From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jan 1 21:23:00 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i022N0E10801; Thu, 1 Jan 2004 21:23:00 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 21:23:00 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401020223.i022N0E10801@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 #1 TELECOM Digest Thu, 1 Jan 2004 21:23:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 1 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Tim Berners-Lee Gets His Knighthood for the WWW (Danny Burstein) Satellite Radio Goes for a Spin (Monty Solomon) Car-Monitoring Service Allows You to be Big Brother (Monty Solomon) California Plan Would Halt Trucks Remotely in Attack (Monty Solomon) GILC Alert v7i9 (Monty Solomon) Step, Panel, XB, and Tone Plants (was Re: 10 Digit) (jsw@ivgate.omahug) Voip PC to PC Talking Try Skype (Gordon Laubach) Re: 10-Digit Dialing (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: NANP Numbering (Linc Madison) Re: NANP Numbering (Arthur Kamlet) Re: NANP Numbering (Mark Brader) Re: Is That Possible? (Greg T. Knopf) Re: Taxes on Phone Bills - Ouch (John R. Levine) Barbers (was Re: 10-Digit) (Dave Close) Re: Linksys boxen (Carl Navarro) Re: Taxes on Phone Bills - Ouch (Joe@nospamcity.com) Re: Telecoms Embrace Internet Calling, But Is It Trouble? (Joe@nospam) Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus (Earle Robinson) Correction, was Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions (Danny Burstein) N-Gage (www.gorover.com) 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: Danny Burstein Subject: Tim Berners-Lee Gets His Knighthood for the WWW Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 02:24:32 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC http://www.w3.org/ -- 31 December 2003 -- Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), will be made a Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth. This was announced earlier today by Buckingham Palace as part of the 2004 New Year's Honours list. The rank of Knight Commander is the second most senior rank of the Order of the British Empire, one of the Orders of Chivalry awarded. Berners-Lee, 48, a British citizen who lives in the United States, is being knighted in recognition of his "services to the global development of the Internet" through the invention of the World Wide Web. [ snippety snip ] http://www.w3.org/2003/12/timbl_knighted _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 03:03:33 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Satellite Radio Goes for a Spin By Lewis Wallace In a TV commercial for XM Satellite Radio, country legend Willie Nelson calls the service "the best radio there is." That's strong praise for an industry still in its infancy. So, are Nelson's words strictly an ad man's hyperbole, or is satellite radio something no self-respecting technophile can live without? The answer, of course, lies somewhere in between. For a stone digital-music geek who has an iPod jammed with thousands of MP3s and no real interest in straying from custom play lists, satellite radio is probably unnecessary. The same goes for talk-radio junkies with well-established affinities for local shows or National Public Radio. However, if you're a music lover with wide-ranging tastes, a driver who spends a lot of time on the road, or a resident of a rural area with no satisfactory radio options, satellite radio could be a digital dream come true. We tested products from the industry's dueling companies -- XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio -- locally and on long jaunts. http://www.wired.com/news/gizmos/0,1452,61668,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 03:04:56 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Car-Monitoring Service Allows You to Be Your Own Big Brother Don't trust your teenagers or your spouse? Networkcar can tell you where they've been driving. By Ralph Vartabedian Times Staff Writer December 31, 2003 The way George Orwell imagined Big Brother was as a police state that imposed unrelenting surveillance on an unwilling public. Orwell never imagined that people would actually make nice with Big Brother as a matter of convenience, but that's one way to view the growing stream of data from automobiles that has attracted a lot of interest from the government and, so far, not a lot of suspicion from the public. Some consumers actually are willing to pay for a service that lets the government know your car isn't breaking the law. For about a year, a La Jolla company has offered to provide remote sensing of a car's systems and to post that data to a private Web page, along with verifying to state agencies that the car is in compliance with the emission laws of California and a few other states. http://www.latimes.com/classified/automotive/highway1/la-hy-wheels31dec31,1,1009805.story ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 12:13:11 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: California Plan Would Halt Trucks Remotely in Attack By Daniel Sorid SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Three years after a truck driver slammed an 18-wheeler into California's state capitol building, lawmakers are considering a plan to link trucks carrying hazardous material to a satellite tracking system that would halt them if they were used in a terror attack. The trucks would be equipped with devices that would either cut off fuel to the engine or turn on the brakes when activated. The proposed bill would implement the country's most stringent safety regulations for trucks carrying fuel and other hazardous materials, but it faces fierce opposition from local trucking companies who complain that the rules would make California truckers uncompetitive. Assemblyman John Dutra, unhappy with the slow federal pace in addressing the issue, introduced the bill in February 2003, and it passed easily in the state assembly. Amid protest from industry groups, the bill failed to get past the transportation committee in the state senate, where it will be reconsidered this year. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40109808 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 12:26:01 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: GILC Alert v7i9 GILC Alert Volume 7, Issue 9 19 December 2003 Welcome to the Global Internet Liberty Campaign Newsletter. Welcome to GILC Alert, the newsletter of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign. We are an international organization of groups working for cyber-liberties, who are determined to preserve civil liberties and human rights on the Internet. We hope you find this newsletter interesting, and we very much hope that you will avail yourselves of the action items in future issues. If you are a part of an organization that would be interested in joining GILC, please contact us at . If you are aware of threats to cyber-liberties that we may not know about, please contact the GILC members in your country, or contact GILC as a whole. Please feel free to redistribute this newsletter to appropriate forums. =============================================== Free expression [1] Hollywood suffers defeat in Net file sharing case [2] Controversial world info summit held [3] Christian Chinese online activist arrested [4] Zimbabwean gov't arrests 14 online dissenters [5] Protests mount against Iran Net censorship [6] Tunisian Net dissident finally freed [7] DVD programmer awaits appeals court ruling [8] Diebold backs down on Internet copyright threats [9] Report on Vietnam Net speech curbs released Privacy [10] Bush Backs International Cybercrime Plan [11] Planned VeriPay human implants pose privacy problems [12] Microsoft security flaws affect automated bank tellers [13] US gov't gets still more spy powers [14] Study: many British websites poor on privacy [15] Yahoo and Excite fix webmail security hole [16] Controversy grows over South Korean mobile phone security [17] New privacy-friendly Cryptophone unveiled http://www.gilc.org/alert/alert79.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 10:37:17 CST From: jsw@ivgate.omahug.org Subject: Step, Panel and XP Reply-To: jsw@ivgate.omahug.org > It should be noted that in the waning days of SxS, the Bell System > added electronic front and back ends to the switches to improve > performance. I'm not sure if they went as far as converting an SxS > exchange into "common control" run by the front end electronics, but > there was some up front processing. The Manawa office in Council Bluffs, IA (Omaha, NE area, 712-366) used what was called 'Directorized SxS'. This was an outboard conversion used on some Ma Bell (and maybe others) step offices to approach common control. This conversion was most likely done in the 1960's, and provided dial tone to the subscriber, and recorded the dialed number, either in dial pulses or touch-tone tones. For interoffice calls it then drove the switch train, and for intra-office it provided the signaling (MF, dial-pulse, possibly even revertive - I dunno) that the called office expected. This installation lasted until the mid 1980's when the Manawa office was cut to a DMS-10. > Panel Type and 1XB had no provision for dealing with SxS pulsing. When > 1XB came around, presumably the easterners assumed that any place which > would need them would be panel. Panel used the 'revertive' signaling method, possibly invented by Rube Goldberg which, to make it very simple, the called office advanced the contact and the calling office told the called office when to stop. This was emulated in the #1 crossbar, as it was intended to be compatible with the panel system. (I also vaguely remember that the 1ESS was able to speak revertive as well.) When placing a call from a panel office, the revertive pulse sounds could often be heard as a distinctive 'scratch-scratch' sound during dialing. I'm familiar with the way both the Omaha and NYC phone systems were back in the electromechanical days, and both used panel and 1XB extensively with lots of revertive pulsing between the various offices. (Ma Bell's first full-scale panel office was in the Atlantic office in Omaha. Years ago I provided information about this to the Digest here.) Both areas used 5XB for newer installations until the early 1970's. There were pockets of SxS around both Omaha and NYC, often appearing as DID implementations, but occasionally for POTS, as in the Manawa office I mentioned above. (I remember specifically that Columbia U in Manhattan and Union Pacific in Omaha used such a scheme.) Many of the CDO's in the hinterlands surrounding Omaha (but in the dialing area) used direct-control step well into the 70's. IIRC, the panel and 1XB offices (and some others) reached the direct-control step offices by way of a tandem office that provided the expected pulse signaling to drive the switch train. > It was only when 5XB came out that there was an alternative to step in > large step cities. I do remember that some 1XB offices were retrofitted to receive (and presumably transmit) MF for interoffice signaling. (The O Street office in Omaha was an example.) I assume that if they could speak MF, that there were provisions for dial pulse signaling as well. > Interestingly I have found historical references to a Panel system > being installed and utilized in the Providence, RI CO on Washington & > Greene. I was always fascinated with the dialing arrangements in some parts of Rhode Island I visited during my younger days. IIRC, the Coventry area was direct-control SxS (early 70's) and had a few varied access codes to dial nearby areas. (Dusting off very rusty memory cells ...) I also vaguely remember that the Scituate area had at least one office with the 'directorized' step, and offered 7-digit 'sane' dialing into the Providence area. > I think there was also some SxS gear because my grandparents phones had > the standard SxS dialtone and when called had the SxS ring and busy > signals, though those may have been Panel signaling I'm not familiar > with. It seems like many of Ma Bell's step offices used a similar type of tone plant, one with the 'flatulent' ringback, and that most of their panel offices (as well as most 1XB and many 5XB) used the very familiar 'metropolitan' tone plant, but I know of many exceptions, making it not trivial to determine the CO type just by the dial/ring/busy tones. I do remember, for example, that some of Ma Bell's step offices had a ring tone that appeared to come from the same type of tone plant used in the newer 5XB offices, one that to the untrained ear sounded very much like today's standard ring tone. There were variations on this theme. The Manawa office I cited above had a ring tone that I had/have never heard elsewhere. It could best be described as a muted blast of an air horn, with a similarly raucous busy tone. I also remember one panel office that served the Boro Park/Sunset Park area of Brooklyn that had a very mechanical-sounding 'flatulent' ring tone and equally funky busy tone. IIRC, the dial tone from this office was similarly unusual. And then there was this strange ring tone best described as a 'low rumble' that occasionally appeared on some of Ma Bell's 5XB offices. I never figured that one out. It was barely audible on some LD calls. It almost sounded like only the spurious harmonics of the ring signal. ------------------------------ From: gordonl@rocketmail.com (Gordon Laubach) Subject: Voip PC to PC Talking Try Skype Date: 1 Jan 2004 14:23:25 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com For FREE great VOIP Pc to Pc talking try Skype.. http://www.skype.com/ 4,968,275 downloads and counting Much easier to use than FWD;.. ( sorry to say) cuts thru the firewalls... The best Audio I have Used.. Skype is the next phenomenon from the people who brought you KaZaA. Just like KaZaA, Skype uses P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you to other users not to share files this time, but to talk and chat with your friends. The technology is extremely advanced but super simple to use... You'll be making free phone calls to your friends in no time! Free unlimited worldwide phone calls to other Skype users Superior sound quality better than your regular phone Works with all firewall, NAT and routers nothing to configure! Friends list shows you when your Skype friends are online and ready to talk or chat. Super-simple and easy to use. Your calls are encrypted "end-to-end" for superior privacy Based on cutting edge peer-to-peer technology developed by the creators of Kazaa and Joltid. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 19:39:59 EST Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing In a message dated 30 Dec 2003 19:19:54 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) writes: > I don't know of the Bell System priorities in the old days. But a > reading of the "Engineering & Science" histories of the Bell System > indicates that small areas did receive attention. "Community dial > offices" were developed. The plans for nationwide direct distance > dialing took into account the many varied dial plans of small offices. As I mentioned, the first dial office in Oklahoma City, in 1920, used A.E. SxS because there was no W.E. SxS equipment. By 1927, there was #1 SxS from W.E., and it was installed in the downtown office in Oklahoma City. CDOs, much smaller places, usually without local operators after dial equipment was installed, were usually W.E. 350 SxS and 355 SxS. But most of these came after World War II. It was in the 1920s, perhaps earlier in a few places, that SxS was installed in a quie a few places it is now hard to consider a "small office";: indeed, many of them were multi-office cities by the time the first dial equipment was installed. These "small places" include such places as Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Wichita and many others. > I dare say that the big cities received more attention because the > more complex calling patterns required it and the cities generated > more revenues. I suspect businesses in big cities tended to spend > more in long distance and premises equipment (key sets, PBXs, etc.) > than in a small town which justified the greater interest. I'm not sure how the usage of long distance and premises equipment particularly affected the type of central office equipment to be installed. Those were all the smae for all types of offices, Panel, step, #1XB. > Step by Step was cheaper to install and run since it was simpler. > Crossbar and panel required technicians with a higher level of > training. > As to inter-office connections, remember that when Panel and #1 > crossbar were developed (1920s and 1930s, virtually all long distance > was handled manually by operators, indeed even establishing a > connection took some time and effort. Gradually, operators could dial > calls in distant cities and routing was simplified. The vast majority of interoffice trunking in cities with more than one office was local trunking between offices. Los Angeles was probably almost unique in having substantial operator dialing to interzone (or "multiple message unit") and toll offices before World War II. Indeed, in the last 1940s my experience on outgoing long distance calls from Los Angeles was that you dialed the code "110" for the long distance operator, who then had to determine from Rate and Route not only the routing (including intermediate distant tandem points), but also what manual toll tandem in L.A. to access because the volume of toll trunks was so great that they had to be allocated between different manual toll tandem boards in the L.A. area. I still remember my first call where the operator dialed directly to a distant point when I was living in Dallas. It was to Corpus Christi, and when I passed the number to the toll operator in Dallas the next thing I heard was the number ringing in Corpus. Before that time, the originating toll operator would pick a trunk to Corpus, where the inward operator would answer "Corpus Christi," and the originating operator would pass the number for Corpus inward to dial. > Panel DID contain capacity for manual/automatic dial interface. > I'm also curious how the last manual systems (1960s) worked in terms > of handling modern higher call volumes. For example, in suburban > Philadelphia (Upper Darby) there was the FLanders exchanges, which > didn't convert until around 1962. It was an old suburban community, > with a big transit terminal and shopping district, and residential > neighborhoods. (In the 1980s I asked Bell of Pennsylvania for > information and they said they had no historical information.) Pat has given an answer to this; I believe various systems, including the ones he mentioned, were used. No local dial-manual interfaces existed in Oklahoma after the downtown office in Oklahoma City was converted to dial in 1928. It is my belief, based on stories of old timers, that customers in the "Northwest" office dialed the local operator at the downtown office and passed their number; customers in the downtown office (still "Number, please") passed their call to the operator orally just like any other call, and she dialed the number in the "Northwest" office. One issue, of course, was of interoperability between dial and manual offices. But a more pressing issue in places that were all SxS and had grown to where the trunking arrangement, directly controlled by the pulses the customer dialed, had become complex and was rapidly becoming more complex, had no way of interfacing with offices designed for such complex arrangements. Panel, and later #1XB, the apparently logical answer, had no provision for interfacing with step offices, only with each other. It wasn't until #5XB came along that there was a solution other than kludges (used in most places), putting senders in the step offices (the L.A. solution) or just accepting that there were some local routes that couldn't be economically automated and requiring customers to dial "operator," who then completed the call for the customer (a solution that was adopted in Houston). An interesting corollary to this is that large and small SxS offices could interface seamlessly, as long as the complexity of the trunking did not overwhelm certain routes. The CDO behind the barber shop in Britton, Okla., a suburb of Oklahoma City, was originally toll, then interzone from most of Oklahoma City. Then it became part of the local dialing area, with "88-" prefixed to the number, working out of the 84- office (a large step office) with suitable digit absorption. Finally, with the change to 7-digit (then as two letters and five) it became TRinity 8-, with one more digit to be absorbed. Incidentally, the office no longer exists, as you would expect, the municipality of Britton has been absorbed into Oklahoma City and no longer is a separate legal entity. But the location of that CDO is still the location of the rate point for the "Britton" zone, which includes at least three separate wire centers, each with ESSs serving multiple prefixes. If you make a toll or other detail-billed call to a number served out of those offices, it will show on your bill as "Britton, OK", no doubt to the confusion of many callers. (That, of course, is not unique anywhere around the country -- there are many rate points like that around the country that, in many cases, have no current place name to give you a clue.) In a message dated 12/30/03 3:31:48 AM Central Standard Time, editor@telecom-digest.org writes: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Two points of interest to add to the > note from Wes Leatherock ... '3 or 4 chair barbershops'; there is no > such animal any longer. The very few barbershops which remain these > days are almost always single person proprietor places. Only rarely > will several barbers work as a group. There simply is no longer any > demand for their services. I go to a salon here in Independence which > has two beauticians on duty; a mother and daughter, but 'Classy > Clippers' as it is known has been around for twenty years at least. > Several multi-chair shops *used to exist* years ago in Chicago. Pat, This is straying far afield from telecom news, but I can assure I had my hair cut this morning in a 3-chair barber shop. And all three barbers were there (on New Years' Eve!). Sometimes I have my hair cut at another 3-chair shop that is on the other side of the center. And again sometimes at a 5-chair barber shop, with all the barbers usually pretty busy. Between those threet is a 4-chair barber shop, with the last chair behind a partition and nominally a style shop, but the barber will do ordinary haircuts if he has no style customers. These are all within three or four miles of my house in Oklahoma City, and I think I saw another one in the other direction a few days ago. I may try it soon. A new "salon" not far from the three I mentioned is having its grand opening special with $2.99 haircuts. I don't know how much male trade they have; the few times I've tried a salon type of place I wasn't entirely satisfied (but of course this is true of some barber shops, too). In a message dated Tue, 30 Dec 2003 04:34:28 -0500, COTTP writes: > Interestingly I have found historical references to a Panel system > being installed and utilized in the Providence, RI CO on Washington & > Greene. > The missing link is between the Panel. I think there was also some SxS > gear because my grandparents phones had the standard SxS dialtone and > when called had the SxS ring and busy signals, though those may have > been Panel signaling I'm not familiar with. I have lived and worked in places served by Panel, #1XB, and SxS, and never noticed a different in the dial tone, ringing and busy signals. Those were produced by a ringing machine which is used in all kinds of offices. (Of course, when a deviant ringing machine is used, as the A.E. ringing machine I mentioned that was in use in the Oklahoma City Jackson office until around 1960 or a little later. It sounded different because the A.E. machine did produce somewhat different tones, but those were used throughout the office, including the numerous expansions of the office with W.E. SxS.) Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 14:39:19 -0800 From: Linc Madison Reply-To: lincmad@suespammers.org Organization: California resident; nospam; no unsolicited e-mail allowed In article , Rob wrote: > OK, I know that this may very well seem a dumb question, but why is > the NANP numbering system different to other phone systems throughout > the world? Why do so many other countries have numbering systems different from the NANP? (Hint: where was the telephone invented?) The answer is that the telephone systems in North America and Europe evolved very differently, under very different economic and social conditions. Europe does not have the vast swaths of sparsely settled territory that exist in the United States and Canada. Also, the telephone systems in Europe developed under government control, mostly under the direction of the postal authorities, while in the US and Canada the telephone systems, especially for intercity calling, were developed by for-profit corporations. > The vast majority of countries in the world have area codes beginning > with '0', whereas in NANP countries the area code commences with '1', No, very few countries in the world have area codes beginning with '0'; Russia is one of a handful. (Moscow = +7 095) For instance, area codes in the UK do not ever begin with '0'. Likewise, area codes in the NANP never, ever begin with '1'. Most countries have '0' as an access prefix, which is customarily quoted as if it were part of the area code, although it is not. In the NANP, we quote the area code as the area code. My area code is 415, not 1415. The leading '1' is quoted separately, since it is an access code. That may sound like a pedantic point, which it may be, but it's also an important element in the equation. > and then numbers on the same area code, or even numbers in > neighbouring codes (i.e. 919, 252 and 304), aren't always regarded as > local, as they are here in the UK. For example, my local calling > area not only covers my own exchange (01685) but also all numbers on > the neighbouring exchanges of 01443, 01639, 01874 and 01495. Another pedantic point: 919, 252, and 304 are not neighboring codes. I suspect you meant 804 (Richmond VA) rather than 304 (WV). Even before the advent of the newest area codes like 028 for Northern Ireland, it was never true that all calls within a UK area code were local. All calls within a *CHARGING GROUP* are local, and in the majority of cases the charging group coincided with the 01xxx area code, but there were several exceptions. Then along came 091 (now 0191), which includes multiple charge groups, and finally 028 and 023. It is also important to remember that, even with the recent explosion of area codes in the NANP and the recent consolidation of area codes in the UK, there are still far more than twice as many area codes in the UK as in the NANP. Area code +1 867 alone is more than sixteen times the land area of the entire UK, although it has about the same population as Worthing, West Sussex (just west of Brighton). Worthing is the 62nd-largest city in the UK. For Welsh examples, Swansea and Newport each have more people than +1 867, and Cardiff has more than three times as many people. The full NANP has about eighty times the UK's land area, with only about five times the population. In short, you *usually* have local calling within an area code because your area codes are *vastly* smaller in land area and population. (Of course, there are exceptions at the extremes: +1 213 has a tiny land area, and +44 20 has a huge population.) If the NANP's area codes covered the same average land area as the UK's area codes, there would be about 40,000 of them. No, thank you. Even if the NANP's area codes only covered the same average population, there would still be over 3,000; again, no, thank you. In North America, at the advent of national numbering, the decision was made by AT&T to take advantage of certain efficiencies in routing by adopting a fixed numbering format, known as 3-3-4. The area code is always three digits, the central office code is always three digits, and the line number is always four digits. By contrast, most of the world adopted variable numbering formats. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and those comparisons weigh differently today than they did in the middle of the last century. > Also, how are calls charged between countries within NANP -- that > is, is a call from Canada or the US to Bermuda or Barbados regarded > as international, even though they're technically (I think!) on the > same phone system? Being on the same phone system is a separate issue from being international. The country code isn't the end of the story as far as billing rates. For instance, on many carriers, it costs less to call a Mexican border town than to call the Yucatan. Likewise, each telco sets its own rates for calls to each country in the world. Although few telcos did so, it was in theory possible to charge differently for Switzerland and Liechtenstein, even before Liechtenstein got its own separate country code. Calls to +41 75 (now +423) could be charged at one rate, and calls to other points in +41 at a different rate. Likewise, calls, whether within the NANP or from outside, can be billed differently to +1 202 or +1 613 or +1 242. Indeed, one of the questions I find most interesting is why so many overseas telcos bill much higher rates for +1 808 (Hawaii) and +1 907 (Alaska) than for other points in the United States. Of course, even within the United States, many telcos bill higher rates for Hawaii and Alaska than for the "contiguous 48." Another related point is that, by the standards of most people in the NANP, the UK has no local calling at all. In most of the NANP, all local calls are included in the monthly line rental at no additional charge. In the UK, that's only true in Kingston-upon-Hull, and with some of the new cable-based telcos. For BT subscribers, it can be less expensive to call the United States than to call your neighbor! My local calling area includes all of +1 415, +1 510, +1 650, +1 925, and +1 408, almost all of +1 707, and about half of +1 831. The total population in that area is about six million, and I have untimed calls at no additional charge. That's on a regular landline, although not with the traditional dominant telco. Many people now have the option for about $20/month of having unmetered calls within the entire USA, and for an extra $5 you can add Canada. Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * lincmad@suespammers.org * primary e-mail: Telecom at LincMad dot com All U.S. and California anti-spam laws apply, incl. CA BPC 17538.45(c) This text constitutes actual notice as required in BPC 17538.45(f)(3). DO NOT SEND UNSOLICITED E-MAIL TO THIS ADDRESS. You have been warned. ------------------------------ From: kamlet@panix.com (Arthur Kamlet) Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: 31 Dec 2003 18:18:53 -0500 Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: ArtKamlet@aol.REMOVE.com In article , John R. Levine wrote: > It's not one phone system, it's one numbering plan. Phone switches > have no trouble looking at the dialed digits and figuring out that a > call staring with 1212 goes to New York, 1416 to Toronto, and 1758 to > St Lucia. The numbers are all the same length, but the numbering plan > is designed so that switches can route long distance calls based on > the first few digits. And then there are overlays [1-800 +7D] Art Kamlet ArtKamlet @ AOL.com Columbus OH K2PZH ------------------------------ Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 00:57:12 EST From: msb@vex.net (Mark Brader) Charlie Gibbs: > That leading 1 is _not_ part of the area code. It started out as > a prefix identifying long-distance calls, ("Access code" in North American jargon.) > but it's nowadays better thought of as the country code - corresponding > to your 44 - followed by a 3-digit area code. No, it is not better thought of as the country code. It's only a coincidence that the country code is also 1. Proof of this is that we have *two* access codes -- we can use access code 0 to request alternate billing (originally, to request operator assistance, but these days it's usually done automatically) on the call. Mark Brader | "The net exists to be used. It is a powerful tool msb@vex.net | and as long as people treat it as a tool and not a toy Toronto | it will prosper." --Jerry Schwarz on Usenet, 1982 My text in this article is in the public domain. ------------------------------ From: Greg T. Knopf Subject: Re: Is That Possible? Date: 30 Dec 2003 16:34:04 EST Organization: Concentric Internet Services Reply-To: gtknopf@concentric.net Hello, dado wrote: > Hi, > Can PBX (private branch exchange) line access the internet ?? > Here is the situation: > The City A (central region) has its own leased line and it's server. > Other cities B,C,D just connect to the central region (city A) > through pbx line. (We all in the same country). > My question now, is that possible that cites (b,c,d) can get the > internet connection through pbx line ?? If that is possible what are > the requirements?? Much of this depends on the PBX type you are using, the type of telco line tying them together, and the protocols supported by them. With that caveat: At all sites you would want to establish a Local Area Network with a hub or a switch. Then each site would need a router, with the central site A having a router capable of multiple serial connections. If possible, then dedicate some of your bandwidth tying the sites together through the PBX setup, let's say a 64kbps channel, for a data connection. At sites B,C, and D this data connection is attached to the local router, which in turn sits on the LAN via the local hub or switch. There are a lot of "ifs" here, so it might be helpful to post your PBX info or info about what type of connections tie the remote sites to the central site. Good luck, - Greg gtknopf@concentric.net info@knopfnet.com ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Taxes on Phone Bills - Ouch Date: 1 Jan 2004 02:01:16 -0500 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Monthly fee: > Line with local service: $8.95 > Taxes: 911 Tax, Al Gore Tax, Spanish American War Tax, State Utility > Tax,Sales Tax =$6.00. > I dropped the second line because of 67% taxes. If not for that, I > would have kept it. You forgot the $6 access charge which is really part of the local service price although telcos would like you to believe that it's something else. That makes the effective tax rate somewhat lower. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 23:53:46 -0800 From: Dave Close Subject: Barbers (was Re: 10-Digit Dialing) Date: 31 Dec 2003 23:52:08 -0800 Organization: Compata, Costa Mesa, California > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The Palmer House Hotel in Chicago and > the Conrad Hilton Hotel both had (maybe still) multi-chair shops. The > lead barber was also the cashier. Of course in addition to a haircut > many guys went in the shop every day to also get a shave and a facial. > Palmer House had twelve chairs I think; but it used to be that all > guys would get a haircut once a week or every two weeks at least. No > more. PAT] I've been going to a four-chair shop in Fountain Valley California for most of the last ten years. Fountain Valley is in Orange County, the epitome of suburbia by some reconning. The owner just retired and sold the shop last month, but it still has four chairs and stays busy. However, what has disappeared are real haircuts. I'm told that using a straight razor is essentially optional on the California license exam and most barbers skip that. A few places seem to recognize the problem, but solve it by pretending to shave my neck, not really doing it. Since I can't see the process, I can only infer their action by the lack of a smooth result. I feel like such an old-timer! Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA "The cost of silicon chips has been dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 steady at about $1bn per acre for dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu 40 years." --Gordon Moore ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Linksys boxen Reply-To: cnavarro@wcnet.org Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 10:00:01 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 22:16:38 -0600, Gary Breuckman wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually I could use a 'pass through' >> socket back there, to attach a second Linksys box as well. But I am >> trying to *avoid* the additional hardware expense and keep my system as >> simple as possible. PAT] > If you mean a Linksys hub or switch, yes, but you do not need another > router. > Also, if you have four ports AND an uplink connector, be advised that the > uplink shares the port next to it, you can't use BOTH the port and the > UPLINK at the same time. > -- Gary Breuckman > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What I have is a little blue box with > squat legs that says Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL Router on the front. > On the back side are six modular connectors (lines one through four) > plus a 'pass through' and a connector to the cable 'modem'. I assume > if I strap another box on either through the 'pass through' or the > socket next to it, I would not need another connector to the cable > modem as well. But then I could have the luxury of a second VOIP > phone, but just imagine the traffic jam going through the cable! PAT] Actually, you unplug one of your 4 devices from the Linksys Router box, and add a 4/5/8/12/16 port hub or switch to that port and plug whatever you unplugged into the hub or switch. A Linksys 8 port switch is designed to stack on top of the router, but I'd just go by price. :-) Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: Joe@nospamcity.com Subject: Re: Taxes on Phone Bills - Ouch Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 05:34:07 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications Second line for basic charge of $8.95? Wow! David wrote: > I recently got ADSL service and looked at what it would take to keep > my second phone line for fax use. > Monthly fee: > Line with local service: $8.95 > Taxes: 911 Tax, Al Gore Tax, Spanish American War Tax, State Utility > Tax,Sales Tax =$6.00. > I dropped the second line because of 67% taxes. If not for that, I > would have kept it. > David ------------------------------ From: Joe@nospamcity.com Subject: Re: Telecoms Embrace Internet Calling, But Is It Trouble? Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 05:40:08 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications Marcus Didius Falco wrote: > It's not entirely bad news for the industry: Net-based calling is > already lowering traditional phone companies' capital costs, and will > continue to do so. And a rack of VOIP equipment is about the size of a > microwave. Just one of those can replace floors' worth of old-school > telecom switches, which are about the size of an industrial > refrigerator. It will be decades, however, before the upgrades are > complete. Those old-school telecom switches are still needed to complete the VOIP call to 99.99% of the subscribers. And, likewise they are need to originate most calls to VOIP subscribers. Cell phones are going after the local provider a lot faster than VOIP. And, the cell phone providers use pretty much the same old-school telecom switch as do the old-school wireline providers. Apparently the reporter doesn't get it. ------------------------------ From: Earle Robinson Subject: Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 22:42:30 +0100 Please accept the following, but please hide my email address. Thank you. In fact, ADSL and ISDN may co-exist quite nicely and this is what happens in Germany. A relatively small amount of the lower bandwidth is left for ISDN, enough for the 2 b channels and the d channel, and the upper bandwidth devoted to ADSL. The reason for this is ISDN has long been very popular in Germany, so the best way to get ADSL subscribers is to offer ADSL on top of ADSL. Thus, Mr. Warren is mistaken in saying this is technically impossible. Earle Robinson ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Correction, was Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 02:41:08 +0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In an earlier posting I wrote the following about ISDN (excerpted): > The standard setup for ISDN in the US uses the exact same type of > (physical) wire pair that a regular phone line would, but the > signalling on it -- even though it's using the same frequencies as a > standard voice line -- is very different. While most of my post was correct, I've since discovered that I should have paid more attention to my kindergarten teacher. The common ISDN circuits in the US actually do use more frequencies on the copper wire than just the regular voice ones. My apologies. Now to crawl back under my rock. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Chris@chris-s.co.uk (www.gorover.com) Subject: N-Gage Date: 31 Dec 2003 16:02:15 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com http://www.n-gage-help.com Seems to be best for Nokia N-gage at the moment! Chris ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #1 **************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jan 2 14:57:15 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i02JvFc15467; Fri, 2 Jan 2004 14:57:15 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 14:57:15 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401021957.i02JvFc15467@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 #2 TELECOM Digest Fri, 2 Jan 2004 14:57:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 2 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson My Upgraded Computer System (TELECOM Digest Editor) ReplayTV Announces New Flexible Pricing Model (Monty Solomon) ReplayTV Price Drop Bait-and-Switch (Monty Solomon) Is TiVo Really All That Great? (Monty Solomon) Century-old Math Problem May Have Been Solved (Monty Solomon) Rumor: Apple iBox (Monty Solomon) Re: Step, Panel and XP (Joe@nospamcity.com) Re: Step, Panel and XP (Joseph) Problem With Distorted Fax Using VoIP (Rob) Re: Taxes on Phone Bills - Ouch (David) How are Cellphone 911 Calls Handled? (W Randolph Franklin) Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 (Mark J Cuccia) Soft Channel Bank? (Chay) Re: California Plan Would Halt Trucks Remotely in Attack (Walt Howard) Re: Barbers (was Re: 10-Digit) (Marcus Jervis) Re: Barbers (was Re: 10-Digit) (Dave Close) Re: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? (Joe@nospamcity.com) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 22:51:27 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: My Upgraded Computer System Starting at about 5 PM New Year's Eve and continuing until way past my usual bedtime, then continuing after I woke up Thursday morning, I made some expansions to my computer. For one, I installed an additional hard drive. I still have my original hard drive of 20 GB, which is partioned into Windows 2000 (12 GB) and Linux sections (8 GB). In addition I now have a new 80 GB drive. The original drive is 'C', the new hard drive is 'F'. My original CD player was 'D' which it still is. For two, I now have a CD/DVD player/burner which is known as 'E'. It is Hewlitt Packard DVD300i by model number. The main reason for the additional hard 80 GB hard drive was to insure lots of swap space when burning new CDs, to make the manufacture of same go as quickly as possible. The little removable 62 MB drive in the USB slot (a tiny little thing about the size of my finger) is now 'G'. And I still have the floppy device, which is 'A'. I have been giving some thought to moving Windows 2000 onto the new 80 GB drive (F) and expanding Linux to the full 20 GB drive (C) which used to be split between Windows and Linux. I presume I would still have to partition the new 80 GB drive (F) to give the new HP writer and reader about 60 GB of swap space. Yes or No? Will 60 GB be adequate for the CD/DVD burner swap space? Yes or No? I do not want to have to load and unload the swap space repeatedly to get my work done. Another project I have in mind: Although I still maintain that my old Toshiba Satellite 220 Windows 95 is the sturdiest work horse in my network, I have pretty much given up on expanding it to anything larger. It just won't handle the added work load. It *might* be upgradeable to Windows 98, or maybe not, but Micrsoft has said their support of Win 98 is ending in a few months, and I really do not think that old (1996) laptop running 122 megs would go to anymore than that. I know it certainly would not be able to handle 2000 or XP. So the 95 just sits there with its old parallel port camera (from Zoom Telephonics, remember those?) and sends pictures out to whoever wants to see them at http://patricktownson.us.tf . But I have thought the Windows 98 (which is on a Winbook XL2 laptop) might be an ideal candidate for conversion to Windows 2000 or Linux. Any thoughts from readers on this? Good idea? Bad idea? And why? It has a 6 GB hard drive. At the present time (as Windows 98) it has numerous problems: For one, it tends to just turn itself off on an arbitrary basis. Other times, it will not permit itself to be turned off short of forcing it down with the master switch. Mostly it is used for feeding out to http://weatherforecast.us.tf the data from the weather station mechanicals on my back porch roof. Although each computer has its own display screen, keyboard and mouse, I can view them on a jumbo monitor using a KVM switch which is handy at times. From the master keyboard, doing 1 through 3 gets me control over each computer. 4 blanks the screen, and F1 gets me a continuously rotating display from the various computers. Any suggestions for improving/cleaning up this mess will be appreciated. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 23:36:50 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: ReplayTV Announces New Flexible Pricing Model for Its The Industry's Premium Quality DVRs, and Best Overall Value ... ReplayTV Announces New Flexible Pricing Model for Its Award-Winning 5500 Series Digital Video Recorders SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 22, 2003-- Purchasers Now Have Choice of Buying the ReplayTV Service Monthly or for a Single Onetime Fee ReplayTV(R), the inventor and creator of personal television, today announced a new flexible pricing model for its acclaimed 5500 Series Digital Video Recorders (DVR). Beginning immediately, consumers will be able to purchase ReplayTV 5500 Series DVRs at the following prices: $149.99 for the 40-hour Model RTV5504; $299.99 for the 80-hour RTV5508; $449.99 for the 160-hour RTV5516; and $799.99 for the new 320-hour RTV5532. With each model, consumers will have the choice of either purchasing the ReplayTV Service for a $12.95 monthly fee, or choosing lifetime service bundled with the product for a single, onetime payment of $299. ReplayTV 5500 Series customers who have already purchased 3-year subscriptions to the ReplayTV Service under the previous pricing model will have their services automatically extended for the lifetime of the product at no additional charge. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200312222009_BWR__BW5508 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 00:30:27 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: ReplayTV Price Drop Bait-and-Switch Posted by michael on Thursday December 25, @11:30AM from the falco dept. jkeyes writes "Last week on 12/17 DNNA (new parent company of Replay TV) decided to drop the Replay TV 5504 model down to $149, yet the boxes and website said that it came with three years free service. So immediately it appeared on deal sites like FatWallet with Replay telling people on the phone who called that yes all 5504 models include 3 years of service so immediately Circuit City & Amazon sold out. Then on the 12/22 DNNA released a press release annoucing the new price and claiming that the 5504 models NO LONGER have 3 years free with them and blamed the retailers for dropping the price too soon. Even though their own Customer Service Reps were saying when it first dropped that you got 3 years free. Also to add to the issue the actual devices have giant green stickers on them saying Three Years Free AND a paper inside telling you this. Replay went on to say that if you had a problem with this or your replay was deactivated to just return it to the retailer you purchased it from." http://slashdot.org/articles/03/12/25/1428233.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 00:34:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Is TiVo Really All That Great? Cable companies slashing fees, crafting services in bid to get consumers to hop on the TV replay bandwagon. By Ron Lieber The Wall Street Journal Originally published December 29, 2003 LOS ANGELES -- The future of TiVo may be uncertain, but the TiVolution has never been more accessible than it is this holiday season. TiVo, which is both popular usage for newfangled alternatives to VCRs and the brand-name of the company that helped popularize them, once required an initial investment of hundreds of dollars. But, as new competitors continue to emerge, most people can now try the new way of watching and recording television for far less. Last week, ReplayTV lowered the price on its cheapest machine to $149 and stopped forcing consumers to buy three years of service upfront, cutting the initial cost by more than $300. Time Warner Cable this year began a widespread rollout of a service that has a TiVo-like digital video recorder built into the cable box and costs less than $10 a month. Some of Cox Communications Inc.'s customers already have cable DVR service, and Comcast Corp. plans to roll it out to all of its subscribers next year. Hate your cable company? EchoStar Communications Corp.'s Dish Network has started offering a free DVR box to new satellite TV subscribers. Though only a tiny fraction of households now have the service, TiVo and its progeny offer features that radically change the way people watch television. They make it easy to record shows so you can watch what you want, when you want. Then, they make it easy to skip commercials [or, in the case of the Super Bowl, watch them repeatedly]. http://www.sunspot.net/technology/bal-tivo122903,0,1069107.story ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 03:46:02 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Century-Old Math Problem May Have Been Solved By Jascha Hoffman, Globe Correspondent, 12/30/2003 BERKELEY, Calif. -- A reclusive Russian mathematician appears to have answered a question that has stumped mathematicians for more than a century. After a decade of isolation in St. Petersburg, over the last year Grigory Perelman posted a few papers to an online archive. Although he has no known plans to publish them, his work has sent shock waves through what is usually a quiet field. At two conferences held during the last two weeks in California, a range of specialists scrutinized Perelman's work, trying to grasp all the details and look for potential flaws. If Perelman really has proved the so-called Poincare Conjecture, as many believe he has, he will become known as one of the great mathematicians of the 21st century and will be first in line for a $1 million prize offered by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge. http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2003/12/30/century_old_math_problem_may_have_been_solved/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 12:22:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Rumor: Apple iBox in Production We just recently received information from a alleged member of a testing program at Apple. MacOSX.com isn't in the business of spreading rumors, nor do we wish to put ourselves into harms way, but we felt this is news worthy. We are trying to find out as much as we can. More on this if we get it, here you go: The Apple iBox is a project that, in one form or another, the company has been working on for years. The prototypes for the first set top mac are still found on eBay today. Little is known about these, but I do know some interesting things about what's now called the iBox. The iBox has a small, sleek encasement that is about 10 inches long, 6 inches wide and 1 - 1 1/2 inches thick. Its optical drive is slot loading and it has an on button that resembles the cube's power "button." Its case is made of the same material found on the G5, even sports the same grey logo on the top. The front, or face, of the iBox is pearl white, similar to an iPod. http://www.macosx.com/content/article.php?cid=53 ------------------------------ From: Joe@nospamcity.com Subject: Re: Step, Panel and XP Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 05:56:50 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications jsw@ivgate.omahug.org wrote: > The Manawa office in Council Bluffs, IA (Omaha, NE area, 712-366) used > what was called 'Directorized SxS'. This was an outboard conversion > used on some Ma Bell (and maybe others) step offices to approach > common control. This conversion was most likely done in the 1960's, > and provided dial tone to the subscriber, and recorded the dialed > number, either in dial pulses or touch-tone tones. For interoffice > calls it then drove the switch train, and for intra-office it provided > the signaling (MF, dial-pulse, possibly even revertive - I dunno) that > the called office expected. This installation lasted until the mid > 1980's when the Manawa office was cut to a DMS-10. General Telephone used directors on the SxS switches extensively after the advent of DID. I had the misfortune of living in a Los Angeles suburb from 1969 until 1979 served by General Telephone of California. The director didn't create a problem until you made a toll call, which brought the yellow punch tape AMA kludge into play. I made lots and lots of long distance calls, and my failure rate was close to 50%. The thing would sit there in silence for 90 seconds, then provide overflow tone. I finally brought in a foreign exchange line from a contiguous Pacific Bell exchange served by a then-new 1ESS. But, GT put it on analog carrier and the sound quality was lousy with echo and tinnines. I raised cain and they finally cut it to PCM carrier with proper supervision, no less, and I finally was in business. I left the area in 1979, but GT didn't cut that office to a GTD5 until 1987. Now, today, in 2004, the former GTE, now Verizon, is probably better for local service in California than SBC (former Pacific Telephone, then Pacific Bell). ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Step, Panel and XP Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 08:51:28 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Thu, 1 Jan 2004 10:37:17 CST, jsw@ivgate.omahug.org wrote: > It seems like many of Ma Bell's step offices used a similar type of > tone plant, one with the 'flatulent' ringback, and that most of their > panel offices (as well as most 1XB and many 5XB) used the very > familiar 'metropolitan' tone plant, but I know of many exceptions, > making it not trivial to determine the CO type just by the > dial/ring/busy tones. You are probably speaking of a Western Electric #355 (Terminal Per Station) or #356 (Terminal Per Line) CDO (community dial office.) > I do remember, for example, that some of Ma Bell's step offices had a > ring tone that appeared to come from the same type of tone plant used > in the newer 5XB offices, one that to the untrained ear sounded very > much like today's standard ring tone. Saugus, Massachusetts was one of these. You can find many of these illustrated on the "Phone Trips" web site Lots of stuff to look at and listen to. Be sure to check out "Network sounds of the '70s" parts 1 and 2. > And then there was this strange ring tone best described as a 'low > rumble' that occasionally appeared on some of Ma Bell's 5XB offices. I > never figured that one out. It was barely audible on some LD calls. > It almost sounded like only the spurious harmonics of the ring signal. Saugus, Massachusetts had this for their #5XB. Of course now most everything's the same boring ESS with the same basic tone everywhere in Canada and the US. ------------------------------ From: sushilover111@hotmail.com (Rob) Subject: Problem With Distorted Fax Using VoIP Date: 2 Jan 2004 06:54:55 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I currently use a Cisco VoIP system that works very well for voice calls. We use CallManager 3.2.2c. We use 6608 gateways to access the PSTN via several PRI lines. These PRI's support both voice calls and fax machines to and from the PSTN. We use both 6624 and VG248 gateways to connect to fax machines. Voice calls to and from the PSTN work very well -- excellent quality, reliability, etc. Fax calls are sporadically problematic. Some faxes are received with part of a page "scrunched." That is, the entire page of the fax is present (and mostly readable), but an inch or two of the page will have been compressed on the received fax to a space much smaller -- a half inch or so. This distortion is very noticable. Usually you can still read the "compressed" text, but obviously the quality of that section is very poor. It doesn't appear to happen nearly all the time. Also it "seems" like it is more likely to happen from a caller outside of New England. We are located in Eastern Massachusetts, so I'm wondering if the problem occurs when calls travel via AT&T (before being delivered to us by Verizon) as opposed to calls that strictly stay on Verizon's network (as calls within New England are likely to do)?? Since the problem only occurs on 5-10% (just a guess) of faxes, identifying possible problem sources is difficult. Any ideas? Thanks - Rob. ------------------------------ From: David Subject: Re: Taxes on Phone Bills - Ouch Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 15:48:51 GMT wrote in message news:telecom23.1.16@telecom-digest.org: > Second line for basic charge of $8.95? Wow! > David wrote: >> I recently got ADSL service and looked at what it would take to keep >> my second phone line for fax use. >> Monthly fee: >> Line with local service: $8.95 >> Taxes: 911 Tax, Al Gore Tax, Spanish American War Tax, State Utility >> Tax,Sales Tax =$6.00. >> I dropped the second line because of 67% taxes. If not for that, I >> would have kept it. >> David I guess I should have stated, monthly fee = $8.95 + $6.00 = $14.95, if I do not make a single call. David ------------------------------ Subject: How Are Cellphone 911 Calls Handled? From: W Randolph Franklin Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 16:23:10 GMT How centralized is the processing of 911 calls from cellphones? Here's my story: My Verizon cellphone is 703-447-xxxx. Last November I was waiting at a stop light in Troy NY (local area code: 518) when an accident occurred a few feet from me. So I picked up my phone: 911 person: "What's your emergency?" me: "I'm reporting an accident at Hoosick and 8th." 911 person: "Huh?" me: "in Troy NY". 911 person: "OK, I'll transfer" me: "I'm reporting an accident at Hoosick and 8th." new 911 person: "Huh?" me: "in Troy NY". new 911 person: "OK, I'll transfer" me: "I'm reporting an accident at Hoosick and 8th." 3rd 911 person: "OK, we'll send someone. Was anyone hurt? ... What's your number" me: "Can't you get that from the ANI?" 3rd 911 person: "Not from a cellphone." Also does the other end lock the phone against further use after the call, or in cellphones is it the cellphone that does this? Thanks, /Wm. Randolph Franklin [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't think it is because it is a cell phone that they cannot get the number. I think it was because of the call being transferred around and the original calling number being lost in the switching as a result. I feel certain the first 911 person had your number, getting transferred to a second then a third person is what lost the number. I do know that when I lived in Chicago and listened to the police scanner, I would hear calls where the police officer would ask the dispatcher, 'what phone number did the call come from?' and the dispatcher would say 'do not have a number ... it came through the operator.' When people call the operator to report an emergency, the operator is *supposed to* relay the original calling number when she dials 312-787-0000 to report the matter. She is *supposed to* give that number to the dispatcher. But things do not always go as they should. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 22:44:11 -0600 (CST) From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 Pat: I assume that the final issue for v.22/2003 was #816, which was dated and time-stamped at: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 17:06:00 EST There was no mention by you as a Administrivia or such that this was indeed the last issue anywhere in the issue (as far as I can tell... maybe I overlooked something?) I do know that v.23 #1, the first issue for 2004 has been prepared and emailed, as I have received my copy. In previous "year-ends", you noted the final issue of the year/volume by reprinting Lauren Weinstein's "The Day the Bell System Died", sung to the tune of "The Day the Music Died/ Bye Bye Miss American Pie" WHICH, BTW ... reminds me... It was *** TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY *** (1-Jan-2004) on 1-Jan-1984, that the Bell System *DID* "officially" die as a single unit. Divestiture was announced in press/news releases by AT&T when approved by the Court (Green) and DOJ in early 1982 (8-January-1982 to be exact). Preparations began throughout 1982 for the official breakup of Bell to take effect "officially" on 1-Jan-1984. And on 1-Jan-1983, exactly one earlier than the actual official/final date of 1-Jan-1984, there were some major steps taken in preparation for divestiture that took effect, but it wasn't actually until 1-Jan-1984 when divestiture officially happened. And even though the official date of divestiture taking effect was twenty years ago today, on 1-Jan-1984, it still took a number of years before many "joint Bell System" functions, such as Calling Cards, Operator Services, toll and tandem switch functions and operations, etc. could be separated where the divested BOCs and AT&T Communications (formerly AT&T Long Lines) were each providing their own separate facilities. Even today, there are *STILL* some remaining legacy vestiges of a BOC "sharing" from AT&T or vice-versa, in network operations. Other thing *HAVE* changed in the past twenty years ... What "was" Western Electric, the manufacturing and equipment arm of the (one) Bell Telephone System, with Bell Telephone Laboratories, was retained by AT&T in 1984. However, a little over ten years later, in the 1995/96 timeframe, AT&T spun-off its equipment and (Bell) Labs operations into Lucent, which itself has had its ups-and-downs over the past eight or so years. (BTW, AT&T did retain a "labs" unit for switched network operations, which was separated from "Bell Labs" shortly before spinning off what would be known as Lucent). I'm not going to attempt any predictions on the future, but I am reposting what I submitted to the Digest almost seven years ago, on Wednesday 8-Jan-1997, on the fifteenth anniversary of the *announcement* of "forthcoming" divestiture (originally on 8-Jan-1982). Ironically also on Thursday, 8-Jan-2004 (about a week away) will be the twenty-second anniversary of the *announcement* of forthcoming divestiture. This can also be found in the Archives in the back-issues: massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/back.issues/1997.volume.17/vol17.iss001-050 - - - - Date: Wed, 08 Jan 1997 10:52:50 -0800 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: This Date in Telecom History - Divestiture It was on this date (8-January) fifteen years ago in 1982, that the 'old' AT&T (as head of the "one Bell System") announced to the U.S. Dept. of (in)Justice, that it would divest itself of its (twenty-two) wholly-owned local Bell Operating (telephone) Companies. This consent decree was supposed end the federal antitrust lawsuit that DOJ filed against the Bell System in the mid-70's. Back in the mid-70's, DOJ wanted AT&T to divest itself of Western Electric and possibly Bell Labs. However, in the divestiture announced on 8-January-1982 (which took effect 1-January-1984), AT&T kept Western Electric and Bell Labs, but spun-off the twenty-two local BOC's into seven new regional Bell holding companies. More recently, AT&T spun-off Bell Labs and what used to be known as Western Electric, into Lucent. The count of twenty-two BOC's doesn't include Southern New England Telephone nor Cincinnati Bell, of which AT&T only held a minority share back in the old Bell System days. And at the time of divestiture, both 'went their own ways' as 'independent' telcos and were *not* placed under NYNEX nor Ameritech. However, the total of twenty-two BOC's *does* count C&P (Chesapeake and Potomac) *four* times, as: C & P - Maryland C & P - D.C. C & P - Virginia C & P - West Virginia BTW, Bell Canada is *not* counted in this total of twenty-two BOC's. Since the 1956 consent-decree, Bell Canada with Northern Electric became more and more separated from AT&T and Western Electric. By the early 1970's, AT&T only held about two percent of holdings of Bell Canada. Also in the early 1970's, Bell Northern Research was created by Bell Canada and Northern Electric as a uniquely Canadian R&D version similar to AT&T/WECo's Bell Labs. In 1975, AT&T/WECo and NECo/Bell-Canada officially terminated what remained of their license and service agreements. Northern Electric had become Northern Telecom; BNR and NT are presently referred to as Nortel. As for divestiture and competition ... it never seems to end. There are more entities out there than ever, involved as carriers, resellers, manufacturers, promoters, etc. of all forms of telecommunications. Also, there is the "Telecommunications Bill" of 1996, signed into law last year. But fifteen years ago, who would have thought that the "one Bell System" would have agreed to split itself up at all! - - - - AND, that is what I posted (almost) seven years ago on what was the fifteenth anniversary of the *announcement* of forthcoming (at that time) divestiture, which officially occurred on 1-January-1984, exactly twenty years ago today (today being Thursday 1-January-2004). I have removed the original sig-line that appeared in my original post. Some information in it is no longer valid (specifically the postal mailing address). The telephone contact info is still valid, the email address is now a shorter domain name as appears below. Happy New Year! Mark J. Cuccia mcuccia@tulane.edu New Orleans LA CSA (in the Land of DIXIE!) [TELECOM Digest Edtor's Note: It seems hard to believe that this Digest dates back to when there was *one* phone system -- the Bell System -- for almost everyone. In 1981-82, the Bell System ruled, there were no cell phones, very little 'enhanced' phone features like ESS, certainly no VOIP. Nor were there any other electronic publica- tions on the internet dealing with phone service except for TELECOM Digest. Now there are at least a dozen e-publications dealing with phone service (in a generic sense) on the net. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Chay Subject: Soft Channel Bank ? Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 23:30:32 -0500 I am looking for a software driven / defined Channel Bank. What I have in mind is a single board PC and backplane board that supports 12 or more PCI slots, into which you could then slot your FXO / FXS cards. Ideally this channel bank would then connect to a CTI softswitch via a T1 / E1 interface. If anyone know of or has heard of such a thing would you please let me know. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: howard@rumba.ee.ualberta.ca (Walt Howard) Subject: Re: California Plan Would Halt Trucks Remotely in Attack Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 04:45:40 UTC Organization: A poorly-installed InterNetNews site In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > By Daniel Sorid > SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Three years after a truck driver > slammed an 18-wheeler into California's state capitol building, > lawmakers are considering a plan to link trucks carrying hazardous > material to a satellite tracking system that would halt them if they > were used in a terror attack. > The trucks would be equipped with devices that would either cut off > fuel to the engine or turn on the brakes when activated. The proposed > bill would implement the country's most stringent safety regulations > for trucks carrying fuel and other hazardous materials, but it faces > fierce opposition from local trucking companies who complain that the > rules would make California truckers uncompetitive. > Assemblyman John Dutra, unhappy with the slow federal pace in > addressing the issue, introduced the bill in February 2003, and it > passed easily in the state assembly. Amid protest from industry > groups, the bill failed to get past the transportation committee in > the state senate, where it will be reconsidered this year. If they aren't real careful with this, they are going to make hijacking a truck as easy as crashing Microsoft Windows. It is very important that only a very few people be able to activate such a system, and that the system operator be able to guarantee this. The level of reliability required exceeds anything that the state of California is capable of doing now. It will also be interesting to see how they can make such a system resist being disabled by a disgruntled (for whatever reason) owner. Walt Howard /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign InterNet: whoward@ieee.org \ / No HTML in mail or news! BellNet: +1 780 492 6306 X / \ ------------------------------ From: Marcus Jervis Subject: Re: Barbers (was Re: 10-Digit) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 08:17:05 +0000 Dave Close wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The Palmer House Hotel in Chicago and >> the Conrad Hilton Hotel both had (maybe still) multi-chair shops. The >> lead barber was also the cashier. Of course in addition to a haircut >> many guys went in the shop every day to also get a shave and a facial. >> Palmer House had twelve chairs I think; but it used to be that all >> guys would get a haircut once a week or every two weeks at least. No >> more. PAT] > I've been going to a four-chair shop in Fountain Valley California for > most of the last ten years. Fountain Valley is in Orange County, the > epitome of suburbia by some reconning. The owner just retired and sold > the shop last month, but it still has four chairs and stays busy. > However, what has disappeared are real haircuts. I'm told that using a > straight razor is essentially optional on the California license exam > and most barbers skip that. A few places seem to recognize the > problem, but solve it by pretending to shave my neck, not really doing > it. Since I can't see the process, I can only infer their action by > the lack of a smooth result. I feel like such an old-timer! Me too! I was born in 1952, and can remember going with my dad to a barber shop in the little San Joaquin valley town where we lived around 1956 or so. A real barber shop, with multiple chairs, and a guy named Doc with a waxed moustache who could give you a real close shave. Recently after growing a beard for a few months and seeing how old I looked when it came out all gray, I decided it would be fun to visit a barber shop and have a real old fashioned shave, where they mix up the hot lather in a little bowl and shave REALLY close ... not like I get with my plastic Bic razor and aerosol canned lather. I called around to inquire how much this would cost, and was incredulous when after calling shop after shop, not only couldn't I find anyone who would shave me, a lot of them weren't even sure what I was talking about. One of them said he'd seen a barber give a shave in a movie once (Remember The Untouchables movie, with Robert De Niro as Al Capone, starting his day with a close shave from his barber?). Finally I called what sounded like an old neighborhood barber shop in Wedgewood (Seattle). The guy said, sure, he could shave me. I got there and discovered this old neighborhood shop, the kind that years ago probably had stacks of Stag magazines and Field and Stream. Operating the shop was a Middle Eastern fellow and an Asian woman, who I think was his wife. Apparently he went to barber college overseas where they still taught straight razor technique. I imagined that he had bought the shop a few years earlier perhaps from a retiring barber. He did the whole routine with a very sharp razor and the hot lather. It was great! An amazingly close shave, unlike any I'd had before. The best part and most unbelievable was when I asked him the price. "Three dollars!" I thought I'd been transported back to the 1950s of my early childhood! I think I gave him seven dollars, and said I'd be back. Which reminds me of another story (I really am getting old). Barbering went into decline in the late 60s and early 70s because fewer men were getting regular haircuts. I remember once in the mid-60s I was at Red's Barber Shop in North City (also Seattle), and Red was complaining about the Beatles and their long hair. Then he launched into some fantasy about getting "one of those long-haired kids" in there, and how he'd like to shave all their hair off. I think one of the guys complained about not being able to "tell the boys from the girls these days". So Red's was an old fashioned barber shop, but this was just before the decline of barbering, and those that survived had to adapt. Sometime, maybe seven years later I was driving down 15th Ave NE in North City, and I looked at where Red's had stood. It was still there, only different. It was the early 70s, and the little shop was now covered with cedar shake shingles, and there was a fern hanging in the window. The sign was different too. It now said, "Red's Unisex Styling Salon". My, how things changed so fast back then. _________________________________________________________________ Working moms: Find helpful tips here on managing kids, home, work and yourself. http://special.msn.com/msnbc/workingmom.armx ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 22:59:32 -0800 From: Dave Close Subject: Barbers (was 10-Digit Dialing) Date: 31 Dec 2003 23:52:08 -0800 Organization: Compata, Costa Mesa, California > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The Palmer House Hotel in Chicago and > the Conrad Hilton Hotel both had (maybe still) multi-chair shops. The > lead barber was also the cashier. Of course in addition to a haircut > many guys went in the shop every day to also get a shave and a facial. > Palmer House had twelve chairs I think; but it used to be that all > guys would get a haircut once a week or every two weeks at least. No > more. PAT] I've been going to a four-chair shop in Fountain Valley California for most of the last ten years. Fountain Valley is in Orange County, the epitome of suburbia by some reconning. The owner just retired and sold the shop last month, but it still has four chairs and stays busy. However, what has disappeared are real haircuts. I'm told that using a straight razor is essentially optional on the California license exam and most barbers skip that. A few places seem to recognize the problem, but solve it by pretending to shave my neck, not really doing it. Since I can't see the process, I can only infer their action by the lack of a smooth result. I feel like such an old-timer! -- Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 dhclose@alumni,caltech.edu The cost of silicon chips has been steady at about $1bn per acre for 40 years." --Gordon Moore ------------------------------ From: Joe@nospamcity.com Subject: Re: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 06:00:58 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications > But you see, its not just the sore losers here in the USA who hate > Bush, a lot of people in the rest of the world don't like him (or > his father) either. PAT] Hey, what about folks like me who voted for Bush and now feel like I elected Adolf Hitler? Trouble is, I can't stand any of the Democrats so it is time to stay home. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well a lot of people feel like yourself, but many are too sheepish to say how they now feel. PAT] ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #2 **************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Jan 3 19:43:50 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i040hoc22607; Sat, 3 Jan 2004 19:43:50 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 19:43:50 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401040043.i040hoc22607@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 #3 TELECOM Digest Sat, 3 Jan 2004 19:44:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 3 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson BBC Writer Can't Fathom the Internet (Ronda Hauben) Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004 Back on 1-Jan-1984 (Lisa Hancock) Re: 10-Digit Dialing (Lisa Hancock) Re: NANP Numbering (Earle Robinson) Re: How Are Cellphone 911 Calls Handled? (John R. Levine) Re: How Are Cellphone 911 Calls Handled? (Steven J Sobol) Re: California Plan Would Halt Trucks Remotely in Attack (Tom Horsley) Re: Step, Panel and XP (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: My Upgraded Computer System (Gene Gaines) Re: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? (Tom Betz) Re: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? (Lisa Hancock) 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: Ronda Hauben Subject: BBC Writer Can't Fathom the Internet Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 17:26:44 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Is there some reason the BBC can't understand what the Internet is about, or take the trouble to spread an accurate understanding of it, rather than a mistaken conception that makes the Internet into the one network ARPANET? Specifically the Internet is a network of networks -- or a metasystem of networks. It makes it possible for diverse networks to speak to each other. The ARPANET was a connection of different computers and operating systems, not at all as the BBC story portrays it. See the following which is the BBC version of the ARPANET and Internet. And below I have included a quote from a paper where the creation of the Internet is described: On Thu, 1 Jan 2004, Dave Farber wrote on his IP list posted: > What the net did next > By Mark Ward > BBC News Online technology correspondent (...) > TCP/IP was key to turning the Arpanet into the internet. > Small start > The Arpanet came before the net and demanded that all computers that > connect to it do so with the same hardware and software. > By contrast, the net, thanks to TCP/IP, could let people on > different sorts of computers running different software, swap > information. The real contrast is quite different, however. From a paper about the ARPANET and the Internet: "The ARPANET solved the difficult problem of communication in a network with dissimilar computers and dissimilar operating systems. However, when the objective is to share resources across the boundaries of dissimilar networks, the problems to be solved are compounded. Different networks mean that there can be different packet sizes to accommodate, different network parameters such as different communication media rates, different buffering and signaling strategies, different ways of routing packets, and different propagation delays. Also dissimilar networks can have different error control techniques and different ways of determining the status of network components." The challenge in accommodating dissimilar networks is at once a conceptual and architectural problem. Kahn recognized the need for a communications protocol to transmit packets from one network, and reformat them as needed for transmission through successive networks. This would require that there be black boxes or gateway computers and software that would provide the interfaces between the dissimilar networks and which would route the packets to their destination. (18) Also there would need to be software to carry out the functions required by the protocol. Appropriate software modules, and perhaps other modifications to allow efficient performance, would then have to be embedded in the operating systems of the host computers in each of the participating networks and gateways would have to be introduced between them. The design for such a protocol would be a guide to create the specification standard for the software and hardware that each network would agree to implement to become part of an internetwork communications system. The standards or agreements to cooperate would be set out in the protocol." (from The Birth of the Internet: An Architectural Conception for Solving the Multiple Network Problem) http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/birth_internet.txt We want the Internet to grow and flourish. It would seem important than to start the new year off with accurate information about its development. Ronda ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) Subject: Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 Date: 2 Jan 2004 20:51:56 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Edtor's Note: It seems hard to believe that this > Digest dates back to when there was *one* phone system -- the Bell > System -- for almost everyone. At the time, I really thought quality telephone service this country took for granted was doomed. It didn't work out that way, thank goodness. The Bell System generally (there are exceptions) ran an excellent service. It was the right system for the technology of the time. But the cost of electronics were on a downhill slide in those years. Look what an IBM plain PC cost and what kind of machine you'd get today with the same money. Cheap electronics revolutionized the ability to provide local and long distance telephone service. In electro-mechanical days, where a single piece of switchgear could cost $1,000, engineers had to be judicious how many they ordered for an exchange and how they all linked together. But today, cheap electronics lets them be inexact, as does cheap fiber optic links. They still have to plan for traffic of course, but it's a lot simpler and easier. Computer programming is a lot today easier when it was back then -- we don't have to count our bits like we did, even in 1984, which led to the Y2K mess. In reading the histories, it's amazing the stuff they no longer have to worry about because of cheap high capacity and electronic flexibility. The breakup of the Bell System had two big separate parts two it: One was the discontinuance of the rental policy. The company realized that the cost of renting out phones was now exceeded by the cost of servicing them, and let that revenue source go. I think that generally has been good for consumers, however, many telephone sets out there today are pure junk. The other was long distance competition. That has always bothered me and I think consumers and investors got screwed and still get screwed. Look at MCI/Worldcom. As far as I'm concerned, if newcomers want a piece of the action, let them pay to build their own infrastructure. The Cable TV company managed to build a line to my house independent of Bell. So should local competitors -- bypass the existing company completely, and that would eliminate all the disputes and finger pointing over the cost of the local loop. It might actually leave the newcomers better off with a modern loop plant while Bell struggles with old copper conduits. I'm sad to say IMHO AT&T has gone really downhill. I no longer use them. All the companies are interested in marketing -- they have sales people now who know nothing of phones nor care; not the well trained service reps of the past. But despite that, the system still seems to work. > Nor were there any other electronic publications on the internet Was there even a publicly accessible Internet back then? I thought it was just locally run BBS's in those days. Back then they seemed to be converting to ESS like crazy. I had it in 1983. When did cell phones come out? Originally they were a replacement for mobile phones, and built into an automobile. I recall watching a "90210" rerun episode, and the guy was talking on a corded phone in the car, which struck me as strange. I then realized that episode was old, and it was advanced for its day. Then they came out with bag phones, then hand held ones, progressing getting smaller and smaller. It blew my mind when I got my first Motorola "flip phone" -- for free no less, with a $20/month (limited usage) rental. I was just like "Captain Kirk" and his communicator; and it amazed me the power it had at such an affordable price. I recall reading articles in the Bell Laboratories Record about "AMPS" which was cell phones. I presume Bell Labs invented the concept. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Cell phones began about 1981. Chicago was the first city to have cellular service. Sometime around 1984 I got my first cellular phone. It was a large thing shaped like a brick, and you wore it in a shoulder holster like thing. I got it from Radio Shack and it cost me about seven hundred dollars and you *had* to have a contract with Ameritech for a year or two to even be allowed to buy a phone. TELECOM Digest began in August, 1981, and it was originally an ARPA group, called arpa.telecom. For a few years, the connection to Usenet was through a gateway computer. PAT] (Lisa then continues) wesrock@aol.com wrote: > As I mentioned, the first dial office in Oklahoma City, in > 1920, used A.E. SxS because there was no W.E. SxS equipment. By 1927, > there was #1 SxS from W.E., and it was installed in the downtown > office in Oklahoma City. Yes, originally WE had to buy its steppers from AE, but eventually built their own. > I'm not sure how the usage of long distance and premises > equipment particularly affected the type of central office equipment > to be installed. Those were all the smae for all types of offices, > Panel, step, #1XB. Well, my response was based on the comment that the Bell System didn't care much for SxS. I'm suggesting that perhaps the more tougher networking needs of bigger or major cities resulted in their getting more attention. Those cities generated more revenue and had more traffic to justify that attention. I dare say that a east coast small city might have more telephone traffic than a mid west or southwest city of the same population. This is because the east was more interconnected and had more national commerce that went by phone than smaller towns which were likely more insular back then. In other words, a small bank in Philadelphia probably had more long distance traffic and sophistication than a bank of the same size in say a city like Houston. > The vast majority of interoffice trunking in cities with more > than one office was local trunking between offices. Los Angeles was > probably almost unique in having substantial operator dialing to > interzone (or "multiple message unit") and toll offices before World > War II. I'm not sure when message units went into effect in big eastern cities like Phila or NYC, to save on writing toll tickets for very short haul toll calls. IIRC, the Bell System history says Los Angeles had a pioneer AMA system which generated a full ticket rather than just a counter increment. > One issue, of course, was of interoperability between dial and > manual offices. But a more pressing issue in places that were all SxS > and had grown to where the trunking arrangement, directly controlled > by the pulses the customer dialed, had become complex and was rapidly > becoming more complex, had no way of interfacing with offices designed > for such complex arrangements. I think the Bell System history mentions an SxS tandem. I also wonder if pre-war or early postwar calling volumes were that large to be that troublesome. By "large" I mean by today's standards. Today no one would blink at spending 15c for a toll call, but back then even 5c was equivalent to $2.00 today. Not a lot, but something to make people pause or limit their use of long distance. Also, the suburbs had yet to have their big postwar book. When the boom hit, the suburbs did have inadequate telephone capacity -- some places didn't even have phones except for some corner phonebanks, others had mandatory party lines. > just accepting that there were some local routes that couldn't be > economically automated and requiring customers to dial "operator," > who then completed the call for the customer (a solution that was > adopted in Houston). We forget that automation, especially sophisticated common control, was very expensive, and it took a lot of volume to justify eliminating manual service. Indeed, well into the 1960s, long distance still required an operating to get the caller's number before ANI. > "Britton, OK", no doubt to the confusion of many callers. (That, of > course, is not unique anywhere around the country -- there are many > rate points like that around the country that, in many cases, have no > current place name to give you a clue.) In suburban Philadelphia, there were two towns that were their own rate center, but actually served by city exchanges. One was MElrose 5 in Melrose Park (also Elkins Park*) which is served out of the city's WAVerly exchange. The other was ESsex 9 in Cheltenham, served out of the city's FIdelity/PI exchange. (There were separate PIoneer and PIlgrim buildings, and I always get them confused, both served northeast Phila.) *The very same Elkins Park mentioned recently in this newsgroup. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing Date: 2 Jan 2004 16:25:10 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > The old style manual exchanges had two groups of holes. > Along the top the holes were tie lines to other exchanges and closer > to the bottom were the numbers on that exchange. In cities, there was not enough room on a boardface for all the jacks. To accomodate, traffic was split between "A" and "B" operators. The A operator answered the subscriber and listened for the exchange and number. She plugged into the exchange only and reached a "B" operator for that exchange. The "B" operator was told the number and plugged into that jack. > The operators' training was very intense *before* an operator was > allowed to work alone at a position. I talked to our town's now retired switchboard operator. When she started on the town manual board, things were pretty informal. The operators acted as they did in the "Mayberry" literature -- knowing where the doctor and other public safety people were, etc. She said operating procedures were pretty informal. Any complex calls (ie long distance) were forwarded to the next town. When the town went dial in 1954, she transferred to a nearby city. That was more as you described -- extremely regimented and structured and certainly not as pleasant to work at. > Because the operators were very well trained, call set up time was > usually the same as or slightly less than in automated dialing days, > at least in the earliest of days when 'rotary dialing' was done. By > the time the subscriber got the phone to his ear, heard the dial > tone, and dialed out all seven digits and the call got set up in > the equipment the manual office operators would have finished two or > three such calls. Don't forget that in small towns often only a few digits were required to dial a call, so dialing was fast. Long distance, on the other hand, was slow and expensive. Until about the late 1950s, it was cheaper to send a telegram, and people wrote letters for social conversation to distant relatives. People from those days tell me service was pretty fast in normal conditions. But it would be slow in abnormal conditions. It cities there was no social conversation. The Bell System history says way back ringing was automated and provided a signal, and a busy signal was provided too. There was high turnover in the job. In the early days, they fired girls when they got married. In later years, people just got tired of it and quit. Some women went on to become PBX operators, being "Bell trained" was an important job requirement. PBX operations varied greatly -- some big boards were as bustling and impersonal as a central office, while others provided more personal service. After WW II, traffic went up but the system didn't have enough capacity to support it. Service quality suffered in some places. People take the telephone for granted these days, and have done so since the 1960s. But in the 1950s and earlier, the telephone was an expensive appliance. Not everyone even had one, and a great many had party lines to save money. The flip side is that people tended to live much closer together in the cities and towns and didn't need the telephone to stay in touch -- they'd just walk down to the corner drugstore/soda fountain. For rural people it was a lifeline. Once the Bell System got the postwar capacity trouble under control in the 1960s, it began to advertise the telephone as a luxury--extensions, premium sets, teenager extensions and later separate lines. Inflation note: Prices in the WW II era are roughly 20 times for today. That is, a 5c coin phone call back then would cost $2.00 today. A $2/month phone bill would equate to $40 today, and I suspect most local service back then ran about $3-$4, equivalent to $60 to $80 today for very basic service. ------------------------------ From: Earle Robinson Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 01:36:35 +0100 Please hide my email address. Thank you. > A better question is why the system in the rest of the world is > different from the system in the US since North America had long > distance dialing first. > The technical difference between the two is that the NANP uses "en > bloc" signalling which collects all the dialed digits and then > >attempts to complete the call, while the ITU system uses > "compelled" signalling which routes calls a few digits at a time. > This means that the NANP system needed phone numbers where the > originating switch could tell how many digits would be in the > number, so numbers are fixed length, while> the ITU system just sent > digits down the line and let the remote switch ask for as many as it > wanted, permitting variable length numbers. While the NANP system had its merits as you point out, the ITU nowadays is more logical. First of all, it avoids all those area code changes that occur periodically in the states. It also is simpler and more flexible. In countries like Germany, you can dial the number and the extension number. There is no limit on the number of digits, as you point out, with the ITU system. Here in France we have an implementation that permits easy dialing around for long distance calls, too. The initial 0 signifies that the phone company selected as the designate local carrier is to be used. (Note that one may choose another one quite easily.) Then the country is divided into 5 areas, 1 for the Paris area, 2 for the Northeast, 3 for the Northwest, 4 for the Southwest and 5 for the Southeast. Cell numbers are use the 6 and 8 is for special numbers. So, a call say to the Paris area might be 01-4444-5555. However, if you wished to use say tele2 for the call, you'd dial 41-4444-5555. International calls are initiated using the standard 00. But, if you wish to use say tele2 you'd dial 40, then the country code, and finally the number. For example, a call to New York City might be 401-212-444-5555. For those carriers that aren't fortunate enough to have their own single digit a 4 digit prefix must be used. An example using budgetelecom to call New York City would be 3111-00-1212-444-5555. Earle Robinson ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jan 2004 20:13:10 -0000 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: How Are Cellphone 911 Calls Handled? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > My Verizon cellphone is 703-447-xxxx. Last November I was waiting at > a stop light in Troy NY (local area code: 518) when an accident > occurred a few feet from me. So I picked up my phone: I believe that cellular 911 goes to the state police here in NY. But I don't know why you'd need two transfers to get to the right department. Usually they'd transfer you directly to the correct place. In our county, there's one PSAP run by the county sheriff's department that handles all the 911 dispatching. The city and village police cover their respective municipalities, the university departments cover Cornell and Ithaca college, and the sheriff's deputies cover everything else. Some of the departments don't have 24/7 coverage so the PSAP has the schedule to know when a department has a car on call and when to call the sheriff. They might have transferred you to the county and the city does its own dispatch. Regards, John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner http://iecc.com/johnl Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: How Are Cellphone 911 Calls Handled? Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 18:14:46 -0600 W Randolph Franklin wrote: > me: "Can't you get that from the ANI?" > 3rd 911 person: "Not from a cellphone." Of course they can't get your location from a cellphone. :) The best they can do is get an approximate location based on which cell towers you are connecting to/have connected to in the past few minutes. Remember that a cellphone can physically be located ANYWHERE, unlike a landline. The carriers are working to fix this, but the 911 call centers have to upgrade their equipment too ... > of the call being transferred around and the original calling number > being lost in the switching as a result. I feel certain the first > 911 person had your number, getting transferred to a second then a > third person is what lost the number. But you're still not guaranteed that the call from a cell will be from any given location. I could be at my house in Apple Valley when calling from my cell, or I could be clear across the country in New York City, for example. JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services 22674 Motnocab Road * Apple Valley, CA 92307-1950 Steve Sobol, Geek In Charge * 888.480.4NET (4638) * sjsobol@JustThe.net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think she asked the man where he was located .. she asked him *what his number was*. PAT ------------------------------ Subject: Re: California Plan Would Halt Trucks Remotely in Attack From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Sat, 03 Jan 2004 00:01:58 GMT > If they aren't real careful with this, they are going to make > hijacking a truck as easy as crashing Microsoft Windows. Yea. On a similar (but possibly even more frightening note) there was a segment on the news the other day about technology being developed to take over the controls of airplanes and divert them automatically from "no fly" zones. My first reaction was: "Great, now terrorists won't need suicide missions to take over airplanes, they can just hijack the technology the manufacturers will be conveniently adding for them to allow the control system to take over the plane and override the pilot ...". >>==>> The *Best* political site >>==+ email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics <<==+ ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 20:35:04 EST Subject: Re: Step, Panel and XP In a message dated Thu, 1 Jan 2004 10:37:17 CST jsw@ivgate.omahug.org wrote: > The Manawa office in Council Bluffs, IA (Omaha, NE area, 712-366) used > what was called 'Directorized SxS'. This was an outboard conversion > used on some Ma Bell (and maybe others) step offices to approach > common control. This conversion was most likely done in the 1960's, > and provided dial tone to the subscriber, and recorded the dialed > number, either in dial pulses or touch-tone tones. For interoffice > calls it then drove the switch train, and for intra-office it provided > the signaling (MF, dial-pulse, possibly even revertive - I dunno) that > the called office expected. This installation lasted until the mid > 1980's when the Manawa office was cut to a DMS-10. The senders used in the London (UK) exchange (all step at the time) were called directors. For some reason I got the idea that "Director" was perhaps the trademark of a particular manufacturer. Someone else commented about the "directors" used by General Telephone on step offices in the L.A. area, so perhaps A.E. owned the rights to the name in the U.S.A. I think you have "interoffice" and "intra-office" reversed in your description. And not only did the sender of director put out the type of signalling needed by the office being called, or offices which it tandemed through, it translated the routing based on the prefix digit dialed, permitting routing that might bear no resemblance to the original three digits and perhaps even adding additional prefix digits as needed to reach the desired office. Originally this was the only purpose of it; putting out signalling other than dial pulses was not part of its original function. >> Panel Type and 1XB had no provision for dealing with SxS pulsing. When >> 1XB came around, presumably the easterners assumed that any place which >> would need them would be panel. > Panel used the 'revertive' signaling method, possibly invented by Rube > Goldberg which, to make it very simple, the called office > advanced the contact and the calling office told the called office > when to stop. This was emulated in the #1 crossbar, as it was > intended to be compatible with the panel system. (I also vaguely > remember that the 1ESS was able to speak revertive as well.) In reading the descriptions of #1XB, I was amused to learn, with what seemed the narrow and short-sighted ideas of the invenstors and designers, that revertive signalling, indeed a Rube Goldberg system, was used between two #1 XB offices, emulating panel even when there was no panel office involved. > When placing a call from a panel office, the revertive pulse sounds > could often be heard as a distinctive 'scratch-scratch' sound during > dialing. > I'm familiar with the way both the Omaha and NYC phone systems were > back in the electromechanical days, and both used panel and 1XB > extensively with lots of revertive pulsing between the various > offices. (Ma Bell's first full-scale panel office was in the Atlantic > office in Omaha. Years ago I provided information about this to the > Digest here.) Both areas used 5XB for newer installations until the > early 1970's. > There were pockets of SxS around both Omaha and NYC, often appearing > as DID implementations, but occasionally for POTS, as in the Manawa > office I mentioned above. (I remember specifically that Columbia U in > Manhattan and Union Pacific in Omaha used such a scheme.) Did these two users own their own switching equipment? Railroads were entitled to, as "right-of-way" companies; don't know about educational institutions. Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Both of those were Signal Corps owned and operated SxS systems. It turned out that DID worked just fine by giving them prefixes and treating them as any other SxS office. (This is, of course, simplifying, since the incoming and outgoing trunking had to be greatly changed, but basically it was no big problem.) The Bell offices they worked out of were either SxS or #5XB, so that presented no problem. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 15:15:15 -0500 From: Gene Gaines Organization: Gaines Group Subject: Re: My Upgraded Computer System Pat, I have an old Sharp laptop (same CPU speed as yours) running Windows 95. I just does the job, and I love it. I sympathize with you in giving up an old "favorite hunting dog" like this. You never can tell about that old stuff. Last week a friend of mine was throwing out an old IBM Wi-Fi card, my wife grabbed it and brought it home, we threw it into the old 95 laptop, installed the software, and the darned thing is doing Wi-Fi wireless all over the house (course, the battery gave up holding a charge about two years ago, has to operate on house power.) On Windows 98 ... I have downloaded ALL the fixes and upgrades for Windows 98 II from Microsoft, can send them to you on a CD if they would help you. Good luck with the housecleaning. Gene gene.gaines@gainesgroup.com ------------------------------ From: Tom Betz Subject: Re: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 22:21:08 +0000 (UTC) Organization: XOme Quoth Joe@nospamcity.com in news:telecom23.2.17@telecom-digest.org: >> But you see, its not just the sore losers here in the USA who hate >> Bush, a lot of people in the rest of the world don't like him (or >> his father) either. PAT] > Hey, what about folks like me who voted for Bush and now feel like I > elected Adolf Hitler? Trouble is, I can't stand any of the Democrats > so it is time to stay home. You can't seriously tell me that you prefer Hitler to Dean. Staying home is how the non-Nazi Germans got Hitler in the 30's. The Nazis didn't stay home -- they elected him democratically on August 19, 1934. One man, one vote, one time. We need to make sure to vote in the 2004 election, or we may not be permitted to do so in 2008. And no, I'm not exaggerating. Democracy is always tenuous, but this year it is more tenuous than most years. "I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were against all proportion of subjection." - W.S. