7
Escapades with Steve
The internal joy I felt when the cop believed our story about the Blue Box being the Moog synthesizer is almost indescribable.
当警察相信了我们对蓝盒子所杜撰的故事，我内心的高兴不可名状。
Not only were we not being arrested for making illegal calls with or owning a Blue Box, but these supposedly intelligent cops had totally bought our B.S. God, I wanted to laugh out loud. Our moods changed instantly.
我们不仅没有因为非法呼叫和持有蓝盒子而被拘留，看似精明的警察还给我们买了B.S牌外套。上帝，我真想大笑，我们立即转惊为喜。
I mean, one second we thought we were being driven off to jail, and the next we realized we had bamboozled the police. Bamboozled up the yazoo! This was such an important lesson to learn in life, and such a continuing theme for me. Some people will just believe the strangest stuff, stuff that doesn't bear any semblance to reality.
前一秒我们还认为自己会被关进监狱，后一秒就发现完全骗过了警察。真是瞒天过海！这是我有生以来，极其重要的一课。有些人就是会相信不可思议的事情，为假象所迷惑。
After the cops dropped us off, we waited at the gas station until finally Captain Crunch showed up in his van. That van sure was scary to ride in as a passenger. It felt like it was going to fall over, it was so rickety. It didn't feel solid at all. It was probably about 2 a.m. by the time we got back to Steve's house all the way down in Los Altos. I picked up my car - I had an ochre-colored Pinto at this time - and drove it back to Berkeley.
警察放过我们，开车离去，我们在加油站等待“嘎吱上校”开着他的小货车出现。成为小货车的座上客还真有些让人惊慌失措。感觉上，它东倒西歪，似乎就快分解一般，坐在其中感觉不太安全。那时差不多凌晨2点，我们先回到斯蒂夫位于洛斯阿尔托斯市的家。然后我开着我的彩色品多车回到伯克利分校。
I was tired. I shouldn't have been on the road. Because you know what happened Somewhere near Oakland on Highway 17, I fell asleep at the wheel. I don't know how long my eyes were closed, but suddenly I opened my eyes and it looked to me like the guardrail was jumping onto my windshield. It looked so strange, like a dream. I grabbed the steering wheel, yanked it as hard as I could to the right, and the car just started spinning around and around.
我太疲劳了，真不该自己开车回去。后来发生什么了呢？在接近奥克兰的17干道上，我竟在驾驶时睡着了。不知道自己睡了多久，但就在我睁开眼时，突然发现我的挡风玻璃就快撞向栏杆，这宛如一场恶梦。我紧紧握住方向盘，尽力向右转，而车却开始旋转了出去。
The only thing holding me in that car was the seat belt.
只有安全带将我固定于座位。
As the car was spinning, I was thinking, This is it. I might die. I could really die. But then the car slid to a stop up against the center guardrail, and it turned out that only the side of the Pinto that hit the guardrail was damaged. But it totaled my car.
当车旋转时，我心想就这样了，我快死了，我可能真的会死。但是，车冲向中间的栏杆后却停了下来，品多车撞向栏杆的一边毁坏了。我的车就这样毁于一旦。
- o -
Losing my Pinto changed my life completely. One of the major parts of my life at Berkeley was taking groups of people down to Southern California or even as far south as Tijuana, Mexico, on weekends. Actually, my first thought after the crash wasn't, Oh, thank god I'm alive, but Man, now I'm not going to be able to take my friends on wild adventures anymore.
品多车的失去完全改变了我的生活。我的伯克利分校最主要的生活方式之一就是，载上大群人前往南加州或更远的墨西哥蒂华纳的共度周末。实际上，当出车祸时，我的第一反应不是“谢谢上帝，我还活着”。而是：“天啊，我再也不能载朋友们一起去野外冒险了。”
The car crash was the main reason that, after this school year, my third year at Berkeley, I went back to work instead of coming back to school. I needed to earn money, not just for the fourth year of college but also for a new car.
