,853% Oh well that's not bad, still under 6% 
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Jan 4, 2015 16:54
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The_Franz posted:Speaking of pay-per-minute calls, those 1-900 numbers were everywhere in the 80s and 90s. The industry was basically completely unregulated and holy gently caress were those things a scam. The industry basically preyed on children, but it was OK because they always warned you to get your parents' permission first. You missed the most  1-900 commercial of my youth:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdQiSGb4Luw Why, yes, I'd like to spend $2 a call to listen to a prerecorded message from an ugly rubber puppet thing. Also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70JzRpdI5xg "OH NO! I CAN'T TIME MY JUMP OVER THE FLAME BAR IN MARIO!!  *curls up into a ball*"
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Jan 4, 2015 17:00
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Jerry Cotton posted:Oh well that's not bad, still under 6% you europeans disgust me
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Jan 4, 2015 17:26
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BattleMaster posted:I don't understand, is there just a cartel of people who have gotten together just to break one of the most basic parts of the USB spec?
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Jan 4, 2015 20:06
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The_Franz posted:Speaking of pay-per-minute calls, those 1-900 numbers were everywhere in the 80s and 90s. The industry was basically completely unregulated and holy gently caress were those things a scam. The industry basically preyed on children, but it was OK because they always warned you to get your parents' permission first. 
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Jan 4, 2015 23:02
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DigitalRaven posted:They're just not trying. Wonga, a payday lender over here, got stung for not mentioning the actual interest rate in one of its ads. To be fair, that rate was 5,853% What legitimate business needs an interest rate of over 30%? Why aren't rates that high literally business-dissolvingly, board-of-directors-imprisoningly illegal? Why do so-called "Christians" tolerate usury to this degree when Jesus would have chased them out of the country with a whip? 
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Jan 5, 2015 05:18
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To be fair, there's a lot of push back against payday loans in the US at least, and they're straight up illegal in 14 states. They'll probably be gone like 900 numbers in a few years.
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Jan 5, 2015 05:36
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I know it's Buzzfeed, but it's a pretty mental list of how insane 900 numbers got. To save the pain, most on the list are the usual pop-band or wrestling promos, with one advertising a Bill and Ted movie, or obsolete dial-a-services like one which played back the top ten hits. Some were pretty cunning, such as Jessica Hahn's exclusive "tell all" to cash in on her affair with televangelist Reverend Jim Bakker or Jose Canseco using it as a sort of PR control and to cash in on the the tabloid attention during the 90's.
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Jan 5, 2015 05:40
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Zemyla posted:What legitimate business needs an interest rate of over 30%? Why aren't rates that high literally business-dissolvingly, board-of-directors-imprisoningly illegal? Why do so-called "Christians" tolerate usury to this degree when Jesus would have chased them out of the country with a whip? Just up the road from me, a combination payday loans shop and church. 
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Jan 5, 2015 05:42
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Zemyla posted:What legitimate business needs an interest rate of over 30%? Why aren't rates that high literally business-dissolvingly, board-of-directors-imprisoningly illegal? Why do so-called "Christians" tolerate usury to this degree when Jesus would have chased them out of the country with a whip? Because a significant segment of the population believes that everyone is a perfectly informed consumer and this will magically stop bad businesses from exploitation. If you paid a thousand dollars for a hundred dollar pay day loan, you deserved to get ripped-off. I am not one of these people and firmly believe businesses like this should be legislated out of existence. By some unfathomable miracle, Arizona actually did this. How the gently caress a state full of batshit crazy, mainly libertarian rightwingers managed to do this is one of the strangest things I saw happen out there. The industry tried their damnedest to stay in the state using political ads that naturally used exactly the same tactics as their business practices. They ran ads that talked about how the law would be "tough on payday loan operations, and make sure they wouldn't be able to exploit people (other than existing)" when in reality by simply not renewing the law would be their death, and it was. 
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Jan 5, 2015 05:45
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You Are A Elf posted:You missed the most this is hilarious. saved.
