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Talk It Over With Captain Crunch
John T. Draper is most famous as "Captain Crunch," the legendary phone phreak who taught others how to make illicit use of Ma Bell's facilities to call almost anywhere, almost any time, for free. But (as a glance at his personal page will show you), that is just about the least of Draper's accomplishments. Not only that, he's still going strong. This is your chance to talk directly to a man without whom the modern-day personal computer -- and modern hacking and many other things we take for granted -- might not exist at all, and certainly would not exist in their current forms. One question per post please, and try to avoid asking questions that could be answered with a little online research. We'll send 10 or 12 of the highest-moderated questions to Draper tomorrow, and run his answers as soon as he has time to reply.
Here.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
What is music when you despise all sound?
My question for you is do you know the meaning of "run on sentence." Here is a translation of his post that would probably make a better question:
Most hackers have lost sleep over an especially challenging problem at some point. When you were younger I expect that hacking and phreaking was one of these problems for you. Each of us has had different problems that have plagued us but it is the drive and focus that we have in common. Do you still have moments like this and if so, what type of problem grabs you now.
I have (briefly) met the Cap'n, at H2k. He was trying to get boys to come to his room for "massages"; I stayed away from him for the rest of the convention. Admirably good hacker != cool person. (Not sure whether I'd call John "admirably good" or not, but his propositions to people at H2k did strike me as a bit creepy. Of course, H2k also had an "orgy" that flopped -- or at least I assume it did since the organizers were selling T-Shirts the next day to recoup their losses -- and a stick of dynamite thrown from the roof of the hotel.)
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
You dont seem to understand. That data was NOT in libraries until people like Mr Draper discovered and published it.
Ma Bell never wanted to give anybody AT ALL any data on how to interface to a phone jack. That's why AT&T always leased phones. They never sold them. It was only when people started to tinker with the system did they finally figure how to interface to it. That right there is the hacking. And since the phone co was soo reluctant in giving basic info, telco dumpster diving came very popular in getting the manuals for telephone equipment.
It was only in '82 did the phone companies release data to electronics people so they could make their own equipment. I even have the first edition of "Creating Telephone Circuits" published in late '81.
The grammar fascist's question to you is, "Do you know the meaning of grammar?" Here is a translation of the previous post that definitely makes more sense:
Most hackers have lost sleep over an especially challenging problem at some point. When you were younger I expect that you lost sleep over hacking and phreaking. Each of us is plagued by different kinds of problems, but but it is the drive and focus that we have in common. Do you still have moments like this? If you do, what type of problem grabs you now?
Thank you! Thank you! I'm here all week.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
You may rest assured that your professor's judgement was correct. John Draper is indeed, a butt raper, as well as a nasty bum, ask anyone who ever came in contact with him.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Wasn't this suppose to be a joke question? A play on the breakfast cereal character Captain Crunch? Yet pumped up as interesting..
No. It's a reference to why John's phreaker nick was Captain Crunch, back in the middle of the Twentieth Century.
In those days the long distance system used in-band signaling tones to connect, disconnect, and dial calls. The base system used a 2600 Hz tone to do the rough equivalent of "on-hook". (That's why 2600 magazine is named that.) The full-blown system also had a set of dual-tones, similar to touch-tones, to "dial" the call - but on some trunks (typically those going to legacy dial-only exchanges) you also dialed the call by switching the 2600 Hz tone on and off like a pulse dialer.
Phone Phreaks needed a tone generator to do the dual-tone system. But you could whistle the 2600 "disconnect" tone (especially if you had perfect pitch). If you were REALLY good you could also whistle pluses of it to dial calls. But that was tough. Something over 5 pulses per second or they separate into two digits. Get every digit right or you dial the wrong number.
Then Captain Crunch cereal came out with a prize inside - a plastic whistle. It JUST HAPPENED to be 2600 Hz. Oops! With the whistle it was REALLY EASY to "blow off" calls and/or to dial calls on the legacy-exchange trunks. John Draper noticed this, made heavy use of it, became famous in phreaker circles for it, and eventually used Captain Crunch as his phone phreak nickname.
So his first Captain Crunch plastic whistle is a real historical artifact. (And probably sitting in an evidence locker somewhere if he didn't lose it long ago.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ok, not anonymous coward, so maybe you (and others) will take this with more than a grain of salt. First hand reporting, no friend of a friend hearsay.
Draper has admitted on several occasions to being gay, and prefering young men. I've known him since soon after he was released from prison (his second or third time when he did hard time in a federal prison), and he's always been rather open about his fondness for young men. But in all those years, I've never seen him going after "little boys", just young guys, 18 to 30.
When he was in prison he had his back broken in a fight because the other inmates considered him to be a child molester. After that he was kept in the prison hospital, and then in isolation until his parole. When I met him he was still wearing a back brace, but that didn't stop him from proposing to go to his apartment for a "massage". Since the people who had introduced us warned me to never be alone with him especially when he mentioned massages, I mostly avoided his attentions. But there were several times when he managed to get me or close friends alone, and then his propositions were rather explicit towards wanting gay sex. At some party in Amsterdam when he was stoned out of his gourd he admitted he was beat up all through high school because he had made passes at some of the other guys.
There was talk, when I first met him, that he was kicked out of the Air Force for being gay. In the USAF he was an electronics technician maintaining microwave repeater towers for phone trunks across Alaska, which is where he learned the basics about manipulating the phone system. He was discharged before he could learn enough to become really dangerous, just mostly dangerous.
He is a poser who was always looking for information to make him look good. He would do anything to learn a technical trick from others, so he could claim it as his own discovery. He always liked to brag, which is why he went to prison after the famous Esquire article. He bragged so much to the reporter about his van full of electronics and ripping off pay phones the feds had no choice but to go after him. His technical abilities are pretty limited, he's always been an outsider to legitimate engineering, and he avoids anyone with in depth knowledge of a subject. For more than two decades he has been hanging around with a young and impressionable crowd, because that is the only place he can be worshipped.
His sexual desire for young men used to be disguised as requests for massages and now the current energy distribution bullshit. He hit on me several times a couple of decades ago, and made me want to stay away from him as much as possible. Other posts are talking about his naive sexual blunderings, just add my voice to that list as a first hand experience. He's a gay, attention seeking freak, not really a phreak.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on