在伯克利分校度过第三学年后，这场车祸成为了我就此辍学而选择工作的主要原因。我需要赚钱，不仅为第四年的学费，也为一辆新车。
If I hadn't gotten in the car accident that year, I wouldn't have quit school and I might never have started Apple. It's weird how things happen.
如果我那年没有遇到车祸，就不会辍学，也就不可能创立苹果公司。事情的发展总是妙不可言。
- o -
But for the rest of the year at Berkeley, I kept playing with my Blue Box. Captain Crunch's design had given me an idea: to add a single little button where I could preprogram a ten-digit number.
但在伯克利分校剩下的岁月里，我仍在研究自己的蓝盒子。“嘎吱上校”的设计给予我灵感：我可以编写一个10个数字的号码，然后为此加一个单独小键。
The number I chose to dial was this weird joke line in Los Angeles. It was called Happy Ben. When you called it, this cranky old guy - he sounded like a real old guy -would answer in this old voice like gravel: "Hey," he'd say, "it's me, Happy Ben." And then he'd sing, off-key, and with no music: "Happy days are here again / happy days are here again / happy days are here again / happy days are here again." And then, "Yep, it's me again. It's Ben."
我选择拨打洛杉矶一条古怪的笑话热线，叫做“快乐的本”。当你拨打进去后，一位声音嘶哑的微弱老人（他听起来真的很老）会接听：“嗨，”他说，“是我，快乐的本。”然后他会走调地清唱：“快乐日子又回来了，快乐日子又回来了，快乐日子又回来了……”这之后，又说，“耶，还是我，本。”
Don't ask me why, but of all the joke lines in the world I now had free access to with my Blue Box, that one number always cheered me up and made me smile. It was just the fact that this grumpy-sounding old guy would sing that song in such a truly happy way. Somehow that style of humor made me laugh. I hope to do the same thing myself someday. Maybe I can sing the national anthem on a joke line. I still might.
请不要问我为什么，但在所有能用蓝盒子免费接通的笑话热线中，只有这一条总让我欢心雀跃。因为那位老人听起来性情乖戾，但却真的能以完全快乐的方式来演绎这一首歌，这种幽默让我开怀大笑。我希望自己有一天也能做到，也许我能在笑话热线上大唱国歌，我现在仍有可能这样做。
- o -
Now that I had a Blue Box that could call anywhere, even internationally, I had a lot of fun calling joke lines all over the world. I'd walk up to a pay phone, dial some 800 number, seize the line with the Blue Box, push the automatic button - beep beep beep - and there he was again. Happy Ben singing "Happy Days Are Here Again." It was my favorite thing.
由于蓝盒子能让我免费拨打任何地方，甚至国际长途，我几乎听遍世界所有的笑话热线。我只需去公用电话处，拨打800，用蓝盒子占住线路，再按下自动键，“哔哔哔”三声后，本就在线上了。快乐的本唱着“快乐日子又回来了”。这是我最喜爱的一支歌。
But I hadn't forgotten what was supposed to be the real mission of phone phreaking: not to mess up the system, but to find flaws and curious things and secrets the phone company never told anyone about. And I really did stick with the honesty thing. Even when I made my calls to friends, relatives, to people I normally would've called anyway, I made a point of paying for those calls. I didn't use the Blue Box. To me, that would have been stealing, and that wasn't what I was about.
但我并未忘记电话黑客应尽的义务：不要混乱系统，而要找到电话公司从没透露的网络漏洞、奇怪事情和秘密。而我也真的坚持诚实，即使有时我打给朋友、亲戚或其他人，我都有付费，不用蓝盒子。对我来说，那意味着盗窃，我是不应该那样做的。
But I did like to use the Blue Box to see how far it could get me. For instance, I would make a call to an operator and pretend I was a New York operator trying to extend the lines for phase measurements, and she would connect me to London. Then I'd talk that operator into connecting me to Tokyo. I would go around the world like this sometimes three times or more.
