Cory Doctorow
Spoontaneous Consumption@pluralistic
And it's all the Phreakers' fault! Damn freeloaders 😡
Den of Earth@manu @pluralistic
I knew a guy in the 80s who would make collect calls from Canada to a payphone in France. When his girlfriend answered, she would say she accepted the charges, but the Canadian operator didnt know that there was no such mechanism in France so they would have long free talks at a time when international calls were expensive and neither Skype nor the Internet existed.
I knew a guy in the 80s who would make collect calls from Canada to a payphone in France. When his girlfriend answered, she would say she accepted the charges, but the Canadian operator didnt know that there was no such mechanism in France so they would have long free talks at a time when international calls were expensive and neither Skype nor the Internet existed.
TonyC@DenOfEarth @manu @pluralistic I heard a story once about a British expat living in the Caribbean. He had arranged for his club in London to phone him with a morning alarm call. A friend heard of this arrangement and asked him, "Isn't that rather expensive?". "Oh, I never pick up the phone" was his answer.
ALAN LAVENDER@phlebas @DenOfEarth @manu @pluralistic I knew of an Art Director in London who used to shoot with my boss when I was a young photographic assistant in the 80s. Rather than pay the cost of London parking meters or garages he would just drive to the doorstep of his first appointment (he drove in from out of town), park his Bentley on the pavement outside then collect it several days later from the car pound where it had been clamped and removed to. He maintained it was cheaper than parking. Probably the same guy.
Frikisada@phlebas @DenOfEarth @manu @pluralistic I don't remember the details anymore, but my mom and one of my aunts had a system. Depending on number of tones and time of day, they meant one thing or the other (i.e. 2 tones at around 9am meant I'm going to the bakery meet me in 10 minutes to go for groceries together)
Philip Moscovitch@DenOfEarth @manu @pluralistic Many years ago in Budapest, some other backpackers told us about a payphone on the outskirts of town that let you make free international calls. We used it a couple of times to call home. One day, there was a Hungarian guy calling his girlfriend, who lived outside the country. He begged us to please not overuse the phone or tell others about it, because it was his lifeline and he didn't want to lose it. We did not go back.
@manu @pluralistic
Another early form of (legit, sorry!) free calls was the old Zenith numbers. This predated the 800 toll free lines. You had to call the operator and ask to be connected to the 5-digit number you wanted.
A company I worked for in the 80s still had a Zenith number published in the white pages even though it had long been disconnected. We tried calling it and were greeted with a very suspicious "and WHO are you trying to reach???" - we hung up.
abcderian@DenOfEarth @manu @pluralistic Is this something different from the abbreviations they used to use for all phone numbers? They used to use the letters associated with the digits as a quick code for operators - for instance, in Central New York there was an exchange that began 756 or 753: those numbers were referenced as 'Skyline', so to call 756-8413 (made up number, do not call!) You would ask the operator for 'Skyline 6-8413'.
Anyone remember Beechwood 4-5789?
According to the Wikipedia article, Zenith numbers were so called because the letter Z was on the number zero (edit, or it should be, see pic), which would take you to the operator you needed in the first place.
Geoff Winkless@DenOfEarth @manu @pluralistic my dad used to tell me a story of how he and his friends got cheap calls from old UK payphones.
In those days, local calls were much cheaper than national; critically, "local" also included the geographical neighbour codes to the local area.
AIUI the paid rate was based on an (inaudible) signal from the exchange.
They worked out that you could hop from area to area by chaining area codes. As long as each exchange saw a local code, it would remain at local rate.
Billy Smith@Geoff @DenOfEarth @manu @pluralistic
There was a recording that i listened to in the early 1990's, called the Sounds Of Britain.
When rotary phones were still a thing, the exchanges used a similar mechanism. You could hear the clicks as the mechanism operated.
If you started dialling an adjacent area code before the first one had finished dialling through, so as long as you knew the numbers, you could dial all the way around the coastline of Britain, and then dial your own phone number. :D
@Geoff @DenOfEarth @manu @pluralistic
When you heard your own number start to ring, you had to hang up your phone.
Then within a few minutes you phone would ring, and when you answered it, all you would hear was the clangs and clicks of closing electro-mechanical connections. :D
Someone played me a tape of it in the early 90's, but i've never been able to find a copy since then. :D
Vaguely here 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈@BillySmith @Geoff @DenOfEarth @manu @pluralistic I still have my dad's exchange index which was exactly the sort of thing you wanted to pull off this kind of trick... Amongst other things ;) https://flic.kr/p/eixfQt
Telephone Exchange Index
Ursidinoj/The Bjornsdottirs
RealGene ☣️@manu @pluralistic
My sister and I built a couple of Black Boxes so she could call home from college (pre SS7). The box worked by limiting the circuit voltage enough to stop the ring signal, but not enough to signal that the receiver was lifted.
So, you were basically talking over a circuit that Bell thought was ringing unanswered.
If we talked more than about 5 minutes, there was a good chance an operator would cut in to ask why we were letting it ring for so long…