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) Subject: Re: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? Date: 3 Jan 2004 10:15:08 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com A Nony Mous wrote: > According to the last news reports I read, Bush actually won the > elections in Florida (a group of news organizations had their own, > unofficial, recount) which gave him the Electoral College majority > required. That is true. I don't understand why Bush critics don't focus on the real spoiler of that election -- Ralph Nader. Had he pulled out, Gore would've won with an unquestioned majority. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > But I do believe if Mr. Gore had taken (through whatever rationale) > the office of President there is a reasonably good chance that > 9/11/01 would have not occurred ... But Bush II went into office a > bit more belicose and beligerant than his predecessor ... I must disagree with that. IIRC, the enemy planned the attack well before Bush entered office and attempted to destroy the WTC during Clinton's term, as well as attacked other U.S. targets world wide. > almost daring the folks in the middle east to cause trouble, which > of course they did. I disagree with the notion that the attack on the U.S. was the result of anything the U.S. said or did. The attack was not rational in the sense it was designed to change US foreign policy or limit US military capability. The attack was simply to murder innocent people and destroy property -- as an end in itself. > ... Clinton was too laid back for anything like that; so, I suspect, > would have been Gore. I can't help but wonder if Clinton was distracted by the impeachment proceedings and Monicagate nonsense to the extent he ignored warning signs or lost credibility to use legitimate military action against those who attempted to destroy the WTC the first time. He tried one limited effort and was roundly criticized for doing so. > But you see, its not just the sore losers here in the USA who hate > Bush... Both Clinton and Bush Jr are passionately hated by their critics and I find this very disturbing. The conservatives hated Clinton since he (to them) represented everything wrong about the 1960s. Newsweek reported that they were indeed out to get him and looking for something when Paula Jones came along and they jumped on that with big money and legal resources. That was bad for the country. But the liberals hated Bush the moment he was elected. Many think the U.S. somehow "deserved" 9/11 because of its foreign policy which is absurb (unless you believe that the U.S. should be 100% isolated from the rest of the world without any trade.) And screaming about every decision Bush makes isn't good for the country either. > a lot of people in the rest of the world don't like him (or his > father) either. PAT] That is something I don't understand and makes no sense. When Bush declared his intent to go into Iraq, the critics went nuts, seeing Bush as far worse than Saddam. If that were really true, then these people would be demanding Saddam be restored to power since Bush had no business removing him, yet I don't hear anyone suggesting that. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #3 **************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jan 4 18:31:02 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i04NV2m28308; Sun, 4 Jan 2004 18:31:02 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 18:31:02 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401042331.i04NV2m28308@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 #4 TELECOM Digest Sun, 4 Jan 2004 18:31:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 4 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 (Kd1s) Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 (M. Sullivan) Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 (Joseph) Re: NANP Numbering (Mark J Cuccia) From the Archives: The Day the Bell System Died (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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: kd1s@aol.com (Kd1s) Date: 04 Jan 2004 01:14:04 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 > Well, my response was based on the comment that the Bell System > didn't care much for SxS. I'm suggesting that perhaps the more > tougher networking needs of bigger or major cities resulted in > their getting more attention. Those cities generated more revenue > and had more traffic to justify that attention. I dare say that > a east coast small city might have more telephone traffic than > a mid west or southwest city of the same population. This is > because the east was more interconnected and had more national > commerce that went by phone than smaller towns which were likely > more insular back then. In other words, a small bank in Philadelphia > probably had more long distance traffic and sophistication than a > bank of the same size in say a city like Houston. Under Bell System management it wasn't that the smaller cities were more interconnected to begin with (They probably were - especially New England) but that wasn't the prime motivator for things like Providence having a Panel swtich, or RI being an all digital state way before the rest of the country. Instead it all has to do with profitability. Those Bell Operating Companies that consistently showed profit got the best of the best. It's why New York city had some of the worst telecom gear in the 60's through the early 80's. They simply weren't profitable. I believe the term is diseconomies of scale. ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 06:44:31 GMT On 2 Jan 2004 20:51:56 -0800, Jeff nor Lisa posted the following to comp.dcom.telecom: > The breakup of the Bell System had two big separate parts two it: > One was the discontinuance of the rental policy. The company > realized that the cost of renting out phones was now exceeded by > the cost of servicing them, and let that revenue source go. > I think that generally has been good for consumers, however, many > telephone sets out there today are pure junk. The "discontinuance of the rental policy" was not an economic decision by the telcos. Telephone rentals were a cash cow, pure gravy. They would never have discontinued them if it was up to them, and they opposed the end of phone rentals vigorously. In fact, the FCC forced this in a series of decisions, summarized (with some simplifications) as follows: First, it decided to allow competition in the provision of telecom equipment and the attachment of such equipment to the telephone network, provided it met certain standards. The telcos fought this, unsuccessfully, but nevertheless managed to suppress equipment competition to some extent by continuing to require equipment rental by requiring it in the tariff for phone service. Next, in the Second Computer Inquiry, also known as Computer II, the FCC decided to separate telecom service from customer premises equipment (CPE); the former was to be a common carrier service and the latter a non-common-carrier matter. The telcos appealed this and lost. The FCC then decided that CPE could not be offered as part of a tariffed service and required a phase-out of all such arrangements. Telcos had to offer customers with in-place equipment the opportunity to buy it or have it removed, or to continue leasing it. The telcos appealed this and lost. > The other was long distance competition. That has always bothered > me and I think consumers and investors got screwed and still get > screwed. Look at MCI/Worldcom. Investors in MCI did very well until the service became a commodity and MCI couldn't make a profit the old-fashioned way. Consumers unquestionably benefited from long-distance competition. If there had not been an MCI or a Sprint, you'd still be paying $1 or more per minute for a long-distance call, in 1975 dollars. Now, long-distance is practically free. How are consumers screwed? The only ones who are screwed are the ones who use a major carrier's "standard" rates, which apply to nobody except those who don't even try to find a reasonable rate. > As far as I'm concerned, if newcomers want a piece of the action, > let them pay to build their own infrastructure. The Cable TV > company managed to build a line to my house independent of Bell. > So should local competitors -- bypass the existing company completely, > and that would eliminate all the disputes and finger pointing over > the cost of the local loop. It might actually leave the newcomers > better off with a modern loop plant while Bell struggles with old > copper conduits. I agree completely, except that Congress decided otherwise in the 1996 Telecom Act. > When did cell phones come out? Originally they were a replacement for > mobile phones, and built into an automobile. I recall watching a > "90210" rerun episode, and the guy was talking on a corded phone in > the car, which struck me as strange. I then realized that episode was > old, and it was advanced for its day. Then they came out with bag > phones, then hand held ones, progressing getting smaller and smaller. > It blew my mind when I got my first Motorola "flip phone" -- for free > no less, with a $20/month (limited usage) rental. I was just like > "Captain Kirk" and his communicator; and it amazed me the power it had > at such an affordable price. > I recall reading articles in the Bell Laboratories Record about "AMPS" > which was cell phones. I presume Bell Labs invented the concept. Bell Labs invented the "concept" of cellular phone service, which was first publicly set forth in a 1971 technical report filed with the FCC. AT&T had lobbied for "hi-cap" mobile phone service for years before that and the FCC had begun an inquiry into the issue in 1968 in response. The FCC allocated spectrum for cellphones in 1974-75, but before setting rules for licensing wanted pilot programs. The Bell Systems Technical Journal devoted an entire issue (in 1975 or 1976, I think) to the subject. There were two pilot "developmental" programs, in the late 1970s: AT&T/Bell Labs' program, as implemented by Illinois Bell in Chicago, and Motorola's program, as implemented by Advanced Radio Telephone Service in Washington/Baltimore. These went online in the 1977-1978 timeframe. Based on the results of the experiments, the FCC initiated a proceedig at the end of 1979 to set rules for commercial cellular service and adopted rules in 1981, which were further refined numerous times. Regular commercial service commenced in late 1983. At that point, the customer equipment was mostly limited to vehicular mobile phones (a box in the trunk, connected to a handset in the car), although Motorola made a limited number of brick-sized handhelds available. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Cell phones began about > 1981. Chicago was the first city to have cellular service. Sometime > around 1984 I got my first cellular phone. It was a large thing > shaped like a brick, and you wore it in a shoulder holster like > thing. I got it from Radio Shack and it cost me about seven hundred > dollars and you *had* to have a contract with Ameritech for a year > or two to even be allowed to buy a phone. TELECOM Digest began in > August, 1981, and it was originally an ARPA group, called > arpa.telecom. For a few years, the connection to Usenet was through > a gateway computer. PAT] See above. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD, USA Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 07:01:56 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NOcom On 2 Jan 2004 20:51:56 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) wrote: > I recall reading articles in the Bell Laboratories Record about "AMPS" > which was cell phones. I presume Bell Labs invented the concept. http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa070899.htm "By 1982, the slow-moving FCC finally authorized commercial cellular service for the USA. A year later, the first American commercial analog cellular service or AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone Service) was made available in Chicago by Ameritech." remove NO from .NOcom to reply ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 20:36:12 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Earle Robinson (no email address indicated) wrote: > While the NANP system had its merits as you point out, the ITU > nowadays is more logical. First of all, it avoids all those area code > changes that occur periodically in the states. It also is simpler and > more flexible. In countries like Germany, you can dial the number and > the extension number. There is no limit on the number of digits, as > you point out, with the ITU system. Well, I beg to differ. The NANP system has *always* been more logical than "other countries". (and note that I don't say "ITU" system). First, the ITU is mostly concerned with country codes and with few exceptions doesn't dictate what *internal* domestic national numbering plans must be like. There are certain standards, in that the DECIMAL system of numeric digits will be used for basic numbering/addressing, even though the "*/#" and sometimes even fourth-column DTMF "A/B/C/D" are valid DTMF signals ... but for the most part, the ITU stays *OUT* of national numbering schemes. The NANP -- the US and Canada for the most part -- is "more-or-less" the same as it was 50+ years ago in 1947. We are still using the same "basic" ten-digit intra-NANP numbering format, although generallized a bit more. In 1947, the basic format was: N 0/1 X + NNX + xxxx Today, the basic format is: NXX + NXX + xxxx where N = any possible digit from 2 thru 9 (eight possiblities), and X = ANY of the ten possible decimal digits 0 thru 9. Actually, in the 1940s/50s and even early 60s (and in some places into the 1970s), the "office code" portion, the D-E-F position digits of the ten-digit NANP number were even generally a bit more restricted than the "general" NNX format. When using pure numeric-digits for the office code of the NNX format, you could have a theoretical possibility of 640 office codes (aka exchanges, prefixes, etc) within an area code ... Doing the Math for N-N-X gives 8 x 8 x 10 = 640 However, because the US/Canada was still using "EXchange NAme DIaling" in the 1950s era, where the first two letters of a name were indicated, there were certain word/letter combinations rarely used or impossible to come up with, meaning that those corresponding numeric combinations were un-used altogether. For the most part, this was the 55x, 57x, 95x, 97x ranges, since there are no (regular) vowels on the 5 (JKL), 7 (PRS), W (WXY), it was difficult to impossible to come up with a word having its first two letters correspond with these numeric combinations. Also, the third digit of '0' (zero), the 'F' position digit in the office code (D-E-F position digits) was usually avoided because it might be confused with the letter 'O' (oh) which is traditionally on the '6' on NANP dials. So, back in "the days", the usually expected theoretical maximum of office-codes (D-E-F) was only 540: Doing the Math: NNX = 8x8x10 = 640 but remove the four possible ranges 55, 57, 95, 97 from the sixty-four 'NN' ranges, and you only get 60 possible *use-able* 'NN' ranges, for the first two digits of the D-E-F office code. Then for the third digit, you multiply by '9' rather than '10' since you are not (usually) using a third digit of '0'. You only get 540. Today, the "theoretical" max for both area codes and for office codes is 800, both are generally of the NXX format, 8x10x10, but you subtract *CERTAIN* possiblities, such as the eight possible 'N11' codes which are used as three-digit "short" special services codes. But, as for the NANP's superiority over the "rest-of-the-world" ... We've maintained a basic *TEN* digit "national" structure for 50+ years. NO OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD can make such a similar claim! And the US/Canada (like it or not) *IS* the leader of the world in modern 20th/21st Century technology, culture, development, etc. OTHER countries have had MAJOR modifications to their numbering plans, including the UK, *FRANCE*, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, the Scandanavian countries, Aussie/NZ, Japan, etc. Sometimes it is major modifications only to certain cities, other times it is a wholesale change nationwide, and it could be anything in-between. Usually other countries of the world keep adding more digits to their national numbering. Again, the NANP's basic numbering scheme is still at TEN-digits, which was what officially began in Oct.1947, and was even proposed by Bell Labs in 1944/45. *DIALING* has expanded in most places, some to ten or 1+ten-digits where it had been only seven-digits for local calling, some places expanded from local dialing of less-than-seven to seven back in the 1950s/early 60s to conform with a standard (and now might even be at ten or 1+ten), but the BASIC NANP Numbering/Routing/Switching/Signaling format is *STILL* TEN-digit as was proposed in the 1940s and began the earliest implementation even as far back as then as well. YES, we've had our painful splits. Especially in the later 1990s and all the way up to and through 2001. BUT THOSE DAYS SEEM TO BE OVER FOREVER, now that there are safeguards in place in numbering/ assignment policies. 2002 had only eight new area codes in the US, some of them were overlays. 2003 only had three new area codes in the US, two of them from a single three-way split of 915 in west Texas, the third was an overlay to 903 in northeastern TX ... AND THAT WAS IT ... 2004 will have only two "known" new area codes, only ONE of them being a split (909/951 in southern California), and the other one being 684, which are identical to the currently assigned (ITU) digits +684 for the "Country" code for American Samoa, a US territory which migrates its numbering/dialing into the NANP beginning Oct.2004. There *MIGHT* be one other southern California split in later 2004, if it is determined that 310 will finally split off 424 this year rather than early/mid 2005. But as for splits ... VIRTUALLY EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM of the 1990 (thru 2001) time-frame could have been an OVERLAY rather than a split, which would have meant *NO* "changes" to observers of anyone dialing TO the EXISTING numbers/customers in the affected area. Even locally, the area code (if used) remained the same -- of course it HAS to be dialed for local calls.... BUT IN FRANCE... THESE DAYS ALL DOMESTIC (including LOCAL) calling now *HAS* to be dialed on a full "national" basis! (I think that there's a case of "pot calling the kettle black" somewhere in here! :-) As for: > There is no limit on the number of digits ... with the ITU system. Ummm ... well there *IS* a limit on the number of national/domestic digits if that country wants to receive calls to its "POTS" (regular) numbers/ customers on the automated *worldwide* network from ALL countries with automated customer outbound Interantional Calling, and here is where the ITU *DOES* get involved... The MINIMUM LIMIT (ooooh there's that word LIMIT!) for a significant worldwide number is SEVEN-digits. This means a domestic number minimum of four-digits if they have a three-digit country-code, and a domestic minimum of five-digits if they have a two-digit country-code. (and if +7 Russia and +1 NANP wanted a mimimum of less than what they each already have, it would be six-digits for a national mimimum matched up with the single-digit country codes). The MAXIMUM LIMIT -- it used to be TWELVE, it is now FIFTEEN -- for a significant worldwide number, as a matter of a standard. And one of the primary reasons that the ITU finally expanded it from twelve to fifteen which took effect circa 1996, was because of auto direct-dial-in to PABX systems mostly in Germany, Austria, and a few other European countries which were NON-standard in having LONGER than twelve-digit worldwide numbers when you include the country-code "itself" (+49, +43, etc) as well as the extension-digits of the PABX. Yes, some European countries were able to implement added customer-dialed-digit capacity in their systems to accommodate these LONGER-than-ITU-standard numbers, but since the ITU didn't "require" a max of greater-than-twelve at the time (until the expansion of the requirment of the max to 15-digits circa 1996), many countries such as carriers in the NANP didn't necessarily allow customer automated dialing to such longer-than-twelve-significant-digit-numbers. Again, me-thinks somewhere there is a "pot calling the kettle black" attitude here! :-) > Here in France we have an implementation that permits easy dialing > around for long distance calls, too. The initial 0 signifies that the > phone company selected as the designate local carrier is to be used. > (Note that one may choose another one quite easily.) ... So, a call > say to the Paris area might be 01-4444-5555. However, if you wished > to use say tele2 for the call, you'd dial 41-4444-5555. International > calls are initiated using the standard 00. But, if you wish to use say > tele2 you'd dial 40, then the country code, and finally the number. > For example, a call to New York City might be 401-212-444-5555. For > those carriers that aren't fortunate enough to have their own single > digit a 4 digit prefix must be used. An example using budgetelecom to > call New York City would be 3111-00-1212-444-5555. Here in the NANP, your "chosen" LD-carrier is accessed (in most cases) when you simply dial 1+/0+ for NANP-calls (1+ for station-sent-paid, 0+ being ONE method for "alternate billing" such as Card, Collect, 3d-Pty billing, etc), and 011+/01+ for IDDD-calls (011+ for station-sent-paid, 01+ for special-billing such as Card/Collect/etc). If you want to use a DIFFERENT carrier than your "chosen" carrier, you dial a STANDARD code of 101-XXXX+. It used to be 10-XXX+ but it was expanded to 101-XXXX+ in the 1990s. Yes, it is LONGER than what is used in France, but let's look at the geographic-size, population of, and the overall length of time that there has been such competitive LD in the US (and even Canada), when compared to ... France. Also, while there was a variable length of both 10-XXX+ and 101-XXXX+ "side-by-side" in the 1994-98 timeframe while existing/previous 10-XXX+ codes were expanding to 101-0XXX+ and NEW codes were assigned first out of the 101-5XXX+ and 101-6XXX+ ranges, until 101-0XXX+ became mandatory for previously existing 10-XXX+ codes in 1998, and now ANY 101-XXXX+ range is assigned ... you just COULD NEVER have such variable length code formats as a general practice in the US/Canada. Technical standards in the long run is one reason -- simplicity and streamlining, and an EASY and EFFICIENT way to expand when necessary... but variable length alternate-carrier-code-dialing would be deemed *ANTI* competitive, and even monopolistic. The "long-time" carriers would have shorter, easier to dial/remember codes, while the upstarts would have longer, more difficult to dial/remember codes. Of course, one "could" claim that the older/longer carriers were there first and had a much larger customer base, but things still need to be carrier/competitive NEUTRAL in the NANP and I would even tend to think in other countries as well... I don't know how government regulation of the telecom industry/standards is within France, but I tend to think that MOST other developed countries with LD competition and carrier-selection-code dialing ten to have STANDARD/ UNIFORM length carrier-codes, or are trending to standard uniform length codes, for the reasons I describe above as they are here in the NANP. There are indeed benefits to certain aspects of various non-NANP "most-of-the-rest-of-the-world" numbering/dialing/routing/switching/ signaling... but in the long run, I know that the NANP's formats and standards have stood up to the test of time, and will CONTINUE to do so. Now that the "scare" of running out of numbers, and WASTE of area codes in rash splits and over-assignments of the 1990s-thru-2001 time frame is FINALLY over with FOR GOOD(!), here in the NANP, the current projections to where the existing ten-digit format MIGHT need to expand to eleven or MAYBE even twelve-digits, is for the 2040 to 2050 timeframe. And even that projection could be pushed out further into the future as time continues and projections are made in later years. BTW, in the 199e/94 timeframe, just prior to the NANP area code format generalizing from N-0/1-X to NXX with an overall increase in the possible number of area codes, the projections for an "exhaust" of a ten-digit NXX-NXX-xxxx NANP was going to be circa 2040 to 2050, same as the current projections. There *WAS* the "scare" that the NANP might run-out of numbers and/or codes by 2007-2010, made back in 1998/99, but that was (IMO) mostly "crying wolf". Of course, area code assignments/activations (splits) in that 1998/99 period was INSANE, but that insanity is finally over. The NANP has had changes over the years, but NO-where NEARLY as crazy as virtually every other (developed and under-developed/non-developed) in the world has had since the 1960s/70s... Mark J. Cuccia mcuccia@tulane.edu New Orleans LA CSA (in the LAND OF DIXIE!) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 20:05:45 -0500 (EST) From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: From the Archives: The Day the Bell System Died It was twenty years ago (1984) that AT&T was divested under orders from Judge Harold Greene, or twenty-two years ago in this next week that the idea of divestiture of AT&T first came up, January 8, 1982 I think. Mark Cuccia suggested that this old archive file first submitted by Lauren Weinstein in the summer of 1983. So, here it is, Mark, and others. PAT 12-Jul-83 09:14:32-PDT,4930;000000000001 Return-path: <@LBL-CSAM:vortex!lauren@LBL-CSAM> Received: from LBL-CSAM by USC-ECLB; Tue 12 Jul 83 09:12:46-PDT Date: Tuesday, 12-Jul-83 01:18:19-PDT From: Lauren Weinstein Subject: "The Day Bell System Died" Return-Path: Message-Id: <8307121614.AA17341@LBL-CSAM.ARPA> Received: by LBL-CSAM.ARPA (3.327/3.21) id AA17341; 12 Jul 83 09:14:35 PDT (Tue) To: TELECOM@ECLB Greetings. With the massive changes now taking place in the telecommunications industry, we're all being inundated with seemingly endless news items and points of information regarding the various effects now beginning to take place. However, one important element has been missing: a song! Since the great Tom Lehrer has retired from the composing world, I will now attempt to fill this void with my own light-hearted, non-serious look at a possible future of telecommunications. This work is entirely satirical, and none of its lyrics are meant to be interpreted in a non-satirical manner. The song should be sung to the tune of Don Mclean's classic "American Pie". I call my version "The Day Bell System Died"... --Lauren-- ************************************************************************** *==================================* * Notice: This is a satirical work * *==================================* "The Day Bell System Died" Lyrics Copyright (C) 1983 by Lauren Weinstein (To the tune of "American Pie") (With apologies to Don McLean) ARPA: vortex!lauren@LBL-CSAM UUCP: {decvax, ihnp4, harpo, ucbvax!lbl-csam, randvax}!vortex!lauren ************************************************************************** Long, long, time ago, I can still remember, When the local calls were "free". And I knew if I paid my bill, And never wished them any ill, That the phone company would let me be... But Uncle Sam said he knew better, Split 'em up, for all and ever! We'll foster competition: It's good capital-ism! I can't remember if I cried, When my phone bill first tripled in size. But something touched me deep inside, The day... Bell System... died. And we were singing... Bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? Ma Bell why did you have to die? Is your office Step by Step, Or have you gotten some Crossbar yet? Everybody used to ask... Oh, is TSPS coming soon? IDDD will be a boon! And, I hope to get a Touch-Tone phone, real soon... The color phones are really neat, And direct dialing can't be beat! My area code is "low": The prestige way to go! Oh, they just raised phone booths to a dime! Well, I suppose it's about time. I remember how the payphones chimed, The day... Bell System... died. And we were singing... Bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? Ma Bell why did you have to die? Back then we were all at one rate, Phone installs didn't cause debate, About who'd put which wire where... Installers came right out to you, No "phone stores" with their ballyhoo, And 411 was free, seemed very fair! But FCC wanted it seems, To let others skim long-distance creams, No matter 'bout the locals, They're mostly all just yokels! And so one day it came to pass, That the great Bell System did collapse, In rubble now, we all do mass, The day... Bell System... died. So bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? Ma Bell why did you have to die? I drove on out to Murray Hill, To see Bell Labs, some time to kill, But the sign there said the Labs were gone. I went back to my old CO, Where I'd had my phone lines, years ago, But it was empty, dark, and ever so forlorn... No relays pulsed, No data crooned, No MF tones did play their tunes, There wasn't a word spoken, All carrier paths were broken... And so that's how it all occurred, Microwave horns just nests for birds, Everything became so absurd, The day... Bell System... died. So bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? Ma Bell why did you have to die? We were singing: Bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #4 **************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jan 4 19:36:58 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i050aw528802; Sun, 4 Jan 2004 19:36:58 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 19:36:58 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401050036.i050aw528802@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 #5 TELECOM Digest Sun, 4 Jan 2004 19:37:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 5 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Forget Your Bank Balance? It's Available on Internet (Monty Solomon) Apple's Tablet Computer Might Finally Be That Link (Monty Solomon) Re: NANP Numbering (John R. Levine) Re: NANP Numbering (Bob Goudreau) Fore ESX-3810 (bleed-22) Re: Is TiVo Really All That Great? (Rob) IN Billing (Ajith) Re: My Upgraded Computer System (Greg T. Knopf) Re: BBC Writer Can't Fathom the Internet (Rob) Re: BBC Writer Fathoms the Internet Pretty Well (Ronda Hauben) Re: BBC Writer Fathoms the Internet Pretty Well (John Levine) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 01:33:52 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Forget Your Bank Balance? It's Available on the Internet Consumers' financial details easy pickings on the Net By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff, 1/4/2004 Eric F. Bourassa, a privacy advocate at the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, knows how difficult it is to keep personal financial information personal. But even he was surprised at how easy it was for The Boston Globe to obtain his private bank account information. Trafficking in confidential financial information is commonplace on the Web, with a quick Google search turning up more than a dozen sites selling everything from Social Security numbers to bank balances. The Globe tested one of the sites in September, paying $125 for Governor Mitt Romney's credit report and in the process discovering a major security weakness in the nation's credit reporting network. In November, with Bourassa's blessing, the Globe began to explore the shadowy world of asset search firms, which advertise that they can unlock the financial secrets of virtually anyone. The mystery is where these firms get their information. Does it come directly from financial institutions? Or does it come through more indirect, possibly illegal, methods? The Globe agreed to pay Ohio-based I.C.U. Inc., whose Web address is Tracerservices.com, $475 for Bourassa's bank account information and his stock and bond holdings. Not all of the information the website provided was accurate, but the bank account information, with the balance listed right down to the penny, was so close that it made Bourassa feel violated. http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/004/business/Forget_your_bank_balance_It_s_available_on_the_Internet+.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 12:11:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Apple's Tablet Computer Might Finally Be That Link Digital Hubris: Apple's Tablet Computer Might Finally Be That Link Between Your PC and TV By Robert X. Cringely High-tech is relentlessly optimistic and for good reason: the good times -- ALL the good times -- are caused by product transitions. New stuff costs more, has higher profit margins, and occasionally leads to changes in market leadership. A year or two later, these products will have been commoditized, the profit sucked out of them by intense competition, and it will be time to move on to the next big thing. Four years ago, the cheapest 802.11b access point you could buy cost $299. This week, I saw one advertised that with rebates brought the final cost down to zero, nothing, nada, zilch. Time to move on. So high-tech is always looking forward, never back, and taking a gamble on something new isn't perceived so much as a gamble but as a way of life. The techniques for getting us to buy new stuff vary. In the best of cases, these new sales are driven by new functionality -- a color printer instead of black-and-white, a notebook computer instead of a desktop, a DVD instead of a VCR. At other times, the upgrade is driven by bloat as new MIPS-burning applications and operating systems make our old stuff too painfully slow. This doesn't happen by accident, folks. And into this performance abyss we throw not just new products but new TYPES of products, because industrial dynasties come from defining new market niches. Hewlett-Packard, for all its glorious history, is more than anything else a laser printer company. Cisco Systems, for all its desire to be something more, is a router company. These are niches they defined and that have led to decades of success. And that brings us to the tablet computer, a tightly-defined product still in search of success. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20031127.html ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: 3 Jan 2004 20:19:32 -0500 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > While the NANP system had its merits as you point out, the ITU > nowadays is more logical. I think all you can conclude is that people like what they're used to. If you want to start an instant religious war, for example, ask people from different parts of the NANP whether you should be able to dial a short distance toll call without dialing 1 first. > First of all, it avoids all those area code changes that occur > periodically in the states. Um, the UK and France have had their share of renumbering, too. The NANP could have avoided most of the area code changes if state regulators had looked ahead and done overlays sooner. It's a political problem, not a technical one. > It also is simpler and more flexible. In countries like Germany, you > can dial the number and the extension number. That's Direct Inward Dialing. We have that here in NANP-land, too. We probably had it first. > There is no limit on the number of digits, as you point out, with > the ITU system. Actually, the limit is 15 digits, raised from 12 a few years ago when German PBXes got really long extension numbers. > Here in France we have an implementation that permits easy dialing > around for long distance calls, too. We have that, too. Dial 011-33-1-23-45-67-89-00 for a call to Paris with your normal carrier, dial 1010XXXX first to pick a different carrier. Yeah, it's a lot of digits, we have a lot of phone companies. Like I said, people like what they're used to. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 21:03:31 -0500 [Please eliminate my email address too. Thanks.] Earle Robinson wrote: > While the NANP system had its merits as you point out, the ITU > nowadays is more logical. First of all, it avoids all those area code > changes that occur periodically in the states. It certainly hasn't worked out that way. In fact, I would wager that a great proportion of people in Europe have had their phone numbers change in the past two decades than in the NANP. For instance, in the UK, *every* POTS number has changed its area code at least once. Remember when London used to be +44 1? Then it was +44 71/81. It may have been +44 171/181 for awhile after that, before it went to the current +44 20. Similarly, every landline number in France is now dialed differently than it was 20 years ago. Check out the WTNG for details on the incredible amount of numbering changes that have taken place in Europe in recent years. Meanwhile, in the NANP, there are tens of millions of people who still have the same area code that they had 30 or 40 years ago. Even the ones who have encountered an area code split got to keep their local numbers. And, with overlay area codes now the most common way to expand the numbering space, most of us will probably never be forced to change our numbers again. > It also is simpler and more flexible. More flexible, yes. Simpler, no. A numbering plan in which all numbers are of uniform length is simpler for people to grasp than one in which number lengths may vary wildly even within a single town. But even most European countries these days employ (or are moving toward) closed numbering plans in which the total nationally- significant phone number length is uniform (though the breakdown between area code length and local number length may differ from area to area). As you note, even France now has a completely uniform numbering-length scheme, just like the NANP. I believe that Germany is now probably the greatest remaining European example of fully variable numbering, in which the number of digits in numbers can vary even within a single exchange. (Other, smaller examples such as Austria remain too.) > In countries like Germany, you can dial the number and > the extension number. There is no limit on the number of digits, as > you point out, with the ITU system. Yes, there is. The ITU limit is 15 significant digits, including the country code (but not including intra-national long distance access codes such as "0", which are not actually part of the area code). The ITU limit used to be 12 until less than a decade ago. Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ From: wink_1000@yahoo.com (bleed-22) Subject: Fore ESX-3810 Date: 3 Jan 2004 18:04:31 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anyone ever have a Fore 3810 freeze up on you when you reset the counters? It happened to me last night, and no one believes me. Ugh. As soon as I typed 'yes' and pressed enter to confirm I wanted to clear the counters, the switch froze. The customer's network engineer got an automated page (via SNMP poll failure) at 6:00 in the morning that the switch went down. Any ideas? Prior to resetting the counters, I viewed the System parameters (to get uptime), viewed SONET/ATM counters and the counters on B* (ethernet ports). TIA. ------------------------------ From: rob51166@yahoo.com (Rob) Subject: Re: Is TiVo Really All That Great? Date: 4 Jan 2004 04:27:29 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Monty Solomon wrote in message news:: > Cable companies slashing fees, crafting services in bid to get > consumers to hop on the TV replay bandwagon. > By Ron Lieber > The Wall Street Journal > Originally published December 29, 2003 > LOS ANGELES -- The future of TiVo may be uncertain, but the TiVolution > has never been more accessible than it is this holiday season. > TiVo, which is both popular usage for newfangled alternatives to VCRs > and the brand-name of the company that helped popularize them, once > required an initial investment of hundreds of dollars. But, as new > competitors continue to emerge, most people can now try the new way of > watching and recording television for far less. > Last week, ReplayTV lowered the price on its cheapest machine to $149 > and stopped forcing consumers to buy three years of service upfront, > cutting the initial cost by more than $300. Time Warner Cable this > year began a widespread rollout of a service that has a TiVo-like > digital video recorder built into the cable box and costs less than > $10 a month. > Some of Cox Communications Inc.'s customers already have cable DVR > service, and Comcast Corp. plans to roll it out to all of its > subscribers next year. > Hate your cable company? EchoStar Communications Corp.'s Dish Network > has started offering a free DVR box to new satellite TV subscribers. > Though only a tiny fraction of households now have the service, TiVo > and its progeny offer features that radically change the way people > watch television. They make it easy to record shows so you can watch > what you want, when you want. Then, they make it easy to skip > commercials [or, in the case of the Super Bowl, watch them > repeatedly]. > http://www.sunspot.net/technology/bal-tivo122903,0,1069107.story I remember TiVo being advertised over here in the UK several years ago, but it never took off. In fact, I'd say it died a death. I put it down to Sky TV (the satellite TV company) introducing a system called Sky+. This is a digital satellite set-top box which can record programmes onto a hard drive without the need of a VCR or recordable DVD. OK, Sky+ isn't exactly cheap as you have to pay to upgrade your current digital set-top box, but it's becoming much more popular than TiVo ever did. ------------------------------ From: kaajith@hotmail.com (Ajith) Subject: IN Billing Date: 4 Jan 2004 11:02:28 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Can anybody explain how the IN Billing in telecom takes place? ------------------------------ From: Greg T. Knopf Subject: Re: My Upgraded Computer System Date: 03 Jan 2004 18:36:48 EST Organization: Concentric Internet Services Reply-To: gtknopf@concentric.net Hello, Just a quick note and perhaps a caveat: TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > Starting at about 5 PM New Year's Eve > ... > I have been giving some thought to moving Windows 2000 onto the new > 80 GB drive (F) and expanding Linux to the full 20 GB drive (C) which > used to be split between Windows and Linux. I know that with numerous Windows versions I have used the OS requires that it's boot partition and home drive be on C:. This has caused me so much grief in the past that when I'm fooling around changing operating systems and loading linux, etc., that I just make sure to include the Windows partition and operating system on my first IDE drive and in fact on the first partitions. I would rather put my linux swap as the first partition, for access speed reasons, but after being driven near to madness with the @%$#! Windows assumptions I have given up trying to move it. This is just a little point, but it might save you some grief to keep it in mind. - Greg gtknopf@concentric.net info@knopfnet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What I did was first use a program called 'Digital Lifeguard' to entirely format the new hard drive (known as 'F') and move all the contents of 'C' to 'F'. Then I took the computer apart and removed the ribbon connector and power cable from the 'C' drive. Then I put the computer back together and booted it up to make sure it would work. Computer *did* attempt to boot and run Windows from 'C' but finding 'C' unavailable it moved along to 'F' and ran okay from there. Then I took the computer apart again, went back inside it and moved the slave/master jumpers in reverse, so that (the now old) 'F' drive impostered C ... and vice versa with 'F', also making the required changes on the ribbon connector so that the 'primary' connection went to 'C' and the secondary connection was 'F'. Then I put the computer back together again, and was now booting from 'C' normally with 'F' as the backup drive. I presume I could have skipped a step here and moved the jumpers and the ribbons first, before screwing it all back together, but having brain desease as badly as I do, I was scared of trying to do it that way. I wanted to make sure it would work first. Trouble now is I have no way to boot into Linux, but my Canadian expert said he is meditating on that problem for me. Nor can I get Windows to recognize the full 80 GB; the Digital Lifeguard program could only do FAT up to about 34-35 GB. I would have had it do NTFS for the full 80 but that would prevent Linux from being able to use the data files of Windows. (On the old partioned C drive although I could boot Linux or Windows, I used FAT rather that NTFS so Linux could move around as it wished through the files, etc.) If the Canadian guy is unable to 'convince' the computer to allow bootup choice of Linux/Windows with Linux on (what will now be 'F') and Windows to continue to default to (what is now) 'C' then I may wind up re-opening the computer, reversing the slave/master relationship, restoring 'C' back to where it was and use the entire 80 on 'F' like I had it planned originally. Yeah, and I may check into Stormont-Vail Medical Center next week and get brain surgery again, also. (wink). PAT] ------------------------------ From: rob51166@yahoo.com (Rob) Subject: Re: BBC Writer Can't Fathom the Internet Date: 4 Jan 2004 04:12:00 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Ronda Hauben wrote in message news:: > Is there some reason the BBC can't understand what the Internet is > about, or take the trouble to spread an accurate understanding of it, > rather than a mistaken conception that makes the Internet into the one > network ARPANET? No doubt because it's just that -- the BBC! They've never *QUITE* got the grasp of the words 'technology' and 'modernisation' -- especially the fatcats who have offices on the top floor of Broadcasting House in London. They seem to have the opinion that all equipment dating back to the 1960s is still perfectly suitable for the 21st Century; while anything introduced since then is no use whatsoever! BTW, as you can probably guess, I'm British! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 12:15:52 EST From: Ronda Hauben Subject: Re: BBC Writer Fathoms the Internet Pretty Well On Sat, 4 Jan 2004, John Levine wrote: >> Is there some reason the BBC can't understand what the Internet is >> about, > Not that I can see. The description of the difference between the > ARPANET and Internet in the BBC article that you quoted is quite > accurate: Are you saying that the ARPANET is the same as the IMP subnetwork of the ARPANET? The whole point of the IMP subnetwork is to connect diverse computers and diverse operating systems. The ARPANET is the connection of these diverse computers and operating systems. It isn't the IMP subnetwork. The IMP subnetwork is the means of connecting the diverse computers, but is *not* the ARPANET. >>> The Arpanet came before the net and demanded that all computers that >>> connect to it do so with the same hardware and software. Essentially this is saying that the Arpanet is the IMP an interconnection of the same hardware and software. That is an inaccurate presentation of the reality. The ARPANET was the solution to the problem of resource sharing among diverse computers and operating systems and their respective users. The BBC quote above says that all of the computers that connect to the ARPANET need the same hardware and software. This does *not* describe the ARPANET. The BBC reporter doesn't say that all diverse computers in the ARPANET that connected to each other used an IMP subnetwork and NCP protocol. But even that would not be helpful in understanding and spreading the essence of the ARPANET among people. >>> By contrast, the net, thanks to TCP/IP, could let people on >>> different sorts of computers running different software, swap >>> information. > You comment: >> Specifically the Internet is a network of networks -- or a metasystem >> of networks. It makes it possible for diverse networks to speak to > Right. >> The ARPANET was a connection of different computers and operating >> systems > Nope. The ARPANET consisted entirely of IMPs and TIPs, which were > built from Honeywell 316 minis and later BBN's own C/30s which ran the > IMP code after Honeywell stopped making the 316 and the occasional > experimental machine like the multiprocessor Pluribus IMP. Are you claiming that the ARPANET was the IMP subnetwork? And that the Hosts were something different? The IMP subnetwork was part of the ARPANET, but *not* the ARPANET. The Hosts were part of the ARPANET. > Lots of different hosts attached to the IMPs, but the hosts were not > part of the packet switching network. It is true that the Arpanet > researchers did all sorts of work trying to deal with incompatible > data formats on the various hosts, but that was above the level of > the ARPANET IMPs which just sent packets around. You say "ARPANET IMPs" - I am saying the IMP subnetwork of the ARPANET. There is a difference between these statements. The ARPANET includes diverse computers and operating systems such as the SDS Sigma 7 computer system at UCLA using the SEX operating system, the SDS-940 using GENIE at SRI, the IBM 360/75 using OS/MVT at UCSB and the DEC PDP-10 using TENEX at the University of Utah. These along with the IMP subnetwork are what are referred to as the ARPANET, at its earliest stages. The significant is that all these 4 host computers were different computers using different operating systems. It is the diversity of computers and operating systems that were connected, that is the essence of the ARPANET. > One of the key differences between the ARPANET and the Internet is > that the Internet doesn't need IMPs -- the host to host protocols are > all well defined and any kind of computer that can talk IP can play. So are you saying that the essence of the difference between the ARPANET and the Internet is that the Internet makes it possible to connect computers without using IMPs? I am saying the important difference between the INTERNET and the ARPANET is that the Internet made it possible to connect different networks, not just different computers. The ARPANET made it possible to connect different computers. > The Unix box on which I'm typing this runs its own TCP and IP software > and connects to other hosts that speak IP, as do my Windows laptop and > the occasional visiting Mac. My router also happens to be a PC > running Unix but it could be a dedicated Cisco box or anything else > that can move IP packets from one network to another. The architectural conception that made it possible to create TCP/IP wasn't the effort to connect different computers and operating sytems. It was the effort to create a way to connect different packet switching networks. Originally the idea was to try to connect the US ARPANET, the French CYCLADES, and the British NPL. That wasn't what happened, but that was the impetus for the architectural conception. One couldn't expect the French CYCLADES to become part of the ARPANET. The French CYCLADES was a packet switching network using different technical aspects, and was under the ownership and control of different political and administrative entities. >> We want the Internet to grow and flourish. It would seem important >> than to start the new year off with accurate information about its >> development. What would you suggest I revise? Perhaps you might find it of interest to read the paper. It is about the difference between the ARPANET and the Internet. It does seem it would be good if there were the effort to help reporters like those of the BBC understand the difference. > Regards, > John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet > for Dummies$ > Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, > Sewer Commission$ > "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web With best wishes, Ronda ------------------------------ Date: 4 Jan 2004 01:11:14 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: BBC Writer Fathoms the Internet Pretty Well Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Is there some reason the BBC can't understand what the Internet is > about, Not that I can see. The description of the difference between the ARPANET and Internet in the BBC article that you quoted is quite accurate: >> The Arpanet came before the net and demanded that all computers that >> connect to it do so with the same hardware and software. >> By contrast, the net, thanks to TCP/IP, could let people on >> different sorts of computers running different software, swap >> information. You comment: > Specifically the Internet is a network of networks -- or a metasystem > of networks. It makes it possible for diverse networks to speak to > each other. Right. > The ARPANET was a connection of different computers and operating > systems Nope. The ARPANET consisted entirely of IMPs and TIPs, which were built from Honeywell 316 minis and later BBN's own C/30s which ran the IMP code after Honeywell stopped making the 316 and the occasional experimental machine like the multiprocessor Pluribus IMP. Lots of different hosts attached to the IMPs, but the hosts were not part of the packet switching network. It is true that the Arpanet researchers did all sorts of work trying to deal with incompatible data formats on the various hosts, but that was above the level of the ARPANET IMPs which just sent packets around. One of the key differences between the ARPANET and the Internet is that the Internet doesn't need IMPs -- the host to host protocols are all well defined and any kind of computer that can talk IP can play. The Unix box on which I'm typing this runs its own TCP and IP software and connects to other hosts that speak IP, as do my Windows laptop and the occasional visiting Mac. My router also happens to be a PC running Unix but it could be a dedicated Cisco box or anything else that can move IP packets from one network to another. > We want the Internet to grow and flourish. It would seem important > than to start the new year off with accurate information about its > development. Agreed. Perhaps now would be a good time to go back and revise the paper of yours that you quoted. > I am saying the important difference between the INTERNET and the > ARPANET is that the Internet made it possible to connect different > networks, not just different computers. The ARPANET made it possible > to connect different computers. This must be some different ARPANET than the one that BBN built and that ran solely on Honeywell 316s and C/30s. Like I said, they did indeed connect all sorts of different computers to the ARPANET, but the network itself was a closed system running on a single fairly exotic set of equipment. The redesign of the Internet that let it run on any old hardware that people chose to connect was and is a crucial difference and one of the most important reasons the Internet succeeded while many other single-architecture networks didn't. The Internet's design to permit multiple networks was important, too, but SNA (remember SNA?) also could handle multiple networks yet didn't go anywhere largely due to its closed design that ran mostly on pricey IBM communication processors. These facts are well known and easily checked by anyone who cares to do so, and you only make yourself look foolish by trying to argue that the situation was and is otherwise. I have no interest in arguing about facts, so this is my last message on this topic. 