You're absolutely right, but these new forms just don't seem as magical as the old in-band signaling. I can only imagine the thrill of discovering the right ton

You're absolutely right, but these new forms just don't seem as magical as the old in-band signaling. I can only imagine the thrill of discovering the right tones to play into the receiver to make Ma Bell do your bidding. Slowly mapping the network and figuring out what trunks connect where, finding the secret phone numbers that only telephone repair people are supposed to use, etc. It just seems kind of lame to set up a SIP gateway and (ab)use the naive ANI/CLID facilities. I mean, it is the "correct" way to hack the PSTN these days, but it just isn't as cool.