Hacker News Reader

For those who don't know: early phone hackers (phreaks/phreakers) discovered that a 2600hz tone would indicate a trunk was idle, reset and listen for a new call. Since the line was not actually hung up the billing system wouldn't activate leading to free phone calls.

Some people learned to whistle the tone, while others used bird calls, and even a whistle given free by Captain Crunch (the cereal).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2600_hertz

I remember reading about this in iWoz and thinking "WTF! This is serioualy cool".

I'm actually even quite positive I remember hearing Mitnick wasn't allowed to use the phone in prison for some time because they were concerned he could initiate some sort of military attack by whistling into the phone.

I heard this around the age of 14 though- so it's possible my memory is foggy.

true story: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-9995253-83.html

But hopefully we won't need them to reboot the earths core.

Awesome Phreaker reference...nice