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Jan 5, 2015 05:56
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Praseodymi posted:Just up the road from me, a combination payday loans shop and church. That is great, especially considering Jesus’s views on money lending. The church is still active? quote:
Ehhh it's not clear UnfortunateSexFart has a new favorite as of 08:05 on Jan 5, 2015 |
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Jan 5, 2015 07:56
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Reverse Centaur posted:That is great, especially considering Jesus’s views on money lending. If only Jesus were here today.
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Jan 5, 2015 08:18
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WWJD? Slap a bitch that's what
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Jan 5, 2015 08:36
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Reverse Centaur posted:That is great, especially considering Jesus’s views on money lending. The church is still active? Yep, you have to go around the side and through a separate smaller entrance.
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Jan 5, 2015 09:21
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Zemyla posted:What legitimate business needs an interest rate of over 30%? Why aren't rates that high literally business-dissolvingly, board-of-directors-imprisoningly illegal? Why do so-called "Christians" tolerate usury to this degree when Jesus would have chased them out of the country with a whip? Sometimes it doesn't really occur to the person taking the loan that payday advance rates are actually downright obscene. They're also often used by the very poor who are highly likely to be financially illiterate. Often they're just desperate or the hideous interest rates ultimately lead to less lost money then things like overdraft fees on bank accounts, penalties for late payment or, you know, starvation and eviction. When it's Monday, rent is due on Wednesday, and payday is Friday sometimes taking $100 and paying $105 in five days turns out to cost less. Companies like that also deliberately prey on the poor because they're the ones that are frequently in desperate enough situations to need it and are also too poor to actually sue.
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Jan 5, 2015 10:25
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Sometimes it doesn't really occur to the person taking the loan that payday advance rates are actually downright obscene. They're also often used by the very poor who are highly likely to be financially illiterate. Often they're just desperate or the hideous interest rates ultimately lead to less lost money then things like overdraft fees on bank accounts, penalties for late payment or, you know, starvation and eviction. When it's Monday, rent is due on Wednesday, and payday is Friday sometimes taking $100 and paying $105 in five days turns out to cost less. Companies like that also deliberately prey on the poor because they're the ones that are frequently in desperate enough situations to need it and are also too poor to actually sue. I agree, there are edge cases where a loan can literally mean food on the table due to an unexpected shortfall (little Timmy broke his leg). The problem I have is the way they structure the loan. If you get $100 on Monday (because you need it Weds), they usually make the loan mature not on the upcoming Friday, but two weeks after that Friday, so you then end up paying $135 or $140 on that loan via auto-pay from your checking account. Sure you can go in and pay in person on Friday, but they're banking (literally) on people being lazy and letting the loan go the distance. And now that $30-35, makes you *just* short of next months rent, so you need another.
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Jan 5, 2015 12:55
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Game boxes were posted in the last page and I got sad because physical game manuals are basically extinct now too. Most new games don't even include a manual, or if they do it's basically just 3-4 pages with the controls and legal information. Hell, the Wii U even has specific functionality to pull up a digital manual on the gamepad so very few if any Wii U games come with anything in the box 
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Jan 5, 2015 18:36
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Old PC game manuals were amazing, especially ones for sim games. I still have the manual for Grand Prix Legends, which has several hundred pages and tells you everything you ever wanted to know about 1960s Formula One cars in an entertaining manner.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:33
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I'm not ashamed to admit that I would be reading D&D game manuals in bed at night.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:38
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Doc Morbid posted:Old PC game manuals were amazing, especially ones for sim games. I still have the manual for Grand Prix Legends, which has several hundred pages and tells you everything you ever wanted to know about 1960s Formula One cars in an entertaining manner. The best was Falcon 3.0 The game "box" was a 3 ring binder that contained all of the game manual.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:44
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mng posted:I'm not ashamed to admit that I would be reading D&D game manuals in bed at night. I was lame enough to read these every night as a kid:  Control diagrams for joysticks for a first person shooter. 
