haha yeah I noticed right before scrolling down

Well thank you guys for clearing that up. I can't imagine why or how he would do that but he got what he deserved.

A sysop

SYSOP, SysOP, Sys-OP System Operator, sysop what's the dif...

"A sysop" versus "AN sysop" is the dif.

Just pokin' a little after I saw Jafo's correction.

The onus is on me, though, for having nothing better to say.

On the bright side you spelt onus correctly - man than could have been rough

The ignominy !

'Phreaker'?

phreaking: /freek´ing/, n.
[from ‘phone phreak’]

1. The art and science of cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls).

2. By extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially, but not exclusively, on communications networks) (see cracking).

At one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an intellectual game and a form of exploration was OK, but serious theft of services was taboo. There was significant crossover between the hacker community and the hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground networks of their own through such media as the legendary TAP Newsletter. This ethos began to break down in the mid-1980s as wider dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of less responsible phreaks. Around the same time, changes in the phone network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way of hacking it, so phreaking came to depend more on overtly criminal acts such as stealing phone-card numbers. The crimes and punishments of gangs like the ‘414 group’ turned that game very ugly. A few old-time hackers still phreak casually just to keep their hand in, but most these days have hardly even heard of ‘blue boxes’ or any of the other paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore.

Just to be nice and clear, here....those 'noble pioneers of phreaking' have nothing to do with the exploits of exile-quality this thread was originated in query about....

Jafo thinks there's an easier, less clumsy way of putting that....but....]....

hehehe