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Installing a payphone in my house

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Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#151

Post by brk »

mattlondon wrote: post #101

I remember doing something similar to get ISP access in the early 90s. Like AOL various ISPs would be bundled into CDs/floppies and offer a free trial. One of them did not validate the card number, so you could just type in 000000000000 or whatever and your free trial was enabled for a month or whatever and then be auto cancelled when they tried to bill for your first month after the trial. In the UK though local cal…

When the first Palm VII's came out (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_VII) I wanted to see how responsive the wireless connectivity was before buying one. The local Staples store had a functional demo unit, but it had no subscription. So I tried signing up with random info, when it got to entering a card number, I entered 4111 1111 1111 1111, which passes the basic validation checks for a visa (and is obviously easy to remember). The device activated immediately and I was able to try some live data transfers. It worked for about 3 days (I went back to check it out of curiosity).

Presumably the activation of service happened locally in the device, or with minimal cross-checking with the backend billing service.

A few months later I tried it on another unit and the number no longer worked for activation :)

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#152

Post by eternityforest »

bmitc wrote: post #52

That's a really awesome story with a great opening, middle, and especially the end, if one ignores the adolescent fraud. I think it really highlights the simple joy that technology that literally just works can bring. I'm around the same age as the author, a little younger in fact, but there's just something about today's Internet and a lot of the overwhelming amount of technology that just isn't fun or memorable. Fr…

I think the technology itself is 100x better in just about every way(Except for pure novelty, smartphones largely killed true gadgets)

The lack of fun, to me, is mostly because of how everything changed around it.

I can make a basic website now, no problem, everything is easier than it was aside from the fact we pretty much have to have HTTPS.

But, nobody will read it, because it will be lost in a sea of clickbait. I will have a hard time writing it, because I will be distracted by the sea of clickbait, and worst of all, I'll have a hard time finding things to write about.

And of course, the very fact it all does work so incredibly well, with a Sci-fi level of polish, means... it's no longer new. Most of it is being a cruise ship tourist, not an Arctic explorer.

Because the internet is dead without the offline stuff that gives it meaning.

It's like, binoculars and a field notes book with nobody to spy on, the perfect party where nobody shows up, or a spreadsheet showing all the customers someone doesn't have.

I think it's just like the idea of set and setting.

The internet/tech/coding/etc is the drug, and we lost all the cultural context, so now it's less "A beer at the bonfire with friends" and more "I had a bottle of wine alone because I don't know what else to do with myself".

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#153

Post by hibbelig »

avg_dev wrote: post #145
hibbelig wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once made a call from a pay phone and after I was done it rang. I picked up. A very nice lady told me I had not paid enough and whether I could please put in another quarter or whatever. That was an interesting experience. In my mind I thought that pay phones were fully automated, especially the count the money part.

You can't leave us in suspense, we need to know whether you coughed up the dough or not.

:-) Of course I did.

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#155

Post by duckmysick »

wildmanx wrote: post #141
bmitc wrote: post #52

That's a really awesome story with a great opening, middle, and especially the end, if one ignores the adolescent fraud. I think it really highlights the simple joy that technology that literally just works can bring. I'm around the same age as the author, a little younger in fact, but there's just something about today's Internet and a lot of the overwhelming amount of technology that just isn't fun or memorable. Fr…

> but there's just something about today's Internet and a lot of the overwhelming amount of technology that just isn't fun or memorable. That's right -- modern age stuff isn't as _hackable_. Especially not at the hardware level. You get an Alexa or a mobile phone or a camera, it's all just a chip on a PCB in a plastic case, not intended to be fiddled with by anybody (not the owner, not some repair show, literally _no…

> In the past you turned on your C64 and could start write away code, average Joe Teenager needs to install some IDE and pull in hundreds of NPM dependencies from shady places just to show a hello world.

Or he could open a console in his web browser.

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#156

Post by lrvick »

Being able to disconnect when I leave my home office is how I stay happy and productive, and rejecting "app culture" by ditching my smartphone last year has been a big part of that.

Still sometimes I need to make an outgoing call to some customer support line or other such nonsense that only works over "the phone".

Back in the day before cellphones were an option I would sometimes use a payphone for these edge cases, but they basically no longer exist.

I had already canceled my cell phone subscriptions a couple years ago and ported my one remaining cell number to a VoIP provider. This lets me get SMS over email for dumb services I can't avoid like banks that insist on using SMS verification still.

Given that setup had worked well, I decided for rare life edge cases that still require classic phone system voice calls I could also get a VoiP ATA box and route calls to it. This let me setup some "dumb" landline phones at home, the first which logically had to be a payphone, which is now installed and working in my home office as of a few months ago, and I love it.

It is visible in most of my work video calls and people are often skeptical that it really works. Some call it to test are amazed it works fine. It amuses me.

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#157

Post by theginger »

hibbelig wrote: post #87
jjeaff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it literally just the sound of money dropping that validated the call? Presumably this was before automatic switching and a live operator had to connect you?

I once made a call from a pay phone and after I was done it rang. I picked up. A very nice lady told me I had not paid enough and whether I could please put in another quarter or whatever. That was an interesting experience. In my mind I thought that pay phones were fully automated, especially the count the money part.

Someone across the street could have been messing with you. This sounds like it was from a time where you could ask to borrow a bars phone to make a free local call and it could be worth someone's while crossing the street to collect a quarter.

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#158

Post by franga2000 »

b112 wrote: post #134
franga2000 wrote: post #112

Just last month I got the opportunity to assist with an art installation that involved a phonebooth, which meant I got to take one home and poke around its insides. It was some of the most delightfully 90s tech I've seen in a while - 2-layer PCBs, all through-hole components, only a few well-known ICs... I ended up carefully removing all the "brains" and hooking up the insides to a raspberry pi, which could join a Di…

Seems weird, to me, that you would need a card. Every phone booth I've used took dimes, then quarters. Some, near the end, could take a credit card or a telco card. I presume you could buy the cards back in the day, anywhere and easily?

For at least the last 25 years of operation, all of our phone booths only took smartcards that you could buy in basically any store or news stand.

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#159

Post by thereddaikon »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #135
WalterBright wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing has not improved one iota in the 30 years I've had a cell phone - the voice quality.

At some point we may need a new name for that rectangle shaped thing that we use for everything but hardly for calling people anymore. Maybe smartbrick?

PocketPC.

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#160

Post by b112 »

guerrilla wrote: post #126
hnbad wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of movies these antics were confined to a specific (wealthy, male, usually white) demographic, though. Likewise a lot of 80s movies happily depict "funny" antics that would even at the time have been considered sexual assault or rape if the perps weren't wealthy white college "boys". Sure, culture has become more sensitive to these things overall and criminal prosecution of credit card fraud and computer crim…

> Outside of movies these antics were confined to a specific (wealthy, male, usually white) demographic, though. Um no, definitely not. > Sure, culture has become more sensitive to these things overall Decades of fearmongering in media, omnipresent surveillance and the buying off of all competent hackers did a good job of that.

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