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. ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #5 **************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jan 5 14:30:56 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i05JUui04028; Mon, 5 Jan 2004 14:30:56 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 14:30:56 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401051930.i05JUui04028@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 #6 TELECOM Digest Mon, 5 Jan 2004 14:31:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 6 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #414, January 5, 2004 (Angus TeleManagement) Re: NANP Numbering (Mark J Cuccia) Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004 on 1-Jan-1984 (Lincoln King-Cliby) AlchemyTV DVR / Digital Video Recorder for your PowerMac (Monty Solomon) TiVo Inc. Invites You to Join Conference Call, Webcast (Monty Solomon) Last Laugh! 15 Year Old Gets Caught With $71,000!!! (free$$$) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 10:31:08 -0500 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #414, January 5, 2004 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 414: January 5, 2004 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca ** CYGCOM INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES: www.cygcom.com ** GROUP TELECOM: www.360.net ** JUNIPER NETWORKS: www.juniper.net ** PRIMUS CANADA: www.primustel.ca ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** TELUS: www.telus.com ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Colville Reappointed to CRTC ** Bell Can Appeal CRTC Contract Ruling ** Telus Wants Re-Auction of Inukshuk Spectrum ** Notice Required on Automatic Contract Renewals ** Telus Apologizes to Customers ** MTS Raises Business Line Rates ** SaskTel Wants EMI, Voice Messaging Forborne ** Bell, Aliant Must Provide Detailed Bills ** Cybersurf Wins Order Against Shaw ** RIM Results Swing to Profit ** DBRS Upgrades Telus Debt ** Nortel Files Final Restated Results ** Emergis Exits U.S. Health Business ** UBS Takes Control of Look ** Canada Payphone Cuts Loss ** Telemanagement Goes Online ============================================================ COLVILLE REAPPOINTED TO CRTC: Telecom Update congratulates David Colville, the CRTC's Vice-Chairperson of Telecommunications and Atlantic regional Commissioner on his re-appointment to the Commission for a further one-year term. BELL CAN APPEAL CRTC CONTRACT RULING: The Federal Court has granted Bell Canada leave to appeal CRTC Telecom Decision 2003-63 (see Telecom Update #405). The appeal is restricted to the question of whether the Commission should have elicited customer views before ordering that details of their contracts with Bell be made public. TELUS WANTS RE-AUCTION OF INUKSHUK SPECTRUM: In December, Telus Mobility asked Industry Canada to revoke Inukshuk's MCS licence for failing to meet license conditions. Telus says the spectrum should be offered again in the upcoming 2.3/3.5 GHz spectrum auction. (See Telecom Update #413) NOTICE REQUIRED ON AUTOMATIC CONTRACT RENEWALS: The CRTC has decided not to remove the automatic contract renewal provisions in Bell and Telus business local service contracts, but Telecom Decision 2003-85 requires both telcos to notify customers at least 60 days before and within 35 days after automatic renewal occurs. Customers will have 30 days from the latter notice to cancel the contract. ** No business customers participated in this proceeding. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2003/dt2003-85.htm TELUS APOLOGIZES TO CUSTOMERS: In a letter sent to two million customers last week, Telus CEO Darren Entwistle says: "Recently, some aspects of our service have not been at the levels you deserve ... If you have been inconvenienced in your dealings with Telus in any way, we sincerely apologize." He says the company is "on track to meet and exceed industry standards in all areas in December 2003." http://about.telus.com/media/customerletter.html MTS RAISES BUSINESS LINE RATES: CRTC Telecom Order 2003-519 approves a proposal by MTS Communications to increase monthly rates for multi-line business service, effective February 1. Non-contracted service goes up $1.45 in bands A to C and $1.65 in bands D to G. Contracted service in all bands increases $1.40, $1.15, and $0.80 for 1, 3 and 5-year contracts respectively. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2003/o2003-519.htm SASKTEL WANTS EMI, VOICE MESSAGING FORBORNE: SaskTel has asked the CRTC to forbear from regulating its Electronic Messaging and Voice Messaging services and any similar services that may be developed in the future. www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2003/8640/8640_03.htm#200318560 BELL, ALIANT MUST PROVIDE DETAILED BILLS: CRTC Telecom Decision 2003-86 orders Bell Canada and Aliant to provide monthly itemized bills to all customers, effective mid-2004. The costs are to be borne by the carriers as a normal cost of business. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2003/dt2003-86.htm CYBERSURF WINS ORDER AGAINST SHAW: Responding to a complaint by Calgary ISP Cybersurf (see Telecom Update #388), the CRTC has ordered Shaw Cablesystems, as a condition of providing its own high-speed Internet service, to provide the same service to ISPs for resale at $22.46/sub/month (25% off Shaw's lowest retail rate) until it provides Third Party Internet Access to its underlying network. ** The CRTC adds, "where TPIA can be technically provided ... cable companies must ensure that TPIA is made available forthwith." www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2003/dt2003-87.htm RIM RESULTS SWING TO PROFIT: Research In Motion reports a profit of US$16.3-million in the quarter ended November 29, compared to a $92.8-million loss a year ago. The company netted a record 154,000 new Blackberry subscribers in the quarter, reaching 865,000. DBRS UPGRADES TELUS DEBT: Dominion Bond Rating Service has upgraded its rating of Telus Communications Inc.'s long-term debt to BBB (high) and confirmed its rating of Telus Corp. at the same level. While generally positive, DBRS expressed concern about technology substitution and competition in Telus's wireline business, and about the possibility of a strike by unionized workers. NORTEL FILES FINAL RESTATED RESULTS: On December 23, Nortel Networks filed restated results for 2000, 2001, 2002, and the first half of 2003. Revenue was reduced to $60.62 billion, and its loss for the period is now $505 million less than previously stated. The previously reported 2Q 2003 loss of $14-million changed to a $37 million profit. EMERGIS EXITS U.S. HEALTH BUSINESS: BCE Emergis says that it is selling its 400-employee U.S. health services business to MultiPlan Inc. for US$213-million, and hopes to sell its U.S. care management operations as well. ** As a result of this change and related writedowns, BCE Emergis is restating its 2003 results to show a loss of between $0.95 and $1.03 per share. UBS TAKES CONTROL OF LOOK: As expected, Unique Broadband Systems has increased its stake in Look Communications to 51% by buying six million shares from Telesystem Ltd. Craig Wireless International has appealed a CRTC ruling that permitted the takeover. (See Telecom Update #409) CANADA PAYPHONE CUTS LOSS: Canada Payphone Corporation reports a loss of $1.8 million in the year ended September 30, 2003, compared to $5.0 million in the previous year. Total revenue was up 12.5%. TELEMANAGEMENT GOES ONLINE: Starting next week: a new subscribers-only section of the Angus Telemanagement website will feature current and past issues of Telemanagement, detailed indexes, feature reports, and more. Watch for full details, including a money-saving Charter Subscription Offer, in next week's Telecom Update. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2004 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 21:55:45 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Bob Goudreau wrote (in reply to Earle Robinson): > Check out the WTNG for details on the incredible amount of numbering > changes that have taken place in Europe in recent years. Meanwhile, > in the NANP, there are tens of millions of people who still have the > same area code that they had 30 or 40 years ago. Even the ones who have > encountered an area code split got to keep their local numbers. And, > with overlay area codes now the most common way to expand the numbering > space, most of us will probably never be forced to change our numbers > again. That is, most of us in the NANP will (probably) never be forced to change our numbers again, until that time "sometime" in the future, when the NANP might ultimately have to expand to something "longer-than-ten-digits", by adding one (or two) digits somewhere within the existing ten-digit number, to create a subsequent eleven (or twelve) digit NANP number. That number "change" is going to affect ANY/EVERY one in the NANP in one big swoop, as well as anyone who needs to call NANP-based numbers from outside of the NANP. But there will be a "permissive/parallel" dialing period for both intra-NANP usage, as well as "intl/ovs"-to-NANP calling. But current projections have that an expansion to an eleven or even twelve digit NANP based number is now anticipated to happen in the 2040 to 2050 time frame. And IMO, as time continues, that 2040/2050 timeframe will be pushed out even further into the future! Mark J. Cuccia mcuccia@tulane.edu New Orleans LA CSA (in the LAND of DIXIE!) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 23:12:55 -0800 From: Lincoln King-Cliby Reply-To: linwebmain@pe.net Organization: Is the sign of a sick mind Subject: Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 [Pat - Please remove my email address. Thanks!] Mark J Cuccia wrote: > It was *** TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY *** (1-Jan-2004) on 1-Jan-1984, > that the Bell System *DID* "officially" die as a single unit. > Other thing *HAVE* changed in the past twenty years ... What "was" > Western Electric, the manufacturing and equipment arm of the (one) > Bell Telephone System, with Bell Telephone Laboratories, was retained > by AT&T in 1984. However, a little over ten years later, in the > 1995/96 timeframe, AT&T spun-off its equipment and (Bell) Labs > operations into Lucent, which itself has had its ups-and-downs over > the past eight or so years. (BTW, AT&T did retain a "labs" unit for > switched network operations, which was separated from "Bell Labs" > shortly before spinning off what would be known as Lucent). You know, it's amazing -- I was born 5 months after divestiture [14-May-1984 to be exact] but I have a strong respect for -- and am amazed by "The Bell System" [Yes, I know about the problems with the NIH syndrome, and various other things -- I'm not sure I'd want to live under an iron fisted Bell System where I couldn't do my own wiring, so no flames, please] But speaking of the Bell System and Western Electric -- my Grandparents are preparing to move out of their Northern California home and into what has been their vacation home (St. Ignace, MI -- a beautiful area, and from what I've been told one of the last places to cut over to direct dial service) ... when my mother and I visited them for Christmas they were offering that they weren't moving for the taking, I seized the opportuntiy for something they thought was odd -- their phones. An old, WE rotary desk set (white 500-series) and a WE rotary wall (white 554) phone. The same Western Electric "Bell System Property - Not For Sale" phones that were installed when built the house 40 years ago and had used day in and day out. Down to the same handset cords that had faithfully carried many hundreds of hours of conversations -- the phones are at least twice as old as I am and is still working flawlessly! (The wall phone was used likely hundreds of times a week -- my grandmother is a teacher and has lots of friends, family, and parents that she keeps in touch with). When the 554 came off the wall for the first time in I don't know how many years, a pristine, stainless steel jack was exposed, down to the Bell System logo embossed in the lower right corner ... I had to resist the urge to take that along too. I remember back when my Grandparents had their 2nd line installed to access the Internet my grandfather (a recently retired Civil Engineer) reminisced about how it used to be so easy -- there was just one phone company and they were responsible for everything, including the phones. If something didn't work, they couldn't blame it on your wiring -- they knew exactly whose responsibility it was to fix the problem. He mentioned that when he was building their home he left one night and the next day when he stopped by the house after his day job a Pacific (Telegraph & Telephone Co? Bell? Telesis? ???) employee had added a notation to the effect of "What about the phones?" on the blueprints. He made the notations about jack locations on the prints, did some work on the house and left. A short time later, the jacks were installed in the locations that he noted by the local BOC. Service was ordered, and the phones installed ... and not one visit from the BOC until they had this 2nd line added roughly 35 years later. I was away from my computer on the 1st, but still wanted to take this opportunity to "Pay my respects" on the 20th anniversary of the death of the Bell System. Lincoln [BTW - Anyone happen to know why, with the exception of the wall jack round jacks and boxes were used? I've always kind of wondered.] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 02:40:32 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AlchemyTV DVR / Digital Video Recorder For Your PowerMac Featuring a high performance Philips tuner and full QuickTime support, AlchemyTV DVR lets you watch TV in full screen mode on your PowerMac. AlchemyTV DVR features a scheduled recording functionality allowing you program the time and date for your recordings in a few easy steps.Your favourite TV program will be recorded onto your hard drive for later viewing or export to VCD or DVD. http://www.miglia.com/products/video/alchemytvdvr/index.html AlchemyTV DVR FAQ http://www.miglia.com/Support/alchemytvdvr_faq.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 09:21:46 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo Inc. Invites You to Join Its Conference Call and Webcast TiVo Inc. Invites You to Join Its Conference Call and Webcast from the 2004 International Consumer Electronics Show - Jan 5, 2004 08:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40121190 ------------------------------ From: free$$$ <'free_money@cox.net> Subject: Last Laugh! 15 Year Old Gets Caught With $71,000!!! Reply-To: 'free_money@cox.net Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 22:34:40 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have received this spam at least five or six times in the past month or so. I have never yet seen the so-called 'original item' in the papers or on televison or heard it on the radio. However, it has obviously inspired some guys (no doubt competing for the idiot-of-the-year award) to try the plan for them- selves. In addition to the five or six times I have received this proposition, I've had twice that many emails from the guys testing it out. My comments inserted below as we read through this, and please accept my apologies if you have also received this many times around. PAT] EARN EXTRA INCOME FROM HOME! As seen on National Television.. PARENTS OF 15 YEAR OLD FIND $71,000 CASH HIDDEN IN HIS CLOSET ! You most likely have just seen this story recently featured on a major nightly news program (USA). And reported elsewhere in the world. His mother was cleaning and putting laundry away when she came across a large brown paper bag that was suspiciously buried beneath some clothes and a skateboard in the back of her 15-year-old sons closet. Nothing could have prepared her for the shock she got when she opened the bag and found it was full of cash. Five-dollar bills, twenties, fifties and hundreds - all neatly rubber-banded in labeled piles. "My first thought was that he had robbed a bank", says the 41-year-old woman, "There was over $71,000 dollars in that bag -- that's more than my husband earns in a year". [TEL Editor: My first thought would have been that he had taken a position as a Usenet group moderator and 'spammed his own newsgroup' on a regular basis. Same as is accused of me, and everyone knows I have bags of money neatly stacked and banded in my closet. PAT] The woman immediately called her husband at the car-dealership where he worked to tell him what she had discovered. He came home right away and they drove together to the boys school and picked him up. Little did they suspect that where the money came from was more shocking than actually finding it in the closet. As it turns out, the boy had been sending out, via E-mail, a type of "Report" to E-mail addresses that he obtained off the Internet. Everyday after school for the past 2 months, he had been doing this right on his computer in his bedroom. [Well I can think of other things guys do with bedroom computers.] "I just got the E-mail one day and I figured what the heck, I put my name on it like the instructions said and I started sending it out", says the clever 15-year-old. The E-mail letter listed 5 addresses and contained instructions to send one $5 dollar bill to each person on the list, then delete the address at the top and move the others addresses Down, and finally to add your name to the top of the list. The letter goes on to state that you would receive several thousand dollars in five-dollar bills within 2 weeks if you sent out the letter with your name at the top of the 5-address list. "I get junk E-mail all the time, and really did not think it was going to work", the boy continues. Within the first few days of sending out the E-mail, the Post Office Box that his parents had gotten him for his video-game magazine subscriptions began to fill up with not magazines, but envelopes containing $5 bills. "About a week later I rode [my bike] down to the post office and my box had 1 magazine and about 300 envelops stuffed in it. There was also a yellow slip that said I had to go up to the [post office] counter. I thought I was in trouble or something (laughs)". He goes on, "I went up to the counter and they had a whole box of more mail for me. I had to ride back home and empty out my backpack because I could not carry it all". [Tel Ed: I'd be most reluctant to let the post office sorting room clerks find out I was getting 'money in my box'; remind me to tell you sometime about a charity in Chicago (Missionary Fathers) or a US-based television evangelist with a box in Toronto, Ontario and what happened to them when a postal clerk got wise to what they were getting in the mail. PAT] Over the next few weeks, the boy continued sending out the E-mail. "The money just kept coming in and I just kept sorting it and stashing it in the closet, barely had time for my homework". He had also been riding his bike to several of the banks in his area and exchanging the $5 bills for twenties, fifties and hundreds. "I didn't want the banks to get suspicious so I kept riding to different banks with like five thousand at a time in my backpack. I would usually tell the lady at the bank counter that my dad had sent me in to exchange the money and he was outside waiting for me. One time the lady gave me a really strange look and told me that she would not be able to do it for me and my dad would have to come in and do it, but I just rode to the next bank down the street (laughs)." Surprisingly, the boy did not have any reason to be afraid. The reporting news team examined and investigated the so-called "chain-letter" the boy was sending out and found that it was not a chain-letter at all. In fact, it was completely legal according to US Postal and Lottery Laws, Title 18, Section 1302 and 1341, or Title 18, Section 3005 in the US code, also in the code of federal regulations, Volume 16, Sections 255 and 436, which state a product or service must be exchanged for money received. Every five-dollar bill that he received contained a little note that read, "Please send me report number XYX". This simple note made the letter legal because he was exchanging a service (A Report on how-to) for a five-dollar fee. ITS TRUE! THE TEENAGE BOY LEGITIMATELY EARNED $71,000. YOU SHOULD PRINT THIS, READ IT AND FOLLOW THE SIMPLE INSTRUCTIONS. YOU TOO CAN MAKE $71,000 AND MORE. IT IS WORKING SO WELL, MANY PEOPLE ARE ENTERING THE PROGRAM FOR SECOND AND THIRD TIMES. SOME ARE REPORTING THEY ARE EARNING ENOUGH TO GIVE UP THEIR JOBS AND THEY ARE SPENDING JUST A FEW HOURS A DAY SENDING OUT E-MAILS! Dear Friend, You can earn $50,000 or more in next the 90 days sending e-mail. Seem impossible? Read on for details; is there a catch; NO, there is no catch, just send your emails and be on your way to financial freedom. AS SEEN ON NATIONAL TELEVISION with a whole segment on "20/20". Thank you for your time and Interest. This is the letter you've been reading about in the news lately. Due to the popularity of this letter on the Internet, a major nightly news program recently devoted an entire show to the investigation of the program described below to see, if it really can make people money. =========================================== Dear Friends & Future Millionaires: AS SEEN ON NATIONAL TV: Make over half a million dollars every 4 to 5 months from your home for an investment of only $25 U.S. dollars expense - ONE TIME!! THANKS TO THE COMPUTER AGE AND THE INTERNET!! =========================================== BE A MILLIONAIRE LIKE OTHERS WITHIN A YEAR!!! Before you say 'BULL', please read the following. This is the letter you have been hearing about on the News lately.....the Oprah Winfrey Show...etc. Due to the popularity of this letter on the Internet, a national weekly news program recently devoted an entire show to the investigation of this program described below, to see if it really can make people money. The show also investigated whether or not the program was legal. Their findings proved once and for all that there are ''absolutely NO Laws prohibiting the participation in the program and if people can follow the simple instructions, they are bound to make some mega bucks with only $25 out of pocket cost''. DUE TO THE RECENT INCREASE OF POPULARITY & RESPECT THIS PROGRAM HAS ATTAINED, IT IS CURRENTLY WORKING BETTER THAN EVER! This is what one had to say: ''Thanks to this profitable opportunity. I was approached many times before, but each time I passed on it. I am so glad I finally joined just to see what one could expect in return for the minimal effort and money required. To my astonishment, I received a total of $610,470.00 in 21 weeks, with money still coming in!" Pam Hedland, Fort Lee, New Jersey. ===== PRINT THIS NOW FOR YOUR FUTURE REFERENCE ====== ORDER YOUR REPORTS TODAY AND GET STARTED ON YOUR ROAD TO FINANCIAL FREEDOM!! If you have any questions as to the legality of this program, contact the Office of Associate Director for Marketing Practices, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Washington, D.C. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I mercifully deleted another 20 K of text, i.e. all the names of the suckers who had bought into this scheme; the names of all the 'valuable reports' you would receive (worthless trash paper is more like it); how to go about manipulating and editing the various names on your list, etc. Its all an old, old story, which began back in the 1930's during the Great Depression, or maybe before that ... of course in those days we did not have the great miracle called 'computers' to store our lists of names and do our mailing for us. Or, as the German Infomatics Society (IBM) said in their 1990 convention in Stuttgart, "computers will change the way we live for the better". Neil Postner replied in a message given at the same convention, "We will inform ourselves to death is what will happen." In twenty-plus years of this Digest -- something I should think would be a *real report* of value -- I have yet to come anywhere close to making what this alleged fifteen year old boy allegedly made in one month with his pseudo-reports. I gave you all a vacation holiday from my usual end-of-the-month spam, but will resume it later in January. Here's to a happy, prosperous and spam-free (dream on!) New Year. PAT] ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #6 **************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jan 6 01:57:38 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i066vci07351; Tue, 6 Jan 2004 01:57:38 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 01:57:38 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401060657.i066vci07351@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 #7 TELECOM Digest Tue, 6 Jan 2004 01:58:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 7 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Using PIX 501 With Vonage VoIP (P Lane) FCC vs. fax.com, Again (Danny Burstein) "Wireless and Internet Phones Not Yet Reliable For 911 (The Old Bear) Is 'Next Year' Finally Here for Wireless Technology? (Joseph) TiVo Says EchoStar Infringed on DVR Patents (Monty Solomon) TiVo Files Patent Infringement Suit Against EchoStar (Monty Solomon) iTunes DRM Cracked Wide Open for GNU/Linux. Seriously. (Monty Solomon) Gadget Sales to U.S. Consumers Seen Growing 5 Percent (Monty Solomon) Holidays Helped Drive 2003 Web Sales Higher - Reports (Monty Solomon) Pop-up Seller Loses Round in Court (Monty Solomon) Cable Wiring Seen as Key to the Digital Home (Monty Solomon) Re: BBC Writer Fathoms the Internet Pretty Well (Craig Partridge) Re: BBC Writer Fathoms the Internet Pretty Well (Mark Crispin) San Diego Startup Stars In Mobile Video Market (Eric Friedebach) Re: How Are Cellphone 911 Calls Handled? (W Randolph Franklin) Re: Forget Your Bank Balance? It's Available on the Internet (Franklin) Re: Is TiVo Really All That Great? (Clarence Dold) Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, Back on 1-Jan-1984 (Lisa Hancock) Re: Last Laugh! 15 Year Old Gets Caught With $71,000!!! (Paul Vader) Spam Origins (Marise_A_Klapka) 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: paul_lane@supplyworks.com (P Lane) Subject: Using PIX 501 With Vonage VoIP Date: 5 Jan 2004 13:39:41 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I thinking of signing up for a test drive of Vonage VoIP. My current setup is a cable modem to the outside interface of a PIX 501. The inside interface is plugged into an 8 port hub. I have 2 servers and a Linksys AP plugged into hub. My questions are will the ATA work on my setup? Do I need to open up ports for it on the PIX? Any documentation on setting this up? Thanks, Paul Lane [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I honestly do not know. I *think* as long as the ATA can see the world and the Vonage people can see the Linksys, it should work okay. I'll recuse from any further answers on this, since I do supply anyone who asks for it with a test drive e-coupon for a month of free service on Vonage. In my case I plugged the ATA directly into a Linksys port (.100 as a matter of fact) and it worked fine. Your PIX-501 confuses me, however. 'Documentation' basically consists of just this: plug a phone into the modular jack on the back of the ATA; then plug the ATA into your internet connection. A few seconds later, Vonage sees it out there, blinks a little red light at you, and you are connected to make/recieve calls. Someone who knows about PIX-501 can answer that part better. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: FCC vs. fax.com, Again Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 17:17:26 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC FCC FINES FAX.COM OVER $5 MILLION FOR SENDING "JUNK FAXES". The Commission imposed a forfeiture of $5,379,000 against Fax.com, Inc., for willful and repeated violations of the Commission's Rules and the TCPA. News Release. News Media Contact: Suzanne.Tetreault@fcc.gov EB. Contact Suzanne Tetreault at (202) 418-7450 and Kurt Schroeder at (202) 418-7320, TTY: 1 (888) 835-5322 FAX.COM, INC., APPARENT LIABILITY FOR FORFEITURE. Assessed a monetary forfeiture of $5,379,000 against Fax.com, Inc. for willfull and repeated violations of the Communications Act and the Commission's rules and orders concerning the TCPA. Action by: the Commission. Adopted: 12/31/2003 by Forfeiture Order. (FCC No. 04-2). EB danny " did my bit in forwarding some over, which is almost as good a feeling as getting the $500 would be " burstein ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 13:12:53 -0500 From: The Old Bear Subject: "Wireless and Internet Phones not Yet Reliable For 911 As summarized in NewsScan for January 5, 2004: WIRELESS AND INTERNET PHONES NOT YET RELIABLE FOR 911 SERVICE Consumer advocates are concerned that people don't realize that when they replace their traditional wired phones with cellular or Internet services they may be losing reliable 911 access. For example, most Internet phone companies offer no 911 service at all. Surveys suggest that 18% of the country's wireless phone owners use them as their primary phone, and that perhaps 5% of cellphone users have given up their wired phones. Regina Costa of The Utility Reform Network says: "I think people are crazy to rely on a wireless phone to contact authorities in an emergency. Sure, it can be very handy. But I wouldn't want to bet my life on it." On the other hand, Ravi Sakaria, president of a New Jersey Internet phone service provider, is confident the problem will be solved in due course: "It will happen because as the number of customers grow, it will become a bigger obstacle to the industry." source: San Jose Mercury News (2 Jan 2004) http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7619455.htm [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Again, talking about Vonage for a minute. When I got my Vonage account several months ago, the Vonage people stressed to me that I should register my '911 service' with them as soon as possible. If you travel around a lot, and take the ATA with you, then you are correct, it is not yet perfected. But as soon as I gave them my street address, it went on the 911 PSAP records that way. I got back email a few days later confirming that my address had been registered, and the same day I got a letter from the City of Independence telling me they had also recorded my street address for public safety purposes based on the request from Vonage. However, I have never moved anywhere or had the box out of service, except to reboot it a couple of times. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Is 'Next Year' Finally Here For Wireless Technology? Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 11:20:23 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NOcom By Jon Fortt Knight Ridder Newspapers Mike McCamon is clearly frustrated, but he's doing well at holding it together. He is Mr. Bluetooth. That's Bluetooth, the wireless technology. You might have heard of it -- the cable-replacement miracle that was supposed to clear the clutter around your personal computer, banish the annoying wire from your cellphone headset and "cure the common cold," as McCamon wryly put it. McCamon is executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, an outfit based in Kansas whose mission is to perfect and promote the technical standard. He is wise not to make promises. Like most everything else technology-related, Bluetooth got over-hyped during the late '90s. Bluetooth boosters from companies long bankrupt kept promising it would be everywhere "next year." http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2001829652_bluetooth05.html remove NO from .NOcom to reply ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 17:58:05 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo Says EchoStar Infringed on DVR Patents NEW YORK, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Television recording technology company TiVo Inc.(NASDAQ:TIVO) on Monday said it has filed a patent infringement suit against satellite TV provider EchoStar Communications Corp.(NASDAQ:DISH), related to digital video recorders (DVR). - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40124166 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 17:59:32 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo Files Patent Infringement Suit Against EchoStar SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO) today filed a patent infringement suit against EchoStar Communications Corporation in federal district court in Texas alleging the satellite television service provider is violating claims of U.S. Patent No. 6,233,389 issued to TiVo in May 2001, known as the "Time Warp" patent. Key TiVo inventions protected by the Time Warp patent include a method for recording one program while playing back another, watching a program as it is recording, and a storage format that supports advanced TrickPlay(TM) capabilities (i.e. pausing live television broadcast, fast-forwarding, rewinding, instant replays, and slow motion). - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40124132 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 21:26:46 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: iTunes DRM Cracked Wide Open For GNU/Linux. Seriously. By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco Exclusive Norwegian programmer Jon Lech Johansen, who broke the DVD encryption scheme, has opened iTunes locked music a tad further, by allowing people to play songs they've purchased on iTunes Music Store on their GNU/Linux computers. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34712.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 21:33:45 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Gadget Sales to U.S. Consumers Seen Growing 5 Percent By Eric Auchard NEW YORK, Jan 5 (Reuters) - U.S. consumer electronics sales are set to pickup this year following a lackluster 2003, when gadgets ranging from camera phones to crystal-clear TVs failed to offset declines in audio and car electronics sales. The Consumer Electronics Association of Washington, D.C. on Monday forecast that the wholesale electronics market in 2004 is likely to grow to $100.99 billion, up 5 percent over 2003, rebounding from three years of negative or minimal growth. The U.S. trade group representing audio, video and mobile electronics makers projected 2003 sales would total $96.35 billion, up 2.3 percent over the downward revised sales estimate of $94.17 billion reported in 2002. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40125612 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 21:34:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Holidays Helped Drive 2003 Web Sales Higher - Reports By Lisa Baertlein SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Online holiday shoppers spent 35 percent more in 2003, helping to ring up the biggest year yet for Web sales, according to a new report issued on Monday. During the 2003 holiday season, Web shoppers parted with a record $18.5 billion, excluding travel, compared with $13.7 billion in the year-earlier period, Goldman, Sachs & Co. (NYSE:GS), Harris Interactive and Nielsen/NetRatings said in their latest eSpending Report. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40125694 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 22:52:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Pop-up Seller Loses Round in Court By Stefanie Olsen Staff Writer, CNET News.com A U.S. district court judge recently barred WhenU from delivering pop-up advertisements to some Net visitors, going against decisions in favor of the software maker's controversial ad tactics. In late December, as part of a lawsuit filed against WhenU by 1-800-Contacts, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted a preliminary injunction that prohibits WhenU from triggering pop-ups when people visit 1-800-Contacts' Web site. In the past, WhenU delivered pop-up ads that promoted rivals of 1-800-Contacts, including another defendant, Vision Direct. In issuing the injunction, the judge said the practice constitutes trademark infringement and violates the Lanham Act, the U.S. trademark act. http://news.com.com/2100-1024-5135313.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 22:58:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cable Wiring Seen as Key to the Digital Home By Marguerite Reardon Staff Writer, CNET News.com A group of vendors and service providers have banded together to help promote technology that would enable homeowners to use existing cable to link their household appliances into a single network. The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) plans to formally announce its formation Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Founding members include networking giant Cisco Systems, cable provider Comcast, satellite provider EchoStar Communications, chipmaker Entropic Communications, retailer RadioShack and consumer electronics makers Panasonic, Motorola and Toshiba. The purpose of the alliance is to develop standards and promote the use of coaxial cable to send high-quality video, voice and data between a variety of household devices, such as TVs, digital video recorders and PCs. Coax cable is already deployed in millions of U.S. households, providing customers with cable television and, in some cases, broadband Internet access. One of the most important tasks of the alliance is to develop a set of standards so that consumers can easily link devices from several different vendors. http://news.com.com/2100-1034-5135390.html ------------------------------ From: Craig Partridge Subject: Re: BBC Writer Fathoms the Internet Pretty Well Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 19:17:15 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The World : www.TheWorld.com : Since 1989 Ronda Hauben writes: >> Nope. The ARPANET consisted entirely of IMPs and TIPs, which were >> built from Honeywell 316 minis and later BBN's own C/30s which ran the >> IMP code after Honeywell stopped making the 316 and the occasional >> experimental machine like the multiprocessor Pluribus IMP. > Are you claiming that the ARPANET was the IMP subnetwork? And that > the Hosts were something different? That is a very accurate description of the ARPANET. Craig ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: BBC Writer Fathoms the Internet Pretty Well Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 16:40:29 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On Sun, 4 Jan 2004, Ronda Hauben wrote: > Are you saying that the ARPANET is the same as the IMP subnetwork > of the ARPANET? The whole point of the IMP subnetwork is to connect > diverse computers and diverse operating systems. The ARPANET is the > connection of these diverse computers and operating systems. It isn't > the IMP subnetwork. The IMP subnetwork is the means of connecting the > diverse computers, but is *not* the ARPANET. Ronda, were you a user of the ARPAnet in its halcyon days (1970-1982)? I was. I implemented the first 96-bit leader (32-bit address) ARPAnet NCP for the PDP-10 in 1978. I was very much part of the TCP/IP transition in 1983, and the subsequent ARPAnet/Milnet split. I wrote some of the earliest implementations of Telnet and SMTP. I even wrote an EGP. I have never heard the term "IMP subnetwork" used. Nor have I ever heard of this strange case which you seem to be making. The notion that the wires of an LH or DH connection are part of a "network" is rather, uh, strange to anyone who actually dealt with it on an electrical basis. A better case may be made for a VDH interface, but that in turn was more of a point-to-point network. So is the notion that the hosts on the ARPAnet were part of the network. It's akin to saying that a human user of a telephone is "part of the telephone network." The notion that the only important difference between ARPAnet and Internet is that "Internet made it possible to connect different networks, not just different computers" is laughable to anyone who was actually there. In conclusion, I will echo John Levine: > These facts are well known and easily checked by anyone who cares to > do so, and you only make yourself look foolish by trying to argue > that the situation was and is otherwise. > I have no interest in arguing about facts, so this is my last > message on this topic. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: San Diego Startup Stars In Mobile Video Market Date: 5 Jan 2004 15:39:09 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jennifer Davies, 01.05.04, Forbes.com Jim Brailean, chief executive of San Diego's PacketVideo, says he's developed a thick skin. He's had to. His predictions about the coming of video on mobile devices has had more stops and starts than rush hour traffic at the Interstates 5 and 805 merge. During the height of the New Economy hype, Brailean founded PacketVideo to provide technology for mobile video, which allows users to record, view and transmit video clips on wireless devices. The company raised about $40 million and filed for an initial public offering in 2000. But as the tech economy swooned, PacketVideo canceled its stock offering and raised money from private sources. In early 2001, the company said it had brought in $100 million from such industry giants as Texas Instruments , Motorola and Qualcomm. But even with its substantial war chest, PacketVideo was unable to outlast the turmoil in the wireless telecommunications market. It was forced to cut costs and restructure itself in August 2002. http://www.forbes.com/2004/01/05/105mobilevideopinnacor_ii.html Eric Friedebach /It's a Hockey Night in Minnesota!/ ------------------------------ Subject: Re: How Are Cellphone 911 Calls Handled? From: W Randolph Franklin Reply-To: W Randolph Franklin Organization: none Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 03:32:39 GMT According to Steven J Sobol : > W Randolph Franklin wrote: >> me: "Can't you get that from the ANI?" >> 3rd 911 person: "Not from a cellphone." > Of course they can't get your location from a cellphone. :) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think she asked the man where > he was located ... she asked him *what his number was*. PAT Correct, they wanted my phone number. I'd already told them the accident location, 3 times. However, the Troy NY police did respond quite fast. (FYI, a drunk driver turned left as a light was changing. Unlike many other drivers who go thru this intersection on red, he didn't make it, was hit, and spun within 10 feet of me.) Wm Randolph Franklin wrf@ecse.rpi.edoocyashunaldomane (Plaintext preferred; attachments deprecated) http://www.ecse.rpi.edoocyashunaldomane/Homepages/wrf/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Its good to hear of a DUI motorist getting what he deserved instead of some poor innocent guy being the victim. Or was there an innocent victim as well? Back to reliance on cellular phones (or any portable phone with a fixed number such as Vonage: I used my cellular phone to call police once a year ago at Christmas when I was with my Salvation Army kettle in front of Marvins Supermarket. A woman pulled into the Marvin's parking lot and went in the store. A few minutes later, a man pulling out of Marvins with his groceries backed into her car. I got his license plate when he chose to drive away hoping not to get caught. When the woman came out of Marvins a few minutes later she saw the damage to her car. I volunteered to call the police for her, but I did not call 911 -- instead I dialed 332-1700 which is the City of Independence Police administrative number. (No matter, really, since the same person answers 911 and also the 1700 line.) I asked if she would have an officer come by Marvins and see this lady. The police dispatchers are very well trained here. She knew exactly where Marvins is located (10th and Myrtle Streets). I think they know every street and almost every house number in town. The officer showed up a minute or two later; the lady was quite annoyed that the 'coward' had hit her car then driven off. I gave the officer the license plate number; it seems the guy's street address was about four or five blocks away. The officer got the guy's phone number and called him on the phone. The conversation went like this: "You get your ass back over here to Marvins and take care of this! I don't think you really want for me to have to drive over to your house! Imagine what would happen then!" Sure enough, about five minutes later the guy came back over, very sheepish looking, gave his name and address to the lady whose car he had banged, as the officer looked on. I know this would not work in a larger city or on a highway, etc but in a small town like ours, if the person can see any sort of street sign at all, or any 'landmark' or store; i.e. Walmart, Marvins, the doctor's office building, the library, the high school, the college, etc the dispatcher knows exactly where he is, cellular or landline phone, or even Vonage phone. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Forget Your Bank Balance? It's Available on the Internet From: W Randolph Franklin Reply-To: W Randolph Franklin Organization: none Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 03:26:44 GMT This isn't really new to the internet. Banks have provided a balance verification service to merchants for decades. If you call a bank and type in a checking account number and a dollar amount, the service will tell you if that account's balance is at least that large. It's all automated, no social engineering required. There are also no messy formalities about proving that you are verifying a real check. Quite a nice simple user interface. IIRC, no bank that I've ever used has bothered to mention this service to me. However, IMHO they will disable it when asked. Wm Randolph Franklin wrf@ecse.rpi.educationaldomain (Plaintext preferred; attachments deprecated) http://www.ecse.rpi.educationaldomain/Homepages/wrf/ ------------------------------ From: dold@IsXTiVoXRe.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Is TiVo Really All That Great? Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 19:47:40 +0000 Organization: a2i network Rob wrote: > I remember TiVo being advertised over here in the UK several years > ago, but it never took off. In fact, I'd say it died a death. I put I certainly see more posts in alt.video.ptv.tivo from the UK than I would expect from a dead product. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) Subject: Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 Date: 5 Jan 2004 12:39:35 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Michael D. Sullivan wrote: > The "discontinuance of the rental policy" was not an economic decision > by the telcos. Telephone rentals were a cash cow, pure gravy. They > would never have discontinued them if it was up to them, and they > opposed the end of phone rentals vigorously. I wish I could recall where I read a telco manager's observation that cost of having a fleet of service trucks and crews to go out and service the rented sets was starting to become uneconomical. Undoubtedly the FCC policies you quoted played a part. > Consumers unquestionably benefited from long-distance competition. > If there had not been an MCI or a Sprint, you'd still be paying $1 > or more per minute for a long-distance call, in 1975 dollars. Now, > long-distance is practically free. I don't agree. Right up until divesture AT&T was lowering its long distance rates because of technology improvements. Those improvements would have continued to drive the rates downward. Of course, not all LD rates went down. Some have skyrocketed, such as LD calls from coin phones or 3rd number billing. (Sorry, but when I was at the hospital unexpectedly due to medical emergencies, I didn't have the proper 'calling card' special phone number.) LD D/A is no longer free. Operator assistance is hard to get or charged for a high amounts. Remember too, local service costs went up at the same time. Administrative and interconnect costs went up, too. From the consumer's point of view, the monthly phone bill didn't go down. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: From the consumer's point of view, the overall bill which had to be paid each month went *up*, considerably. The phone company quit the system of long distance subsidizing local service. PAT] ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Last Laugh! 