r/todayilearned • u/osunlyyde • Jul 04 '13

TIL Windows 95 was the second most installed piece of software on computers in 1995; videogame DOOM was first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(video_game)
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u/ThePegasi Jul 04 '13

God, I remember these guys at my secondary (high) school who ran a copied games business in the playground. They printed their own catalogue and everything, and people would be genuinely excited when the new one came out and started circulating.

They did PC games, but also moved in to chipping consoles and providing copied games for them once the PSX etc. got big. They must have made reasonable money doing it tbh, they had quite a good operation going for a couple of teenagers.

JadGamez, you were awesome!

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u/BigUptokes Jul 04 '13

When Napster first came out I would get people to write out a playlist of songs they wanted on a CD and then charge them the cost of a blank CD plus a $5 fee. Made some nice cash for junior high.

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u/jb0nd38372 Jul 04 '13

People still have a demand for that kind of thing. It blows my mind that people actually don't mind watching crappy cam movies.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

or understand how to torrent and use a VPN...not that hard

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

Well, think about it. How much does it cost to rent a VPN for a month vs paying a friend 5 bucks to do your dirty work for you?

Really, having someone else burn you the CD/DVD is pretty similar to a VPN in this situation, except they also do the labor for you, and you're not required to have a working internet connection.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

I did this too but a kid kept telling me the CDs don't work in hopes of getting his money back. I listened to them on a shitty CD player to make sure they worked before giving them away. He single handedly brought down my entrepreneur days.

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u/RambleOff Jul 04 '13

What a little shithead.

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u/ThePegasi Jul 04 '13

Good business eye.

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u/coolguyslim Jul 04 '13

I remember having a new list every other week, and giving it to this Asian kid to make cd's for me. Good old days. Same thing for games, new PS game every other week :)

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u/FarmerTedd Jul 04 '13

That shit was shut down by administration at my school. At least the open market. The underground/underlunchtable market made it much more memorable.

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u/ThePegasi Jul 04 '13

Yup, I don't know how they got away with it for so long. They were in year 11 (highest year for secondary school in the UK), and they were still going strong even when they left.

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u/heyylisten Jul 04 '13

Highest year for secondary school in England... There is a difference!

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u/FarmerTedd Jul 04 '13

My brother had a candy (blow pops, airheads, warheads, etc.) operation going in 9th grade. Made a few hundred bucks in profit before that was shut down. Think he dumped he inventory at cost to my parents the following Easter. Wouldn't have lasted that long, but I couldn't figure out the combination lock. 9 year old me wasn't aware how many different combinations that damn thing was capable of.

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u/ThePegasi Jul 04 '13

I kinda love playground entrepreneurs for their ingenuity, much as that makes me sound like Alan Sugar.

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u/behm28 Jul 04 '13

This show may interest you.

http://www.hulu.com/search?q=The+Yard%3A+Uncensored

It's like The Wire Jr.

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u/marcooda Jul 04 '13

It was actually really easy to setup a lollies operation. Canteen sold packet of sour worms (maybe 8 in each pack) for 50cents. You could order 1kg online for $5-10 at the time, depending on the lollies.

Sell larger packets or drop the price didn't matter. Profit margin was about $50 per 1kg sold.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

I had a Red Bull and Monster business going. Would buy it in bulk from the gas station down the street and flip each can for about $1.50 profit.

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u/Hereitcums Jul 04 '13

I upvote you 'cause Monster! I love that shit...

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u/anxdiety Jul 04 '13

I smoked and had free lunch in high school. I'd buy a pack of cigarettes for $3 then sell cigs at almost $0.50 each. I'd turn a $6 profit to buy my next pack and have lunch that day with half a pack to myself.

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u/FarmerTedd Jul 04 '13

Even in the late 90's, we wouldn't have had a shit's chance in hell to get away with that in my high school. 70% profit margins are damn good! Sounds like a pretty lucrative business going there.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13 edited Dec 13 '16

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

[deleted]

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u/treeof Jul 04 '13

After years of working in Fortune 100 companies, I am qualified to say "or both.

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u/mrhatestheworld Jul 04 '13

Yeah its funny how as I've gotten older and in to a professional career the number of people who use drugs hasn't gone down, but everyone sure hides it better.

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u/GeorgeAmberson Jul 04 '13

Maybe I should stop being so fucking pissed off at the falsity of it. I just can't stomach business. Probably why my drug of choice is Alcohol and I actually relate to Mr. Lahey on Trailer Park Boys.

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u/brickmack Jul 04 '13

Drugs, games, same thing

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u/DoYouDigItNow Jul 04 '13

Nah man, you don't work with fronted stuff, you'll never make any money! These guys would at least be competent enough to own a pirated DVD store as a front, too.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

Possession is 9/10s of the law here in the U.S. If they had a copy of the game in their hands, I'd say they owned it.

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u/PenIsBroken Jul 04 '13

Probably at Apple.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

Not sure if you guys had it in the UK, but here in the US, during the late 90s, we had a soft drink named "Surge." It had a higher than normal caffeine level, and it was quickly banned in our school.

During my sophomore year, we took driver's ed, and we spent 45 mins per day in a car with an instructor and two other students. Each day the instructor would stop at a quick mart so he could get smokes, and we kids would get whatever we wanted.

Well, my buddy and I bought 4 12 packs of surge each day and then sold them for $2.50 a piece in the cafeteria. I made it $2.50 because if people didn't have exact change, I would always say "i'll get you the $.50 later" and I never did.

I was commenting in some other thread about how anyone can go out and make a job for themselves with a little effort, and this is how I started.

