190 DEAR HACKER

190 DEAR HACKER

Dear 2600:

I have a comment and a story to relate. First, my comment: Keep up the good work! I don’t know if I really consider myself a hacker as such (I’m a scientist), but I love learning about the technology around me.

I firmly believe that knowledge, like anything else, can be used for good or evil; my son can verify that. I hereby salute you for providing knowledge to the masses!

Secondly, I want to pass on this story. My wife and I were driving around Leesburg, VA on Route 15 and we came to an intersection with something funny going on. All four stop lights were red and each had bright white strobing lights blinking on and off very quickly. In addi- tion, traffic was beginning to pile up on all four sides. Understandably, nobody wanted to go through a red light. Neither of us had ever seen anything remotely similar to this before. Luckily, I remembered read- ing about how the police and fire departments change the lights green by using an infrared strobe and I might be able to simulate this by flashing the brights. So, I told my wife to flash the brights. What did we have to lose? Well she did it and only our traffic light turned green! Needless to say, that little trick gained me much respect in her eyes and got the traffic moving again. Those other folks might still be sitting there! Too bad for them. Maybe they should read 2600!

Dr. Bob Germantown, MD

Dear 2600:

I stopped war dialing for about a year and recently I got back into it. I soon realized that war dialing was not going to be as easy as it used to be. The first number I dialed, a voice picked up and said, “Hello? Hello?” This is what I was used to. As soon as my computer hung up the line and got ready to dial the next number, I received an incoming call. It was the guy I just war dialed. I was surprised—Call Return (*69) had totally slipped my mind. I have tried to war dial a couple of times since then but the same thing happens. The modem is not able to dial out because the line is tied up with all the angry incoming calls.

TECHNOLOGY

I am able to block Caller ID with the handy *82 disable number, but what can I do about Call Return? Ty Osborn

Guy At The Desk Since you’re obviously in a part of the country where blocking (*67) does not dis-

able *69, we have an alternate solution. Get call forwarding on your line so that when people call you back, it goes someplace else and doesn’t interfere with your dialing. That’s a marketing angle the phone companies are unlikely to pursue.

Dear 2600: When walking around a strip mall, I heard a beeping sound. It sound-

ed like a beeper, but faster. I looked around and no one was there. But there was a NYNEX payphone! It was beeping. I picked up the receiver and it stopped. So I dialed my friend’s house and I heard the “Thank You for Using NYNEX” recording. It didn’t ask for any money, the call didn’t go through, and when I hung up the phone, it started beeping again! What could this be?

PoT-UsA Sounds like one of NYNEX’s new phones was in some sort of trouble. These

models are almost exactly like COCOTs and a number of them cut off the touch tone pad after only a few digits. When you pick up the receiver, you hear a fake dial tone. After you actually dial the number, the phone grabs a real dial tone and makes the call. It sounds like this phone was having trouble getting a real dial tone so it started screaming for help.