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Exploding the Phone

Started by cfpyne, March 01, 2013, 11:44:56 AM

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Greg G.

I'm about half-way through the book.  I got a kick out of this paragraph in chapter 14, page 207:

QuoteThat April, Tom Duffy [Security Agent for New York Telephone] made another trip to Acker's house.  This time he ripped out Acker's touch-tone phone, replacing it a rotary dial one.  Acker was aghast.  "Rotary dial!" he wailed, but Acker's mom was actually kind of pleased.  "She could never understand why anyone would want to push buttons when God intended us to spin a dial," he says.
The idea that a four-year degree is the only path to worthwhile knowledge is insane.
- Mike Row
e

Greg G.

#16
Still reading this book every chance I get, mostly during breaks at work.  I was a teenager during most of this, in the same general area as some of the key players and could very well have become a "phone phreak" had I been introduced to it.  Maybe.

Every time the book starts to sound like it's getting dull, the author brings you back from the abyss.  This reads like good cloak & dagger writing.

Couple things I was wondering about.  In the northern burbs of Seattle where I grew up, in the mid-60s (GTE territory) I often made calls to my cousin in Canada by dialing directly.  It didn't take long to figure out how to make free calls because when I dialed the number, an operator would come on the line and ask for the number I wanted to bill to.  Well, it didn't take much thinking or electronic gadgets to figure out that since they apparently didn't know what number I was calling from for billing purposes, to just pick one at random out of the phone book.  There was never any repercussions that I recall, other than speculation that when the owner of the phone number got their bill, they disputed it and the phone company dropped it from their bill.  You would think that when that happened, the phone company would try to collect from the receiving end (my cousin), but I never heard anything like that.  I'm sure I would have, because Uncle Dave was a real skinflint, he would have raised holy $hit.

The other thing I was wondering about is something I just ran across today.  I was assuming that "phone phreaking" was long dead as a hobby due to technology, but I came across this notation on a website while trying to find out who/what a repeat junk call was coming from.  It mentions a "switch number" of interest to "phone hobbyists" (see screen capture).
The idea that a four-year degree is the only path to worthwhile knowledge is insane.
- Mike Row
e

rp2813

My apologies for not getting back to this thread sooner.

I can't find the newspaper article I read about ending land line (copper) service but did google up some links.  Here's one of them: 

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/verizon-would-end-century-of-regulation-by-killing-wireline-phone-says-ny-ag/

It took me a while to start the book and I only have about 30 minutes per day to read, so it's been slow going.  I've enjoyed the book thus far, and have just finished the chapter covering the beginning of the end for Xbar switches.  I found the author's description of the 30' long electronic prototype and his related quote about Bell Labs' engineers beating an idea to death very amusing.
Ralph