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In the Middle Ages, when Internet access wasn't in your pocket all the time, I was in a hostel which had Internet kiosks, you'd put a coin in a machine, and the PC would start 2 browser windows: 1 with just a countdown, and one for you to browse. You'd have to put more coins or when the time ends the browser would be killed.

Of course there was nothing else in the UI except this window and the browser, but on ancient Firefox, in the print window you had the option to specify the command line to print. I tried "xterm", hit "Print", and voila, a prompt!

Using ps, I managed to figure out the difference between the unpaid browser and the paid one, and next time around I could launch a browsing session without payment...




This is excellent, and while I’m guessing that you could have paid, browsed and moved on with less effort, that wasn’t the point.


that's pretty low effort, so not really. but cool. win-win.




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