bonzibuddy would be a welcome change from all this ai bullshit that's getting thrown at us.

Sherk goes hard though

lol I remember copying game shortcuts on desktop on my flash drive thinking I'll get the game at home

We all learn from our mistakes, that's why people who previously pirates make an easy guide

I was lucky to have a mac because I tried opening a lot of yourfile.exe's

Yes I do want more animal facts Buddy!

Gets lied to about animals

Bonzibuddy was classified as malware for collecting user information and using deceptive ads. I never used it myself but I'd bet it's downright tame compared to the shit considered normal business practice nowadays.

And if they don't that because they didn't notice it yet.

I wish I got bonzi buddy instead of a virus that copy pasted itself into multiple directories on Win 98se, restoring itself whenever a copy got deleted. That was quite the challenge for 9 year old me to clean the family PC before mom got home from work. Limewire gets all the hate but most of mine came from Real Player! Little me thought Real Player software was legit because of their video codec I always saw anime rips using. No. Nope.

Hey that’s unfair, I deliberately wanted Bonzai buddy, it wasn’t a virus.

Thanks for reminding me, I did that on a floppy disk once and was so proud at first...
Thats how you learn I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

TBH didn't it work at some point? Boots up Rodent's Revenge

I remember getting a barrotes infection but I think it came in a floppy.

I did that for a friend when he asked me to share my copy of Minecraft with him, holy shit

Maybe the BonziAI has been in control of google for years.

I shudder from the thought of what a petri dish the family computer was back then

My computer class teacher did the opposite

He claimed that you can delete all the big exe files, as they are not needed as just take up space

He'd love demonstrate it on the school computer, but it didn't boot right now, "for some reason"

He was not a good CS teacher

Kind of relieved to see I wasn't the only one who did this!

the computer pic is ai slop :(

Oh yeah, I got that too though DC++ local server. It was "Game_Name trainer.exe" whereas name could be not even from a PC game, but a PS2 exclusive. That shit would generate tons of 1kb exe files of other games in folders like Movies, Music, Downloads and Games, and would slow the fuck down my XP booting speeds if I deleted all of them prior reboot.

Thankfully didnt stole/removed/encrypted anything off my PC.

I think there are games that are simply a single .exe file, so copying that does work, I think I have one in Windows XP era and just left it on the desktop for easy access lol

lmfao, I wonder if the school even check the teacher's background

I think he meant the installer files, not the actual .exe that launched the game, but who knows

yeah, I think he heard the shortcut thing somewhere and completely misunderstood it.

tbf, this is now 25 years ago, so computers were still quite a novelty in regular schools, let alone have teachers that know about them. I think he was just a math teacher before

I remember for my birthday one year I wanted the Sega CD Memory card/cartridge thing. It was literally just a memory card BUT I thought it was some magical tool, officially licensed/made by Sega mind you, where I could then go to blockbuster and rent games and it would then SAVE those games...in their entirety...to the memory cartridge. thus allowing me to have a bunch of games without paying full price for them. This is what I believed the thing did. that was my birthday present. a memory card.

To be fair, a lot of adults were doing this too back then. Especially when BonziBuddy was a thing. And thanks to them, is why we openly accept programs with adware today. "hOw eLsE aER tHeY GuN mAkE moNeY FoR It?".

Nah you're just a bug chaser

So I just always find it funny some pirates around some communities, get such an egotistical stroking of themselves when they make bold claims as to not having screwed up. They did, just don't want to mention it.

To be fair, it was pretty easy to not screw up with early piracy. Just don't download or run any executables and you were pretty much safe. Back in the day, you didn't even need a VPN. I've screwed up far more recently than I did back then.

My favorite screw up was the time my mom got a C&D for me pirating the movie "Law Abiding Citizen". Awful movie but if I still had that letter I would frame it.

This is me still accidentally downloading cam versions of movies.

Is your keyboard not a bunch of asymmetrical keys melded together?

Also modern piracy: "Don't even try to use our private tracker system,"

My worst case wasn't even my piracy.

At my previous job (like 15+ years ago now), the owner asked me to fix his daughter's laptop.

So I went about doing that.

And stupidly, I connected it to the network, and within minutrs, people were complaining the network was down.

The laptop was apparently blasting out so much spam, the ISP blacklisted us and blocked us.

I'm convinced that private trackers are the pirating equivalent to snipe hunting.

Like, I'm sure they exist, but mostly just for sake of trolling casuals who aren't willing to spend hours and hours min-maxxing their client and torrent list.

Those kinds of things existed in Japan. The Famicom Disk System is probably the most notable example, but I think there were equivalents for the 16-bit consoles

Honestly, that one's on Microsoft. There's basically no value to copying a symlink to a separate disk other than to copy the source. They have all the necessary information to resolve that logic, but chose not to.

Yupp I always use a separate system for piracy and anyone that doesn't is absolutely playing with fire.

There is a folder on your PC containing lots of junk from the old 32 bit era that you don't need on modern PCs: system32.

So if you need some disc space ...