From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jan 22 21:17:03 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0N2H3523878; Thu, 22 Jan 2004 21:17:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 21:17:03 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401230217.i0N2H3523878@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #33 TELECOM Digest Thu, 22 Jan 2004 21:10:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 33 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson eCom.com Inc. Announces Acquisition Of Freedom 4 Wireless Inc. (Eworld) Re: All-Zeros Numbers (Julian Thomas) Re: America's Opinion of AOL (Kilo Delta One Sierra) What Does COR on a Definity's Trunk Do? (Rod) Re: Using Calling Card to Dial Internet Access From Hotel (Scott Dorsey) Identity Theft, Online Fraud on the Rise - U.S. FTC (Monty Solomon) Re: Habeus.com and Spam (John Levine) Phantom DSL Reprised (Nick Landsberg) Re: Wireless Home Networks (John Mayson) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk is definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Eworldwire Subject: eCom.com Inc. Announces Acquisition Of Freedom 4 Wireless Inc. Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 18:20:34 -0500 eCom eCom.com Inc. Announces Acquisition Of Freedom 4 Wireless Inc. Is Completed By MyZipSoft Inc. For Immediate Release PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla./EWORLDWIRE/Jan. 22, 2004 --- eCom eCom.com, Inc. (OTCBB: ECEC) today announced the acquisition of Freedom 4 Wireless by MyZipSoft, Inc. has been completed. MyZipSoft, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of eCom eCom.com, Inc. ("eCom") MyZipSoft, Inc. acquired all of the assets of Freedom 4 Wireless, Inc. a wholly owned subsidiary of American Capital Holdings, Inc. www.freedom4wireless.com. The name of MyZipSoft, Inc. was changed to Freedom 4 Wireless, Inc. Terms of the acquisition are: shareholders of record at the close of business (4:00 p.m.) on February 23, 2004 of eCom eCom.com, Inc. common stock will be issued one (1) share of Freedom 4 Wireless, Inc. for every twenty (20) shares of eCom. For further clarification purposes, each eCom eCom shareholder will still maintain their existing share ownership of eCom eCom on the aforementioned February 23, 2004 shareholder of record date. David Panaia stated, "We are continuing with our commitment set forth in December to bring additional shareholder value to our company. Freedom 4 Wireless will change the landscape of wireless technology for years to come. I encourage every shareholder to visit www.freedom4wireless.com and see what we have accomplished. Freedom 4 Wireless has grown from a research development company to a company whose products are ready for market." Barney A. Richmond Chairman of American Capital Holdings, Inc. stated; "Freedom 4 Wireless is one of our brightest stars three (3) years in the making. Our core technology is the Fourth Generation (4G) of wireless mobility. It is the first true ad hoc peer to peer networking system. It is the only system available today that supports real-time user applications at highway speeds. It is available at a reasonable price and can be installed to serve mobile users for about 1/10th the cost of 3G networks at comparable capacity. F4W's system is based on Internet Protocol: Any application that is written to run on an IP-compatible host will run across F4W's network. That means that 99% of applications need no modification." About Freedom 4 Wireless, Inc. Freedom 4 Wireless (F4W) is a provider of 4th Generation Mobile Broadband Wireless Services and Products. F4W's unique 4G mobile broadband wireless system provides data, video, audio, and voice services to subscribers on the move, at highway speeds. F4W generates revenue from the selling of subscriber services, vertical product sales equipment sales and contracting to deploy turnkey wide area network wireless solutions. F4W is building a national high speed mobile broadband wireless network as well as building tactical networks for Homeland Security and Law Enforcement agencies. F4W's services and products fall into three broad categories. Freedom 4 Emergency Alert Display Services(TM), Freedom 4 Mobile Services(TM) and Freedom 4 Smart Equipment Services(TM). F4W's focus is on the public safety market in 2004 and 2005, by in 2006 F4W believes that the demand for mobile broadband services from business customers will begin to generate significant incremental revenue from the network infrastructures that originally were deployed to provide services to the Public Safety Market. Freedom 4 Emergency Alert Display Services(TM) networks are networks of plasma and LCD displays that provide Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Community Alert System(TM) (CAS) messaging to the public in times of community crisis and distress. Such services will allow both federal and local governmental authorities to communicate with the public about