Jim’s Recommended Software and Apps

Hello people, my name is Jim (“Hello Jim”, says the other addicts at the meeting), I am addicted to software! Ever since I was introduced to Windows, by my mom of all people, Windows 95 to be exact, when you had to install Windows using 13 x 1.4 MB floppy disks and you got online through your phone landline via a modem’ I’ve been addicted to computers. Not just building and fixing them but addicted to software. I shiver to think of the hours I spent downloading software. Anything and everything that would make Windows run better or anything that would take me to a new world of possibilities and creativity. One of the first “Must Have” programs I remember was called Getright. It was basically a download manager that would automatically reconnect you to the internet and allow you to RESUME downloads. This was huge. Downloads would take hours and there was nothing worse than being half way through a download and lose your connection to the internet and then have to restart the download from the beginning. Another “must have” application from back in the day when burning CD’s was a new thing, was CDRWIN. This was burning software that just so happened to allow you to copy Playstation games. Back when you could rent games from Blockbuster, copy them, and Bob’s Your Uncle, you just got a new game for the price of a rental. Speaking of Piracy, I forget the name of the app, but some freaking genius’s came up with software to reprogram DirecTV Satellite cards, that would unlock all the premium channels and PPV’s. I made a lot of money programming peoples cards, which had to be reprogrammed often because DirecTV would send ECM’s (electronic counter measures) to your receiver that would make your hack inoperable. Thankfully, the geniuses would have a fix, almost instantly, that you just reprogram the card and it’s good for another month or so. Nowadays, you just install Kodi and you can watch movies that are still in theaters and live pay per views like UFC. I was in a software cracking group called PhrozenCrew for a while, only as a tester, which was right up my alley. The geniuses of the crew like tKC, DaVinci and STaRDoGG CHaMPioN and a local member I actually met, DBcooper, would crack programs, upload them to our FTP site, where the testers like me, would download the crack and make sure it worked. Then we would update the .nfo file, package up the crack and distribute them to 0day FTP sites and newsgroups. I’m not ashamed to say, I will always be involved in software piracy. It has and still does allow me to explore so many different programs that I could never afford, such as the G.O.A.T., IMHO, Adobe Photoshop, it’s simply the best. Even the operating system I use today, Windows 11, is pirated and free. So in this blog, I just want to save people some time and recommend software that I have deemed to be ‘Must Have”, through years of testing thousands of programs and downloading countless terrabytes, I think I know what the best applications are for a given task. So, here we go. I hope someone gets some useful info from my rambling on. -Jim