Comment Re:2600 meetings (Score 1) 71
I'll second your "unwanted LEO attention" but we got ours for a pretty good reason. The average meet was around 10 to 15, but at the time attracted mainly young computer enthusiasts - the vast majority hadn't even graduated high school. Even though I was still in my early 20's at the time, I'd taken on the roll of elder statesman and, towards the end of my tenure, was bringing teaching aides to each meet and sharing basic skills like soldering, circuitry, and the theory behind voiding warranties. I have to say, seeing that "light bulb" moment when someone learns something is uniquely rewarding
After being worn down on the beggs and please, I finally acquiesced and did a practical demonstration. At the time there was a cheap gadget at Radio Shack that had an acoustic coupler on one side, a 10 pad on the other, and a wee bit of memory for storing phone numbers. You would enter the number, hold it to the pay phone, and it would play back the tones but - with a few minor tweaks - you could convert it into a box of many colours.
While I was doing a demonstration on how to make one, by first going over (ala Q & A) the circuitry inside, discussing which parts were replaced, why, what they did, why they did it et al - making it much more of a learning experience and less of a phreaking one, a young chap snuck off with the working version and decided to test it out on the payphone in front of the book store where we met and the sight of a 14yr old holding a strange device to a phone & laughing maniacally was enough for the book store owner to call the ol' bill.
Suffice to say, we all learned something that day...