Three Blind Phreaks

Post writes "'When they dial, they use the middle finger.' - Wired's story about three sightless brothers who 'have devoted their lives to proving they can out-think, out-program, and out-hack anyone with vision.'"

Comments

Are they heroes?

[ObviousGuy]

It used to be cool to show off with these 'hacks' like phreaking and other service-theft tricks, but these days it seems that they would do better service to the name 'hacker' if they worked on things that made our world easier to live in, for both sightless and sighted folks.

I'm not about to tell them what they should or shouldn't be doing, but sometimes you really have to wonder how the hacker community can take having borderline criminals like these three brothers calling themselves part of hackerdom.

They are crackers, despite what they call themselves.

Re:Nothing Special

[aTMsA]

sounds like normal boring phreakers to me.

But they make news because they are blind.

Well if you read the article carefully, you'll see this:

At one point during my visit with the Badirs, I pull out my cell phone and make a call. Before it even connects, Shadde, who is sitting across the room, recites all 12 digits perfectly.

Ramy smiles at the parlor trick. "It used to be disgusting to be blind," he says. "Today, you scare people. You possess skills that those with sight cannot possibly understand."

This is something normal people usually can't do, but i've known blind people that can do that kind of "tricks"(they can also tell you if you're standing or sitting while talking on the phone, for example). Certainly being blind gives them some good social-engineering-enabling abilities, and they can also play the poor-blind-victim that'll probably soften the most paranoid secretary;

Of course, if instead of touch-tone passwords these secretaries had been typing their passwords in a unix terminal, they would be screwed, and no amount of over-the-shoulder peeking would have helped them! ;)

My my...

[CODiNE]

As a deaf guy I just have to say... living your life based on revenge and sticking it to others is a sad way of living. All you do is repeat the unfair sort of situations that made you so PO'ed and produce an army of other angry PO'ed people... ooohhh... negative feedback loop! Cutting people off on the freeway and tailgating doesn't solve your problems. It's funny how people in left hand turn lanes get upset at people running red lights keeping them from making their turn... so they in "revenge" run their red light and cause different people to miss THEIR turn, who then in return... blaaahhh... just live by "The Golden Rule" and everybody is a little bit happier.

Re:Why are genetically defective people breeding?

[evilviper]

the parents should have stopped breeding. Now there are three more genetically defective people who can keep those defective genes into the gene pool.

Wow... I thought we'd heard the end of this with the death of Hitler's Nazis, and Margaret Sanger.

I would say the best thing about our society, is that physical abilities do not mean life or death. I would assume that you are a skinny geeky guy (possibly not, but likely since you are posting here) and in the world of hunting and gathering, you would be dead, because you are not the strongest, and fastest.

If you think that all geeks should die off, then you are a moron who can just discard the contributions that less-physically-fit people have made.

The best example that comes to mind is Stephen Hawking... He should be dead by most measures, but he is alive, and contributing to the betterment of all society.

What do you know? Are you certain that blind people have nothing to contribute to society? People though the same thing about Blacks, Hispanics, etc., yet they've been proven wrong time and time again.

Before "civilization", nature would weed out genetic defects like that using starvation, wolves, lions, bears, etc. Now you have people perpetuating defective genetic lines just because they can.

First off, you are assuming that there was a time before civilization. Animals like wolves have a natural pack instinct, and humans show the same traits. It would seem that humans would have always sought-out civilization...

Well, I suppose crap like this is why I marked you as a FOE in the first place...

So theft isn't theft?

[Infonaut]

Nothing like selective morality.

So if you use phone sex hotlines you deserve to have your money stolen? If you use a dating service do you deserve the same thing? If you subscribe to a right-wing or left-wing newspaper do you deserve to be ripped off by someone?

As for ripping off a government-sponsored radio station, who do you think is paying for it? Where does the government's money come from? It's not takin money from mom and pop directly, but it's not as though their not hurting the general public. People like to rail against government inefficiency and complain of mismanaged tax dollars. It's odd to me that someone would not be outraged by criminals directly stealing those tax dollars.

These guys aren't exactly Robin Hoods.