15 Year Old Gets Caught With $71,000!!! Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 20:40:40 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations 'free_money@cox.net writes: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have received this spam at least five > or six times in the past month or so.] Is that all? This isn't a new one -- though it shows some effort to deal with past 'giggle test' parts of it. For example, the kid has his own PO box now, to explain how the parents didn't discover more than 14,000 envelopes coming to the house, and there's a note about him having no time to do homework -- it would take 20 hours continuous work, at five seconds per (I don't know about you, but I can't go that fast) to open all those envelopes, and your profit might get wiped out from paper cuts! But still, this one part always boggles me: > chain-letter at all. In fact, it was completely legal according to US > Postal and Lottery Laws, Title 18, Section 1302 and 1341, or Title 18, > Section 3005 in the US code, also in the code of federal regulations, > Volume 16, Sections 255 and 436, which state a product or service must > be exchanged for money received. Those references are correct, and there is indeed that last sentence in them. But if you read the rest of the law, which you're bound to do if you've bothered to look it up, you know the 'reports' figleaf will not work. I understand that the postmaster general just *loves* to get copies of chain letters that mention this, because it makes proving fraud fairly trivial. You might claim ignorance of a law and get leniency, but when a cite to the law is right in your pitch, documenting that what you're doing is illegal ... > [Tel Ed: I'd be most reluctant to let the post office sorting room > clerks find out I was getting 'money in my box'; remind me to tell > you sometime about a charity in Chicago (Missionary Fathers) or a > US-based television evangelist with a box in Toronto, Ontario and > what happened to them when a postal clerk got wise to what they were > getting in the mail. PAT] This member of the audience is always up for one of your stories, but I think I know how this one ends -- with fines bigger than the money in the envelopes, right? * * PV something like badgers -- something like lizards -- and something like corkscrews. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I forgot how much Jimmy Swaggart got ripped for when the postal clerk in Toronto took a liking to Swaggart's Canadian post office box. I think it was around a million dollars. On the other hand, the Missionary Fathers had a box at the same post office in Chicago I used to go to. The evening shift super- visor and the three employees who got caught with their hands in the till there got away with about 150 thousand dollars in cash donations. I remember that incident well. I used to go into the downtown post office box area (zips 60690 through 60699 [all just 'paper zip codes' used for sorting purposes, no physical location for those zip codes]) to pick up my mail late at night, several nights per week, and got aquainted on a first name basis with the counter clerks there. I went in one night to get my mail, none of the regular clerks were there except one lady I knew. "Where is Joe tonight, or Amanda?" Amanda was the supervisor at night. "Oh," said Jean, sort of giggling. "I guess you did not hear that the postal inspectors came in last night and cleaned the whole place out. They caught her and Joe on hidden videotape; she was getting into the (metal holding) tray for Missionary Fathers, and taking a huge handful of envelopes with her then going into the ladies restroom. When she would come out a few minutes later she had none of the envelopes. Then Joe would take a handful of envelopes and disappear into the men's room the same way. And there were two other workers in the sorting room caught doing the same thing. Postal inspectors came in last night about 10 PM, played the video tapes for the entire staff to watch, then asked 'if anyone wants to make confessions, it will go easier on you'. No one would confess until those videos were played showing Amanda and Joe going into the stalls, sitting there and ripping open envelopes, pocketing the cash and flushing the checks and prayer requests, etc down the toilets. The silence was deafening and those four workers were fired on the spot." (I am sure federal indictments followed soon therefter.) Missionary Fathers is that bunch (who under various names) send out the pictures of the pitiful little children who have sent you their cheesy Christmas gift: often times pencils, or mailing address labels or sometimes a crappy string of beads, etc. And wouldn't you like to send a Christmas gift by return mail to these children to show them how much you care about their welfare? A few dollars or whatever God puts on your heart to spare will go to the Crappy Pitiful Children's School where we see that they get at least one square meal each day and a new pair of overalls to wear. Always real tear-jerking letters and pictures designed to tug at your heart strings. If its not Christmas then maybe its Fourth of July. Always a sad story, always a free gift because the indigent children love you so much. $150 thousand is all Joe and Amanda would 'fess up to; their take and the others in on it was *much more*. It was so bad that the one bunch of crooks (Missionary Fathers) finally decided to abandon their post office box and moved it out to one of the suburbs when the second bunch of crooks (postal employees) took them so badly. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Spam Origins From: Marise_A_Klapka@NDGSTP.COM Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 15:07:38 -0600 I recently saw this article in my monthly e-newsletter from CyberAtlas and thought it might be of interest. If you choose to pose, please withhold my name/e-mail address. Thanks. U.S. Named as Biggest Spammer, Spammee By Robyn Greenspan The United States may not have to look past its own backyard to enforce the Anti-Spam bill the president is expected to sign by 2004. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 2003 e-commerce and development report identifies the U.S. as the top perpetrator, responsible for more than half of the spam received in the world. |-------------------------------| | Spam Origins, March 2003 | |-------------------------------| |United States58.4% | |-------------------------------| |China5.6% | |-------------------------------| |United Kingdom5.2% | |-------------------------------| |Brazil4.9% | |-------------------------------| |Canada4.1% | |-------------------------------| |Others21.8% | |-------------------------------| |Source: UNCTAD | |-------------------------------| The majority of spam victims are in the U.S. as well, the report finds, and David Schatsky, senior vice president of research, Jupiter Research (a unit of this site's corporate parent) says simply, "That's where the money is." Schatsky explains that the U.S. is the largest marketplace in the world, making it an attractive target. http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/geographics/article/0,,5911_3113611,00.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Does that 58.4 percent of all spam sent out include that snotty, bratty little 15 year old boy with the 71,000 dollars hidden away in his closet? PAT] ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #7 **************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jan 6 14:47:27 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i06JlRH11621; Tue, 6 Jan 2004 14:47:27 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 14:47:27 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401061947.i06JlRH11621@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 #8 TELECOM Digest Tue, 6 Jan 2004 14:47:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 8 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Coax Chipset Enables Home Net Backbones (Monty Solomon) ATI Spins Digital TV Tuner/Decoder chip (Monty Solomon) Siemens Gigabit 2420/8825 Voicemail Quesstion (Steve Fitzgerald) Re: NANP Numbering (Earle Robinson) New Videophone Hailed As Breakthrough For The Deaf (Eric Friedebach) Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 (John Levine) Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 (Kilo Sierra) Re: Using PIX 501 With Vonage VoIP (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Re: Is TiVo Really All That Great? (Rob) Re: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? (Michael Chance) Re: Last Laugh! 15 Year Old Gets Caught With $71,000 (Charles Cryderman) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 23:34:04 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Coax Chipset Enables Home Net Backbones By Robert Keenan EE Times Wayne, N.J. - A chip set from startup Entropic Communications lets end users turn their coaxial connections into a backbone network in the home. Wireless connections -- mostly wireless-LAN links --are quickly becoming the de facto approach for distributing broadband connections and multimedia content from a router to a node, such as a laptop. But Wi-Fi systems struggle to penetrate some walls and thus fall short in providing total coverage in a home. That coverage issue will loom larger as end users start to distribute HDTV connections over Wi-Fi channels. To help solve the problem, equipment vendors have considered establishing a backbone network in the home. With the EN1010 RF front-end IC and the EN2010 baseband controller IC, Entropic (San Diego) gives equipment vendors a way to tap into coaxial connections and establish a backbone that can deliver a peak performance of 270 Mbits/second and real throughput of better than 100 Mbits/s. http://www.commsdesign.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=17200154 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 00:58:53 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: ATI Spins Digital TV Tuner/Decoder Chip By Junko Yoshida EE Times PARIS - ATI Technologies Inc. is rolling out a digital TV chip that integrates front-end digital terrestrial and cable demodulators and a back-end high-definition MPEG-2 decoder. The X210VC "DTV-on-chip" will give ATI "at least a two-year jump" on DTV silicon competitors, said director of marketing Mike Gittings. While many semiconductor companies continue to sit on the fence or have given up on the U.S. terrestrial DTV market, consumer electronics suppliers are scrambling to meet the Federal Communications Commission's digital tuner mandate, which requires TV makers to equip at least 50 percent of their 36-inch and larger TVs with a terrestrial digital TV tuner/decoder by July 1 (see story, page 18). http://www.eet.com/semi/news/OEG20040105S0040 ------------------------------ From: sf@mnetsys.com (Steve Fitzgerald) Subject: Siemens Gigabit 2420/8825 Voicemail Question Date: 6 Jan 2004 04:22:56 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Does anyone know if on the 2420 or 8825 it is possible to disable the answering machine on only one of the lines? I have two lines and only want the answering machine to answer one of the them. The other line has dedicated voicemail service off-site. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: Earle Robinson
Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 14:58:41 +0100 (Please mask my email address. Thank you.) Mr. Cuccia and others have replied extensively to my messages. Rather than using quote backs, I'll attempt to address the major points raised. You say that the USA is the leader for technology, etc. Yes, that is true, but the brains behind much of this come from Europeans and, more recently, Asians. Andy Grove is Hungarian, as was von Neumann. American rocket technology was brought by von Braun from Germany after the 2nd World War. The nuclear research was mostly done by men from Europe, too. Turing was English, the diesel engine was invented in Germany, movies in France, and the only commercial supersonic aircraft was created by the French and the English. I can travel from Paris to London in a couple of hours at over 200mph, down to Marseille in a few hours, too. Radar and the decryption of German code were done in England. I could go on and on. You speak of how the American phone system already had 7 digits from the 40s on. Well, yes in cities like New York. But, I was growing up in Greenwich Connecticut where our phone number was Greenwich 102. Given the many small non-bell companies and the fact that different bell subsidiaries used differing technologies the American system was far from that good. Granted it was much better than in Europe. But, Europe had gone through 2 devastating wars, bombed and the scene of so many battles. I well remember how awful the telephone systems here were until action was taken beginning in the late 1960s through the 1970s. Today, overall the systems here are often better than what is in the states. I also recall how awful phone service was in west Los Angeles in the late 70s and into the 80s (also mentioned by another writer in a message here the other day). We were served (an oxymoron) by General Telephone. It was virtually impossible to obtain a reliable connection to CompuServe, whose nodes were in PacBell territory only a few miles away. Even today many Americans have problems with dialup connections. Further, ISDN was never developed as it was here in Europe. Cell phones? Here in Europe we are approaching 90% market penetration everywhere. Not so in the states. Here in France if I dial a number, and there is no call waiting on that line, I get a busy signal, just as in the states. But, all I need do is to punch the 5 on the touch pad and hang up. When my correspondent hangs up my number rings, I pick up the phone and the phone is ringing at the other end. No extra charge, no monthly fee. It's free. Interested in ADSL? All I need do is provide my phone number and address on a web page and I am told how many meters I am from the central office and told I qualify because it is 473 meters. If I prefer a phone company other than France telecom I can choose from 6 or 7. Try that in the states! If you are in NYC you have Verizon , if in Miami Bell South. No choice. ADSL? I have a choice among nearly 10 ISP's. And, often quite cheap. Though I now have cable access I could sign up with one ISP which offers not only 2048/256 internet service, but VOIP phone (and phone number) with free phone calls within France and unbeatable rates for international calls, e.g. 3 cents to call the states, plus up to 100 television channels, too. All this for $35 per month and using that copper pair. You point out that the national phone systems were a hodge podge in the past. Yes, this was true. But, not today. There was a change in numbers several years ago here in France, to 10 digit dialing. Since this allows up to nearly 500 million phone numbers it is clear that with a population of 60 million France is covered for many years. The UK, alas, made a bollocks of things, so that they have had to endure 3 or 4 different changes in the past 10 years or so until they got it right. But, in other countries it was done correctly. I stand corrected as concerns the maximum number of digits mandated by the itu. But, this could be readily extended, as it was when it went from 12 to 15. The American system seems so cumbersome in comparison. While I can merely replace the first digit to use one of the major alternate carriers, in the states I'd have to dial several digits to do this. We also have features, like the handling if a busy signal that I already mentioned, which you don't have. For example, I can add other data to my directory listing using the internet, to provide the names of other people who use my number, email addresses and other numbers, too. Cellular phone numbers will be listed shortly, though one may opt out if one wishes. Call blocking here may be done on an individual basis or globally. Naturally, there is an emergency number, 112, valid everywhere in Europe. But there is also an emergency number for abused women to call, too. Finally, to address your vaunted 7 digit dialing. Well it ain't so in many places any more. In Miami you have to dial 10 digits to call a local number and I think it is the same in NYC, too. Given this, many people are confused between long distance dialing, 11 digits (1 digit more than here in Europe) and local calling. With our 10 digit dialing norm there is no confusion. Earle Robinson ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: New Videophone Hailed As Breakthrough For The Deaf Date: 6 Jan 2004 09:18:33 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Thomas J. Fitzgerald, 01.05.04, Forbes.com The spread of high-speed Internet access and the increasing sophistication of videoconferencing tools have given the deaf broad new access to a simple pleasure that most people take for granted: chatting on the telephone. New products and services promise to liberate the deaf from the slow text-based telecommunications systems that have been their primary option for decades. One offering, a videophone and relay service introduced by Sorenson Media, enables users to sign with each other or with banks of interpreters who translate live phone conversations between the deaf and those who hear. The Sorenson videophone is a breakthrough, said Genie Gertz, an assistant professor of deaf studies at California State University at Northridge, because it enables the deaf to use what many consider to be their native language American Sign Language with unprecedented simplicity and clarity. This is a gigantic step for the deaf community, Gertz, who is deaf, said through an interpreter. The Sorenson VP-100 is a stand-alone videophone that works with a television and broadband Internet connection. It has a remote control and a flashing light that can be used instead of a ringer to signal incoming calls. Users can sign directly with another deaf person or with a Sorenson interpreter. Because of the high quality of the video, the interpreter can read the deaf user's signing while simultaneously translating and speaking to the telephone user, and vice versa. http://www.forbes.com/2004/01/05/105videophonepinnacor_ii.html Eric Friedebach /Mortgage your Viagra!/ ------------------------------ Date: 6 Jan 2004 07:18:56 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Of course, not all LD rates went down. Some have skyrocketed, such as > LD calls from coin phones or 3rd number billing. Payphone operators finally seem to have figured out that if you don't totally rip people off, they might use your service. I see a lot of payphones that offer long distance anywhere in the country for 25 cents/minute with a three or four minute minumum. That's not exactly cheap, but it's back down in the range where if you want to call someone, you'd be inclined to dump in the quarters rather than go to extraordinary lengths to avoid using the phone. I've seen phones in NYC with stickers offering similar international rates, 25 cents/min to most of Europe and plausible rates to other countries. Those of us old enough to remember the Bell system will remember that calls across the country cost 25 cents/min back when a quarter could still buy two or three candy bars. > Remember too, local service costs went up at the same time. > Administrative and interconnect costs went up, too. From the > consumer's point of view, the monthly phone bill didn't go down. It's true, if you don't make a lot of toll calls, your bill has gone up, although I haven't seen overall numbers comparing monthly rates (the real ones, with all of the fee and tax junk added on) to inflation. If I had to guess, I'd guess that the cost of local service in constant dollars is about the same as it was 20 or 30 years ago, but long distance, particularly international, is much cheaper. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner http://iecc.com/johnl Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 06 Jan 2004 09:16:11 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 > Remember too, local service costs went up at the same time. > Administrative and interconnect costs went up, too. From the > consumer's point of view, the monthly phone bill didn't go down. Indeed. In 1982 I got my own phone line. I was all of 16 at the time and had my first modem so I was always tying the line up. I had a job so my father had them hook the line up, and every month I paid the bill in cash. I paid a total of $12 a month. That included the phone rental (A red 2500 set of course!) and the Touch-Tone surcharge and taxes. Now the line charge alone is $17.26, then add in the damned fees and taxes and it come out close to $30. That's what is killing any savings. The phone companies and the government saw a golden opportunity to rape and pilage as usual and we end up footing the bill. Know what? Universal Service charges should have gone away a long time ago. If people want to move out to the burbs and rural areas let them pay to have the lines strung. Nail the damned contractors that are building up the suburbs and rural areas -- and also screwing the cities at the same time. But the main culprit here is plain old corporate dominance. I do wish that some day we get an administration willing to put the corpo-military complex in their place. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Interesting how you mention your very own first telephone. I first got subscribed under my own name back in 1960, when I moved out from living with Mommie Dearest to my own little place in Hyde Park (the U of C neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.) The monthly bill was around six or seven dollars and my roomate and I agreed to split the bill but each be responsible for our own long distance charges and or telegrams which were sent by phone. Illinois Bell did not ask for deposits, or run credit checks, etc. You simply called them one day and they came out the next day to put the phone in. They trusted you to pay the bill when it arrived. We decided on a green 'palmolive' color rotary dial phone and since we lived in an apartment-hotel with a switchboard the phone man put in a phone with a turn-button: one side of the turn button was the switch- board phone (DOrchester 3-7500), the other side of the turn button was our private phone (HYDe Park 3-3714). We did have a bell-chime device to ring the phone (it sounded like a doorbell) and we had to pay fifty-cents per month for that side ringer. Touch tone was not available. ESS features were still ten years distant for the downtown Chicago area and fifteen years distant for the other areas of Chicago. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 06 Jan 2004 09:21:55 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Using PIX 501 With Vonage VoIP > My questions are will the ATA work on my setup? Do I need to open up > ports for it on the PIX? Any documentation on setting this up? You may have to open a port or two. The folks at Vonage should be able to help you with it. I have not yet tried Vonage but I run a Netgear FVS318 which is a router/firewall/vpn device and has 8 ports. I use a total of four -- I like having the expansion option available to me. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That's why I have two 'root USB hubs' on my main computer with a powered four-way connection on both of them. I do not use all eight sockets (four cameras, printer, expandable 'hard drive' with a couple vacancies.) I like the idea of instant expansion also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rob51166@yahoo.com (Rob) Subject: Re: Is TiVo Really All That Great? Date: 6 Jan 2004 07:49:45 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com dold@IsXTiVoXRe.usenet.us.com wrote in message news:: > Rob wrote: >> I remember TiVo being advertised over here in the UK several years >> ago, but it never took off. In fact, I'd say it died a death. I put > I certainly see more posts in alt.video.ptv.tivo from the UK than I > would expect from a dead product. > Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 Ask people on a general high street in the UK what TiVo is and they'll no doubt look at you askance. Ask them what Sky+ is and there's every possibility that they'll know exactly what it is. The biggest problem TiVo had in the UK was the lack of proper marketing and advertising. Plus it wasn't a name that people here recognised. As far as Sky's concerned, however, every household in the UK has heard of it, and a lot of people have their TV service through Sky Digital, if not Sky+. ------------------------------ From: Michael Chance Subject: Re: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 13:01:11 GMT In article , Joe@nospamcity.com says: > Hey, what about folks like me who voted for Bush and now feel like I > elected Adolf Hitler? Trouble is, I can't stand any of the Democrats > so it is time to stay home. The recent spate of comparisons of President Bush to Adolf Hitler are so outrageous, it's almost impossible to write a calm, rational response. Since he's done it so much better than me, here's the response of Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress, from his recent article in the Wall Street Journal: "The Holocaust was the worst crime in history. The Nazis killed ... millions ... in a systematic genocide. ... "The last survivors of that horror will soon pass from among us. It is for them that we guard against the danger that the memory of the Holocaust will be trivialized. That danger is abetted when people devalue this monumental evil for political gain. "Comparing the commander-in-chief of a democratic nation to the murderous tyrant Hitler is not only historically specious, it is morally outrageous. " Please remember to think of those remaining Holocaust survivors before you go calling someone -- anyone -- another Hitler. Never again. Michael Chance ------------------------------ From: Charles Cryderman Subject: Re: Last Laugh! 15 Year Old Gets Caught With $7 Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 10:04:36 -0500 Pat, The note you had provided stated that "20/20" did an investigation. Here is their response: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/DailyNews/2020_marketingscam021008.html Marketing Scheme Falsely Using 20/20's Name Internet Ploy Seeks Cash From Respondents N E W Y O R K, Oct. 8 -Internet stories with headlines like "ABC's 20-20 'Boy 15 Makes 71 Thousand in 5 Weeks'" have been falsely using ABC's and 20/20's names. The schemes claim that you can get rich by doing little more than spending $25 on various Internet marketing reports. They also claim that ABC's 20/20 broadcast a news report that investigated this scheme and concluded it was legal. This statement is patently false. ABC has never investigated this scheme and has not broadcast a news report validating it. For further information on chain letter/get-rich-quick schemes, contact postal authorities or go to their Web site at: http://usps.com/websites/depart/inspect/chainlet.htm. Happy New Year old man and may you see many more. Chip Cryderman ------------------------------ 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #8 **************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jan 6 23:02:57 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0742uJ14023; Tue, 6 Jan 2004 23:02:57 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 23:02:57 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401070402.i0742uJ14023@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 #9 TELECOM Digest Tue, 6 Jan 2004 23:03:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 9 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: NANP Numbering (Jay Hennigan) Re: NANP Numbering (Mark J Cuccia) Re: NANP Numbering (Joseph) Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 (Kilo Sierra) Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 (John Levine) Re: Is TiVo Really All That Great? (Clarence Dold) Re: OnStar's Scare Tactics (Proprclr) AT&T Long Lines Web Site, Cold War Comms E-mail List (Albert LaFrance) Re: NANP Numbering (Joey's Advice to Unwashed Masses) (Joey Lindstrom) Apple Macworld Expo Press Releases (Monty Solomon) 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: Jay Hennigan Organization: Disgruntled Postal Workers Against Gun Control Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 16:46:24 -0800 On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 11:42:53 -0800, Rob wrote: > OK, I know that this may very well seem a dumb question, but why is > the NANP numbering system different to other phone systems throughout > the world? > The vast majority of countries in the world have area codes beginning > with '0', whereas in NANP countries the area code commences with '1', > and then numbers on the same area code, or even numbers in > neighbouring codes (i.e. 919, 252 and 304), aren't always regarded as > local, as they are here in the UK. The area code doesn't start with a '1' in the NANP. A leading '1' may or may not be necessary depending on the locality and how it is set up. It so happens that the country code for the NANP is also '1', which can be a bit confusing. Area codes, also referred to as NPA for "Number Plan Area", are three digits long. The first digit is 2 through 9. Within each area code are exchange codes, also three digits in length, the leading digit of which is also 2 through 9. Each exchange code can support up to 10,000 lines, so four more digits follow. A full NANP telephone number is ten digits, usually written with a hyphen between each group such as xxx-yyy-zzzz. You may also see an older form (xxx) yyy-zzzz, where xxx is the area code, yyy is the exchange code, and zzzz is the individual line within the exchange. Early on, the second digit of an area code was either a 1 or a 0, and the second digit of an exchange code was never a 1 or 0. Thus, it was possible to examine the dialed digits on-the-fly and determine by the end of the second digit whether a call was within or outside of the NPA. If the second digit is a 1 or 0, the customer is dialing an NPA, expect a total of ten digits. If the second digit is 2 through 9, the customer is dialing an exchange code, expect a total of seven digits. Letters on the dial were used in positions 2 through 9 and exchanges were given names corresponding to th efirst two digits. The leading digit "1" was not used, as it could be a switchhook bounce. The leading digit "0" got you an operator. Toll vs. local calling is determined by mileage, not by number pattern. It is possible that calls within the same NPA are toll, or that calls to an adjacent NPA are local. Typically anything beyond 12 to 16 miles is toll. An NPA can cover up to an entire state, which can be hundreds of miles. At some point, some telephone companies began to require a leading "1" to place a toll call, as it was not possible to tell from a 7-digit number if it was toll or not. Often a second, higher pitched dial tone followed the "1" to further caution the customer that it was a toll call. With population growth, area codes would "split", new lines would be drawn on the map, and exchange codes could then be re-used in both the new and old area codes. After a while this ceased to scale and the digits 0 and 1 were allowed as the second digit of exchange codes. This broke the convention of using names as there are no letters on the dial in the 0 and 1 positions. The abandonment of exchange names caused a political hue-and-cry at the time, but it allowed the number of exchanges within an NPA to grow by 20%. Now it was no longer possible to tell from the second digit whether a call was within or outside the local NPA. The leading 1 was changed from an optional "this is a toll call" to "An NPA follows." For example, if I'm calling a number in NPA 512, I would dial 1-512-yyy-zzzz. There might also be a 512 exchange within my local NPA, which I would dial as 512-zzzz with no leading 1. Much later, the requirement that the second digit of an NPA be 1 or 0 was also dropped, which allowed many more NPAs. In some localities with rapid growth, area code splits became frequent. This is a problem with reprinting stationery, educating customers, reprogramming automatic dialers, etc. People got upset about the nuisance of this, and "overlay" vs "split" area codes were born. This meant that the area code no longer really represented an area, as two area codes would cover the same geographic area. As exchange codes are unique only to an NPA, you could have a phone number of 512-555-0166 and your next door neighbor would have 789-555-0166. and, you would be local calls to each other. In these localities, customers would frequently misdial by omitting the area code. Telcos then mandated ten-digit dialing, where the customer was required to dial the NPA even if it was the same as his own. > For example, my local calling area not only covers my own exchange > (01685) but also all numbers on the neighbouring exchanges of 01443, > 01639, 01874 and 01495. Not only is it not possible to tell from the digits dialed if a number is local or toll, we have "LATAs", or geographic boundaries that are quasi-toll and don't line up with NPAs at all. Within a LATA, the local telco usually handles these quasi-toll calls, but if aa call crosses into a different LATA (even if it might be in the same NPA), the call must be handled by a long distance carrier, usually other than the local exchange telco. > Also, how are calls charged between countries within NANP -- that > is, is a call from Canada or the US to Bermuda or Barbados regarded > as international, even though they're technically (I think!) on the > same phone system? They're charged based on the calling and called country, not by the digits dialed, handled by a long distance carrier. This all probably seems very confusing to someone who hasn't grown up with it, but it kind of makes sense to those of us who have. The driving force is to have fixed-length numbers of seven or ten digits, and delay the need to go beyond ten digits for a fully unique number for as long as possible. From a technical perspective, it would have been easier to put wireless services in their own unique NPAs, as the growth in wireless is what drove many NPA splits. The wireless folks fought this politically. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 14:44:45 -0600 (CST) From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Earle Robinson (no email address indicated), from France, claims: (BIG snip) > ... [Finally] to address your vaunted 7 digit dialing. Well it ain't so > in many places any more. In Miami you have to dial 10 digits to call a > local number and I think it is the same in NYC, too. But whoever said in this thread that seven-digit (local and/or same-NPA) dialing is still in force "everywhere" in the NANP? The NANP was intended as a ten-digit numbering plan from the beginning, on a "3+3+4" format (or "3+7") even though in the 1940s thru early 1960s, there were *MANY* areas that still had less-than-seven-digit local numbering/dialing. And most all of us are *QUITE WELL AWARE* that there are the overlay areas with *mandatory* (1+)ten-digit local/same-NPA dialing, such as the entire state of Maryland (301/240, 410/443), New York City (212/646, 718/347, 917), most of southeast Florida (305/786, 954/754), a large part of southern/southeastern Ontario/Toronto Metro (416/647, 905/289), a large part of southwest BC/Vancouver Metro (604/778), the northern suburbs of Chicago (847/224), Atlanta Metro (404/770/678/470), Houston Metro (713/281/832), just about ALL of northeastern (903/430) TX (including but not just Dallas (214/972/469) and Ft.Worth (817/682) Metro), Charlotte NC Metro (704/980), the VA suburbs of DC (703/571), the Portland OR extended area (503/971), Denver CO Metro (303/720), a portion of southeastern MI (248/947), parts of northeastern (330/224) and all of northwestern (419/567) Ohio, Philadelphia (215/267) and southeastern (610/484) PA, most of northern NJ (201/551, 973/862, 732/848), eastern MA/Boston Metro/etc (617/857, 508/774, 781/339, 978/351), Pittsburgh PA Metro (412/724/878), ALL of Puerto Rico (787/939), Orlando Metro/Central Florida (407/321). I THINK that I've covered all of the overlay areas (which all have mandatory (1+)ten-digit local/same-NPA dialing). And there are more areas which are planned to go overlay whenever it is actually determined that another area code is really needed. (Disclaimer ... I hope I don't have any typograhical errors in listing the actual code-numerics neither). The NANP has adapted to the numerous technological and regulatory changes over the past 50 years, with the least noticeable changes in actual numbering/dailing when compared to OTHER parts of the world ... and again I'll say that the NANP *IS THE BEST* numbering/dialing plan IN THE WORLD, despite some "flaws" which could be corrected with industry/regulatory agreement/co-operation. > Given this, many people are confused between long distance dialing, > 11 digits (1 digit more than here in Europe) and local calling. With > our 10 digit dialing norm there is no confusion. YEAH... You're RIGHT! and *THAT's* because YOU don't really have ANY real "FREE" local calling. In (most parts of) Europe (including France and the UK), you PAY for even your shortest distance local calls. True, some of the more populated largest urban areas in the US have measured/message rate/unit "local" calling (and I guess that many parts of the NON-US Caribbean parts of the NANP have measured "local" calling too), but the LARGE BULK of the US, as well as ALL of Canada, do have *TRUE* "free" (monthly flat rate) local calling. And, those parts of the US (and all of Canada) *DO* usually have a clear indication in the *dialing* procedure as to when a call would or would not incur toll charges -- i.e., (other than 800/888/877/866/etc. toll-free where 1+ always still seems to be required), the "requirement" of a 1+ before a ten-digit number when dialed from those areas means that toll charges are most likely incurred, while calls that do not incurr extra toll charges (with the exeption of the 8YY+nxx-xxxx toll-free numbers as stated above) are dialable as 'straight' ten-digits. Unfortunately, dialing rules are not uniform throughout the NANP. BUT ... I'll take the NANP methods over *ANY* other numbering/dialing plans. The NANP has *MOST CERTAINLY* stood the test of time! And it covers one of the largest geographic areas of the world, as well as THE most *populated* parts of the world. Mark J. Cuccia New Orleans LA CSA ... in the LAND of DIXIE! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, I think the most populated part of the world is China. They are way ahead of the USA population, even if you include Canada which somehow got included in the scheme intended for the USA and the several islands south of Florida put together. But the NANP is strange because of the political games which have been played with it over the years. Canada is 'good' so they got included; Cuba is 'bad' so they were excluded, even though it (Cuba) is surrounded by other islands which are included in NANP. Even though Hawaii and Alaska are states and therefore entitled to be NANP, two other relatively insignificant and tiny islands thousands of miles away had their international codes swapped into the NANP. Mexico is no further away than Canada, yet it (Mexico) is not NANP. Why does a large island to the northeast of Canada get included in NANP (as 709?) but St. P&M (much closer to mainland USA not get included? So Mark, it seems to me NANP is not such a great deal; there were lots of politics played in who got to be included, and why. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 13:39:12 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NOcom On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 14:58:41 +0100, Earle Robinson
wrote: > You speak of how the American phone system already had 7 digits from > the 40s on. Well, yes in cities like New York. But, I was growing up > in Greenwich Connecticut where our phone number was Greenwich 102. Well, it's no different than what other places went through. Smaller places had differing length phone numbers. Many places in the UK had three digit telephone numbers up until a few years ago. Many places in the US if they were small enough might have had as few as 3 digit telephone numbers as well. The North American system has been basically the same from 1947 though to the present with some changes. Yes, there's not always continuity between dialing from one area to the other, but basically everything has remained the same since 1947. > Today, overall the systems here are often better than what is in the > states. > I also recall how awful phone service was in west Los Angeles in the > late 70s and into the 80s (also mentioned by another writer in a > message here the other day). We were served (an oxymoron) by General > Telephone. I really don't think you can judge American telephone quality by a second-rate telephone company such as GTE. > Here in France if I dial a number, and there is no call waiting on > that line, I get a busy signal, just as in the states. But, all I need > do is to punch the 5 on the touch pad and hang up. When my > correspondent hangs up my number rings, I pick up the phone and the > phone is ringing at the other end. And that service is also available in North America as well. > If you are in NYC you have Verizon , if in Miami Bell South. No > choice. Perhaps this was so at one time. You are free to get local service from numerous companies now. > Finally, to address your vaunted 7 digit dialing. Well it ain't so in > many places any more. In Miami you have to dial 10 digits to call a > local number and I think it is the same in NYC, too. Given this, many > people are confused between long distance dialing, 11 digits (1 digit > more than here in Europe) and local calling. With our 10 digit dialing > norm there is no confusion. No, it isn't available in all places any longer, but then again you have to dial 10 digits on all your calls in France so there's no advantage for you either. remove NO from .NOcom to reply ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 06 Jan 2004 21:01:03 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 > The monthly bill was around six or seven dollars and my > roomate and I agreed to split the bill but each be responsible for > our own long distance charges and or telegrams which were sent by > phone. So in 22 years the price changed about $5.00, and I got a Touch Tone phone to boot! So that does support the argument that a regulated monopoly was better for us than the current scheme although I see now that Verizon is offering an unlimited plan here in RI for $54 a month. I pay about $45 a month now for all my services -- and my LD runs anywhere from $5.00 a month to $20 a month. So my total telecom costs range from $50 a month to $65 a month at an average of $57.50. The plan might just be worth it. ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jan 2004 01:18:55 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I paid a total of $12 a month. That included the phone rental (A red > 2500 set of course!) and the Touch-Tone surcharge and taxes. > Now the line charge alone is $17.26, then add in the damned fees and > taxes and it come out close to $30. Twelve bucks in 1982 is worth about $24 now, so the local rate has gone up by about 25%. In the meantime, long distance rates have gone from over 25 cents/min (worth about 50 cents/min now) to 5 cents/min or lower, so they've dropped by 90%. If you make no long distance calls at all you lose, if you make a lot you win, if you make an average number, it's a wash. > That's what is killing any savings. The phone companies and the > government saw a golden opportunity to rape and pilage as usual and we > end up footing the bill. I've got news for you, there were plenty of taxes in 1982 as well. Local rates deliberately went up because the subsidy from long distance is almost gone. > Know what? Universal Service charges should have gone away a long > time ago. If people want to move out to the burbs and rural areas let > them pay to have the lines strung. I don't think it's a good idea to start an inter-regional war. The current implementation of USF certainly leavs something to be desired, but the theory is as good as ever: the more people you can call, the more useful your phone is. There are lots of involuntary transfers from one part of the country to another, and I sure hope you don't live in California because if you do, I'd like to have a few words about your water bill. ------------------------------ From: dold@IsXTiVoXRe.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Is TiVo Really All That Great? Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 20:24:44 UTC Organization: a2i network Rob wrote: > Ask people on a general high street in the UK what TiVo is and they'll > no doubt look at you askance. Ask them what Sky+ is and there's every > possibility that they'll know exactly what it is. That is the same as in the US. But I consider Tivo a growing product. Ask people on the street in the US what Dean Witter is and they'll recognize the name. The fact that the company no longer exists is irrelevant. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: balanco01@yahoo.com (Proprclr) Subject: Re: OnStar's Scare Tactics Date: 6 Jan 2004 13:14:17 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com joe@home.com.eu (joe@home.com.eu) said: > I leased a GMC vehicle for 3 years starting in Feb 2002. It had one > year's free Onstar (I call it Offfstar ;-) > It is absolutely worthless. The clerks that they employ speak > terrible English, are for the mostpart stupid, and some are even > surely. Let me guess, Onstar "outsourced" it's call center to India. > If you have a roll-over crash the antenna will probably break off, > thus preventing the cell phone connection. > OTOH, if you have an on-highway crash, the odds are overwhelming that > help will come first from the sources used by the 99% of folks and > entities who do not have Offstar. > The optional personal calling feature sucks, too. Although it sounds > good in the vehicle the person on the other end hears a very tinny > voice. And, there is no way of sending out DMTF for after-connect tone > prompts. Hmmm ... will holding up one of those hand held DTMF dialers to the microphone work? > And, getting directions is good for a real belly laugh. > Anyone who subscribes to this service is apparently too dumb to get > their own cell phone and real auto GPS navigation unit. I've heard their recent ads, what a dumb campaign. General Bullmoose created a real loser, and is force-feeding it to keep it alive. I doubt I will get another GM vehicle so long as they force me to pay for that equipment (it's a mandatory install in many of their lines of vehicles). ------------------------------ From: Albert LaFrance Subject: AT&T Long Lines Web Site, Cold War Comms E-mail List Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 18:03:22 -0500 Mr. Townson, First of all, I wanted to let you know how interesting and useful the Telecom Digest and Archive has been to me -- it's a very valuable resource! Also, I maintain a web site which you might want to add to your Links page. It's devoted to the former AT&T Long Lines microwave and cable networks: http://long-lines.net . And finally, there's an e-mail list on the Yahoo Groups service which deals with all types of communications networks, C3I systems and facilities of the Cold War era. The group's web page, where you can join or view archived messages, is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coldwarcomms . Again, thanks for your excellent work in preserving telecom history. Regards, Albert LaFrance [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks very much for your kind words, Albert. I do appreciate it when someone tells me they like the hard work that has gone into the Archives over the years. In correspondence I receive now and then from someone who absolutely hates me as the moderator here (and he claims there are just whole bunches like himself, but never comes up with any names), a recent letter from him pointed out 'how obvious it was that the Digest was not any good lately as a quick look at the Archives would easily indicate.' But what the Moderator Hater tends to ignore is the fact that when this Digest began there was no web, and there were *no* other telecom forums around. I was sort of like Ma Bell ... if you wanted to talk telecom you did it here, in this newsgroup. And like the late Ma Bell, now I have literally dozens of 'competitors' around on the web and the various ISPs, like Yahoo and AOL and others. Everyone has a telecom forum these days, it seems. I've invited him to go use a few of them, and maybe he does, but he still comes around here to pester me also. If I had *anything* at all to do with a few of the other forums getting started -- and I know I did for a few of them -- then I am humbly grateful. Anyway, thanks again for your kind note, and I hope this mention in the Digest gets you a few new subscribers/readers. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 13:33:58 -0700 From: Joey Lindstrom Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Organization: Telus Sucks! Subject: Re: NANP Numbering; Joey's Advice to the Unwashed Masses Tuesday, January 6, 2004, 12:47:27 PM, Earle Robinson wrote: > You say that the USA is the leader for technology, etc. Yes, that is > true, but the brains behind much of this come from Europeans and, > more recently, Asians. Andy Grove is Hungarian, as was von Neumann. > American rocket technology was brought by von Braun from German > after the 2nd World War. (more examples snipped) And the zipper, basketball, the snowmobile, and (Eureka!) the telephone all came out of Canada. Innovation comes from all over. Mark's point is that the USA is a world leader in innovation, and despite your examples to the contrary, Mark's statement is perfectly true. > Here in France if I dial a number, and there is no call waiting on > that line, I get a busy signal, just as in the states. But, all I need > do is to punch the 5 on the touch pad and hang up. When my corres- > pondent hangs up my number rings, I pick up the phone and the > phone is ringing at the other end. No extra charge, no monthly > fee. It's free. You are intimating that this service is unavailable here (later, in your original post, you clearly state that we "don't have" this feature). In fact we do, and depending on the phone company you're with, it might be pay-per-use, or a flat-fee charged monthly, or may be included in a service bundle. But we do have this feature. Granted, it takes three keys rather than one, but hey. > Interested in ADSL? All I need do is provide my phone number and > address on a web page and I am told how many meters I am from the > central office and told I qualify because it is 473 meters. If I > prefer a phone company other than France telecom I can choose from 6 > or 7. Try that in the states! Try that in Germany or the UK. My German friends tell me that ADSL is completely unavailable where they live (outside Muenchen) but they've got ISDN at some whopping huge monthly rate. Ditto my friend in London, England. She lives in one of the most important cities in the world, and they can't even get broadband together (she calls it "steam-powered internet"). Before moving recently, she could not get ADSL or cablemodem service for love or money. Now she's got cablemodem (still no ADSL available), and is paying as much as I'm paying for "business class" service here in Canada, and getting about a tenth of the bandwidth. There are exceptions to everything, Earle. This other point you make, though, is interesting. You're telling me that there are six or seven companies competing for local dialtone service for residential customers? Hey, I'll take your word for it, but this I find extremely hard to believe. Long distance, maybe. Dialtone? Wow, that's unbelievable. Here in the wilds of Western Canada, we've got two local dialtone providers (for residential: six or seven for business) and umpteen dozen long distance companies all vying for our 3 cents per minute. > If you are in NYC you have Verizon , if in Miami Bell South. No > choice. Perhaps some of our American readers can respond to this point, but I'm sure that there are alternatives to the ILEC available in these markets. Or am I wrong? > I stand corrected as concerns the maximum number of digits mandated > by the ITU. But, this could be readily extended, as it was when it > went from 12 to 15. The American system seems so cumbersome in > comparison. Why would more than 15 ever be necessary? How many people can this world support? Personally I thought it was ridiculous moving from 12 to 15 in the first place, in order to allow for this direct-dial-in variable-number-length scheme in Germany and Austria. Fixed length good, variable length bad. :-) > While I can merely replace the first digit to use one of the major > alternate carriers, in the states I'd have to dial several digits to > do this. You have to dial "several" digits to select SOME carriers, as you illustrated in your example. The NANP system probably has one or two digits too many, but it allows for a maximum of 10,000 long distance carriers. That's a lot. > We also have features, like the handling if a busy signal > that I already mentioned, which you don't have. See above. > For example, I can add other data to my directory listing using the > internet, to provide the names of other people who use my number, > email addresses and other numbers, too. Cellular phone numbers will > be listed shortly, though one may opt out if one wishes. Call > blocking here may be done on an individual basis or > globally. Naturally, there is an emergency number, 112, valid > everywhere in Europe. But there is also an emergency number for > abused women to call, too. Ah, yes. Aren't standards a wonderful thing? 