Phone phreaks had it rough

[dsrtao]

Early hackers of the telephone system had a great big system to play with, which was hard to access and hard to manipulate and not all that capable. Not to mention expensive, which lead to a fair amount of theft-of-services.

These days anyone with a Linux box, a hundred dollars or so in extra hardware and a desire to play with complex software can get involved in Asterisk and immediately have access to more features than a major switch from the early 1990s.

It's fun.