I would have thought the advent and wide deployment of digital switches was what made it impossible. If not that, then surely the modern switches have anti-phreaking software built in. The irony is that the era of the public phone is coming to an end, as they've been almost completely supplanted by cell phones, except perhaps in airports and the like. It's hard to imagine now how much of a convenience pay phones must have originally been. The idea of calling anywhere in the world from any down town street corner must have seemed as amazing as wireless phones seem to new adopters (like me) now. My wife and I were recently at a wedding in Las Vegas trying to meet up with the other guests from the same wedding. It finally became obvious that some of the guests were not looking in the right place for the rest of us due to a breakdown in communication. No problem, everyone involved has a wireless phone. A quick phonecall amounting to "where are you? We're right below you, head down the stairs to your right" put the matter to rights. Mindboggling. I begin to see how people burn through serious airtime in a month now. Seductive technology. I wonder how we managed without it. -- Jim Strickland jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BeOS Powered! -----------------------------------------------------------------------