imminent and immediate events that may require a quick response to save lives or improve public well-being. Built into these displays are 2-way video and voice capability so that an individuals and first responders in a crisis can communicate with emergency organizations. Freedom 4 Mobile Services(TM) and Freedom 4 Smart Equipment Services(TM) are offered through a unique mobile broadband wireless network. It is the first affordable mobile broadband wireless system, and it will offer data, voice, and media services. It will be used to provide mobile, broadband, wireless services to the Department of Homeland Service, local governments (police, fire/rescue, code enforcement, permitting, and traffic management), state departments of transportation (to meet intelligent transportation system needs), health care institutions (mobile telemedicine), corporate enterprises, small businesses, and consumers. The vision of Freedom 4 Wireless is to provide broadband wired and wireless network services to enhance the safety and well-being of the public and to enable government agencies to increase their effectiveness and efficiency. F4W will do so through Freedom 4 Emergency Display Services, Mobile Services, and Smart Equipment Services. By 2007, Freedom Zone Networks envisions its initial local and regional service networks merging with one another to become a national network capable of delivering nationally coordinated, but location specific public safety information relevant to the local community and providing government agencies with the mobile broadband wireless communications capability that they so badly need. For additional information contact: info@freedom4wireless.com or call media relations for F4W @ 1-866-823-5252 Website: www.freedom4wireless eCom eCom.com, Inc. David J. Panaia 561/622-4395 djp@ecomecom.net www.ecomecom.net HTML: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/wr/012204/2084.htm PDF: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/pdf/012204/2084.pdf ONLINE NEWSROOM: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/2093.htm LOGO: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/2093.htm CONTACT: Harry Timmons American Capital Holdings, Inc. 14 East Washington Street Suite 306 Orlando, FL 32801 PHONE. 4076505252 FAX. 4076505253 EMAIL: htimmons@achinc.net http://www.achinc.net Copyright 2003 Eworldwire, All rights reserved. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 18:06:38 -0500 From: Julian Thomas Subject: Re: All-Zeros Numbers In <1074803881.1375.96301.m12@yahoogroups.com>, on 01/22/04 at 08:38 PM, telecom-news@yahoogroups.com typed: MANY years ago, I remember a squib in some French newspaper (I was on a trip there at the time) about someone (some pr guy or something like that) who had a number of the form BAL 00 01 (back when letters were still being used) - the joke was to the effect that "one less number, and he wouldn't have a telephone". Julian Thomas: jt@jt-mj.net http://jt-mj.net In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State! Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org -- -- If it screams, it's not food... Yet. ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 22 Jan 2004 22:08:13 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: America's Opinion of AOL > Don't ditch it. Use the "bring your own provider" option. Connecting > to AOL via some other internet connection has always been faster than > AOL dialup. It's easy to do, just drop down the "location" box on the > signon screen and select TCP. Save the AOL account for worldwide > dialups, if you travel. But that's the thing -- I don't want to pay for it. So I'll ditch it anyway. Thanks though. ------------------------------ From: wolfing1@yahoo.com (Rod) Subject: What Does COR on a Definity's Trunk Do? Date: 22 Jan 2004 12:45:12 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I changed a station's COR to not being able to call a certain trunk's COR (so they always use a particular trunk when making long distance calls, instead of the 'main one'. Problem is, it's still going thru, ignoring what I did. Basically, it looks like this: Trunk 1 (main one) COR 20 Trunk 2 (aux) COR 30 ARS for 12125555555: 1 - Trunk 1 FRL 1 2 - Trunk 2 FRL 0 Station info: FRL 0 COR 15 COR 15: set up so it can't call COR 20 Result: if I call 12125555555 from the station, it doesn't use Trunk 1 because of the FRL being too low, so it tries to Trunk 2. My idea is that it shouldn't work because of the station's COR 15 says it can't call COR 30, but it does! So, what's the deal? I may have been a little confusing in my explanation, but hopefully you got the idea. