[HN Gopher] Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987
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Bill Atkinson doxxed Douglas Adams in 1987
Author : harryvederci
Score : 32 points
Date : 2024-11-03 21:19 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (not.withoutdistractions.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (not.withoutdistractions.com)
| johndoe0815 wrote:
| Looks like it were the real addresses, see
| https://www.housebeautiful.com/uk/lifestyle/property/news/a1...
| harryvederci wrote:
| Haha awesome, thanks for looking it up!
| ccppurcell wrote:
| Phone number looks right too. Correct format for London at
| the time and apparently 01-359 was the Canonbury telephone
| exchange, which is almost certainly the closest to Duncan
| Terrace!
| pydry wrote:
| Looks like a different address close by - on a street parallel
| to upper street.
| agsnu wrote:
| Listed as the "new address" in the screenshot...
| jhbadger wrote:
| >I read somewhere that Douglas Adams (writer of The Hitchhiker's
| Guide to the Galaxy) was the first person in Europe to own an
| Apple II computer.
|
| Not the 1977 Apple II, but the 1984 Macintosh. Adams owned a
| variety of computers from the obscure DEC Rainbow, to the also-
| obscure Apricot, to the BBC Micro, but as far as I know he never
| owned an Apple II, but he was a fan of the Macintosh from the
| first time he saw it and even wrote in the "about the author"
| section of his books that he "lived with a lady barrister and an
| Apple Macintosh".
| sedatk wrote:
| IIRC, he wrote some of his books on a PowerBook.
| fsckboy wrote:
| pre internet, your name, address, and phone number would
| published in the widely distributed telephone book.
|
| if you were a big celebrity, you could get an "unlisted" number
| (I think you had to pay for it), but that was relatively rare.
|
| you might recall, the opening of the original Terminator film
| (1984, same time period) hinges on this idea: the robot has a
| name and a city, he tears that page out of a phone book in a
| phone booth, and starts visiting the addresses one by one.
|
| it's how we all lived (minus the killer robot), and it didn't
| seem strange at all. Women who lived alone frequently would have
| just their first initial instead of name, but that was not for
| fear of "stalkers", it was for fear of potential "heavy
| breathing" annoyance calls late at night.
| jockm wrote:
| Anyone could pay to have an unlisted number, it wasn't crazy
| expensive in the US at least
| donatj wrote:
| My mom worked in corrections and after an incident with one
| of her coworkers getting attacked at home, we got an unlisted
| number.
|
| I remember as a teen being very irritated that people could
| no longer find me in the phone book.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| haha was not aware "heavy breathing" calls were a thing
| nervousvarun wrote:
| I'm an old and your comment made me realize "prank calls"
| basically no longer exist.
|
| This was an enormous cultural phenomenon that existed for
| decades (at least in America) and somewhat quietly has
| completely died off.
|
| For anyone who might know, were prank calls as much of thing
| in 50s-90s Europe? Asia? Honestly don't know but it was
| sortof ever-present in the background of American teenage
| life (it was pretty likely you either were pranked or pranked
| someone else at some point in your adolescent life).
|
| (Yes I realize "heavy breathing" calls are more akin to
| sexual harassment and on the extreme end of the "prank call"
| spectrum)
| Joeboy wrote:
| I used to live nearby. Was always amused by the Hotblack Desiato
| estate agent signs.
| chilmers wrote:
| I still live nearby and am similarly amused. 22 Duncan Terrace
| is an especially nice house, in an area not short of nice
| houses. Clearly Adams had done pretty well from Hitchhikers and
| his other work by the 80s.
|
| Iain M Banks also lived in Islington in the 80s and much of his
| novel Walking on Glass is set in and around the place, and
| include some references to Adams living there.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > But first, let's address the elephant in the room: yes, there
| is a character in _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ named
| Hotblack Desiato. Yes, they are named after us. No, we didn't
| just pull this name out of thin air, it's actually the last
| names of our two founders.
|
| -- https://hotblackdesiato.co.uk/about-us/
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(page generated 2024-11-03 23:00 UTC)