______________________________________ ________| l a s l o c o m m . n e t |_______ \ | | / \ I | t e c h n i c a l j o u r n a l | iii / / |______________________________________| \ /__________) (_________\ laslocomm.net presents... the laslocomm.net technical journal now with 31337 ascii graphics! w00t! ---=== free dmitry! see http://www.freesklyarov.org/ ===--- volume 1, issue 3 | july/august 2001 in this issue editorial comments interesting news items article: unlicensed radio operation in the US of FCC review: mailandnews.com column: milwaukee urban exploration call for authors copyrights redistribution editorial comments lots of things I could rant about, but the biggest is the case of one dmitry sklyarov, a programmer from russia who was arrested and now faces a bail hearing in san jose for violating the digital millenium copyright act. chances are, bail will be denied, mainly because he'd probably get on a plane and leave for home. this arrest is a bad thing... the dcma can be applied to many things that hackers do as a matter of daily activity, and if this case is allowed to continue, we're all in trouble. there is very little in america more powerful than legal precedent that sides with corporations. if you've been listening to the mass media, you've missed most of what's really going on, and I encourage you to keep up with the case via the EFF's web site, eff.org, and the various support sites including www.freesklyarov.org. in the ever changing telecomm world, payphones are disappearing. "they" say that cellphones are replacing the need for public phones... I disagree, but then again I don't have a cellphone. my personal opinion is that payphones are much more reliable, much cheaper, and much easier to use than even the coolest cell/pcs phone... but times do change. I'm looking for people from 414 that are interested in writing for the ltj. if you're interested, drop a line to me at webmaster@laslocomm.net see you next time! -laslo interesting news items http://www.latimes.com/news/state/20010609/t000047994.html http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6359207.html http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201-5995337-0.html http://www.cptech.org/ http://www.phoneplusmag.com/prepaid/toc161.html http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6344815.html http://www.sdtimes.com/news/032/story17.htm now we have a war on cybercrime to go with the war on drugs http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010720/tc/ashcroft_cybercrime_2.html sbc/ameritech moved payphone rates to $.50, and of course didn't have to consult with anyone about it (that's deregulation for ya...) http://www.caller.com/2001/july/07/today/localnew/4638.html simple fix to problems with code red IIS worm http://www.apache.org disposable cellphones coming, "they" say http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-202-6721403.html 262 is filling up fast, better start that bilge pump http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jul01/numbers01073101.asp more disappearing payphones http://www.news-press.com/news/today/010729payphones.html article: unlicensed radio operation in the US of FCC radio frequencies are worth their weight in gold. just ask nortel, who lost $19.2 *billion* dollars in the second quarter of this fiscal year, and who picked up a $1 *billion* 3g wireless contract from sprint[1]. those audio and video and god knows what else services require a lot of bandwidth to get to your handheld phone. as you hear in economics 101, when supplies get low, prices tend to go up if there is demand. so what does this have to do with you, oh great text file reader? simple... the federal communications commission sells of chunks of bandwidth to companies who then launder it to the point where you can't tell who owns what. the government gets paid, not necessarily passing on all that cash to you. there are, however, exceptions... frequencies and bands that are not for sale to the highest bidder. that's what this article is about. information here is presented for information only; when the world ends you may need it. first, and probably best known, is the citizen's band radio service (cee-bauy to those of you named bubba). cb as defined by the fcc includes 26.965Mhz to 27.405Mhz, separated into 40 channels[2]. (if you follow the footnote, you'll see that the channels are 10khz apart. if you think that's a lot of bandwidth for simple voice, you are right.) cb rules also allow am and ssb[3] operation, meaning you can use either the lower or upper sideband of a channel to communicate, which is much more efficient use of bandwidth. if you buy a cb radio from a store, you're either going to get a 40 channel am radio, or a 40 channel am/ssb radio. with a little googling, you'll find that some radios can be, um, /expanded/ to operated either between those assigned channels, or above or below the official channels. the practice of operating between channels has been called "sliding"; operating just out of band is appropriately known as "outbanding". according to the rules, you are not allowed to modify your transmitter[4]. according to reality, it is not impossible for some radios to be modified to operate on other than the assigned channels. check flea markets and ebay, chances are you'll find one. it is also permissible to operate a manual phone patch on cb. you may find out that sunspots affect the citizens band (aka 11 meters) much the same way they affect the 10 meter amateur radio band. so although cb is meant for short range personal communications, it is possible to talk over long distances if conditions are right. you guessed it, that's against the rules, too, but you would never know that listening to any channel on a summer afternoon. would it be possible to wire the audio input of a cb radio to the output of a tape recorder? of course, but "broadcasting" (and especially playing music) is prohibited as well. the complete rule set is available online (and in the box of every store bought cb radio)[5]. cb radios come in different shapes and sizes (handheld, headsets, base stations, mobile), but they all do the same thing to start with: you get 40 channels to communicate on. the family radio service offers 14 channels. these are the cute ruggedized radios that sort of look like cell phones that you see people using in public places (malls, festivals, camping, whatever). a good example is here[6]. these radios use tone squlech, meaning instead of hearing all traffic on a particular channel, you can filter out all except the people you want to hear. the frs operates