When I was a dumb kid I pronounced WAREZ a lot like you would the word Juarez.

In '93 or '94 my guitar teacher gave me a floppy with Cakewalk (I think 2, might have been the first version) and Band In a Box on it, and it still had the .NFO files from wherever he downloaded it. That was how I first learned the word "warez" and googling it (well not googling, nobody used google yet if it even existed at that point, I probably used Alta Vista) when we got internet access a year or two later is how I started to learn what the Internet was all about.

World Wide Warez Board -> Seanbaby's NES page -> Portal Of Evil

And now you're stuck with me.

The mid to late 90s was a wondrous time for software pirates on warez sites. Sometimes I downloaded shit just cause it was free, not cause I wanted or was intending to use it.

^pretty much. I was a sysop (ahh, I miss that word) of a "BULLETIN BOARD" from 7th-12th grade and hosted some warez n' crackz and crackist guides and of course the forbidden *unabridged* anarchist's cookbook etc.

I really miss the days when social media was created by people. It was also a time where you could mess around with computers online and not be completely destroyed by Russian gangs within minutes. There's so much bad shit out there right now, and Kaspersky anti-virus is not going to protect you from a whole lot of it (there's no patch for stupid/naive, in any case). I don't know why anybody lets their children use the internet.

Remember the days when you only had to worry about viruses if you downloaded shit off some shady site and not from just using the internet in any way no matter how benign.

God bless you, and this video.

Thank you for cluing me in on that gem!

Paul Schindler was the wacky weatherman of Computer Chronicles.