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Using Calling Card to Dial Internet Access From Hotel? Date: 22 Jan 2004 16:24:22 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Joe Blo wrote: > I tried using my laptop to dial my local internet connection telephone > number via my calling card from my hotel room. It did not work, even > though I perfected the pauses and touch tone codes to where the > laptop got through and started connecting. However no connection could > be established. If I dialed direct from the hotel long distance, this > number worked fine (@ a 1.50 per minute) Could it be that some calling > cards (my Walmart & AT&T branded) could degrade the signal through its > signal path significantly to cause problems? Almost certainly. The calling cards I normally get for overseas calls (Carte Oro from the local Latin bodega) seem to use VoIP lines. Audio quality varies from excellent to quite spotty depending on the time of day, but I would seriously doubt that a modem would work at all. Anything that employs any sort of lossy compression scheme isn't going to work with a modem (although some long distance providers that use lossy compression have some additional gadgetry to demodulate your modem connection, send the baseband data, and then run it through another mode on the other end). --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 16:35:19 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Identity Theft, Online Fraud on the Rise - U.S. FTC WASHINGTON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Identity theft and fraud cost Americans at least $437 million last year as scam artists made themselves at home on the Internet, according to federal statistics released on Thursday. The Federal Trade Commission said it received more than half a million consumer complaints in 2003 as scam artists financed their spending sprees with other people's credit cards and hucksters sold nonexistent products through online auction sites like eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY). Identity theft -- the practice of running up bills or committing crimes in someone else's name -- topped the list with 215,000 complaints, up 33 percent from the previous year. Internet-related fraud accounted for more than half of the remaining complaints as scammers found victims through Web sites or "spam" e-mail, according to an FTC report. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40272544 ------------------------------ From: John Levine Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? In-Reply-To: Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Does anybody know why Anne P. Mitchell was ousted from Habeas.com? Differences with the owners, nothing unusual in a startup. (I've been through at least three CEO ejections in other tech startups over the years.) I'm on Habeas' nearly unpaid advisory board and I can report that the new management is well aware that their reputation is on the line in the current spam blast. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Isn't Anne Mitchell involved with one > of the netizen organizations fighting spam? Yes. See www.isipp.org. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl Sewer Commissioner "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Subject: Phantom DSL Reprised Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 00:04:52 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Some few weeks ago, there was a discussion in this group about DSL being available or not available. One poster, I forget who, claimed that he was told that DSL was not available, but that the restaurant downstairs had DSL and it was in the same CO, and the same cable (and possibly even the same drop). I went to dslreports.com to also find out that my CO was wired for DSL, although I'm at near the distance limit, being 11,000 feet from the CO. I called Verizon. Droid said no, not available, but she would put in the order anyway in case her data was old. OK, at least she was trying to help. A week later, Email that DSL is NOT available, just like the web site says. Check with DSL reports again. Yep, available. Two other outfits listed as providing it. Earthlink and COVAD. Try to call Earthlink and get a recording that "if you are under 18 you must hang up now!". (1-800-EARTHLINK, which I translated to 1-800-327-4546, but later realized that it should have been 327-8454), so I went to their web site. Their web site also says that DSL not available for my phone number. Finally call COVAD. Get a real person. "No sir, residential DSL is not available from that CO." Ears perk! ***RESIDENTIAL***(?) DSL! There's a difference between residential DSL and business DSL, and it's the price they can charge for it! "Yes, sir. We can provide business DSL at $159.95 per month." Out of my league, if I was running a business out of here, I might consider it, but I'm not, so I thanked the person and hung up. As I backtracked through the web pages I had visited, all of them had a seemingly innucuous set of buttons, "business" vs. "residential." I didn't try the experiment, but I suspect that if I clicked "business" it would have shown that DSL was available, at a steep price. So, it seems, the providers are hoarding the DSL circuits in my CO so they can milk the businesses