112 gets you an emergency operator, and that's all well and good. Works throughout Europe, you say? Great. But you'll pardon us if we grimace a bit when you brag about these things, because our standards existed FIRST. Why should we change "911" to "112"? Look at it from our point of view. Here's what we see: a bunch of johnny-come-latelys take a look at our standards, decide they need changing (mostly so that they're not "American" anymore), implement those changes, then can't understand why the rest of the world won't join their new and improved "standard". Nobody asked us for our opinion, and even if they had, it has not been demonstrated that this new standard is in any way superior to what we've got, which works and works well. It's a model of efficiency. 10 digits is just fine for 350 million people and leaves lots of room for growth. > Finally, to address your vaunted 7 digit dialing. Well it ain't so > in many places any more. In Miami you have to dial 10 digits to call > a local number and I think it is the same in NYC, too. Given this, > many people are confused between long distance dialing, 11 digits (1 > digit more than here in Europe) and local calling. With our 10 digit > dialing norm there is no confusion. Exsqueeze me? Baking soda? If I'm in France, I dial 10 digits to reach across the country or to the restaurant across the street. Explain to me how a Frenchman is *NOT* confused over what is long distance and what is local, where an American WOULD be. You're talking out of your ass on this one. As for me, here in Calgary I dial local calls as 7-digit, though I have the option also of dialing as 10-digit (with area code) or even 11-digit (1+area code). If I dial a long-distance number with only 7 digits, my call will not go through, which alerts me that this is a call I'm going to have to pay for. (but let's not start that jihad again -- some people are adamantly opposed to toll-alerting) And that brings me to the most basic, fundamental difference between "my" phone system and "your" phone system. I can pick up my phone and call my friend across the city and chat for hours, and never even *THINK* about what this call is costing me. Because it's not costing me anything over and above my monthly flat-rate. When you adopt THAT, let me know, and I'll reconsider this quaint notion that your phone system is somehow "better" than ours. Y'know, the way you really, really stretch credulity in order to construct an argument -- ANY argument -- that something French is better than something American, reminds me a whole lot of something that Robin Williams said in his recent concert video. Imagine, if you will, Robin speaking in an over-the-top French accent, and saying something like the following (paraphrased to keep it in a g-rated context): "Ah, screw you Americans, we hate you ... What's that? Ze Germans are coming? 'ALLO, AMERICANS! WE LOVE YOU!!!" Joey Lindstrom [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There you go, Earle! Did Joey get you straightened out, or didn't he? Don't you just love Canadians who like to pretend they are arrogant USA citizens, with their general dislike for so much of the customs of the rest of the world? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 14:22:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Apple Macworld Expo Press Releases Apple Introduces iPod mini 6 January 2004, 2:02pm ET, PR Newswire http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?symbols=NASDAQ:AAPL&story=200401061902_PRN__SFTU087 Over Two Million iPods Sold 6 January 2004, 2:02pm ET, PR Newswire http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?symbols=NASDAQ:AAPL&story=200401061902_PRN__SFTU088 Apple Announces iLife '04 6 January 2004, 2:04pm ET, PR Newswire http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?symbols=NASDAQ:AAPL&story=200401061904_PRN__SFTU089 Apple Introduces Jam Pack 6 January 2004, 2:05pm ET, PR Newswire http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?symbols=NASDAQ:AAPL&story=200401061905_PRN__SFTU090 Apple Introduces Xserve G5 6 January 2004, 2:06pm ET, PR Newswire http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?symbols=NASDAQ:AAPL&story=200401061906_PRN__SFTU091 Apple Unveils New Xserve RAID Storage System 6 January 2004, 2:07pm ET, PR Newswire http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?symbols=NASDAQ:AAPL&story=200401061907_PRN__SFTU092 Apple Introduces Final Cut Express 2 6 January 2004, 2:07pm ET, PR Newswire http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?symbols=NASDAQ:AAPL&story=200401061907_PRN__SFTU093 Mac OS X Users Approach 10 Million 6 January 2004, 2:09pm ET, PR Newswire http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?symbols=NASDAQ:AAPL&story=200401061909_PRN__SFTU094 Apple Previews Xgrid Technology 6 January 2004, 2:09pm ET, PR Newswire http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?symbols=NASDAQ:AAPL&story=200401061909_PRN__SFTU095 ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #9 **************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jan 7 02:21:55 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i077LsR15298; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 02:21:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 02:21:55 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401070721.i077LsR15298@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 #10 TELECOM Digest Wed, 7 Jan 2004 02:17:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 10 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Bonanza for Errors [Diebold] (Marcus Didius Falco) Internet Telephones Challenge Social Contract (Marcus Didius Falco) Caller-ID on Regular Phones Using a PBX (Chainsman) Automated Attendant Systems (JamminDJ) Re: Using PIX 501 With Vonage VoIP (Chainsman) Re: Last Laugh! 15 Year Old Gets Caught With $71,000!!! (Marcus D Falco) ReplayTV Apologizes for Service Flap (Monty Solomon) Delphi Unveils Mobile Satellite TV Antenna System at CES (Monty Solomon) Intel Launches $200 Million Fund For 'Digital Home' (Monty Solomon) Re: NANP Numbering and Splits (John Levine) The NANP, and Comments by the Digest's Editor (Mark J Cuccia) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 22:52:52 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Bonanza for Errors [Diebold] By DER SPIEGEL http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/international/europe/05SPIEGEL.html Published: January 5, 2004 America's Electronic Voting Machines Are Susceptible to Manipulation Walden O'Dell is entitled to call himself a "Pioneer." The business leader from North Canton, Ohio, has qualified for the honorific because he collected 600,000 dollars for George W. Bush's election campaign. He accompanied this with a pledge to do everything possible to help Ohio "deliver its electoral votes to the president" in 2004. But with this statement O'Dell has caused more of a stir than he could have wished. For the "Pioneer" is also chief executive of Diebold Inc., a company that among other things manufactures voting machines. About 40,000 of these are installed in 37 states and are supposed to record and count votes on November 2. Diebold is in second place, right behind the market leader, Election Systems and Software which achieved its top ranking under Chuck Hagel before he, a Republican, was elected senator from Nebraska. Recently the states have left decisions about the technological side of voting procedures to private companies. It is shocking enough that the giants of the trade are vying to get close to the government. But in addition, O'Dell has inadvertently called attention to how susceptible the machines are to manipulation. In principle, voting machines work like ATMs: The voter touches the name of his candidate on the screen. But instead of receiving some sort of receipt at the end of the transaction as he does from a money machine, he gets no receipt at all for the vote he has cast. Thus there is no way to check whether the machine has really recorded what it was supposed to have recorded. And discrepancies are not rare, as was revealed a year and a half ago during spot checks performed in Dallas and Georgia: in thousands of cases the computerized voting machines had either allocated votes to the wrong candidate or not counted them at all. The lame excuse was that the screen had wrongly calibrated itself because of frequent use. In the meantime, legions of computer freaks have tackled both the computers' software and hardware, discovering plenty of sources for errors. Since the exact time of the transaction is not recorded as it is with ATMs, some sinister forces could arrange ex post facto for a desired result without attracting attention during the customarily low voter turnout. Diebold even admitted that the database had not been encoded before the counting of the votes -- a windfall for hackers. Ironically, the electronic voting machines are supposed to prevent a repetition of the embarrassments that occurred in Florida in 2000, and which tinged the election of Bush with suspicion. Antiquated equipment was unable to read voting cards that had not been properly punched - and consequently they were not counted. The U.S. Congress is spending just under four billion dollars on modernization of the voting process. A changeover to the digital era will be complete by 2006. By November 2nd this year, new computer screens should be operational at about 20 percent of all polling places. Now Diebold is thrashing about with all sorts of inadequate explanations for the defective software. Yet the company could learn a lesson from its small, keen competitor. The Avante company combines digital high tech with old-fashioned paper statements. In this way each voter can make sure that the computer has really done what the voter wanted it to do -- and manipulation is, at least for the most part, made more difficult. [translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo] Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 23:52:30 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Internet Telephones Challenge Social Contract It's a not terribly accurate description of the subsidies in the past, or the current issues. But, can the good grey Times be wrong? http://www.iht.com/articles/123613.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/technology/05voip.html Matt Richtel Monday, January 5, 2004 Charles Davidson, a self-proclaimed gadget freak in Tallahassee, Florida, began using Internet-based telephone service last week. He can call anyone -- not just the other 100,000 pioneers around the United States using such service, but also any of the millions of people still making do with conventional telephones, like his parents in Elizabethton, Tennessee. But Davidson is more than an adventuresome consumer. He is also a member of the Florida Public Service Commission, a regulator who is anxious to see Internet telephone service spread because he predicts it can make the nation's phone services less expensive and richer in features. That is why Davidson wants the U.S. and state governments to allow Internet-based phone service to blossom, free from regulation, taxes and surcharges. Like a growing number of officials who advocate minimal oversight of the service -- including Michael Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission -- Davidson says Internet telephone service should be treated just like other unregulated Internet services, like e-mail messaging and Web surfing. But unlike some proponents of deregulation, Davidson also has a nagging concern. Because Internet-based phone service currently rides over traditional telephone or cable lines, it simply will not work unless the conventional phone network is intact. The government has long regarded that network as a national asset akin to roads and highways, and it is a communications system whose reliability and virtual ubiquity make it the envy of most of the rest of the world. So Internet telephone service raises a key public policy question: If the government does not continue to play a role in ensuring that the telephone network is reliable and universally available, does the nation risk losing a vital asset? Davidson, a former antitrust lawyer appointed to the Florida commission by the Republican governor, Jeb Bush, says he tends to believe that markets are more efficient than regulators. But some of Davidson's counterparts in other states sound just as certain that only government referees can preserve the decades-old tradition of universal, reliable telephone service. "If somebody doesn't regulate this, it's buyer beware," said Loretta Lynch, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission, who was appointed by the former governor, Gray Davis, a Democrat. Lynch, a lawyer, said the telephone's role in society was too important to leave in the hands of market forces. "Telecommunications is essential to our democracy," she said. "It's essential, in fact, to keeping an informed populace." The communications commission has embarked on a series of public hearings around the country on whether and how to regulate Internet telephony. The policy questions go to the heart of a social compact born in the 1930's. Back then, the government granted regulated monopolies in individual markets to AT&T and other, smaller companies. In exchange, policy makers exacted a price: the telephone monopolies had to meet service-quality standards and collect taxes and surcharges to support affordable, universal access even in rural areas where free-market economics would not have made it cost-effective. Some of the lower costs of Internet telephone service are a result of the underlying architecture. In the conventional telephone network, voice calls travel over a line that stretches from the home to a piece of phone company equipment called a circuit switch. The switch, and many others like it along the way, routes the call to its destination over local or long-distance networks. The switches can be expensive, as much as $10 million apiece, said John Hodulik, a telecommunications analyst with UBS Securities. Were telephone companies to build a network from scratch today, they likely would do so using the less expensive Internet architecture that has enabled start-up companies like Vonage Holdings, based in Edison, New Jersey, to enter the market. Vonage, the industry leader, has invested a mere $12 million in technology, according to Jeffrey Citron, the company's chief executive. That, he said, is a far cry from the $75 million to $100 million that some companies must spend to begin offering conventional telephone service. But some critics say a big reason Vonage and other Internet-based phone providers can cut costs is because they do not have to adhere to the same rules and regulations as the conventional telephone companies on whose local and national networks the Internet providers depend. Even an Internet telephony fan like Jeff Pulver, who was formerly on the Vonage board, acknowledged that a substantial amount of cost savings comes from avoiding the taxes, surcharges, and access fees used to support the traditional phone network. The fact that Vonage is not regulated and did not pay to build the national network may obscure the real cost of providing Internet-based phone service. Likewise, the cost to customers is not as low as it may seem. While consumers may pay less each month for Internet telephone service than for regular phone service, they cannot obtain the service unless they first have high-speed Internet access -- on which they are likely to spend $40 to $70 a month. That is why policy makers like Lynch of the California regulatory panel resist the idea that Internet telephone service will lead to a telecommunications market so competitive that government regulation becomes unnecessary. She said that if conventional telephone companies like Qwest were allowed to avoid regulation by moving their business to Internet-based service, it would drain money from the universal service funds that have enabled low-income residents, as well as schools and libraries, to afford basic phone service. The New York Times Copyright 2003 the International Herald Tribune All Rights Reserved *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, International Herald Tribune and the New York Times Company. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Chainsman Subject: Caller-ID on Regular Phones using a PBX Date: 6 Jan 2004 19:27:59 -0800 Organization: http://netscape.net/ Hi, I have a home telephone system which I'm very pleased with but my family is distraught that it won't pass caller-ID to their regular phones. I have looked around for systems that pass caller-ID to regular old phones but haven't found any so far. I have heard that there is a new Panasonic unit that will pass caller-ID to regular phones. Does anyone know of any systems that will do this? My requirements are for a minimum of 2 outside lines and 6 extensions. Thanks! ------------------------------ From: JamminDJ Subject: Automated Attendant Systems Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 02:30:33 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com Hello, I am a tech consonant for a computer help desk at a mid to large size university. Currently all calls to the centre go through an initial auto attendant system, then are forwarded to dept. depending on need. One of these options is password change. This is all done by human operator right now, we take their SSN numbers and get fed a new password out. This becomes quite tiresome, and some higher ups have actually threatened to quit due to the infinite number of calls for change password requests. My question is, is there a piece of software or hardware, capable of taking a purely numeric SSN number, feeding to one of our mainframes, and spit out the purely alphaic password? I know it can be done, this is evident in the CVS 'Rapid Refill' system. I just wonder if there is any third party software that can do this, and do it at a university price. Thank you for your time, Paul Miller ------------------------------ From: Chainsman Subject: Re: Using PIX 501 With Vonage VoIP Date: 6 Jan 2004 19:34:14 -0800 Organization: http://netscape.net/ Hi, I use Vonage VoIP with my home telephone system in a NATted and firewalled network and it works fine. If you order Vonage now, the current device has a simple firewall and NAT function so you can use it like a gateway. The most important reason to do this is that your firewall will probably not pass-through the Quality-of-Service (QoS) tagged packets. If you use the Vonage device between your gateway and your cable/DSL modem then the QoS tags are used and, probably more importantly, the VoIP network activity gets the highest priority over your networks' internally-generated traffic. The layout that gives VoIP the highest priority (via QoS over the cable modem network and priority over all your internal network's traffic): network --> gateway/router --> Vonage device --> cable modem I have used it in both modes and if you are doing online games you will probably not like the firewall and NAT function but if you depend on the Vonage for your primary phone line (I do not) you will want it as the last device before the modem. It should be noted that Cisco was not interested in adding the NAT/Firewall feature to their VoIP box so that's why Vonage is only using the Motorola box now. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 23:39:41 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Re: Last Laugh! 15 Year Old Gets Caught With $71,000!!! pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) wrote about Re: Last Laugh! 15 Year Old Gets Caught With $71,000!!! > 'free_money@cox.net writes: <> > But still, this one part always boggles me: >> chain-letter at all. In fact, it was completely legal according to US >> Postal and Lottery Laws, Title 18, Section 1302 and 1341, or Title 18, >> Section 3005 in the US code, also in the code of federal regulations, >> Volume 16, Sections 255 and 436, which state a product or service must >> be exchanged for money received. > Those references are correct, and there is indeed that last sentence > in them. But if you read the rest of the law, which you're bound to > do if you've bothered to look it up, you know the 'reports' figleaf > will not work. I understand that the postmaster general just *loves* > to get copies of chain letters that mention this, because it makes > proving fraud fairly trivial. You might claim ignorance of a law and > get leniency, but when a cite to the law is right in your pitch, > documenting that what you're doing is illegal ... Unfortunately, the post office isn't set up to deal with Email spam, or wasn't the last time I checked. And the IRS isn't set up to deal with Email that purports to show how you don't have to pay taxes. And the FCC doesn't care about the cable boxes that allow you to pirate CATV. The SEC does seem to care (or at least respond) when I forward spam investment opportunities (or faxed ones, though these now have to be faxed to the SEC because their incoming mail is irradiated and this destroys non-plain-paper faxes. The FTC is supposed to be doing something about spam, and I just heard of another large case filed. And some of the 419 frauds sent to the secret service <419.fcd@usss.treas.gov> do seem to get prosecuted. But, mostly, there isn't much point in forwarding spam to the authorities other than the SEC, FTC or USSS. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:18:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: ReplayTV Apologizes for Service Flap SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) -- Digital video recorder maker ReplayTV is apologizing to customers after many were lured to buy a machine through an offer of three years' of free service that the company now says it made by mistake. The Santa Clara-based company said Tuesday that boxes of its lowest-end model were "mistakenly labeled" with the reduced price offer, which has been rescinded. In addition, ReplayTV says the company's call center employees mistakenly told some customers the new lower $149 price for the unit included three years of service. ReplayTV said it would honor the three years of service offer "for those customers who were confused by these mistakes." A spokeswoman was unsure how many customers qualified. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401070256_APO_V6448 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:34:15 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Delphi Unveils Mobile Satellite TV Antenna System at CES Delphi Demonstrates Consistent TV Reception That Will Bring the 'Best Seat' Into the Vehicle LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Delphi Corp. (NYSE:DPH) will display another industry-first at the 2004 International Consumer Electronics Show this week (Las Vegas Convention Center, North Hall, Booths #5206 and #5213). Delphi's innovative antenna system tracks a geo-stationary satellite from a moving passenger vehicle. The technology is the first-known application to achieve this functionality while adhering to the stringent compact packaging and styling, cost and performance constraints associated with passenger car requirements. While there are currently military and other specialty vehicles that utilize geo-stationary satellite tracking technologies with large radomes, none exists in low-profile form or without modifications in the vehicle contour. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401061500_PRN__DETU008 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:37:27 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Intel Launches $200 Million Fund For 'Digital Home' By Ben Berkowitz and Daniel Sorid LAS VEGAS/SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC), the world's largest microchip maker and an eager entrant into the consumer electronics business, is backing up its vision of a PC-centric digital home with a new $200 million investment fund. The fund, to be operated by Intel's venture capital arm, will focus on technologies that allow content such as movies and music to travel wirelessly between electronic devices around the home, Intel said on Tuesday. Intel stands to profit handsomely should PC technology, which is heavily reliant on Intel chips and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) software -- spread into televisions, DVD players and stereos. Major PC makers and computer chip companies, unsatisfied with thin margins and slowing sales in traditional computer businesses, are pushing actively into consumer electronics. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40133201 ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jan 2004 05:43:58 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: NANP Numbering and Splits Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > From a technical perspective, it would have been easier to put > wireless services in their own unique NPAs, as the growth in wireless > is what drove many NPA splits. The wireless folks fought this > politically. The conventional wisdom is that wireless, fax machines, and dialup modems were the main reason for all those area code splits, but in this case the conventional wisdom is wrong. The main reason was local competition. Because call routing and billing were both based on NPA-NXX, every CLEC had to get an entire prefix in every rate center where it planned to offer service, even if it really only needed a few dozen numbers. Lots of CLECs started up, they all got allocated prefixes all over the place, which needed a whole lot of area codes. Since then the number of CLECs has shrunk, and a combination of local portability and thousands allocation has vastly slowed the rate at which new prefixes are needed, but you still have inane situations like Middlebury VT, with a population of less than 10,000, having eleven prefixes (three Bell, one each for three cell carriers, and five for other carriers.) Putting wireless in separate NPAs would have been a terrible idea for both policy and technical reasons. It'd have been bad policy since it'd have maintained an increasingly irrelevant distinction between the two, and the price and service competition we're now seeing between wireline and wireless wouldn't have developed as fast if it all. With integrated numbering, cell carriers could hook up to the existing phone network either like PBXes for small locations or like an non-Bell ILEC switch in larger ones, with no changes to the existing wireline switches other than what they already did anytime a new prefix was opened. If they'd made separate area codes, they'd have had to overlay a new area code on top of every existing area code, forcing switches to upgrade to permit overlays long before they actually did. It would have used up a lot more area codes than actually happened, since there are plenty of NPAs where all the cell numbers fit into the existing area code and no overlay or split has been needed. 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. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 22:51:50 -0600 (CST) From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: The NANP, and Comments by the Digest's Editor The Digest editor had interjected comments at the end of two submissions in a recent Digest issue (issue #9), on the subject of the NANP. The editor first commented at the end of my previous submission: > ... it seems to me NANP is not such a great deal; there were lots of > politics played in who got to be included, and why. Patrick, my reply post was MOSTLY concerned with the numbering and dialing aspects of the NANP, not so much the politics involved. And for the most part, the politics wasn't so much governmental as BUSINESS associations and relationships. Yes, government policy did have some influence (i.e., Cuba and Mexico), but for the most part it wasn't the US government as much as it was the *CUBAN* and *MEXICAN* governments that didn't want to be part of the NANP back in the 1960s/70s/era, and that has all become legacy. SP&M is FRENCH (as are Guadeloupe, Martinique, etc. in the Caribbean) and again, it was the *FRENCH* that wanted European-French-like telephone aspects on those islands. Geography is mostly centered around the mainland US/Canada, even though there are the US-Pacific (and AK/HI states) and NANP-Caribbean. Yes, I probably erred in saying that the US/Canada is the most populated part of the world, when in actuality it would be China. I should have known because I have always heard all of those "old sayings" about the number of Chinam ... Chinese ... But the US/Canada is the largest in *TELEPHONE* population of the world, i.e., telephone penetration, in the world, as far as I can tell. So, as the MAIN intent of my posts was the actual NUMBERING/DIALING aspects of the NANP (with geography and "some" politics" thrown in), I'll reply to one of your comments in that light ... if you don't think that the NANP is "such a great deal" afterall, I don't know what you've been placing calls on for the past 50-some years. Maybe you should move to the UK (especially LONDON) or some other country where there are *wholesale* numbering changes in the major cities (locally too) or even nationally, every few years. And later on, the Editor makes a comment at the end of Joey Lindstrom's reply post; > There you go, Earle! Did Joey get you straightened out, or didn't he? > Don't you just love Canadians who like to pretend they are arrogant USA > citizens, with their general dislike for so much of the customs of the > rest of the world? Actually, Patrick, it's the other way around. Pot calling the kettle black here, me-thinks. YES, I will admit that there are those US/Canadians who travel to Europe/etc. and try to run their lives. I also admit that the US government has *FOR DECADES* tried to "run the world" and *THAT* is why most-of-the-rest-of-the-world (especially many Arab countries and Arabs IN EXILE) seem to HATE "us" for the foreign policy of the US Government (which seems to be managed by a certain foreign country anyhows! :( ) BUT ... I really want to get back to TELEPHONY, mainly numbering/dialing. MY obsevations are that for the most part, most of us in the NANP are mostly happy with our own numbering and dialing plan. Those of us who "know" the telephone industry are well aware of what other parts of the world had, as well as currently have, or will be modifying to, in the way of numbering/dialing/etc. And it does make for some intersting comparison. But we here in the NANP, while "happy" to advise/consult WHEN ASKED, are NOT really all that interested in chaning or "forcing" NANP-like policies on other parts of the world. HOWEVER ... It certainly seems to me that the Euros (and other "rest-of-the-worlders") or at least CERTAIN individuals from those non-NANP parts of the world, who post to TELECOM Digest AND another telecom (numbering) forum on the Internet, seem to take an arrogant attitude towards the NANP *EVERY TIME THEY THINK THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT*, especially when "unprovoked". And there are those of us in the NANP who are quite defensive of our own numbering/dialing systems, and don't like to see it WRONGLY "trashed". ESPECIALLY when most of us really keep to ourselves and try NOT to dictate NANP policies on other countries, but ALSO we can come up with FACTUAL refutations to those other "claims" from non-NANP-ers. And, Patrick (and others), as a matter of fact, the trend in "other parts of the world", FOR THE MOST PART, but probably not "universally" nor "ironclad", seems to be in their current numbering/dialing modifications of the 1990s+, is to become more "NANP-like" in the fact that they are migrating to fixed-length "overall" numbering, whether or not "parsing" is becoming uniform. And in some cases, there is fixed-length *dialing* in some of these countries. It might not be a "carbon copy" of the NANP, but it is migrating to fixed-length aspects which have mostly been a major aspect of NANP "numbering" (and to a great but not universal extent, dialing) since the NANP's inception. AGAIN, I will say (especially because the Editor here who has lived in the NANP all his life, makes the statement that he doesn't think the NANP is "such a great deal") ... the NANP has most CERTAINLY stood up to the test of time over the past five-plus decades, and will probably stand up to the test of time over the NEXT five (maybe even more) decades, in the fact that it remains a ten-digit format, only now generalized to NXX-NXX-xxxx. AND NO OTHER COUNTRY/NUMBERING PLAN can make such a claim, at least not for anything in the PAST years/decades. (I can't speak for the future because I dont know what the growth trend projections are in other parts of the world). Mark J. Cuccia New Orleans LA CSA (in the LAND of DIXIE!) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You can always tell when Mark becomes angry because (a) he spends an entire line or more yelling (large case) and (b) because he takes my name in vain, using it in every paragraph or two. I do not know what you are talking about when you say our numbering system is stable. So stable, in fact, that during the 1990-2000 time period I had to change my number four times on account of changes in area codes. I started out in 312, had it for many years, along with all of northern Illinois. Then it became 773 because the crybaby banks and financial houses downtown kept wanting more and more and more and more phones, and *they* thought it was unfair to make *them* change to 773, so everyone else in Chicago had to move to 773 to accomodate them (maybe so they would quit crying about what an expense it would be to make *them* have to change their stationary, etc ... so a few million rest of us had to change ours instead). If we had had a 'flexible' numbering system such as parts of Europe, then the stupid bankers could have had fifteen digit numbers if they wanted to cover all their PBX-extensions and the rest of us would have stayed in 312, since the banks and large corp- orations downtown refused to give it up. Well then they changed to 708 for the suburbs -- all of them. Well okay, so I had to start dialing ten digits to the McDonalds right across the street, literally less than fifty feet away, to order my lunch and have it delivered. Or eleven digits if you count the damnable '1' on the front of different (than yourself) area codes. Then as I started to wise up to Chicago politics, etc and fled to live in Skokie I myself became a 708-er ... but it doesn't stop there. Soon after moving to Skokie and handing out my 'new' telephone number, more crybabies came along and said now you will be 847 (as in 'VIP') and only the south and close in west suburbs will keep 708. Again, the very idea of making *them* dial additional digits just wouldn't do. After all, we have this fabulous NANP system, and *they* want more phone numbers for their faxes, their cell phones, their teenager lines, etc so YOU will move to 847 ... I don't live there now, but I understand that now the 847 people have all been evacuated once again to 224 along the lakefront area. The stench from politics in Chicago got to be so awful I knew I had to move *really far away* in order to breath fresh air once again, so I came to 316-ville. No sooner had I gotten here, give or take a few months, and the Boeing Aircraft people in Wichita and the state government people in Topeka all decided they wanted more, more, more, more phones, so after making sufficient stink with the Kansas Commission they got to keep 316 and I got moved to 620. Then South- western Bell, in their wisdom, decided I had to go back to dialing '1' before *anything* that was not in the City of Independence itself. Even directory assistance, '1411'. Even rinky-dinky Prairie Stream Communications is not that insane. And you say that NANP is a stable system that has served me well? Oh, by the way, in case of dire emergency, which is the only valid reason for calling '911' it is still shorter and easier for users of rotary phones to dial '112' (four pulses/pulls) than 911 (eleven pulses/pulls). But that would involve some changes in our system, in our way of doing things, right Mark? PAT] ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #10 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jan 7 21:02:55 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0822ta20388; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 21:02:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 21:02:55 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401080202.i0822ta20388@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 #11 TELECOM Digest Wed, 7 Jan 2004 21:03:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 11 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson JetBlue to Add Fox Video Entertainment System; Debut XM (Monty Solomon) AT&T 'Unlimited Country Plans' (Monty Solomon) Re: Caller-ID on Regular Phones Using a PBX (Carl Navarro) Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004,on 1-Jan-1984 (Kilo Delta Sierra) Re: NANP Numbering (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: NANP Numbering; Joey's Advice to the Unwashed Masses (David Winfrey) Re: The NANP, and Comments by the Digest's Editor (Joseph) NANP and Mr. Cuccia (Earle Robinson) Inventions (was Re: NANP Numbering) (Mark Brader) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 09:03:31 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: JetBlue to Add Fox Video Entertainment System and Debut XM NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 7, 2004-- Low-Fare Carrier Will Offer up to 100 Channels of Satellite Radio Free of Charge and Add Movies and Episodes of "The Simpsons" JetBlue Airways (Nasdaq:JBLU) will make flights even more entertaining in 2004. JetBlue was the first carrier to debut up to 24 channels of live DIRECTV(R)(a) programming in-flight in 2000, and remains the only carrier offering satellite TV free at every seat. Now, in agreements with XM Satellite Radio (Nasdaq:XMSR) and News Corporation (NYSE:NWS), (NYSE:NWS.A); (ASX:NCP), (ASX:NCPDP), JetBlue will add up to 100 channels of digital satellite radio and movie channels featuring 20th Century Fox movies and episodes of Fox's popular TV series "The Simpsons." XM Satellite Radio's free in-flight service will allow JetBlue customers to choose from XM's unmatched variety of music, news, sports, information and entertainment, all with digital-quality audio and coast-to-coast coverage. Current artist information and song title playing will be displayed on JetBlue's seat-back TV screens to provide a comprehensive audio-visual experience. The system is expected to be introduced fleet-wide on JetBlue's Airbus A320 aircraft this year and on the airline's new fleet of EMBRAER 190 aircraft as they are introduced into service in 2005. In 2004, JetBlue will also add movie channels which will be offered for a nominal fee. The first dedicated in-flight service created by News Corporation's Fox Entertainment Group will offer JetBlue customers first-run movies, television shows, sports and news programming plus other original entertainment developed by Fox. The digital video system will feature an in-seat credit card payment system, whereby JetBlue customers can purchase Fox entertainment options through a convenient credit card reader. LiveTV, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of JetBlue, will install the onboard systems that will deliver the XM Satellite Radio and digital video services. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40133815 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 09:06:04 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AT&T 'Unlimited Country Plans' AT&T Leads Market with Innovative 'Unlimited Country Plans' - Jan 7, 2004 07:30 AM (PR Newswire) Unique New Plans Offer Unlimited International Calling To 17 Countries. Consumers Also Offered An Unlimited Asia Select And Unlimited Europe Select Plan. MORRISTOWN, N.J., Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- AT&T today announced a groundbreaking and industry-leading offer with its "AT&T Unlimited Country(SM) Plans." These exclusive AT&T calling plans provide unlimited international calling to 17 popular countries for a specific monthly plan fee.* As the industry leader in unlimited long distance for domestic calling, AT&T continues to break new ground by broadening its portfolio to include unlimited international calling to 17 countries. With a monthly plan fee as low as $39.95 for unlimited calling to the United Kingdom, calling across the ocean or around the world has never been easier or more economical. Consumers will enjoy the ease and convenience of one low monthly plan fee for unlimited international calls to the eligible country of their choice -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week -- on direct-dialed calls made from home. In addition, subscribers who call any other country will receive AT&T's already low international rates through the AT&T AnyHour Advantage Plan. As a special value at no additional charge, subscribers to any Unlimited Country Plan will receive a flat rate on domestic long distance of 7 cents per minute on all interstate and in-state calls direct-dialed from home.** - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40134455 ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Caller-ID on Regular Phones using a PBX Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 10:07:38 -0500 Organization: Airnews.net! at Internet America On 6 Jan 2004 19:27:59 -0800, Chainsman wrote: > Hi, I have a home telephone system which I'm very pleased with but my > family is distraught that it won't pass caller-ID to their regular > phones. I have looked around for systems that pass caller-ID to > regular old phones but haven't found any so far. I have heard that > there is a new Panasonic unit that will pass caller-ID to regular > phones. Does anyone know of any systems that will do this? My > requirements are for a minimum of 2 outside lines and 6 extensions. The Comdial DX-80 will pass CID to 4 S/L sets. Since a system would probably come with a couple of multi line sets, or you could double up extensions, it might not be a problem. I would guess that correspondingly the Vodavi STS might do the same. The Panasonic digital 308 will pass CID to one S/L station and you could drive a couple of CID boxes. I don't remember if the new systems coming out will do CID to sets. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 07 Jan 2004 18:39:29 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004, back on 1-Jan-1984 > I don't think it's a good idea to start an inter-regional war. The > current implementation of USF certainly leavs something to be desired, > but the theory is as good as ever: the more people you can call, the > more useful your phone is. There are lots of involuntary transfers > from one part of the country to another, and I sure hope you don't > live in California because if you do, I'd like to have a few words > about your water bill. No, not California but Rhode Island. New England in general gets screwed in the federal tax scheme. We put much more money in than we get back, even when you include the Big Dig in Boston. What blew my mind about the Big Dig is that most of it is 6 lane highway. If you've ever driven the highways through Boston or even Providence you know that six lanes isn't adequate. The difference is obvious here in Providence. Once you break past downtown Providence and points south, I-95 becomes 4 lanes. And every day -- in the afternoon there's a huge pile-up during the commute at the change from 4 to 3 lanes coming north. For those living in Cranston and parts of Warwick they can take either RI-10 in or I-295 to RI-6 which then dumps in at the end of RI-10 which then connects back to I-95 near the I-195 interchange. Stupidity of government agencies never fails to amaze me. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 09:51:21 EST Subject: Re: NANP Numbering In a message dated Tue, 06 Jan 2004 13:39:12 -0800 Joseph writes: > Well, it's no different than what other places went through. Smaller > places had differing length phone numbers. Many places in the UK had > three digit telephone numbers up until a few years ago. Many places > in the US if they were small enough might have had as few as 3 digit > telephone numbers as well. When I lived in Konawa, Oklahoma, during the early 1950s and was owner of the Konawa Leader (weekly newspaper), the office number was 234 and my home number was, I believe, 287. This was a dial exchange. The NANP, while in existence, was still in its preliminary stages of being implemented. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: David Winfrey Subject: Re: NANP Numbering; Joey's Advice to the Unwashed Masses Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 13:04:58 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There you go, Earle! Did Joey get you > straightened out, or didn't he? Don't you just love Canadians who > like to pretend they are arrogant USA citizens, with their general > dislike for so much of the customs of the rest of the world? PAT] The editor's credibility might be improved substantially if he would present facts to demonstrate why Joey's various points are not correct. Accusations of arrogance are not particularly useful; rational argument requires actual data. But this is Usenet. Sorry, I forgot. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are forgiven for forgetting this time around. But this Usenet (the very same!) is where Joey Lindstrom can make comments to Earle such as: (Quoting from the back issue a couple days ago:) > Y'know, the way you really, really stretch credulity in order to > construct an argument -- ANY argument -- that something French is better > than something American, reminds me a whole lot of something that > Robin Williams said in his recent concert video. Imagine, if you > will, Robin speaking in an over-the-top French accent, and saying > something like the following (paraphrased to keep it in a g-rated > context): > "Ah, screw you Americans, we hate you ... What's that? Ze Germans are > coming? 'ALLO, AMERICANS! WE LOVE YOU!!!" > Joey Lindstrom So while you are reminising about Usenet and the things you have for- gotten about it, please remember the above as well. In no *moderated* newsgroup would the above total disdain for an entire nation of people be permitted, as Joey has done. And those final two lines above which begin, "ah screw you Americans" was the basis of my response to Joey Lindstrom. So while you complain about my dearth of factual matter, perhaps you might ask Mr. Lindstrom to explain where the above fits in to anything. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: The NANP, and Comments by the Digest's Editor Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:27:32 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NOcom On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 22:51:50 -0600 (CST), [Pat the comp.dcom.telecom editor] wrote: > [I do not know what you are talking about when you > say our numbering system is stable. So stable, in fact, that during > the 1990-2000 time period I had to change my number four times on > account of changes in area codes. I started out in 312, had it for > many years, along with all of northern Illinois. Then it became 773 > because the crybaby banks and financial houses downtown kept wanting > more and more and more and more phones, and *they* thought it was > unfair to make *them* change to 773, so everyone else in Chicago had > to move to 773 to accomodate them (maybe so they would quit crying > about what an expense it would be to make *them* have to change their > stationary, etc ... so a few million rest of us had to change ours > instead). If we had had a 'flexible' numbering system such as parts > of Europe, then the stupid bankers could have had fifteen digit > numbers if they wanted to cover all their PBX-extensions and the > rest of us would have stayed in 312, since the banks and large corp- > orations downtown refused to give it up. The reality is that the form of the NANP has remained pretty much the same since 1947. The changes to area codes have happened because of growth and also because of politics. As was mentioned in another previous bit on this subject the fault for you having to change your number the many times you had to was because everyone did every possible thing that they could do to fight the "inevitable" that instead of carving up areas into smaller and smaller areas they instead did overlays and put another area code in the same area where an area code already served. In retrospect if people knew what they do now about how there was going to be a run on procuring new numbers between 1995 and 2002 they perhaps might have done things differently. Then again some areas probably wouldn't such as Californians who have a fear of dialing extra digits on a local call even though 80% of their calls require them to dial extra digits anyway. Politics has played a big part in the mess. Not only in Chicago, but in Boston among other places. Places with clout got to keep their old area code. Places that didn't have clout were relegated to getting a new area code with all the trouble and expense that goes with it. remove NO from .NOcom to reply ------------------------------ From: Earle Robinson