但我的确喜欢尝试看看蓝盒子到底能接多远。例如，我打给接线生，假装自己是纽约的接线生，为检测而转接电话线路，之后她就帮我连线于伦敦。然后我又骗那里的接线生帮我连到东京。有时候，我就这样漫游世界3次或是更多。
And by this time I got great at sounding official, or doing accents, all to fool operators around the world. I remember one very, very late night in the dorm when I decided to call the pope. Why the pope I don't know. Why not So I started by using the Blue Box to call Italy Inward (country code 121), then I asked for Rome Inward, and then I got to the Vatican and in this heavy accent I announced I was Henry Kissinger calling on behalf of President Nixon. I said, "Ve are at de summit meeting in Moscow, and ve need to talk to de pope."
而那时，我也擅长官方表达，或是用官方口音，只为了愚弄世界上的接线生。有一次深夜在宿舍里，我决定打给教皇。为什么要打给教皇呢？我不知道。可又何尝不可呢？所以我用蓝盒子呼叫意大利接听处（国家区号为121），然后再问到罗马接听处，最后还连接上梵蒂冈宫，我以很重的口音宣称自己是代表尼克松总统的亨利·基辛格。我说：“我们曾在莫斯科的首脑会议上会面，我们需要与教皇谈谈。”
And a woman said, "It's five-thirty here. The pope is sleeping." She put me on hold then for a while, and then told me they were sending someone to wake him and asked if I could call back. I said yes, in an hour.
一位女士回答：“现在这里才5点30分。教皇还在熟睡中。”她让我等一会，然后告诉我，他们已经派人叫醒教皇，并问我是否还会打来。我回答：好的，一个小时之后。
Well, an hour later I called back and she said, "Okay, we will put the bishop on, who will be the translator." So I told him, still in that heavy accent, "Dees is Mr. Kissinger." And he said, "Listen, I just spoke to Mr. Kissinger an hour ago." You see, they had checked out my story and had called the real Kissinger in Moscow.
一个小时后我再次打去，她说，“好的，我们会让教皇来接听，谁来翻译。”我仍用很重的口音回答，“这是基辛格先生。”只听他说：“听着，我一个小时前才与基辛格先生通过话。”他们核实了我的故事，还打给了在莫斯科的货真价实的基辛格。
Ha! But I didn't hang up. I said, "You can verify my number. You can call me back." And I gave him a U.S. number that would call a loop-back number so they wouldn't find out my number. But they never called back, which was too bad.
哈！但我并没就此挂断。我说：“你可以核对我的号码。也可以再打给我。”为了不让自己的号码被发现，我给了他们一个美国的回拨号码。但可惜的是他们没打过来。
Years later, though, I couldn't stop laughing when I saw an article about me where they were interviewing Captain Crunch. He said I was calling the pope to make a confession!
尽管事隔多年，当我看到“嘎吱上校”在一篇报道中对我的评论，我仍忍不住开怀大笑。他说我打给教皇是因为想要忏悔。
- o -
For ages and ages, I always told people how I was the ethical phone phreak who always paid for my own calls and was just exploring the system. And that was true. I used to get huge phone bills, even though I had my Blue Box that would've let me make any call for free.
多年以来，我总告诉人们，我是一个多么道德的电话黑客，只为研究这一网络，而自己的私人电话皆会付费。的确如此。尽管那时蓝盒子能拨打任何免费电话，但我的电话账单总是数目庞大。
But one day Steve Jobs came along and said, "Hey, let's sell these." So by selling them to others we really were getting the technology out to people who were using it to call their girlfriends and the like and save money on phone calls. So looking back, I guess that, yes, I aided and abetted that crime.
有一天，斯蒂夫独自对我说，“嗨，我们销售这个吧。”所以，我们开始销售蓝盒子，也真的用这项技术帮助人们免费打给他们的女友、喜欢的人。现在回想，是的，我其实在纵容和帮助犯罪。
We had a pretty interesting way of selling them. What we would do is Steve and I would find groups of people in various dorms at Berkeley to sell them to. I was always the ringleader, which was really unusual for me. I was the one who did all the talking. You know, I thought I'd be so famous doing this, but it's funny, I didn't know you had to talk to a reporter to get your phone phreak handle (mine was Berkeley Blue) in articles.