for $160 bucks a month before offering it to residential customers (going rate about $30 per month). High speed access through the cable company is about $50.00 per month. Unless there are regulations against this, I guess I'm SOL (and so is the original poster.) -- "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That's a lot like the routine I got from SW Bell. I originally called up and ordered DSL and a reader here sent me a check payable to the Telephone Company for a year's worth of service so I could test drive it. (Thanks once again, name not mentioned here, I have not forgotten your kindness!) And it wasn't bad at first until the spam started rolling in, and it took me so long to wade through the voicemail menus and the holding time queue to reach someone who could help with anything. But then one day by accident (I am sure it had to be by accident) a promotional mailing and a CD to the former owner of my telephone number. "Try our DSL along with a boatload of other goodies for free if you will try our service for just $29 per month. They were offering Yahoo/DSL at that low price. I guess Yahoo bought the telephone company or the other way around. Anyway, I suggested to them "if you can afford to give DSL for $29 per month then you *should* give it for that, along with the free CDs, gift cards, free installs and other goodies. You are charging me almost twice that much, and I sent you a check for a year's service in advance." The lady said to me, "DSL is not a tariffed offering. We can do as we please with that, subject to technical limitations." I guess that's right. What the market will bear and all that rot ... Then they tried to say to me one day if I had a Cingular Wireless phone (which I do) I could get another reduction in the overall bill each month which was just another lie. Then when I switched my phone to Prairie Stream, Southwestern Bell tried to hold my DSL line hostage. Like love and marriage and the horse and carriage you can't have DSL without our phone service. Take us and love it or at least live with it. So I dumped DSL as well and went with cable modem through Cable One. I think you should go ahead and press the button to order 'business DSL' service, then when the first bill shows up tell them you really meant to order residential service, and make them explain to you what makes 'business DSL' different than any regular DSL service. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jmayson@nyx.net Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:09:48 CST Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com > For most people, this will be enough. However, there are known > weaknesses in WEP, and a VERY determined hacker (including law > enforcement types) might POSSIBLY be able to determine your keys and > snoop on your traffic. In practice, on a typical home network, this > will be extremely difficult (not enough packets flying around to build > a large enough statistical universe), but you should be aware of it. Here are some more tips. Keep your power turned low. I kept mine at 12.5%. Worked fine for the PCs in the house, but was useless for my PDA. I had to up the power to 50%. Not only will you reduce 2.4 GHz "pollution" you'll make your AP harder to see. Use MAC address filtering. Sure, it's possible to spoof a MAC address, but only a very determined hacker could pull it off. Restrict your IP addresses. I will only issue so many and most of the time they're all assigned. And lastly, turn off everything when not in use. I'm reminded of the story of the two campers who encounter a bear. One laces up running shoes and points out he doesn't have to outrun the bear but the other camper. Most of the APs in my neighborhood are wide open. A spammer/pornographer/etc. will use their networks rather than go to all sorts of trouble to crack into mine. And before I get a lot of angry emails: I might have used the term "hacker" or "hacking" in this posting concerning wireless home network security. Yes, I do know the difference between a "hacker" and a "criminal with a computer". I was using those terms loosely, but do understand why using the term "hacker" in that context is not correct. > So now, the 'karma question' comes into play. Do I find out which of > my neighbors is Mr. (or Mrs.) Netgear and Mr. Linksys and tell them to > please turn on some security before someone comes along and downloads > all their birthday party pictures? If I was going to be a nice > neighbor and do that, what stops me from getting hit with the > question, "Well now, what were you doing accessing my network?" > So I leave it to the TD reader. How would you approach this dicey > situation? If it were a friend I'd tell them, otherwise I keep my mouth shut. A lot of people are technologically ignorant and will probably accuse me of "hacking". Try to do someone a favor ... John Mayson Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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