Turns out it's really just a park bench with four phone lines for laptop users to plug in modems, and nobody'd thought to block long distance or international calls. After they'd called their local council, they called Bill Gates's secretary, but didn't reach Mr. Bill himself. -----Original Message----- From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net] Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 11:12 AM To: ip-sub-1@majordomo.pobox.com Subject: IP: the Internet park bench

Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 13:35:01 -0400 To: farber@cis.upenn.edu (David Farber) From: Richard Jay Solomon <rsolomon@dsl.cis.upenn.edu> Subject: the Internet park bench

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1481000/1481783.stm

Thursday, 9 August, 2001, 13:44 GMT 14:44 UK Bad start for internet bench The teenagers took advantage of the free service Two teenagers discovered the world's first internet bench could be used to make free international telephone calls. The cyber-seat, which is based in a public park in Suffolk, UK, went online on Monday. Neil Woodman and Dan Sanderson, both 17, took a normal telephone handset along to the bench, which was created by Microsoft's MSN service in partnership with the local council. The pair cheekily phoned St Edmondsbury Council to warn them of the problem and then tried to call Microsoft boss, Bill Gates. For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/