4 ms·

The public switched telephone network is a huge, complicated, and arcane network that spans the entire globe. Its language is incantations of tones and pulses r

by dwyerm 10y ago

The public switched telephone network is a huge, complicated, and arcane network that spans the entire globe. Its language is incantations of tones and pulses responded to with more tones and clicks. It feels magical! Someone who knows the right arcane magic words can end up on the other side of the planet. Meanwhile, your opponents are often seen as bumbling and unprepared. I can't think of any other system that so closely pairs intelligent exploration with the feelings of discovery. ...or, at least, that's my thought on the matter.

chillingeffect 10y ago
yes part of the magic was that there were so many different types of systems to get into. It was much, much more than just the 10 digit phone numbers. There was the parallel Blue Box system. There were mysterious things called "0488s," entry points to satellite systems, strange networks, loops, lots and lots of company voicemail systems, various ways to "extend" or evade traces, access points to service console to give yourself phone numbers, etc. In fact, almost all of the stuff, like conferences was in normal use by corporations during the day and crawled over by teenagers at night :) Even just payphones had numerous ways to be hacked.
peckrob 10y ago
This is a bit how the Internet and the early web felt to me as a teenager in the mid 90s. When most people in my high school could barely turn a computer on, I felt like a wizard who knew about an entire secret world, and it was awesome. I could dial into my local mom and pop ISP and be playing a MUD with people from three different continents at the same time. I think in those days I had more online friends from MUDs, IRCs and talkers than I did in "RL." Or just surfing to random servers and seeing what was out there. In a time before Google indexed damn near everything, a lot of the Internet was just exploration and finding random, crazy or awesome things. One night I found a page from a professor at Purdue about lighting grills on fire with liquid oxygen. Thankfully, my parents were good sports about all this and eventually got a second phone line installed. Probably because they got tired of me always tying up our main line with an Internet connection.

by dwyerm 10y ago

chillingeffect 10y ago

yes part of the magic was that there were so many different types of systems to get into. It was much, much more than just the 10 digit phone numbers. There was the parallel Blue Box system. There were mysterious things called "0488s," entry points to satellite systems, strange networks, loops, lots and lots of company voicemail systems, various ways to "extend" or evade traces, access points to service console to give yourself phone numbers, etc. In fact, almost all of the stuff, like conferences was in normal use by corporations during the day and crawled over by teenagers at night :) Even just payphones had numerous ways to be hacked.

peckrob 10y ago

This is a bit how the Internet and the early web felt to me as a teenager in the mid 90s. When most people in my high school could barely turn a computer on, I felt like a wizard who knew about an entire secret world, and it was awesome. I could dial into my local mom and pop ISP and be playing a MUD with people from three different continents at the same time. I think in those days I had more online friends from MUDs, IRCs and talkers than I did in "RL." Or just surfing to random servers and seeing what was out there. In a time before Google indexed damn near everything, a lot of the Internet was just exploration and finding random, crazy or awesome things. One night I found a page from a professor at Purdue about lighting grills on fire with liquid oxygen. Thankfully, my parents were good sports about all this and eventually got a second phone line installed. Probably because they got tired of me always tying up our main line with an Internet connection.