I get so sick and tired of reading this stuff like, "beware when setting your modem parameters as evil criminal hacker types might invade your computer and make calls', or 'cyber criminals are stealing your bank account now!!!'

If they are, they're walking ghosts, I'm sure, because they spent every waking hour and every last ounce of energy they had trying to figure it out. Even if they could access my bank account I don't think they're going to have any time or energy left over to spend it.

I just spent two weeks trying to get my modem to dial from a LAN. Everything I tried, everything I read, said how easy it would be and how great the authors were from their ivory towers of knowledge, because they knew all about these things. Well I'm here to tell you it can't be done. At the end of the day, sedentary, in front of a computer screen, trying to figure out every possible key combination under the sun, and reading every article I can find on networks, LANs, modems and more, I'm exhausted and I've lost muscle tissue from sitting around so long. If there is a hacker out there, who can dial my modem without me knowing about it, more power to 'em. Let them make the phone calls. They deserve it and at least I know it can be done.

It's Y2K all over again relabeled as Cyber crime or war. Mass hysteria and panic has gripped the ever so intelligent public. Everybody and his/her Yahoo now-a-days is a comuputer expert so they know: cyber crime is on the war path and we all better get armed and maybe buy new computers and read some of that advertising next to the newspaper article about hackers.