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Jan 5, 2015 20:15
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Doc Morbid posted:Old PC game manuals were amazing, especially ones for sim games. I still have the manual for Grand Prix Legends, which has several hundred pages and tells you everything you ever wanted to know about 1960s Formula One cars in an entertaining manner. Best examples were Microprose sims. Check this out: https://archive.org/stream/Gunship_1986_Microprose_Software#page/n1/mode/2up Includes basics on helicopter aerodynamics, including things like ground effect and autorotation, height-velocity diagrams, and writeups on Soviet military hardware that were cribbed right from Janes.
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Jan 5, 2015 20:19
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Zemyla posted:What legitimate business needs an interest rate of over 30%? Why aren't rates that high literally business-dissolvingly, board-of-directors-imprisoningly illegal? Why do so-called "Christians" tolerate usury to this degree when Jesus would have chased them out of the country with a whip?
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Jan 5, 2015 20:54
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Phanatic posted:Includes basics on helicopter aerodynamics, including things like ground effect and autorotation, height-velocity diagrams, and writeups on Soviet military hardware that were cribbed right from Janes.  as hell.
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Jan 5, 2015 22:01
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Dial-A-Song is back. Once upon a time you could call a tape-based answering machine and hear a song. It was a way to listen to music for free in the days before youtube and bittorrent. Now it's back and...probably all digital now. Feel free to call (844) 387-6962 to relive the years from 1983 to 2006!
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Jan 5, 2015 22:16
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For any goon They Might Be Giants fans: http://tmbw.net/wiki/Dial-A-Song
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Jan 5, 2015 23:18
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If only that song didn't get every single thing wrong about what Jesus was pissed about. I'm not a believer, but I hate that musical so much.
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Jan 5, 2015 23:53
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Companies like that also deliberately prey on the poor because they're the ones that are frequently in desperate enough situations to need it and are also too poor to actually sue. John Oliver sums it up better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw
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Jan 5, 2015 23:58
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:John Oliver sums it up better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw Holy hell, I didn't know it was that bad. Just when I think people can't be any more unscrupulous, I always get surprised 
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Jan 6, 2015 02:44
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RandomPauI posted:Dial-A-Song is back. Once upon a time you could call a tape-based answering machine and hear a song. It was a way to listen to music for free in the days before youtube and bittorrent. Now it's back and...probably all digital now. Feel free to call (844) 387-6962 to relive the years from 1983 to 2006!  The same song as on the phone number can be heard (in better quality) on DialASong.com.Edit: Or their Youtube channel. m2pt5 has a new favorite as of 21:56 on Jan 6, 2015 |
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Jan 6, 2015 21:51
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You Are A Elf posted:You missed the most holy gently caress I forgot all about Freddy Freaker. Thanks for reminding me of that idiotic loving song that me and my idiotic loving friend would sing at each other idiotically all summer. That one and this one that Yo MTV Raps couldn't quit playing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPJs3OhFnmk
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Jan 7, 2015 01:30
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m2pt5 posted:
The point is they've brought back an obsolete way to share their music, albeit updated for the digital age.
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Jan 7, 2015 05:44
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Jehde posted:I was lame enough to read these every night as a kid: Jedi Knight series rules, this rules. But whyyyy were you using a joystick?
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Jan 7, 2015 05:53
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I bought some joystick that came with instructions on how to best map controls to use it with an FPS. How you could play an FPS with a joystick comfortably (aside from MechWarrior, maybe), I have no idea.
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Jan 7, 2015 06:22
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Ensign Expendable posted:I bought some joystick that came with instructions on how to best map controls to use it with an FPS. How you could play an FPS with a joystick comfortably (aside from MechWarrior, maybe), I have no idea. I used to play fps with a joystick + mouse. Joy stick to move/mouse to look, it was the closest to what is basically an xbox controller now before they existed. I had my hand down around the bottom of the joystick not at the top, it worked really well for Quake 3 (pretty sure that was the game).
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Jan 7, 2015 06:40
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