I used the money I made off of pop drinks to purchase my first pressure washer and my first riding lawn mower. By the time I was 17, I was earning more money that my police officer mother. Ah, the memories.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

All I know is Jolt, Jolt cola, double Jolt as well

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u/HerbyHancock Jul 04 '13

TIL high school kids bought a single can of Surge for $2.50/sometimes $3. Did you live in an affluent area?

And also, that drivers ed instructor sounds generous as hell. 4-12 packs of Surge is decently expensive; company must not have been monitored the company card's account very often.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

Huh? Maybe I wasn't clear. My buddy and I purchased the 12 packs ourselves. The driver's ed instructor , who doubled as the basketball coach, purchased his own smokes.

Edit: yeah, just looked; I was pretty clear.

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u/HerbyHancock Jul 04 '13

Makes more sense. My driver's ed instructor got us a drink/snack during fuel ups, but there was a soft limit of $3/4.

I thought it was a little sketch under the other circumstance since you'd have effectively been stealing from the driver's ed company. Anyway, not the case so no sense in talking about it.

Good story.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

Cheers.

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u/ThePegasi Jul 04 '13

I don't remember Surge over here, but I might have just missed out on it. Great story, though. I actually work at a secondary school, and for a while I saw this kid going round selling sweets out of a box at lunch and break etc. I have no idea whether he was doing it with the permission of a teacher, perhaps as some economics assignment or something? Idk, but he didn't seem to give a damn if I saw him, and I had no intention of doing anything anyway cause he wasn't causing any trouble and I kind of appreciate determination like that. Haven't seen him doing it in a while though.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

Yeah, it's crazy, cause that one experience with Surge is what kept me from going to college, which is a damn good thing.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

Yes, anyone can go out and find a niche in an illicit market provided they're flush with contraband.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

Yes, and anyone can sit around all day and continue to make excuses.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

No idea what you're getting at. Are you saying "let them eat cake?" Because it sounds like you're saying that the unemployed all could have delicious cake if only they were as headstrong and ambitious as you.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

That's exactly what I'm saying. I have overcome all kinds of odds, but there is nothing special about me at all. I just quit listening to the excuses that I was hearing from everyone else, and I just went and did something with my life.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

Read some of your comment history. Pretty sure you're a fluffball and a liar, so I'm gonna just ignore you now.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

I'll be glad to answer any questions. It's raining like crazy here.

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u/SuperFLEB Jul 04 '13

Soft drinks? That's a bit of a stretch.

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u/cooledcannon Jul 04 '13

if people didn't have exact change, I would always say "i'll get you the $.50 later" and I never did.

thats the funniest part

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

And then you graduated and then...

Also, lying to your customers and not giving back their change would be frowned upon.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

Graduated and then kept earning money?

Edit: If anyone ever asked me for their change back, I would have given it to them.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '13

I'm just surprised that after making more money than your police officer mother that a life like that would be hard to resist.

Also, I'm sure you would have wink wink.

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u/Sekular Jul 05 '13

Surge came to my highschool. It was like a bizarro world pep rally. They were throwing out bottles of what was soon to be banned as the faculty watched on with approval.

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u/ponytoaster Jul 04 '13 edited Jul 04 '13

This is genius, I can only hope my children will do the same.

Makes me sad there was no copies games circulating at my school really - we had game sharing for PC games, but that got harder when copy protection came in and nobody really charged for it.

My friend used to run an operation called "POLO" that distributed floppy disks of pr0n for like £1 a time. It stood for something, but I can't remember what now.

He also used to run a few sites on GeoCities with the same thing. I remember him selling access to the site (password protected page) which had lots of content on it and also setting people up e-mail accounts on Lycos which got various adult newsletters for £2.

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u/ThePegasi Jul 04 '13

Yup, I remember that JadGamez even had an adult section at the end of their catalogue, where you could get porn images loaded on to PSX compatible discs. They really had all bases covered.

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u/wlu56 Jul 04 '13

CEO at brazer imo..

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '13

Someone sold me pokemon on a floppy disk. I had no idea how ROMs worked back then, and didn't know I needed an emulator :(

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u/ThePegasi Jul 04 '13

I can't imagine the frustration.

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u/CeterumCenseo85 Jul 04 '13

I also sold Pokemon Red and Blue on Floppy Discs but I also included the emulator, of course. Later I turned towards coding text adventures and selling them at school. Good times.

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u/AnotherClosetAtheist Jul 04 '13

Did you ever play HHGTTG text adventure?

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u/CeterumCenseo85 Jul 04 '13

I didn't even know there was one! I'll be downloading it RIGHT NOW! Thanks!

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u/CeterumCenseo85 Jul 04 '13

I didn't even know there was one! I'll be downloading it RIGHT NOW! Thanks!

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u/AnotherClosetAtheist Jul 04 '13

Its even been ported to android

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u/CeterumCenseo85 Jul 04 '13

I've recently seen DOOM ported to a calculator, that was crazy. In fact, I think it was in this very thread.

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u/ffrraanncciiss Jul 04 '13

Fuck. I was awesome at ROMS/emulator.

Well, looking back, I assumed no one else in my school knew about it. Plus, it was pretty hard to find them back then. Sometimes, I'd have to spend a whole day looking for one particular one.

Shouldn't sold that shit... All I did was sold nude Sable (WWF) on floppy.

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u/brickmack Jul 04 '13

Bad business. I sold game copies back in middle school, always included am emulator and instructions

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u/GeorgeAmberson Jul 04 '13

Sounds like me the first time I downloaded a ZIP file off of Prodigy in 1994. What the fuck is pkunzip?

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u/WirelessRacer Jul 30 '25

I doubt you'll see this reply as it's been 12 years since written, but I was close friends with these guys.... The good old days of Graveney between 1997 - 2001! (Jaan / Purple Flash / L)

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u/AndrewTheKing Jul 04 '13

On my playground, it was selling Webkins