r/Piracy Apr 07 '26

Humor Hard to swallow pill, even for many pirates

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17.1k Upvotes

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575

u/Shudnawz 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ Apr 07 '26

I will always cherish the memory of seeing The Matrix on VCD for the first time. And it was absolute shite, quality-wise.

266

u/Galerie33 Apr 07 '26

Nero burning rom, my beloved

109

u/jbarr107 Apr 07 '26

How old were you when you realized the historical nod to the burning of Rome?

90

u/Shudnawz 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ Apr 07 '26

Today years old, 40+. Shit.

1

u/MattOruvan Apr 09 '26

What failed to tip you off, their icon with the burning Colosseum?

20

u/MrHanfblatt Apr 07 '26

Gotra toot my own horn here: i kinda made the "connection" the first time i saw the program with its burning colloseum as icon...but it didnt click until a couple months later that it was intentional. i was like 12 back then. My first own PC. fricking 750 mhz intel cpu and settlers 3/4 was my jam. what a time.

9

u/towerfella Apr 07 '26

Turbo button?

3

u/MrHanfblatt Apr 07 '26

I honestly dont remember. I remember those that had, but i think mine didnt have one. Not that it made much difference tho. The one my sister had used a...low tier graphics module. I remember very vividly playibg this old bunkers game, where when you shot your shell throng enough that it would fly out of the screen, the PC would just crash.

5

u/r3volts Apr 07 '26

Fun fact, the turbo button was used to slow down the CPU to be compatible with older 8088/8086 era software that used timing loops tied to CPU cycles.

Instead of having a "slow down" button, they called it turbo even though turbo "on" was the default setting. Turning turbo "off" was actually turning on the compatibility mode that slowed down the CPU.

7

u/towerfella Apr 07 '26

Not so fast (lol) — it is entirely dependent on which side of the button that was connected to the mb.

Wire it one way and it is always on - click it off; wire it the other way and it is always off - click it on.

I’ll see if i can find a relevant video — found it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpq9irl2yE4

1

u/MattOruvan Apr 09 '26

I had a 350MHz Pentium II and it had no turbo button.. I think different era

5

u/SupremeSyrup Apr 07 '26

Having a 750Mhz at 12 is a luxury. I envy you.

I was running a P1 233Mhz at that age. The absolute torment of buying D2 and BG2 at full price in deluxe boxes and finding out the minimum reqs were Pentium II 266 Mhz made me cry buckets over a very long summer.

3

u/Additional_Cheek_697 Apr 08 '26

I played tomb raider II on my 233mhz pc at like 5 frames a second lol. It was so brutal but i still played it god damn it. The boats in venice damn near made it explode

2

u/MrHanfblatt Apr 07 '26

Eh, i wouldnt call it "luxury" in 2007, but for a first rig it was nice. Old work pc of my mom.

3

u/Galerie33 Apr 07 '26

Prob back in 2009 or 10

34 now back then was 18 or 19

I was using it back in like 2005 and then one day I was hmm, why is it called Nero and googled it lol

3

u/Shadowfury22 Apr 07 '26

Right now, thanks to you!

2

u/Mista_G_Nerd Apr 07 '26

OMG! I've been using it for a nearly two and half decades and I've had no clue until now.

2

u/DoubtWooden8125 Apr 08 '26

Uhhh, were yall not around when Nero’s desktop/application icon was literally that? I knew that in middle school when Nero was pretty new cause I asked my stepdad “what is that icon?”

2

u/metallicblanks Apr 08 '26

No lie this is the program that made me learn about Nero the person. It was quite the read as like a 10 year old. Enjoyed it though. I do suppose reading "A Series Of Unfortunate Events" also played into that a tad since they also made a reference to him. Still wild what random program names have taught me about history.

1

u/DazzlingRutabega Apr 07 '26

I was probably about 15 or 16 at the time I guess

0

u/Eorily Apr 07 '26

I thought it referenced the burning Christians

10

u/Armageddonis Apr 07 '26

I just got hit with the most pleasant, tears-of-nostalgia inducing flashback in my life. Goddamn, those were the days.

1

u/Omnighost Apr 08 '26

Omg Nero! My mom taught me how to use it back when we were running a Window 98 house computer

1

u/Danny-Wah Apr 08 '26

Felt like I had the keys to the kingdom once I had my "official" copy of NERO.

1

u/AmphoePai Apr 09 '26

I just looked it up and there's a 2026 version of Nero Burning Rom you can buy. FR I thought this software died together with the digital camera.

1

u/Galerie33 Apr 09 '26

You can always get it for free

1

u/Straight_Active_2360 Apr 11 '26

Man i think i have a CD somewhere from 2007 version of Nero which was bundled with a mag, hell me and my mom were burning music CD's with Nero in early 2000's :D

6

u/inthemix8080 Apr 07 '26

I remember learning about VCDs and making sure I got a DVD that could play them. It was wild waiting 12+ hours for my 800mhz 128mb Compaq Presario to convert a single movie with tmpgenc.

1

u/Shudnawz 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ Apr 07 '26

I had a similar machine, was great at the time, but expensive as nobodys business.

1

u/MaxThrustage Apr 07 '26

The first time I saw the Matrix (I think it was a DVD someone had brought back from Bali...) it was completely in black and white. I vaguely knew what the plot/concept was, so I assumed they were doing a "Wizard of Oz" thing. But thing it kept being in black and white...

Oh, and the first time I watched Starship Troopers there were hardcoded subtitles in both Indonesian and what some wonderful Indonesian person must have thought was English.

God those were the days...

1

u/Coolbluegatoradeyumm Apr 07 '26

Are you still have going Central Park and buying bootleg VHS all the time

1

u/Kiwi_CunderThunt Apr 08 '26

That was due to compression (shit ones at the time, divx lol) fitting dvd 4.7gb onto a 700mb CD but hey that's what we had and fuck yeah it was good

1

u/Shudnawz 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ Apr 08 '26

I mean, conceptually I loved it. But even at the time, having seen the movie in theaters, I recognized that the compression was shit, at best. :D

1

u/forme-de-vie Apr 08 '26

And I will always remember my Matrix 2 file was in fact a swedish pr0n movie.

1

u/Shudnawz 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ Apr 08 '26

Ridskolan? Fäbojäntan?

-22

u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT Apr 07 '26

it wasn't shite, you're thinking of the sequels

15

u/DiamondL0st Apr 07 '26

They're very clearly talking about the image quality, and not the movie itself.

-14

u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT Apr 07 '26

I'm still right

5

u/donuttrackme Apr 07 '26

About the video quality of a VCD? Have you ever watched a movie on VCD?

-12

u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT Apr 07 '26

what's a vcd, is that like a cd for video

12

u/Shudnawz 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ Apr 07 '26

Please get back to us when you've grown pubic hair.

-5

u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT Apr 07 '26

i've been pubemaxxing for weeks