Wank in chat rooms updating electrical wiring cost

Gaining legal access to the web — at that time still essentially an academic and military domain — was incredibly difficult.

There were no Internet Service Providers, cyber cafes or free access points in libraries in 1989 — but there were plenty of not-exactly legal ways for those in the know.

Teenage boys tinkered with these new machines, swapping pirated software on five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks.

They can actually determine whether they are communicating with a male or a female, for example.

, as clients such as pepsi and state farm pulled their advertising due to the issue.

state farm spokesman phil supple said, “we were thoroughly appalled when we were told that our ads were appearing on those sites.

It was, says Dreyfus, a time of experimentation and community in an emergent hacker subculture.

"The Australian computer underground thrived like a vibrant Asian street bazaar," Dreyfus writes in her book.