但销售蓝盒子很是有趣。我和乔布斯在伯克利分校各种各样的公寓里售卖。我总成为销售领军人，这对我来说真是不同寻常。整个过程都是我与人聊天。我认为自己因此而出名，有趣的是，我不知道是否应该告诉记者，在文章写出我的电话黑客绰号“蓝色伯克利”。
Anyway, the way we did it was just by knocking on doors. How do you know you're not walking up to somebody who's going to turn you in Someone who might see it as a crime Well, we'd knock on a door (usually a door in a male dorm) and ask for someone nonexistent like, "Is Charlie Johnson there" And they'd say, "Who's Charlie Johnson"
无论如何，我们销售的方式就是在公寓逐一敲门。你怎么知道开门的人会拒绝你呢？有人也许会视之为犯罪。我们通常敲门（一般是在男生公寓）后会随便询问一个名字。“查理·约翰逊在吗？”他们会问：“谁是查理·约翰逊？”
And I'd say, "You know, the guy that makes all the free phone calls." If they sort of seemed cool - and you could tell by their face if they wanted to talk about such a tiling as illegal free phone calls - I'd add, "You know, he has the Blue Boxes"
然后我就说，“就是那个能打免费电话的人。”如果他们觉得这很酷，就可以当面问问他们是否愿意谈论一下非法免费电话。我还会加上一句：“知道吗，他有蓝盒子？”
Sometimes they might say, "Oh my god, I've heard about those things." And if they sounded really cool enough, and every once in a while they did, then one of us pulled a Blue Box out of our pockets. They'd say something like, "Wow! Is that what they look like Is that real"
有时候他们可能会说：“噢，上帝，我曾听说过。”如果他们足够兴奋，每隔一会儿就如此，我们中的一个人就会从口袋里掏出蓝盒子。他们就会叫：“哇！它是这个样子的呀？是真的吗？”
And that's how we knew we had the right guy and he wouldn't turn us in. Then one of us would say, "Tell you what, we'll come back at 7 p.m. tonight; have everyone you know who knows someone in a foreign country here and we'll give you a demo."
我们知道这就找对了人，他也不会拒绝我们。然后我们其中一人就会说：“告诉你，我们将在今晚7点回来。所有需要打国际长途的人都会在此，我们会给你们一个模板。”
And we'd come back at 7 p.m. We'd run a wire across their dorm room and we'd hook it up to the tape recorder. That way, everything was tape-recorded -every single sale we ever did was tape-recorded. Just to play it safe.
晚上7点，我把线接到他们公寓，再将其连到录音机。每一项单独交易都被记录下来。这只为一切安全进行。
We made a little money selling Blue Boxes. It was enough at the time. Originally I would buy the parts to hand-build one for $80. The distributor in Mountain View where I got the chips (no electronics stores sold chips) charged a ton for small quantities. We eventually made a printed circuit board and, making ten or twenty at a time, got the cost down to maybe $40. We sold them for $150 and split the revenue.
通过售卖蓝盒子，我们赚了一些钱，在那时已经足够。起初我们用于制作的零件需要80美元，但从加州山景城的分销商那里，以便宜价格则能购得大量零件（电子商店都不售卖零件）。最后，我们还使用了印刷电路板，一次就可制造10或20个，使成本降低到40美元。而我们却以150美元卖出，利润平分。
So it was a pretty good business proposition except for one thing. Blue Boxes were illegal, and we were always worried about getting caught.
所以，这是一种很好的商业方式，只有一样不好。蓝盒子为非法商品，我们总担心有一天被绳之以法。
- o -
One time Steve and I had a Blue Box ready for sale. Steve needed some extra money, and he really wanted us to sell the box that day. It was a Sunday. Before driving up to Berkeley to sell the Blue Box, we stopped to eat at a Sunnyvale pizza parlor. While eating our pizza, we noticed a few guys at the next table. They looked cool, and we started talking to them. It turned out they were interested in seeing one and buying it.
