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I remember being nearly murdered by my parents after they received the phone bill via the (physical, paper-based in those days :-) ) mail. The minitel promptly
by louissan 5y ago
I remember being nearly murdered by my parents after they received the phone bill via the (physical, paper-based in those days :-) ) mail.
The minitel promptly was locked out of reach of the family's children ....
still, good days. They even had games!
36.15 ...
- jpoesen 5y agoA little too much of 3615 ZAZA perhaps?
- louissan 5y agohah I wish I could have. But... in hindsight ... no. Teenage wet fantasies and all that :-)
- thamer 5y agoFor context for "36.15": you would access Minitel services by typing a numeric code followed by a short textual name, the most common code being 3615. Advertisements for Minitel services would say something like "Dial 3615 HOTSTUFF to meet a passionate lover". A lot of these services were adult chat, games, or extremely low-res porn, and it was easy to rack up a massive phone bill by connecting to them (you'd have to remember to disconnect, too!). Another very common use cases was phone book lookups. Think of it as a physical terminal for a ncurses-style terminal app using a remote client, with the display updating line by line with a scanning cursor as you received data. There's an example of what that looked like in this short documentary about Minitel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlUmxUB9RhI&t=500s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlUmxUB9RhI&t=500s – every single page loaded line by line that way.
- glandium 5y agoMore precisely, the minitel would call 36 15, which would open a page on which you type the short textual name and press enter, which would then connect you to the service you want. And the terminal would tell you the cost per minute of the service.
- xwolfi 5y agoYeah my switch from minitel to internet was quick when my parents compared the bills lol.