Instant contempt sweeps across his face. There is a pause as
his lips curl into a noticeable sneer and he replies with complete
derision, `Telescum'. The underground hated Australia's national
telephone carrier with a passion equalled only to its love of
exploration. They felt that Telecom was backward and its staff had no
idea how to use their own telecommunications technology. Worst of all,
Telecom seemed to actively dislike BBSes.
Line noise interfered with one modem talking to another, and in the
eyes of the computer underground, Telecom was responsible for the line
noise. A hacker might be reading a message on PI, and there, in the
middle of some juicy technical titbit, would be a bit of crud--random
characters `2'28 v'1';D>nj4'--followed by the comment, `Line noise.
Damn Telescum! At their best as usual, I see'. Sometimes the line
noise was so bad it logged the hacker off, thus forcing him to spend
another 45 minutes attack dialling the BBS. The modems didn't have
error correction, and the faster the modem speed, the worse the impact
of line noise. Often it became a race to read mail and post messages
before Telecom's line noise logged the hacker off.
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