一次，我和斯蒂夫准备前去销售。由于斯蒂夫很需要钱用，他那天很希望能销售成功。那是个星期天。在开往伯克利分校销售之前，我们先在阳光谷比萨店享用一餐。当时，我们发现附近桌子有一群人。他们看起来很酷，于是我们交谈了起来。最后他们竟然对蓝盒子很感兴趣并决定买下。
We then went to a rear hallway of the pizza parlor, where there was a pay phone. Steve pulled out the Blue Box. They gave us a number in Chicago, in the 312 area code, to test it. The call went through to a ringing phone, which no one answered.
然后，我们去了比萨店后面走廊的公用电话亭。斯蒂夫拿出蓝盒子。作为试验，他们给了一个芝加哥的号码，区号为312。电话通了，但却无人应答。
The three guys were really excited and told us they wanted the Blue Box but couldn't afford it. Steve and I headed out to the parking lot to get into Steve's car. And just very quickly, before Steve started the engine, one of the guys popped up next to the driver's-side window with a big long black gun barrel pointed right at us.
那三个人很是兴奋，表示很想拥有蓝盒子却没有那么多钱。我和斯蒂夫就立即前往停车场，回到斯蒂夫的车上。说时迟那时快，斯蒂夫还没发动引擎，其中一个人就在驾驶座旁的窗口用枪对准了我们。
He demanded the Blue Box.
他让我们交出蓝盒子。
Steve nervously handed it to him. And the thieves went to their own car. As we sat there, stunned, an amazing thing happened. One of the guys came back to the car and explained he didn't have the money yet, but he did want the Blue Box. And that they would pay us eventually. And he wrote down a phone number and a name for us to call him at. His name was Charles.
斯蒂夫紧张地递给了他。这些小偷就回到他们的车上。而我们就目瞪口呆地坐在那里，多么惊险的一幕。他们中另一个人回到我们的车边，解释说他还没有钱，但的确很想拥有蓝盒子，但他们最终会付钱给我们。之后，他写下了他的电话号码和名字，他叫查尔斯。
After a few days, Steve called the number. Someone answered, and when we asked for Charles, he gave us the number of a pay phone. We knew it was a pay phone because back then, if the last four digits of any number started with a 9 or a 99, it was certainly a pay phone.
几天后，斯蒂夫拨打了这个号码。有人接听，但当我们问到查尔斯时，他却给了我们一个公用电话号码。因为那时，任何公用电话后面4位数都以9或99开头，所以我们清楚那是公用电话号码。
Steve called that number, and Charles answered. He said he would pay us eventually for the Blue Box, but he needed to know how to use it.
斯蒂夫又拨打了公用电话号码，查尔斯接听了。他说他最终会付钱，但首先想知道如何使用。
Steve tried to talk him into returning it to us. Charles said he wanted to meet us somewhere. We were too scared to meet him, even in a public place. I came up with the idea of telling him a method to use that would get him billed for every call - like, to start your call by dialing an 808 number, which is an area code for Hawaii. I also thought of telling him a way to use it that would get him caught. Like dialing 555 information calls, which look suspicious when they last for hours.
斯蒂夫想尽力说服他还给我们。查尔斯想与我们见个面。即使在公共场所，我们也害怕与他碰面。我曾想要告诉他一种方法，让他每一个电话都需付费。比如，拨打前，先拨808，那是夏威夷的区号。我也曾想设计让他被抓住。比如拨555信息台，他们总是疑心长时间的咨询。
If only I'd been more of a joker, I would've thought to tell him to start by dialing the number of a police station.
如果我更爱开玩笑一点，甚至会让他先拨警察局的电话。
But I didn't recommend any of those things, and in the end, Steve hung up. We were too scared to do anything, and for sure Charles and those guys never learned how to use it.
但这些想法，我一个也没提出，最后，斯蒂夫挂断了电话。我们还心有余悸，什么也不想做。而查尔斯那一群人肯定永远也不懂得怎么使用它。