on uhf, in the 400Mhz range, so actual distance is fairly limited without a larger and higher antenna. the radios built for frs are often very high quality for a decent price, and I recommend them for tactical situations, especially in urban settings. if you're going to be out in the fields or on the road, cb may be a better choice. the third choice I'll talk about here is murs: the multi use radio service. this includes the following frequencies: 151.820 MHz, 151.880 MHz, 151.940 MHz, 154.570 MHz, 154.600 Mhz[7]. murs allows you to send data (packet, et al) as well, giving you an option for setting up small networks. the 2 watt erp limit is a bit strict, I think... but a good antenna at those frequencies can do wonders. (I will keep this section short; k4abt does a much better job explaining than I will.) now that you know you can operate (provided you have the equipment) on HF (cb), VHF (murs) and UHF (frs), what do you do with that information? the possible uses are limitless, depending on what you do with your time. you can expand your horizons by adding and modifying equipment in some cases, however. you don't *have* to use the antennas the store offers; you can build your own using inexpensive speaker wire, a tree, and an antenna tuner[8]. many pieces of ham radio equipment can be adapted for use. [1] http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010627/tc/tech_nortel_dc_1.html [2] http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cgi?TITLE=47&PART=95&SECTION= 625&YEAR=2000&TYPE=TEXT [3] http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,289893,sid9_gci284014,00.html [4] http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cgi?TITLE=47&PART=95&SECTION= 607&YEAR=2000&TYPE=TEXT [5] http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_00/47cfr95_00.html [6] http://commerce.motorola.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ProductDisplay?prrfnbr=228887& prmenbr=126&twoway_cgrfnbr=8&zipcode=&prsdesc=TALKABOUT% AE%20T5200%20AA%20Alkaline%20Radio [7] http://www.packetradio.com/murs.htm [8] http://www.aesham.com review: mailandnews.com there are a zillion free email services. what makes mailandnews.com interesting is the ability to also access usenet from the web, along with wireless and voice capability. In this review, I will cover each of mailandnews.com's unique capabilties. email basic functions that you would expect, with a very clean and suprisingly quick interface that reminds me a little of yahoo! mail and microsoft outlook. also includes .forwarding, vacation messages, and advanced handling rules. nothing exceptional, but the interface is especially sharp and all functions work as you would expect them to work, except the news icon. see the news section. score: 9.75 news usenet is accessed either from the news icon in the email interface, or as a folder. if you're used to outlook-like software you expect the news interface to appear by clicking the news icon, but instead you get the newsgroup list for finding newsgroups to read. not a terrible thing, but it's worth a deduction. other than that, news works just like email, using the same interface. very nice. the majority of news groups are carried, with no visible censorship going on, and posts appear within a day or so, consistent with posting through my ISP. score: 9.75 voice voice access is available from a 1-800 line and a local number in baltimore, maryland. the synthesized voice for mail reading is is male and somewhat mechanical, but more understandable than other services have been. menus and prompts are in a female voice. switching menus takes some time, which is filled in by the female voice saying "please wait" repeatedly. this gets annoying after a few seconds, but most of the time the voice is in a helpful, quiet tone. voice access gives you access to only your email, but you can reply to incoming emails by phone, and this feature works well. voice quality is passable, and encoding and sending speed very quick. you can compose new voice messages only to addresses stored in your address book. my only complaint is the waiting time between some menus that can be rather frustrating. score: 9.0 wap I don't have wap capable equipment, so this part of the service was not reviewed and does not appear in the overall score. overall mailandnews.com is a very good service. the ability to use voice and wap, plus allowing SSL connections on the web, is very useful. not much to say other than give it a good look if you need access to usenet and voicemail as well as decent email. overall score: 9.7 column: milwaukee urban exploration recently, laslocomm.net/exploration was added to the urban exploration webring. as a result, traffic to the site doubled almost immediately, suggesting that either there are a lot of infiltrators in the world in general, or there are more in the milwaukee area than I previously thought... or both. :) in any case, I've created a group/mailing list at yahoo![1] to help people get in touch with each other. if you're in the milwaukee area, please stop on by. personally, I haven't had time for much; I started a new job recently, which decreases my available free time quite a bit. on the other hand, the job involves crisscrossing the milwaukee metro area several times a day, so I get to see and make note of buildings, drains, roads, etc. as things at work get a little more routine for me, I'll be able to do some recon and hopefully make suggesstions for places to explore. if you're out doing something interesting, drop a line and let me know. I have enough space to host a few people if you want to post your own content on laslocomm.net/exploration. [1] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/milwaukee_exploration call for authors the laslocomm.net technical journal is open to ideas from others. if you wish to have an article or column included in a future issue, please send your submission, article idea, or wacked news item via email (plain text is fine, don't *even* send it in word) to webmaster@laslocomm.net or use the submit form at http://www.laslocomm.net/submit.html. copyrights and credits and shouts all copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this issue are the property of their owners. y0: doc, sinic, voodoo, agentOJ, all of the bastages that are going to/went to defcon without me, #2600, ati, drop-music.com, anada.net, infiltration magazine, the inventor of the mountain dew code red slurpee, and whirred to y0 m0mm4. peace. that is all. redistribution (c) 2001 laslocomm.net all rights reserved redistribution permitted for non-commercial, personal use