Subject: NANP and Mr. Cuccia Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 00:53:22 +0100 (Please mask my email address. Thank you.) First all, Mr. Cuccia taxes as arrogant anyone who disagrees with him. Why an ad hominem attack? Mr. Cuccia, not only are there far more people in China than in the USA, but Europe has more people, too. While the UK did fumble its modernization of the telephone numbering system, this didn't occur in the rest of Europe. My number in Paris has remained the same for 20 years now. Friends of mine in the states have endured 3, 4 or more area code changes during this time. In the USA the dialing system is also very confusing. In some areas you dial 7 digits for a local call, in others 10, and in others 11. Why? Mr. Cuccia also praises and repraises the "free" local calls in much of the states. However, he omits a couple of salient points. First, one pays much more monthly for a telephone line in the states than here in France. So, someone who doesn't make many local calls is out of pocket much less here than in the USA. Further, there are now plans that offer a fixed number of minutes per month at a very reasonable rate, too, and some that are unlimited usage. Unlike Mr. Cuccia, I have used both the NANP system and the French system extensively. How can one write without experience? Earle Robinson ------------------------------ Subject: Inventions (was: NANP Numbering) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 20:12:23 EST From: msb@vex.net (Mark Brader) Earle Robinson writes: > The nuclear research was mostly done by men from Europe, too. Turing > was English, the diesel engine was invented in Germany, movies in France > ... Radar and the decryption of German code were done in England. ... The Enigma cipher was first broken in Poland, although the later developments that enabled the Allies to continue breaking it throughout the war, as well as the breaking of the more difficult Geheimschreiber (code name "Fish") ciphers, did take place in England. As for radar, the Germans, the British, the Americans, the French, and the Japanese *all* invented it independently, and all kept it secret from each other until the outbreak of war. The first to complete a working radar system was Rudolf Kühnold (Kuehnold) of Germany, in 1933-34. The Germans were initially interested in naval applications, and they had the first shipboard installation, in 1935. Robert Watson-Watt of Britain invented radar independently in 1935, and was determining the distance to targets months ahead of the Germans. The British government committed to using it for air defense the same year, and by 1937 the British also had airborne radar systems. In the US, work on radar began in 1934 but proceeded more slowly and a working system was not developed until 1936. After the war began, British and US researchers worked together to develop better systems than either country had individually; much of this work was in the US, which also contributed the word "radar" in 1940. -- Mark Brader, Toronto "Unjutsly malinged? I think not." msb@vex.net -- Ross Howard My text in this article is in the public domain. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #11 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jan 8 14:56:12 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i08JuC424986; Thu, 8 Jan 2004 14:56:12 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 14:56:12 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401081956.i08JuC424986@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 #12 TELECOM Digest Thu, 8 Jan 2004 14:55:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 12 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson DISH Network Introduces One-Stop Lowest Price One-Stop Shop (M Solomon) Philips Unveils First Internet-ready TV Set (Monty Solomon) Gates Unveils Innovative New Products and Services at CES (M Solomon) Humax USA to Deliver TiVo(R)-Powered DVR and DVD Recordable (M Solomon) Finnish Study Shows Handset Radiation Within Limits (Monty Solomon) TiVo and Sonic Team Up to Put TiVo on the Go (Monty Solomon) Netscape Launches Low-Cost Internet Access Service (Monty Solomon) Verizon Wireless Announces Roll Out National 3G Network (Monty Solomon) Sony Ericsson Starts Web Gaming Service (Monty Solomon) Verizon Outlines Leadership Strategy for Broadband Era (Monty Solomon) Re: Inventions (was: NANP Numbering) (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Re: AT&T 'Unlimited Country Plans' (Joseph) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 14:40:18 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: DISH Network Introduces Lowest Priced One-Stop Shop DISH Network Introduces Lowest Priced One-Stop Shop for High-Definition TV System - Jan 8, 2004 09:10 AM (BusinessWire) ENGLEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2004-- HD Leader Rolls out Everything You Need for Living Life in HD: Monitor, Satellite TV Receiver, Delivery and Installation for Less Than $1,000 EchoStar Communications Corporation (Nasdaq:DISH) announced today at the 2004 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that the company's DISH Network(TM), a leading American satellite subscription television service, is offering the most affordable high definition television (HDTV) package in the nation. The DISH Network HDTV System provides consumers with everything they need to start enjoying HDTV: a 16:9 HD television monitor, an HD satellite TV receiver, a satellite dish, home delivery and standard professional installation, all for less than $1,000. Further establishing itself as the leader in high definition TV, DISH Network offers a package of popular HD channels, including ESPN HD, Discovery HD Theater, HDNet and HDNet Movies for $9.99 per month or $109.89 annually, the lowest prices in the industry. DISH Network also offers high definition channels such as CBS-HD, HBO-HD, Showtime HD, and DISH-On-Demand pay-per-view HD movies. Offered to new and existing residential customers through a special promotion through Jan. 31, 2004, the DISH Network HD System includes a DISH 811 HD satellite TV receiver/decoder and the customer's choice of a 34-inch CRT or a 40-inch rear-projection wide-screen HD monitor, all for only $999. Delivery and installation are included. Customers must agree to purchase at least America's Top 60 programming package (formerly America's Top 50) for $24.99 per month and the HD package for $9.99 per month for one year. For new customers who already have an HD monitor, DISH Network offers a promotion making the DISH 811 HD satellite TV receiver available for free. This is a savings from the MSRP of $399. DISH Network has further strengthened its HD product line with the introduction of the first-of-its-kind high definition digital video recorder (DVR). The DISH Player-DVR 921 is available now for a $600 upgrade when customers purchase the DISH Network HDTV System. The DISH Player-DVR 921 features a 250-gigabyte hard drive capable of recording up to 25 hours of high definition video or up to 180 hours of standard definition content, or a combination of both. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40144695 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:31:52 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Philips Unveils First Internet-Ready TV Set LAS VEGAS, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Dutch Philips Electronics (AMS:PHG) (NYSE:PHG) on Wednesday unveiled a television set featuring a wireless connection to the Internet and personal computers, enabling it to play music, pictures and video from the Web or PCs. The product, which was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and which is not yet on sale, adds to a range of networked products manufactured by Europe's largest consumer electronics maker. Philips is already selling an Internet-connected HiFi set which can play radio channels that are available on the Web. It has also announced home servers which can pull music and video from the Net and transport it to the TVs and HiFi sets which consumers already have in their homes. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40141144 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:34:07 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Gates Unveils Innovative New Products and Services at CES Gates Unveils Innovative New Products and Services at CES, Details Vision of 'Seamless Computing' for Consumers - Jan 7, 2004 09:50 PM (PR Newswire) Keynote Address Features New Media Center Technologies, MSN Services and Smart Watches For MSN Direct; Gates Highlights Growing Role of Software in Consumer Electronics. LAS VEGAS, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In his keynote address at the 2004 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates expanded on the company's vision for "seamless computing," demonstrating software breakthroughs that deliver unified digital experiences and make the technology in consumers' lives work as a connected whole. Gates introduced a number of products and services that bring the power of software to the world of consumer electronics, including MSN(R) Premium and enhanced MSN services for broadband Internet users; and new Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Media Center Extender Technologies and Portable Media Centers, which make the digital entertainment experiences of Media Center PCs available throughout the home and on the go. Gates also announced retail availability of Smart Watches for MSN Direct, which provide discreet and convenient access to personalized information. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40141782 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:44:38 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Humax USA to Deliver TiVo(R)-Powered DVR and DVD Recordable Details Product Specifications and Distribution Strategy; Signs on Good Guys and Tweeter LAS VEGAS, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Humax, an international leader of digital satellite set-top box manufacturing, today disclosed details of its plan to sell innovative DVRs and DVD recordable products powered by TiVo. Humax has licensed TiVo-technology that will be incorporated into a full line of digital video recorders and DVD recordable products. In the start of the second quarter of 2004, Humax will introduce two standalone TiVo Series 2(R) DVRs consisting of an entry-level 80-hour model and a step-up 250-hour model. Later in the third quarter, Humax plans to deliver two combination DVD recordable models integrated with TiVo's best-of-breed service and robust features including home networking capability, progressive scan output and DV input. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40142910 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:45:35 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Finnish Study Shows Handset Radiation Within Limits By Brett Young HELSINKI, Jan 8 (Reuters) - A survey of some of the world's most popular cell phones found they emit radiation well below agreed limits and largely in line with the data published by manufacturers, a Finnish regulator's study showed on Thursday. The survey by Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority Finland (STUK) covered 12 models made by the world's top handset makers, including Finland's Nokia (HELS:NOK1V), Motorola (NYSE:MOT) of the U.S. and South Korea's Samsung (KOREA:005930). The publication comes at a time that global demand for mobile phones is booming but concern also is rising among consumers and some in the scientific community that mobile phone use can lead to problems ranging from headaches to tumours. Nokia, the world's top player, has forecast 2003 global industry sales of 460 million handsets alone, and some of its rivals expect an even higher number. It foresees 1.6 billion mobile subscribers by 2005. All models tested showed the radiation emitted, or the specific absorption rate (SAR), was well below the agreed level in Europe of two watts per kilogram. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40143058 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:46:26 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo and Sonic Team Up to Put TiVo on the Go LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2004-- Sonic(R) Enables TiVo(R) Series2(TM) Subscribers with Home Media Option(TM) to View Recorded Programming on Laptops, Burn Recorded Programming to DVD on their PCs Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ:SNIC), the leader in DVD creation software, announced today that it has teamed with TiVo (NASDAQ:TIVO), Inc., the creator of television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), to allow TiVo Series2 subscribers with Home Media Option to burn recorded programming onto DVD using Sonic MyDVD(R) and play their TiVo content on their PCs wherever they go with Sonic CinePlayer(TM). The combination of TiVo and Sonic technologies will, for the first time, allow TiVo subscribers to take advantage of their PC to access content on their TiVo DVR, burn to DVD, and enjoy TiVo on the go. The new software is being demonstrated by TiVo and Sonic at CES. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40143266 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:47:55 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Netscape Launches Low-Cost Internet Access Service New Dial-Up Service Offers Unlimited Usage For $9.95 Per Month Online Charity Auction of New Netscape.com E-Mail Addresses Kicks-Off Today on eBay(R) to Benefit City Year Netscape, one of the original pioneers of the Internet, today announced the introduction of a new, affordably priced dial-up Internet service for consumers who want a reliable and low-cost way to get online. The Netscape(R) service costs $9.95 per month for unlimited use and is available now at www.getnetscape.com or the Netscape(R) portal ( www.netscape.com ). With a simple approach of "Just the Net You Need," the Netscape Internet service offers e-mail with built-in spam filters, a convenient start page with news headlines, Internet search enhanced by Google(TM) technology and unlimited dial-up Internet access through an extensive nationwide network with thousands of access numbers, allowing subscribers across the country to get online easily and stay reliably connected. And, with the new service, Netscape.com e-mail addresses are available publicly for the first time, giving subscribers a unique opportunity to create a personalized online address at a renowned Internet brand. To kick off the launch, a special online charity auction of new "@Netscape.com" e-mail addresses begins today on eBay, The World's Online Marketplace(R) (found at www.getnetscape.com/ebay ). Two hundred personalized e-mail addresses of the most popular female and male first names will be up for bid on eBay from January 8 through January 14. In addition to the personalized e-mail address, winning bidders will receive a free year of the Netscape service membership. Minimum bids start at $9.95 and proceeds will go to City Year, which unites a diverse corps of young adults for a demanding year of full-time community service, leadership development and civic engagement. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40143653 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:49:27 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Wireless Announces Roll Out of National 3G Network BroadbandAccess Provides Fastest Wide-Area Wireless Data Connections BEDMINSTER, N.J., and LAS VEGAS, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest and most reliable wireless voice network and the leader in next generation technology deployment, will begin immediately to expand its BroadbandAccess service nationally. Powered by Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) third generation (3G) wide-area network, BroadbandAccess commercial service, with average user speeds of 300-500 kilobits per second (kbps), is expected to be available in many major U.S. cities this summer. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40143779 QUALCOMM Congratulates Verizon Wireless on Planned Nationwide Deployment of CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Services - Jan 8, 2004 07:30 AM (PR Newswire) - First Nationwide Deployment in the United States Will Bring High-Speed Wireless Data Services to Consumers and Businesses - SAN DIEGO, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM), pioneer and world leader of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) digital wireless technology, congratulates Verizon Wireless on its plan to commercially deploy CDMA2000 1xEV-DO services nationwide. The third-generation (3G), high-speed data network, marketed under the name BroadbandAccess, will be available to customers in major markets this summer, with continued deployments across the nation throughout 2004 and 2005. The nationwide deployment of BroadbandAccess comes on the heels of Verizon Wireless' successful commercial deployments in San Diego and Washington, D.C. in October 2003, which signified the first time that CDMA2000 1xEV-DO access was made available in any major metropolitan area in the United States. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40143634 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:51:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Sony Ericsson Starts Web Gaming Service STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Sony Ericsson said Thursday it launched a trial version of its own online gaming service for users of some of its phones, joining others in the bid to bring gaming to cell users. But unlike Finland's Nokia, which released its much-hyped gaming deck N-Gage, Sony Ericsson's service is usable on most of its higher end phones and doesn't use Bluetooth to let gamers play each other head to head. The games, the London-based company said, are online, not stored in a multimedia card inserted into the phone. The first games available include a Rally racer (a four-player game) and RC Battle (an eight-player game). The trial service will let users download the game and then play other users via the online service. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40144216 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 14:03:49 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Outlines Leadership Strategy for Broadband Era Verizon Outlines Leadership Strategy for Broadband Era; Announces Major New 3G Mobile Data and Wireline IP Network Expansions Verizon Chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg, at the Consumer Electronics Show, Says Company Will Invest $3 Billion Over Next Two Years to Bring Broadband to Mass Market LAS VEGAS, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg today unveiled the company's plans for leadership in the emerging broadband industry. He outlined two major new network expansions that are key to bringing the benefits of this new era to homes and businesses across America and said Verizon was committed to investing a total of $3 billion in its networks over the next two years to bring broadband to the mass market. To illustrate Verizon's unique ability to lead in the broadband revolution, Seidenberg also announced a new service, iobism, and new product, Verizon One, that will help families and businesses create a personal network to manage their communications devices and activities. The network expansion initiatives involve both Verizon's wireless and wireline networks. Verizon Wireless will expand its third-generation (3G) mobile data BroadbandAccess network nationwide. In addition to its ongoing annual capital investment program to build network capacity and coverage, the company will invest $1 billion over the next two years to further deploy its broadband technology, known as EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized). Verizon also will dramatically accelerate the evolution of its nationwide wireline network to packet-switching technology and, as announced yesterday, has selected Nortel Networks as its voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) equipment provider. Both moves are major steps toward creating a new growth-market for communications services in the wireless and broadband era. Seidenberg will outline the company's plans and Verizon's vision for the future in an address scheduled for 2:30 p.m. PST today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40144501 ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 08 Jan 2004 05:22:48 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Inventions (was: NANP Numbering) > In the US, work on radar began in 1934 but proceeded more > slowly and a working system was not developed until 1936. But the critical thing that did happen regarding RADAR happened here in the U.S. It essentially got Raytheon to where it is today. Seems the British had to machine the cavity of the magnetron in a fairly robust piece of metal -- it was time consuming and expensive. An engineer from the U.S. whose name escapes me came up with the idea of using stacked plates of the same dimension to form the magnetron cavities. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: AT&T 'Unlimited Country Plans' Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 08:19:19 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NOcom On Wed, 7 Jan 2004 09:06:04 -0500, Monty Solomon wrote: > With a monthly plan fee as low as $39.95 for unlimited calling to the > United Kingdom, calling across the ocean or around the world has never > been easier or more economical. Consumers will enjoy the ease and > convenience of one low monthly plan fee for unlimited international > calls to the eligible country of their choice -- 24 hours a day, seven > days a week -- on direct-dialed calls made from home. In addition, > subscribers who call any other country will receive AT&T's already low > international rates through the AT&T AnyHour Advantage Plan. As a > special value at no additional charge, subscribers to any Unlimited > Country Plan will receive a flat rate on domestic long distance of 7 > cents per minute on all interstate and in-state calls direct-dialed > from home.** How much you wanna bet that once they start selling these all you can eat international plans that they'll introduce (after the fact) limits to prevent people from camping on the line 24 hours a day. We've seen this before several times with Sprint and MCI/Worldcom. And pardon me, but I can't get excited about domestic calls for 7 cents per minute when it's quite easy to find LD carriers giving 2.9 cents/minute and also bill in less than full minute increments as well. remove NO from .NOcom to reply ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #12 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jan 9 01:27:18 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i096RIu27241; Fri, 9 Jan 2004 01:27:18 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 01:27:18 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401090627.i096RIu27241@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 #13 TELECOM Digest Fri, 9 Jan 2004 01:27:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 13 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson XM Satellite, Adobe, Picasa, MoodLogic Bring New Digital Music (Solomon) New TiVo(R) Powered Products in 2004 Include DVD Recorders (M Solomon) New TiVo(R) Service Release Ushers in Era of 'TiVo to Go' (M Solomon) Do Web Search Engines Suppress Controversy? (Monty Solomon) DIRECTV to Add High-Definition Network Signals to its Channel (Solomon) Rhapsody on Home Stereos (Monty Solomon) Philips Shows Off "Contactless" Payment Prototype (Monty Solomon) Murdoch Might Give Away Some Set-Top Boxes - Report (Monty Solomon) Echostar, Viacom Still Talking Toward CBS Deal (Monty Solomon) Annoying Phone Calls (Andy Nelson) Re: Inventions (was: NANP Numbering) (Scott Dorsey) Re: Gates Unveils Innovative New Products and Services at CES (jmeissen) Re: Netscape Launches Low-Cost Internet Access Service (John McHarry) My First Phone (was Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004 (Al Gillis) Touchtone Accuracy Tests (Pete Romfh) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 15:15:48 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: XM Satellite, Adobe, Picasa, MoodLogic Bring New Digital Music XM Satellite, Adobe, Picasa, MoodLogic Bring New Digital Music, Photo Services To TiVo(R) Via Home Media Option(TM) - Jan 8, 2004 01:00 PM (PR Newswire) Leading Digital Content Companies Recognize Simplicity, Control of Home Media Option To Create Enjoyable Living Room Entertainment Experience LAS VEGAS, INTERNATIONAL CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), the creator of digital video recorders (DVRs), said new development partnerships with leading digital photo and music companies will expand the features and capabilities of the TiVo service through its groundbreaking Home Media Option(TM). Home Media Option is the easy-to-use solution for transporting digital content stored on the PC to the television where it can be enjoyed by the entire family. Now top digital media companies are extending their products so they easily and simply communicate with TiVo connected to the home network through Home Media Option. At the International Consumer Electronics Show, TiVo demonstrated new digital media services that are being developed by XM Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: XMSR), that will bring satellite radio to the home entertainment center. Other new services from Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE), MoodLogic and Picasa were also showcased by TiVo at CES. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40146769 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 15:17:14 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: New TiVo(R) Powered Products in 2004 Include DVD Recorders, HD New TiVo(R) Powered Products in 2004 Include DVD Recorders, HD DVR, and Home Network Enabled Products - Jan 8, 2004 01:00 PM (PR Newswire) TiVo Hallmarks of Simplicity and Control Fuel Proliferation of New Products LAS VEGAS, INTERNATIONAL CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO) today said new products powered by TiVo in 2004 will include DVD recorders, high-definition DVRs, and home network enabled products. These new products point to growing opportunities for TiVo in the marketplace, as the simplicity and control that TiVo is known for becomes a sought after differentiator by consumer electronics companies to drive adoption for many new digital entertainment products. In 2004, consumers will be able to experience TiVo in ways never before possible. From DVD recorders that deliver on the unfulfilled promise of the VCR, to the HD enabled DIRECTV (NYSE:GMH) DVR, to the most popular standalone DVR on the market, the TiVo Series2(TM), TiVo is offering consumers unparalleled functionality and ease of use, in packages to fit any lifestyle. In fact, consumers will be able to choose from over a dozen TiVo powered products from industry leaders including DIRECTV, Hughes, Humax, Philips, Pioneer, RCA, Samsung and Toshiba this year. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40146764 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 16:12:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: New TiVo(R) Service Release Ushers in Era of 'TiVo to Go' TiVo Service Upgrade, Software from Sonic Solutions, TiVo Content Security Key, Lets You Easily Transfer Recordings to a PC and Take Them On the Road LAS VEGAS, INTERNATIONAL CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO) announced today it intends to deliver a new service release in the Fall of 2004 called "TiVoToGo(TM)." For the first time, TiVo subscribers with Home Media Option(TM) will be able to move their favorite programs stored on a TiVo DVR to a laptop for viewing on the road, or to any PC. For those who have a PC equipped with a DVD burner, programs can then be burned to DVD so users can take the TiVo experience with them wherever they go. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40146765 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 16:50:58 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Do Web Search Engines Suppress Controversy? by Susan L. Gerhart Abstract Web behavior depends upon three interlocking communities: (1) authors whose Web pages link to other pages; (2) search engines indexing and ranking those pages; and (3) information seekers whose queries and surfing reward authors and support search engines. Systematic suppression of controversial topics would indicate a flaw in the Web's ideology of openness and informativeness. This paper explores search engines' bias by asking: Is a specific well-known controversy revealed in a simple search? Experimental topics include: distance learning, Albert Einstein, St. John's Wort, female astronauts, and Belize. The experiments suggest simple queries tend to overly present the "sunnny side" of these topics, with minimal controversy. A more "Objective Web" is analyzed where: (a) Web page authors adopt research citation practices; (b) search engines balance organizational and analytic content; and, (c) searchers practice more wary multi-searching. Contents Understanding Web behavior: Politics, technology and users. Why does visibility of controversy matter? Case studies of controversial topics Summary of case studies: How much is controversy suppressed? Limits of the experiments Explanations for controversy revealing/suppression General explanations Toward a more objective Web A simulated objective Web Conclusions http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_1/gerhart/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 18:04:15 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: DIRECTV to Add High-Definition Network Signals to its Channel DIRECTV to Add High-Definition Network Signals to its Channel Lineup; Agreement in Place to Offer CBS-HD Programming 8 January 2004, 11:00am ET LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2004--Continuing to expand its high-definition and enhanced digital television programming, DIRECTV, Inc., the nation's leading digital multichannel television service provider, announced today that it plans to offer CBS-HD programming -- including hit primetime series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and "Everybody Loves Raymond," as well as the Sunday, Feb. 1 broadcast of Super Bowl XXXVIII -- in the coming weeks. A similar agreement with FOX is expected to be reached in the next several weeks. The CBS-HD programming, from WCBS in New York and KCBS in Los Angeles, will be available to eligible DIRECTV customers in markets where CBS owns and operates stations, including Chicago; Philadelphia; San Francisco; Boston; Dallas; Detroit; Minneapolis; Miami; Denver; Pittsburgh; Baltimore; Salt Lake City; Austin, Texas; and Green Bay, Wis. Similarly, FOX programming is also expected to be offered to customers in FOX O&O markets. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401081600_BWR__BW5448 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 22:24:51 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Rhapsody on Home Stereos PRISMIQ Teams with RealNetworks To Give Consumers Access to Rhapsody on Home Stereos PRISMIQ/Rhapsody Combo On Display During CES; Visit TechHome TechZone (Booth #17695, South Hall 2) and RealNetworks booth (#22611, South Hall) at Las Vegas Convention Center. SAN MATEO, Calif., Jan. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- PRISMIQ, Inc. ( www.PRISMIQ.com ), a leader in networked entertainment devices and software, today announced it has joined together with RealNetworks, Inc. ( http://www.real.com ), the leading creator of digital media services and software, to enable its customers to listen to RealNetworks' award-winning Rhapsody Internet jukebox service on their home stereo via a wireless or wired home network. PRISMIQ's award-winning entertainment gateway product line, the PRISMIQ MediaPlayer and the PRISMIQ MediaPlayer/Recorder, are next generation entertainment gateways that sit on or near the home theater system and connect to the home network to access PC Media and Internet services. RealNetworks' Rhapsody is the #1 Internet jukebox service, offering unlimited access to more than 30,000 CDs of music for just $9.95 per month. By working together, the companies will enable consumers to enjoy Rhapsody's wide-ranging library of music and the service's high-fidelity Internet radio on their home entertainment systems. PRISMIQ and RealNetworks both embrace the UPnP(TM) (Universal Plug and Play) standard to communicate and share information and media across consumers' home networks. PRISMIQ recently completed integration of RealNetworks' Rhapsody SDK, which ensures that consumers enjoy unlimited remote access to their entire Rhapsody library while still honoring copyrights. Only networked home audio components that are certified to be compliant with RealNetworks' security enhancements can bring the Rhapsody experience to the digital home. The next public release of PRISMIQ software, currently scheduled for early February, will contain code that enables existing and future customers to enjoy Rhapsody. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40150831 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 22:27:38 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Philips Shows Off "Contactless" Payment Prototype By Ben Berkowitz LAS VEGAS, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Philips Semiconductors on Thursday unveiled a new technology in cooperation with credit card provider Visa International that it said promises to make wireless commerce as easy as the wave of a hand. Philips Semiconductors, a unit of Philips Electronics (AMS:PHG), on Thursday took the wraps off Near Field Communication, or NFC, a technology to enable a new kind of "contactless" payment. As opposed to well-known limited-distance wireless standards like Bluetooth, NFC has a much shorter range -- 4 inches or so -- and does not require secured pairings as Bluetooth devices do. Philips executives said their goal was to incorporate the NFC technology in a wide range of computers, handheld devices and cell phones. Visa said the technology could also be built into a new generation of credit cards. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40151054 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 22:29:46 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Murdoch Might Give Away Some Set-Top Boxes - Report NEW YORK, Jan 8 (Reuters) - News Corp. (AUS:NCP) (NYSE:NWS) chairman Rupert Murdoch said he might give away some digital video recorder set-top boxes to lure cable subscribers to News Corp.'s newly acquired satellite TV provider DirecTV, according to an interview in Business Week magazine. A spokesman for News Corp. in New York was not immediately available for comment on Thursday. Last month, the Federal Communications Commission and antitrust enforcers approved the $6.78 billion plan by News Corp. to gain control of DirecTV, the No. 1 U.S. satellite television provider and a pipeline into millions of American television sets with 12 million subscribers. In an interview in the latest issue of Business Week magazine, Murdoch was asked whether he would give away set-top boxes to lure cable subscribers. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40151141 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 23:53:15 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Echostar, Viacom Still Talking Toward CBS Deal LOS ANGELES, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Satellite TV provider EchoStar Communications Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH) and Viacom Inc. (NYSE:VIAb) have extended talks into next week on a deal that would include broadcast rights for CBS stations in major cities, including New York and Los Angeles, both sides said on Thursday. EchoStar also said that while negotiations continued, it has asked the U.S. District Court in San Francisco to hold in abeyance a lawsuit it filed a day earlier. EchoStar's suit seeks to block Viacom from withdrawing rebroadcast rights for its CBS-owned stations. The suit says Viacom has insisted that any deal for rights to its CBS affiliates must include arrangements for Viacom-owned cable networks such as a new offering, Nicktoons. By making that link, Viacom's actions amounted to an illegal restraint on trade, the lawsuit said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40151063 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 11:54:07 PST From: Andy Nelson Subject: Annoying Phone Calls Can someone explain this? One day last week, on New Year's Eve in the afternoon, I'm at home since I have the day off from work. My phone rings once, briefly. I try to answer it and get a dial tone. I hang up, thinking someone must have dialed a wrong number and hung up but my phone rang anyway. Within three seconds, my phone rings again. Briefly. Almost as short as the courtesy ring when I forward my calls. So nothing can come through on call display. Again, every time I answer, they have hung up or disconnected and all I have is a dial tone. This happens many times in just a two or three minute period! So, I do a *69 to get a quote of the calling number if possible. It quotes back a local area number, a number which ends in all zeros. I forget exactly what the Name displayed, but it was a four character name like a company's abbreviation. I remember trying to look them up in the latest phone book but couldn't find any entry for them. I also never heard of this company or that abbreviation before. I also try to do a Call Block on that number, and whether I let the system try to block the "last incoming call" or I try to manually enter that number in myself, I get a message that "this number cannot be added to your call block list". I even tried calling back to that number, but I get a recording that says that the number is not a good or working number! Huh? I called into my voicemail to see if somehow those calls forwarded to my voicemail and maybe someone left a message. While trying to navigate my voicemail, I keep getting a Call Waiting beep tone every five seconds, and the Call Display shows that very same number, each time I get a beep, every time it takes up another slot on my Call Display box! It almost seems like SPAM, where every few seconds, another spam pops into your inbox, where you get fifty or sixty porno spams in a very short period of time! All like I'm being attacked! HELP! After a few minutes, the phone call attacks seem to stop. And so far it hasn't happened again, thankfully! Do telephone companies still provide Annoyance Call Bureaus? With competition these days, you wonder if one company can file official complaints about customers with a different phone company because of annoying, obscene or threatening calls from the customer of the other phone company, or if anything can be followed through. But has this happened to anyone else before? Thanks, Andy ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Inventions (was: NANP Numbering) Date: 8 Jan 2004 15:51:17 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Mark Brader wrote: > As for radar, the Germans, the British, the Americans, the French, and > the Japanese *all* invented it independently, and all kept it secret > from each other until the outbreak of war. The first to complete a > working radar system was Rudolf Kühnold (Kuehnold) of Germany, in > 1933-34. The Germans were initially interested in naval applications, > and they had the first shipboard installation, in 1935. Right, BUT, what the English had was the magnetron. Everybody else was limited to very long wavelengths, which made their systems comparatively less useful. > Robert Watson-Watt of Britain invented radar independently in 1935, > and was determining the distance to targets months ahead of the > Germans. The British government committed to using it for air defense > the same year, and by 1937 the British also had airborne radar > systems. This was the CHAIN HOME system, which operated on 45 MHz. The German gear of the same era was also working on similarly long wavelengths. > In the US, work on radar began in 1934 but proceeded more > slowly and a working system was not developed until 1936. After the > war began, British and US researchers worked together to develop > better systems than either country had individually; much of this work > was in the US, which also contributed the word "radar" in 1940. -- The concept of radar is fairly intuitive and it's not surprising that many different groups in the thirties came up with it at the same time. What is amazing is the magnetron tube with the ability to generate extremely short wavelength signals for high resolution images. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Gates Unveils Innovative New Products and Services at CES Date: 8 Jan 2004 23:05:54 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > Software in Consumer Electronics. > LAS VEGAS, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In his keynote address at > the 2004 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Microsoft > Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates expanded on the > company's vision for "seamless computing," ..... > Gates introduced a number of products and services that bring the > power of software to the world of consumer electronics, including > MSN(R) Premium and enhanced MSN services for broadband Internet > users; and new Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Media Center Extender > Technologies and Portable Media Centers, which make the digital > entertainment experiences of Media Center PCs available throughout > the home and on the go. Gates also announced retail availability of > Smart Watches for MSN Direct, which provide discreet and convenient > access to personalized information. So this is how far CES has fallen? The keynote address is now a product announcement platform for Microsoft. I think Bill Gates should be banned from making the keynote addresses in the future because he has bastardized it like this. I'm sure there are REAL industry visionaries out there who can think of more than what will make Microsoft richer. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Netscape Launches Low-Cost Internet Access Service Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 19:35:16 -0500 Monty Solomon wrote: > New Dial-Up Service Offers Unlimited Usage For $9.95 Per Month > Online Charity Auction of New Netscape.com E-Mail Addresses > Kicks-Off Today on eBay(R) to Benefit City Year > Netscape, one of the original pioneers of the Internet, today > announced the introduction of a new, affordably priced dial-up > Internet service for consumers who want a reliable and low-cost way to > get online. The Netscape(R) service costs $9.95 per month for > unlimited use and is available now at www.getnetscape.com or the > Netscape(R) portal ( www.netscape.com ). I couldn't find a list of dialup numbers. While Netscape has a good name, I wouldn't sign up without knowing they offer local access where I live. This looks like they have a couple bugs to work out in their marketing presentation. ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: My First Phone (was Re: Twenty Years Ago Today 1-Jan-2004) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 16:13:59 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com (Much snippage...) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Interesting how you mention your very > own first telephone. I first got subscribed under my own name back in > 1960, when I moved out from living with Mommie Dearest to my own > little place in Hyde Park (the U of C neighborhood on the south side > of Chicago.) The monthly bill was around six or seven dollars and my > roomate and I agreed to split the bill but each be responsible for > our own long distance charges and or telegrams which were sent by > phone. Illinois Bell did not ask for deposits, or run credit checks, > etc. You simply called them one day and they came out the next day to > put the phone in. They trusted you to pay the bill when it arrived. > We decided on a green 'palmolive' color rotary dial phone and since > we lived in an apartment-hotel with a switchboard the phone man put in > a phone with a turn-button: one side of the turn button was the switch- > board phone (DOrchester 3-7500), the other side of the turn button > was our private phone (HYDe Park 3-3714). We did have a bell-chime > device to ring the phone (it sounded like a doorbell) and we had to > pay fifty-cents per month for that side ringer. Touch tone was not > available. ESS features were still ten years distant for the > downtown Chicago area and fifteen years distant for the other areas of > Chicago. PAT] When I ordered My First Telephone the Business Office customer service representative finally got to the question about color. Somehow I was evidently thinking of television and responded that I'd like "a black and white set". Well -- that clearly touched a raw nerve for this Lily Tomlin-like CSR. She spent several minutes explaining to me that this was the TELEPHONE and should not be compared to other services I might use and that two-tone telephone sets were not available and would I prefer a BLACK set or one of the half-dozen colors they offered? Feeling sufficiently chastised, I asked for plain black and we went on with the ordering process. Hoping to save a much money as possible I selected a rotary dial and no extensions! Them were the days! Al [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There were a lot of Lilly Tomlin-like service reps in those days. But truth be told, telco employees got a lot of grief from the customers also. Somewhere around, I have a sort of ragged, torn up copy of a 1923 directory from Chicago Telephone Company. I think it was the last year of Chicago Telephone, before they were bought out by the Bell consortium and changed into Illinois Bell. On the front cover down in the corner was a little announcement saying, 'Our subscribers are requested to speak in the same courteous, non-abusive way to our operators which they expect to hear in return. Would you want our operators to curse at you? It is not their fault if a line is engaged when you try to reach it.' And that was altogether too common: A rude, crude person (usually a man but not always) would ask for a number that historically was always busy -- such as the train or bus station information line -- and upon being told for the umpteenth time that 'the lion is busy' and respond with a string of curse words in the operator's ear, as if she could have corrected the problem had she been competent and not too lazy to do so. And anytime an operator or customer service rep cursed at a subscriber -- and they sometimes lost their 'cool' and did so, chances are likely they were fired on the spot. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Pete Romfh Subject: Touchtone Accuracy Tests Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 21:46:27 -0600 Organization: Not Organized As part of evaluating some proposed systems I need to find a simple way to verify that DTMF is passed accurately over various parts of a TDM/VoIP network. Obviously I could dial a series of extensions and verify they are reached but I'm looking for something like the old CO test number where you could call in, hit digits 1 through 0 and get a couple of beeps or the dialed digits read) back. Failing that, is there an inexpensive test set that will give me some quantifiable test results? I'm open to creative ideas. Pete Romfh, Telecom Geek & Amateur Gourmet. promfh at Texas dot net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Check Mike Sandman's catalog online at http://www.sandman.com . He sells a device which prints out with LED the digits that are heard. PAT] ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V23 #13 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Jan 10 00:17:03 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0A5H3a03589; Sat, 10 Jan 2004 00:17:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 00:17:03 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401100517.i0A5H3a03589@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 #14 TELECOM Digest Sat, 10 Jan 2004 00:17:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 14 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Caller ID and Spying??? (desiv) Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot (Sam Nickerson) Re: Netscape Launches Low-Cost Internet Access Service (John Levine) AT&T High Speed Service Question (BMN) One-Stop Shopping Approach to HDTV (Monty Solomon) Norvergence (n-line@juno.com) Maverick Wireless Corporation Launches Wireless Broadband (Eworldwire) Posting FAQ (Brett M Nelson) 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: desiv Subject: Caller ID and Spying??? Organization: Comcast Online Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 01:53:58 GMT OK, being the tech in the family, I get an email from my mom. Her friend is freaked out. Her friend has CallWave. She was online when my mom called, but here's the thing ... For the phone number, it shows my mom's number. BUT for the name, it shows someone else's name!!! Now, this is the first time she's seen it with this other name, so she's freaked out. (She even took pics of the screen with her digicam..) Now, here's where I get concerned ... The "other person" is involved in a messy divorce with my sister. (I'm not taking sides, just stating facts) ... and ... The "other person" works for a security company. Surveillance type stuff ... My first reaction, knowing a little (just a little) about Caller ID was that ... that shouldn't happen. My mom's number and someone else's name. As far as I know, Caller ID is data sent over the phone line from the phone company. When my mom called this lady, QWest detects that this woman is on the phone, and forwards the call and ANI info to Callwave. They (Callwave) then sends it to this woman's PC. So, if this my mom calls, it should be her number AND name. If this other person called, it should be his number and name. But how is it my mom's number and his name? Now, I'm not asking how HE did it (if he did) ... What I want to know is how would that be possible??? Something like call forwarding or transferring?? Some way someone could monitor phone calls??? I do computer networking, not telco, so I'm not "up" on this stuff ... I told my mom that even tho I was a tech, I wasn't a phreak. Or even someone who uses this stuff enough to know. I don't even have a home phone. :-) Cable modem ... Any ideas on what it might be? What they should look for? She called QWest and they confirmed his name is not on the account and hasn't ever been ... Thanx in advance. signed, confused ... P.S. I've read abit more about Caller ID since.. Apparently QWest would have sent the number to Callwave, and they would have checked a database to get the name??? (right?) So, it could be that the database they checked happens to have this other name. Still weird and a heck of a coincidence if it is. ------------------------------ From: Sam Nickerson Subject: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot Organization: Comcast Online Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 03:14:42 GMT Just a quick warning to anyone thinking about going Vonage for the "Virtual Number" feature. I am a new customer to them; jumped on board because of the virtual number idea. I have a mother in Florida living on a fixed income and it would help her alot to be able to call me when she needs to. After getting set up and generating a virtual number, mom in Florida at the same area code could not make a non-toll call. I called Vonage customer no care and they said the prefix generated was not in her calling region ... sorry. Was there any way for them to refund the 14 bucks I spent on a useless number ... nope. But they did give me a list of prefixes that would work for her, and that all I need to do was generate another and look at the number before final submit and I would not get charged, just hit back and try another until a working number magically appears and hit submit to accept it. Tried that, then found the generated number does not show prior to submit and I get hit with another 14 bucks charge. 28 bucks of worthless numbers I, and mom, can not use. Called Vonage Customer no care again, guy says sorry, let me put a credit against your account for the 14 bucks so you can try again at no charge. Thru the dice again, no good. Well sorry sir, guess we don't have numbers in her local area; nothing I can do about the 28 bucks you have spent so far, no managers around that can help, send us an email and they will review. Sheeeesh, for a company looking to break into an emerging market you would think they would handle customers better, their marketing group is spending a lot of time, money and effort only to have customer no care mess it up. Just my experience; your mileage may vary. Sam [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, Sam, I am really sorry to hear about your bad experience with Vonage thus far. But if you do send a copy of the same letter you sent here to them, they will in fact read it, and very likely help you out. My other suggestion at this point would be to select (from among the various Florida area codes and prefixes on display in the drop down menus) a number that, even if not absolutely local to your mom is in some sort of 'extended' area that she could call for 'almost' nothing extra. In fact, since I am a user of Vonage with fairly good standing with them, include this note from me when you email Vonage, and ask their personal assistance in resolving the matter. I feel certain they will resolve it in a favorable way to you. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jan 2004 07:44:48 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Netscape Launches Low-Cost Internet Access Service Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I couldn't find a list of dialup numbers. While Netscape has a good > name, I wouldn't sign up without knowing they offer local access > where I live. This looks like they have a couple bugs to work out in > their marketing presentation. It's AOL, it's the same enormous list of dialups. ------------------------------ Reply-To: BMN From: BMN Subject: AT&T High Speed Service Question Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 07:06:32 -0500 Organization: Bell Sympatico Anyone have any experience with AT&T high speed service. I have a corp client that has a bill for approx $5K monthly for a data service which looks as though it is connecting two sites. There are no other details on the bill and it seems very expensive, even for a private line. Site A is in Indiana and Site B is in Wisconsin. Site A is $3500 with a $1400 credit and B is $5000 with a $2000 credit, but no other info. Further investigation with the CSR and the client will tell me, but this is the second time I have seen one of these inexplicable AT&T high speed service bills. The last one tuned out to be some FR services. But the amounts on this bill are astronomical. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 08:57:20 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: One-Stop Shopping Approach to HDTV By ERIC A. TAUB The satellite retransmission industry hopes to push the popularity of high-definition television by taking a page from the shopping mall playbook. On Jan. 1, PanAmSat, a satellite operator that beams programming to local cable operators for transmission to their customers, switched many of its HDTV channels to a new satellite that the company is positioning into something it calls an HDTV neighborhood. Trading on a successful marketing approach used for analog television since the 1980's, the company, which is owned primarily by Hughes Electronics, says it thinks that cable operators will be more likely to offer HDTV programming if they, like shoppers who go to a mall, can find the good things all in one place. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/business/media/05sat.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 15:49:28 GMT Subject: Norvergence From: N-Line@juno.com Patrick, You seem to have the most insight to this company. (From looking at forums.) They've approached us with their "service" and I'm in the process of trying to figure out if they are reputable. Can you help? Chad [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would suggest two things: one, look and scan through our back issues file for December just past and read some of the messages there, none of which are very favorable. I also suggest you wait a day or two while this inquiry from you makes the rounds on comp.dcom.telecom (and other participating newsgroups) and see if some of the readers wake up and respond to you directly; again, the most recent replies were not very favorable from Norvergence's point of view. The company seems rather litigous, or anxious to sue anyone who gives them a bum rap. For instance, they threatened to sue me if I did not remove the most disparaging messages about them from our archives. I did not remove the messages, but its not that they did not try to make me (short of suit), including an inquiry they made of MIT's legal counsel. I'd review their contract they'll ask you to sign as a condition of getting the 'Matrix box' **very carefully** and let's see if any readers write you direct with responses. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Eworldwire Subject: Maverick Wireless Corporation Launches City-Wide Wireless Services Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 16:33:53 -0500 Maverick Wireless Corporation Successfully Launches City-Wide Wireless Broadband Services Maverick Wireless Proves Its CITYWIDE WiFi(TM) Services Are the Answer to Rural America's Broadband Needs BOTHELL, Wash/EWORLDWIRE/Jan. 9, 2004 --- Maverick Wireless Corporation today announced the successful launch of its CITYWIDE WiFi(TM) services in Benton County, Washington. It is the first community in the United States to enjoy what Maverick Wireless proclaims will be commonplace throughout the nation. "Recent technological advances and the international adoption of wireless broadband standards have made the viability of city-wide wireless broadband services a reality. The technology is now at a point where skilled wireless broadband service providers can offer their services across entire cities and even address the needs of communities that do not have access to traditional broadband options," David Schmelke, President and founder of Maverick Wireless Corporation. "Broadband is essential to the economic growth of our community and making it available throughout the county is among our highest priorities. The experts at Maverick Wireless are without a doubt the best at what they do and they have been an important part of our success," said a Benton PUD Representative. According to Mr. Schmelke, it is up to wireless experts to lead the charge into this new era of broadband. Schmelke, the former Director of Wireless Data at T-Mobile, USA, says that the successful commercialization of city-wide WiFi networks depend entirely on the wireless expertise and the abilities of the service providers to design, deploy, and support their customers. "The successful deployment of a carrier grade, community-wide WiFi network is as complex a challenge as one can imagine. The reason we're emerging as a leading authority on this subject is because of our deep rooted wireless knowledge. Benton County's successful launch is our proof that we understand the technology, the unique challenges surrounding such a deployment, and how to successfully overcome those challenges," says Schmelke. He adds, "Contrary to the belief of many traditional Internet Service Providers, you can't simply throw up towers and have a robust network that is truly ready for subscribers." Maverick's CITYWIDE WiFi(TM) network in Benton County covers an area of 40 square miles. Subscribers enjoy the freedom of accessing the Internet at broadband speeds anytime, from anywhere within the wide area network. CITYWIDE WiFi(TM) monthly rate plans range from $19.95 for a 128Kbps account to $49.95 for a 1Mbps account. To address security concerns the service also boasts 256bit encryption, user authentication, and certificate-based protection. Skilled sales, installation, customer care and technical support representatives are available to ensure that the service is easy to use. Gayle Cook, a CITYWIDE WiFi(TM) Subscriber states, "Maverick Wireless provided one of the best sales and service experiences I've ever had. The people at Maverick helped me understand the advantages of wireless broadband and they helped me select the best CITYWIDE WiFi(TM) service plan for my needs. I couldn't be happier with my decision to use their services." About Maverick Wireless Corporation Maverick Wireless Corporation is a leading authority on community-wide wireless broadband services. Founded by the former Director of Wireless Data at T-Mobile, USA, Maverick is a privately held wireless services corporation based in Bothell, Washington. For more information on CITYWIDE WiFi(TM) Services from Maverick Wireless Corporation, please visit www.citywidewifi.com HTML: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/wr/010904/2037.htm PDF: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/pdf/010904/2037.pdf ONLINE NEWSROOM: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/2071.htm LOGO: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/2071.htm CONTACT: Rolf DeDamm Maverick Wireless Corporation Bothell, WA PHONE. (425) 444-2945 EMAIL: dedamm@maverickwireless.com http://www.maverickwireless.com WEBSITES: http://www.maverickwireless.com, http://www.citywidewifi.com SOURCE: Maverick Wireless ATTACHED MEDIA: Logo: Maverick Wireless Logo (size: 40.0 k) Maverick Wireless Logo http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/media_uploads/Maverick_Wireless.jpg Logo: CityWide WiFi Large (size: 40.0 k) CityWide Logo large http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/media_uploads/Citywide_WiFi_Large.jpg Copyright 2003 Eworldwire, All rights reserved. Press Relase Distribution By EWORLDWIRE http://www.eworldwire.com (973)252-6800. For Media Questions: http://www.eworldwire.com/forthemedia.htm ------------------------------ Reply-To: From: Brett M Nelson Subject: Posting FAQ Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:43:50 -0500 Is there an FAQ about posting to the newsgroup? My posts aren't going through and would like to know if I am not following a required format. Regards, Brett Nelson Corporate Head Office Associate Director Consultant Development Schooley Mitchell Telecom Consultants 211 Ontario Street Stratford, Ontario N5A 3H3 main number (519)275-3339 auto-attendant (519)273-5163 x223 facsimile (519)273-5331 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I answered this gentleman in email and the answer is worth repeating here: "I am the moderator of TELECOM Digest, which is the newsletter-digest format for the comp.dcom.telecom newsgroup. There really are very few 'rules' to follow for posting to the newsgroup; here they are: "Send your posting as email to 'editor@telecom-digest.org'. "Make a copy for yourself at least until it is printed/answered. "After you post it in email, within a few seconds or minutes you should recieve an auto acknowlegment that it was recieved. "Most submissions are printed the same day received or the next day at the latest. A few I choose not to use for whatever reasons. "Try and edit what you sent to make my work easier, correcting spelling errors and formatting, etc. "Your message actually goes several places: 1) to the TELECOM Digest newsletter, which is published 1-2 times each day; 2) to the comp.dcom.telecom newsgroup. (A batch of messages is released each time an issue of the Digest is published.) 3) to supplemental telecom newsgroups such as Yahoo groups telecom_news, AOL, and Compuserve. "You should have received an auto-ack to this message of inquiry you sent to me. That *should* arrive each time you write here. "If you read the Digest version of the group http://telecom-digest.org for a few days before writing you will see the general format to use, etc." Patrick Townson TELECOM Moderator ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #14 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Jan 10 22:21:33 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0B3LXA08855; Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:21:33 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:21:33 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401110321.i0B3LXA08855@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 #15 TELECOM Digest Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:21:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 15 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FBI, Justice Dept. Seek Wiretaps For VoIP (Marcus Didius Falco) "Talibanism in Technology" (Marcus Didius Falco) Casino Chips to Carry RFID Tags (Monty Solomon) The Click Heard Round The World (Monty Solomon) C-Band TX'er In PCI Form Factor (Chay) Re: Caller ID and Spying??? (Ray Normandeau) Re: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot (John Levine) Re: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot (Joe@nospancity.com) Re: Maverick Wireless Corporation Launches City-Wide WISP (Dan Burstein) Verizon DSL - Idiots (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Verizon RI Pricing (Kilo Delta One Sierra) You Didn't Forget Did You? Do it Now! (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 19:41:51 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: FBI, Justice Dept. Seek Wiretaps For VoIP X-URL: http://www.mccullagh.org/ http://news.com.com/2100-7352-5137344.html Feds seek wiretap access via VoIP Last modified: January 8, 2004, 7:42 AM PST By Declan McCullagh The FBI and the Justice Department have renewed their efforts to wiretap voice conversations carried across the Internet. The agencies have asked the Federal Communications Commission to order companies offering voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service to rewire their networks to guarantee police the ability to eavesdrop on subscribers' conversations. Without such mandatory rules, the two agencies predicted in a letter to the FCC last month that "criminals, terrorists, and spies (could) use VoIP services to avoid lawfully authorized surveillance." The letter also was signed by the Drug Enforcement Administration. [...] One unusual section of the FBI letter is that it claims the bureau is seeking to protect Americans' privacy rights: "Mandatory CALEA compliance by VoIP providers would better protect the privacy of VoIP users than a voluntary approach. CALEA protects the privacy of surveillance suspects by requiring carriers to provision the surveillance in a confidential manner." Otherwise, the FBI argues, a VoIP company might turn over a "full pipe" to police that would include conversations of more people than necessary. [...] Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 19:47:33 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: "Talibanism in Technology" From: K.Ellis To: David Farber Sent: Jan 10, 2004 11:24 AM Subject: "Talibanism in Technology" Interesting read. "Talibanism in Technology" deals with seven reasons why women in technology are invisible http://www.dqindia.com/content/special/103022602.asp Karen Ellis <>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> The Educational CyberPlayGround http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ Hot List of Schools Online Net Happenings,K12 Newsletters, Network Newsletters http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Community/index.html "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" Funk Brothers http://www.edu-cyberpg.com//funkbrothers.html 7 Hot Site Awards New York Times, USA Today , MSNBC, Earthlink, USA Today Best Bets For Educators, Macworld Top Fifty <>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 16:48:52 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Casino Chips to Carry RFID Tags 11:48 09 January 04 New Scientist When rumours surfaced in 2003 that the European Central Bank was quietly planning to put RFID (radio frequency identification) tags in euro banknotes to combat fraud and money laundering, privacy groups balked at the possibility that anybody with an RFID reader could count the money in wallets of passers by. While the rumours have not been confirmed or denied a new generation of casino chips with built-in RFID tags is giving an insight into the way banks and shops could keep track of real money if it were tagged. The chips will be launched later in 2004 and will allow casino operators to spot counterfeits and thefts, and also to monitor the behaviour of gamblers. RFID tags are tiny silicon chips that broadcast a unique identification code when prompted by a reader device. The tags do not need batteries, since they simply modify the radio signal fired at them by the reader. The readers work over distances ranging from a few centimetres to a few dozen metres, depending on the type of tag. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994542 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 17:04:09 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Click Heard Round The World The Click Heard Round The World It was December 1968. An obscure scientist from Stanford Research Institute stood before a hushed San Francisco crowd and blew every mind in the room. His 90-minute demo rolled out virtually all that would come to define modern computing: videoconferencing, hyperlinks, networked collaboration, digital text editing, and something called a "mouse." Doug Engelbart tells writer Ken Jordan what it felt like to launch the point-and-click revolution 15 years before the Mac. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/mouse.html ------------------------------ From: Chay Subject: C-Band TX'er In PCI Form Factor Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 13:51:22 -0500 Looking for a transmitter for C-Band frequencies in PCI form factor. For DVB/IP two way internet access. Similiar to those used by Gilat and Web-Sat. Anyone know of any? ------------------------------ From: rayta@msn.com (Ray Normandeau) Subject: Re: Caller ID and Spying??? Date: 10 Jan 2004 11:51:31 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com desiv wrote in message news:: > For the phone number, it shows my mom's number. BUT for the name, it > shows someone else's name!!! It is almost AS IF your mom's outgoing calls were being routed thru someone else who was passing thru the Caller ID but goofed up on the name. ------------------------------ Date: 10 Jan 2004 05:45:01 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I have a mother in Florida living on a fixed income and it would help > her alot to be able to call me when she needs to. After getting set > up and generating a virtual number, mom in Florida at the same area > code could not make a non-toll call. I called Vonage customer no care > and they said the prefix generated was not in her calling region > ... sorry. When you get a Vonage number, you can specify the exact rate center where you want the number. For example, if you pick 954, then you can pick Coral Springs, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, or Pompano Beach. It is not exactly a state secret that local calling areas have nothing to do with area code boundaries, but are a list of rate centers. I got a virtual number last week so my sister in Vermont could call me as a local call, and it took about 10 seconds to look through the list of Vermont rate centers to find one local to her. If you and your mother can't figure out what's a local call for her, visit http://members.dandy.net/~czg/search.html which has an extensive data base of local calling area information. 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: Joe@nospancity.com Subject: Re: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 08:59:18 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications Sam Nickerson wrote: > Just a quick warning to anyone thinking about going Vonage for the > "Virtual Number" feature. I am a new customer to them; jumped on board > because of the virtual number idea. > I have a mother in Florida living on a fixed income and it would help > her alot to be able to call me when she needs to. After getting set up > and generating a virtual number, mom in Florida at the same area code > could not make a non-toll call. I called Vonage customer no care and > they said the prefix generated was not in her calling region ... sorry. > Was there any way for them to refund the 14 bucks I > spent on a useless number ... nope. But they did give me a list of > prefixes that would work for her, and that all I need to do was > generate another and look at the number before final submit and I > would not get charged, just hit back and try another until a working > number magically appears and hit submit to accept it. Tried that, then > found the generated number does not show prior to submit and I get hit > with another 14 bucks charge. 28 bucks of worthless numbers I, and > mom, can not use. > Called Vonage Customer no care again, guy says sorry, let me put a > credit against your account for the 14 bucks so you can try again at > no charge. Thru the dice again, no good. Well sorry sir, guess we don't > have numbers in her local area; nothing I can do about the 28 bucks you > have spent so far, no managers around that can help, send us an email > and they will review. > Sheeeesh, for a company looking to break into an emerging market you > would think they would handle customers better, their marketing group > is spending a lot of time, money and effort only to have customer no > care mess it up. Just my experience; your mileage may vary. > Sam I think the problem may be with you and your mother. In my part of California when I selected Area Code 949, it gives me the option of selecting one of four locations. Those locations have exactly the same name as the SBC exchanges in the 949 area code. What could be simpler? Sure, either you or your mother has to figure out which of the listed exchanges, if any, are a local call for her. But, that can easily be done before you hit "go." ------------------------------ From: danny burstein Subject: Re: Maverick Wireless Corporation Launches City-Wide WISP Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 06:41:18 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Eworldwire writes: > Maverick Wireless Corporation Successfully Launches > City-Wide Wireless Broadband Services > Maverick Wireless Proves Its CITYWIDE WiFi(TM) Services Are > the Answer to Rural America's Broadband Needs [ snip of the usual press release boilerplate ] A key problem here is that this company is asking customers to pay $20 (or more) per month for access to the network. Which is, perhaps, a realistic business model. Except for one little point: This company, like the vast majority of others, is using the *publicly available* 802.11 frequencies. There is *no* exclusivity on these channels. So, anyone else in the service area can (and many will ...) set up their own base stations and networks, and cause lots and lots of interference. This company (and the others) have no bumping privileges whatsoever on these frequencies. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 10 Jan 2004 15:46:33 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Verizon DSL - Idiots I wanted to install DSL (Cable company finally pissed me off enough that I went to the local office, threw my cable box on the desk and told them to shove their crappy service. It's Cox btw.) but Verizon droids tell me it's not available, that I'm close to 5 miles from the CO. Now I know for a fact that I'm nowhere near 5 miles from the CO. More like a mile maximum. So I went on their web site and sure enough I get the 'future notification' page. I plug in the phone number of the restaurant below me which is served on the same cable group, same CO and guess what, it's available. Time to call the morons back. Tony ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 10 Jan 2004 15:44:27 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Verizon RI Pricing Well -- looks like Verizon has caught on. Residential for $54 a month includes VM, CLID and a raft of other features. I just might bite because in a given month my phone bills add up to about $54 as it is now, but they do range a bit. Having a fixed cost might be nice. I note business is $38 but there's a little disclaimer about "Excludes line charge". Typical Verizon -- so the line charge is probably about $15 but it makes it somewhat cheaper than Vonage especially when you consider the broadband connection charges. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 01:04:41 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: You Didn't Forget Did You? Please Do it Now! On several occassions around the end of December I put a message in the Digest saying the mailing list was being rebuilt. I asked for people who wanted to remain on the email list (mail from editor@telecom-digest.org each day) to tell me if they wanted to remain on the list or not. A large number of you responded, but John suggested waiting a few more days for the stragglers to get in. **THIS IS THE LAST CHANCE**. (now I suppose I have bought myself a couple more days of waiting time as a result.) If you want to remain on the list of folks who get email from me each day (often times two or three times in a day) you MUST send me a notice in one line or less saying "subscribe email.address (your name)." IN that order, nothing more or less. If you were attentive and responded during December or the first few days in January, **do not** respond again. If you somehow overlooked those daily messages during the last week of December (for example, on vacation, whatever) then please do it over the weekend or Monday at latest. If you read this through comp.dcom.telecom then don't bother. If you read this through http://telecom-digest.org then don't bother. Only reply if you get email from me and wish to continue receiving it. Please do it now. Thanks. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #15 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jan 11 23:47:05 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0C4l5114958; Sun, 11 Jan 2004 23:47:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 23:47:05 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401120447.i0C4l5114958@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 #16 TELECOM Digest Sun, 11 Jan 2004 23:47:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 16 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots (Charles P.) Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots (Steven J Sobol) Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots (Joe@nospancity.com) Re: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot (Sam Nickerson) Re: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) NEC and Centigram (Tvargas) Re: Siemens Gigabit 2420/8825 Voicemail Question (Rupa Schomaker) Trouble Getting Into Archives (DC) More on NANP Numbering Compared to Europe (Bob Goudreau) Re: BBC Writer Fathoms the Internet Pretty Well (Ronda Hauben) Re: Automated Attendant Systems (Carl Navarro) Doubling Down on Digital Entertainment (Monty Solomon) New TVs Are Easy to Admire, Tougher to Comprehend (Monty Solomon) Mars Info on NASA Web Site Gets Inundated (Monty Solomon) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 03:53:27 +0000 (GMT) From: Charles P. Subject: Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots Organization: Optimum Online I had Verizon tell one customer they couldn't do it, even though their neighbor had it. They then called Earthlink who said no problem and put it in on Verizon's wires. cp Kilo Delta One Sierra wrote in message news:telecom23.15.10@telecom-digest.org ... > I wanted to install DSL (Cable company finally pissed me off enough > that I went to the local office, threw my cable box on the desk and > told them to shove their crappy service. It's Cox btw.) but Verizon > droids tell me it's not available, that I'm close to 5 miles from the > CO. > Now I know for a fact that I'm nowhere near 5 miles from the CO. More > like a mile maximum. So I went on their web site and sure enough I get > the 'future notification' page. I plug in the phone number of the > restaurant below me which is served on the same cable group, same CO > and guess what, it's available. > Time to call the morons back. > Tony ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 23:57:29 -0600 Kilo Delta One Sierra wrote: > I wanted to install DSL (Cable company finally pissed me off enough > that I went to the local office, threw my cable box on the desk and > told them to shove their crappy service. It's Cox btw.) but Verizon > droids tell me it's not available, that I'm close to 5 miles from the > CO. Telco droids are idiots. Upper-level repair techs are usually clued, but the front-level people are stupid. What did you expect from a phone company? (And Verizon's not as bad as the other ILECs, in my opinion!) JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services 22674 Motnocab Road * Apple Valley, CA 92307-1950 Steve Sobol, Geek In Charge * 888.480.4NET (4638) * sjsobol@JustThe.net ------------------------------ From: Joe@nospancity.com Subject: Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 02:03:12 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications If the web site tests the line and says it's eligible why not place the order on-line so you don't have to deal with the "morons." Kilo Delta One Sierra wrote: > I wanted to install DSL (Cable company finally pissed me off enough > that I went to the local office, threw my cable box on the desk and > told them to shove their crappy service. It's Cox btw.) but Verizon > droids tell me it's not available, that I'm close to 5 miles from the > CO. > Now I know for a fact that I'm nowhere near 5 miles from the CO. More > like a mile maximum. So I went on their web site and sure enough I get > the 'future notification' page. I plug in the phone number of the > restaurant below me which is served on the same cable group, same CO > and guess what, it's available. > Time to call the morons back. > Tony ------------------------------ From: Sam Nickerson Subject: Re: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot Organization: Comcast Online Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 06:31:31 GMT On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 08:59:18 -0800, Joe wrote: > Sam Nickerson wrote: >> Just a quick warning to anyone thinking about going Vonage for the >> "Virtual Number" feature. I am a new customer to them; jumped on board >> because of the virtual number idea. >> I have a mother in Florida living on a fixed income and it would help >> her alot to be able to call me when she needs to. After getting set up >> and generating a virtual number, mom in Florida at the same area code >> could not make a non-toll call. I called Vonage customer no care and >> they said the prefix generated was not in her calling region ... sorry. >> Was there any way for them to refund the 14 bucks I >> spent on a useless number ... nope. But they did give me a list of >> prefixes that would work for her, and that all I need to do was >> generate another and look at the number before final submit and I >> would not get charged, just hit back and try another until a working >> number magically appears and hit submit to accept it. Tried that, then >> found the generated number does not show prior to submit and I get hit >> with another 14 bucks charge. 28 bucks of worthless numbers I, and >> mom, can not use. >> Called Vonage Customer no care again, guy says sorry, let me put a >> credit against your account for the 14 bucks so you can try again at >> no charge. Thru the dice again, no good. Well sorry sir, guess we don't >> have numbers in her local area; nothing I can do about the 28 bucks you >> have spent so far, no managers around that can help, send us an email >> and they will review. >> Sheeeesh, for a company looking to break into an emerging market you >> would think they would handle customers better, their marketing group >> is spending a lot of time, money and effort only to have customer no >> care mess it up. Just my experience; your mileage may vary. >> Sam > I think the problem may be with you and your mother. In my part of > California when I selected Area Code 949, it gives me the option of > selecting one of four locations. Those locations have exactly the > same name as the SBC exchanges in the 949 area code. > What could be simpler? Sure, either you or your mother has to figure > out which of the listed exchanges, if any, are a local call for her. > But, that can easily be done before you hit "go." Perhaps you don't get out much, perhaps English is not your first language, in either case I forgive your misinterpretation of my post. As posted Vonage Technical Support was not able to discern a correct exchange, so how should a customer? Not all areas of the U.S. are as over populated and well defined as the California region, and the majority of this country lies outside of California. Per Vonage Tech support you take a throw of the dice, get charged against your credit card, and hope for a prefix in the desired area. Whoa dude surfs up, Sam ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:47:38 GMT From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: Re: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot Organization: Excelsior Computer Services > I have a mother in Florida living on a fixed income and it would help > her alot to be able to call me when she needs to. After getting set up If you call the business office, you can probably get a business number in any exchange you want, and then have it forward anywhere you want. Should be about $25/month, plus usage. -Joel [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah, but if he did that, why not just get an 800 number -- much cheaper -- for mom's use in calling him using Bell all the way. In that case, a long haul via Bell from mom to him would be much cheaper that a combination of 'extended toll' for mom and a Vonage virtual number for himself. PAT] ------------------------------ From: tvargas@networld.com (Tvargas) Subject: NEC and Centigram Date: 11 Jan 2004 11:27:29 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Has anyone ever integrated a NEC 2000 IVS system to a Centigram Model 70 Voicemail system? If so, how was your template configured? ------------------------------ From: Rupa Schomaker Subject: Re: Siemens Gigabit 2420/8825 Voicemail Question Date: 11 Jan 2004 12:13:38 -0600 sf@mnetsys.com (Steve Fitzgerald) writes: > Does anyone know if on the 2420 or 8825 it is possible to disable the > answering machine on only one of the lines? I have two lines and only > want the answering machine to answer one of the them. The other line > has dedicated voicemail service off-site. Don't know about the 2420. My 8825 allows you to configure answering machine, auto attendant, etc for each line independently. Now if I could just get it to detect when the other end hangs up on my Vonage line. For now I limit the message length to 1 min and have to suffer up to 1 min of "off hook notification beeps" ... > Thanks. -rupa [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mike Sandman ( http://www.sandman.com ) and I did some testing on this recently. Unfortunatly, Vonage does not do call supervision if that is a critical point with you. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 11:15:20 -0800 From: DC Subject: Trouble Getting Into Archives I would like to look at vol 15, issue 362 but there seems to be a problem getting into that directory. It just hangs when I click on that directory. Is there something wrong? Thank You, Darold Coffey [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I sent a copy of Vol15_#362 to Mr. Coffey today. Anyone who wants something from the archives and for whatever reason gets hung up or has trouble finding what they want is welcome to ask for help in getting it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: More on NANP Numbering Compared to Europe Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 21:49:16 -0500 [Patrick, it occurs to me that I never received the usual auto-acknowledgement to the message I submitted several days ago, so it apparently never made it. Here's another attempt.] [Please continue to omit my email address too.] Earle Robinson writes: > While the UK did fumble its modernization of the telephone numbering > system, this didn't occur in the rest of Europe. Er, actually if you'll check the WTNG, you'll see quite a lot of examples of European numbering plans that endured wholesale changes over the past couple of decades (adding digits, rearranging entire area code schemes, etc.) It's not just a UK thing by any means. Greece, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, etc. Not to mention France ... > My number in Paris has remained the same for 20 years now. Was it the early 1980s that Paris changed from 7D to 8D numbers? Of course, from a dialing perspective, your number has only remained unchanged to those callers who were outside of France, who have been able to dial you as +33 1 AB CD EF GH for that entire period. Inside France, the dialing of your number (and every other POTS number) has certainly changed in that time. You used to be dialable as AB CD EF GH from within the Paris region (+33 1), and as AB CD EF GH from the rest of the country, IIRC. (Wasn't the access code something like 16-1 or 19-1?) But now you are reachable as 01 AB CD EF GH from everywhere in the country. > Friends of mine in the states > have endured 3, 4 or more area code changes during this time. I think you'll find that the number of people living in areas that have undergone that many NPA splits is proportionally very tiny compared to the number who have undergone no changes at all. (Mark & Co., are there actually *any* areas at all that have undergone *four* splits since 1984? PAT complained about having four area codes over the years, but bear in mind that he moved to different cities at least a couple of times, which isn't at all the same as having your number change due to an area code split.) Of course *most* of France had to change its numbers during the past decade; the entire "rest of the country" outside the Paris (+33 1) region had their numbers lengthened by prefixing an area code to their existing numbers (+33 AB CD EF GH became +33 X AB CD EF GH). I.e., their numbers changed from everyone's perspective (international and intranational). > In the USA the dialing system is also very confusing. In some areas > you dial 7 digits for a local call, in others 10, and in others 11. > Why? In Europe, the dialing system is even more confusing. In some areas you dial 5 digits for a local call, in others 6, in others 7, in others 8, in others 9 or 10. > Mr. Cuccia also praises and repraises the "free" local calls in much > of the states. However, he omits a couple of salient points. First, > one pays much more monthly for a telephone line in the states than > here in France. What does monthly service for a POTS line from FT cost these days (including any fees/taxes)? I thought it was in the EUR 15 range, which is certainly comparable with many areas of the US. (Canada tends to be slightly cheaper.) Regards, Bob Goudreau Cary, NC [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not remember the *exact* order of things from back when I was living in Chicago but let us take a hypothetical person living in Evanston/Skokie, IL for thirty years or so. They began with 312 for all of northern Illinois. Then they went to 708 when all suburbs were split away from Chicago. Then they would have gone to 847 when the northern suburbs were split away from the southern/western suburbs. Now they have gone to 224 when the northeastern suburbs were split away from the northwestern suburbs. That would appear to be four potential area code splits in a bit over twenty years wouldn't it? Yes, I did move from Chicago to Skokie but I got 312/773 even though I was gone from the area before 847/224 took place. I am talking now about the hypothetical person who never moved out of the same house in Evanston for 20 plus years, of which there have been many folks. Or, let's take Northwestern University, which has been in the same spot for more than a century: 312 --> 708 --> 847 --> 224. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ronda Hauben Subject: Re: BBC Writer Fathoms the Internet Pretty Well Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 03:40:07 +0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Mark Crispin wrote: > On Sun, 4 Jan 2004, Ronda Hauben wrote: >> Are you saying that the ARPANET is the same as the IMP subnetwork >> of the ARPANET? The whole point of the IMP subnetwork is to connect >> diverse computers and diverse operating systems. The ARPANET is the >> connection of these diverse computers and operating systems. It isn't >> the IMP subnetwork. The IMP subnetwork is the means of connecting the >> diverse computers, but is *not* the ARPANET. > Ronda, were you a user of the ARPAnet in its halcyon days (1970-1982)? > I was. I implemented the first 96-bit leader (32-bit address) ARPAnet > NCP for the PDP-10 in 1978. I was very much part of the TCP/IP > transition in 1983, and the subsequent ARPAnet/Milnet split. I wrote > some of the earliest implementations of Telnet and SMTP. I even wrote > an EGP. I know you were Mark, as I have written you several years ago based on my research on TCP/IP digest and other early Internet documentation. And I wrote some about how you spoke out with regard to issues you disagreed about on the tcp/ip digest. That you now complain when I speak out about issues that are a problem is a bit of a surprise. I am glad that there are people like you online who were involved with the early development of the ARPANET. But then I would hope you would be helpful in spreading accurate knowledge about the technical developments. To ask if I was online then isn't quite relevant, is it? I have read many of the documents and been in contact with many who were online then. And I hav2 done substantial research both by being in contact with people who were there and by researching the documents created at the time. I an co-author of one of the early books about the history and development of the ARPANET, Usenet and the Internet. The book was written on the basis of help from people who had been involved in the early developments of the Net. > I have never heard the term "IMP subnetwork" used. I don't understand the point of your saying this? Whether or not you have heard of it, it has been used. I didn't make it up. If you were interested in helping to sort this out you might take a look back at some of the RFC's that a short search on google shows used the term "IMP subnetwork." A short search turns up: RFC 687 by David C. Walden from June 1975 NIC #32654 http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc687.html RFC 410 by John M. McQuillan 10 November 1970 http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc410.html RFC 528 by J. McQuillan 20 June 1973 NIC: 17164 http://rfc-528.rfc-search.org/ RFC 533 by David Walden July 17, 1973 NIC: 17452 So though you may not have noticed "IMP subnetwork" in those RFC's, it has been a term used and it expresses a helpful concept. > Nor have I ever heard of this strange case which you seem to be making. > The notion that the wires of an LH or DH connection are part of a > "network" is rather, uh, strange to anyone who actually dealt with it > on an electrical basis. A better case may be made for a VDH > interface, but that in turn was more of a point-to-point network. > So is the notion that the hosts on the ARPAnet were part of the > network. It's akin to saying that a human user of a telephone is > "part of the telephone network." Mark, are you saying that the telephone isn't part of the telephone network? It is important that people have some understanding of the technology. Do you disagree? The hosts are more akin to the telephone. They were the different computers and different operating systems that were part of the ARPANET. This is more akin to the telephone being part of the telephone network, than to refer to the human telephone user or human computer user. The question whether the human telephone user or the human computer user is part of their respective networks is a serious question, but doesn't seem relevant to trying to clarify whether the ARPANET was made up of both the IMPs and HOSTs and whether the telephone network is made up of the switching network and the phones that make the communication possible. > The notion that the only important difference between ARPAnet and > Internet is that "Internet made it possible to connect different > networks, not just different computers" is laughable to anyone who was > actually there. Are you stressing "only" here? I am stressing that an "important difference" between them is that the ARPANET connected different operating systems and different computer systems, and the Internet connected different networks. I wasn't focusing on whether there is only one important difference or more. To say "laughable" doesn't help to clarify anything. Instead it can serve to intimidate any disagreement. Similarly to refer to anyone "who was actually there" as the being the deciding factor, is not helpful. There will in the not too distant future be no one who was "actually there" to refer to. It is important that knowledge of these developments be made available to those who weren't there. That is why I took the trouble to comment on the BBC reporter's article, as it didn't help clarify, but only spread sand in the eyes of anyone trying to understand the ARPANET and Internet. > In conclusion, I will echo John Levine: >> These facts are well known and easily checked by anyone who cares to >> do so, and you only make yourself look foolish by trying to argue >> do so, and you only make yourself look foolish by trying to argue >> that the situation was and is otherwise. If these facts are easily checked, I wondered why neither you nor John tried to look up "IMP subnetwork" instead of insisting it is a phantom term. >> I have no interest in arguing about facts, so this is my last >> message on this topic. > -- Mark -- That is your perogative of course. It is the 10th anniversary this weekend of Michael and I putting the online book "Netizens" online. We worked on the book and put it online because we felt it was important to spread an understanding of the history and impact of the Net as it seemed it was not understood by many online who were enthralled by what it made possible, but had no idea where it had come from. The book was an early history of the Net and explored its potential impact. Michael, particularly, and I had been encouraged by many online at the time to do our work and we got help from many online. Michael still continues to get numerous emails that say that people have found his work very helpful to them, especially the chapters of Netizens that he had done about the creation of the ARPANET. Based on this work, many other efforts to write about the history were begun. So it is sad to see the state of the situation now, where when one makes an effort to clarify a misrepresentation that a BBC reporter makes which is being spread via the powerful distribution mechanisms of the BBC and also online, that there is an attack on the effort to make the clarification. How can the BBC reporter care to try to understand the ARPANET and Internet if there isn't an effort to correct misrepresentations. The IMP subnetwork was not the ARPA network (as the ARPANET was sometimes called before the creation of the Internet). The ARPANET is the interconnection of different computers and operating systems and the IMP subnetwork. The Internet was the interconnection of diverse networks, or a network of networks (or a metasystem of networks). Usenet is about disagreements, so hopefully it can help to have discussion over the differences. I wrote a paper on the tcp/ip digest where I refer to the role you played there Mark. It was a very helpful role. It is online at: A Study of the ARPANET TCP/IP Digest and of the Role of Online Communication in the Transition from the ARPANET to the Internet http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/tcpdraft.txt I am working on a paper about the early development of the Internet as an international collaboration. And I welcome input into that process. Ronda Netizens is online at http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/ A draft paper on the 10th anniversary of Netizens http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netizens2004.doc ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Automated Attendant Systems Reply-To: cnavarro@wcnet.org Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 00:52:29 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 02:30:33 GMT, JamminDJ wrote: > Hello, I am a tech consonant for a computer help desk at a mid to > large size university. Currently all calls to the centre go through an > initial auto attendant system, then are forwarded to dept. depending > on need. One of these options is password change. This is all done by > human operator right now, we take their SSN numbers and get fed a new > password out. This becomes quite tiresome, and some higher ups have > actually threatened to quit due to the infinite number of calls for > change password requests. My question is, is there a piece of software > or hardware, capable of taking a purely numeric SSN number, feeding to > one of our mainframes, and spit out the purely alphaic password? I > know it can be done, this is evident in the CVS 'Rapid Refill' > system. I just wonder if there is any third party software that can do > this, and do it at a university price. I have never done this, but Amanda does simple comma delimited or ODBC compliant database lookups, depending on which system you buy. Try www.taa.com and look at Amanda @work.group or Amanda Portal. The former is fairly inexpensive for what it does, about $2500 retail, and the latter about $5200 for 4 port systems. Carl Navarro > Thank you for your time, > Paul Miller ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 21:22:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Doubling Down on Digital Entertainment By Cynthia L. Webb washingtonpost.com Staff Writer When the world's technology heavyweights get together every January to tout their flashy gadgets, you know it's more than just "Vegas, baby." It's the International Consumer Electronics Show , and this year's event kicked off with the latest installment in Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates's vision of the wired future. That future will play out in a seamless melange of connected PCs, TVs and a host of other electronics devices -- a digital entertainment system with the computer as its central nervous system, Gates said in his opening keynote. And in a familiar refrain, Gates wants Microsoft to be the market leader. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64733-2004Jan8.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 21:28:37 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: New TVs Are Easy to Admire, Tougher to Comprehend By Rob Pegoraro LAS VEGAS It is becoming harder to buy a television set than a personal computer. The unheralded side effect of the digital transformation that promises to bring TV sets new levels of quality and performance is that they've become much harder to decipher. These things were once commodity items that anybody could buy based largely on brand and price, but the evidence on the show floor at the Consumer Electronics Show here indicates that they're all shifting painfully back into the status of "exclusive" products, each with a unique mix of innovations, limitations and, most of the time, higher prices. This tension between creativity and commodity is part of this industry's way of life. A product can't be born without creativity, but it can't be a success until it hits commodity status. In between, it's a mess for consumers to sort out. That's the story behind three big stories of this year's CES: flat-panel digital televisions, digital video recording and wireless media networks. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5386-2004Jan10.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 10:57:35 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Mars Info on NASA Web Site Gets Inundated By ANICK JESDANUN AP Internet Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- Think of the Library of Congress' entire print collections _ and then some _ to get an idea of how much data space enthusiasts have downloaded from NASA's Web sites this week. Visitors had obtained more than 34.6 terabytes of images, video and other information as of Friday afternoon, the bulk related to the Mars rover Spirit. By some estimates, all the words in every book in the Library of Congress total 20 terabytes. So far, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has posted all raw images from Spirit, some within a half-hour of the data reaching Earth. At least 10 to 30 images are expected daily, with some even available in 3-D. NASA also created panoramic views by piecing several images together and plans interactive features in which viewers control the view with a mouse (sorry, but you won't be able to control the spacecraft's camera directly). Once the rover begins moving, NASA plans video summaries at least weekly by combining still images. For now, video is largely limited to animation of the spacecraft's journey, documentary-style clips and streaming of the NASA TV cable channel. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40157493 ------------------------------ 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. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #16 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jan 12 00:26:02 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0C5Q2415266; Mon, 12 Jan 2004 00:26:02 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 00:26:02 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401120526.i0C5Q2415266@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 #17 TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Jan 2004 00:26:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 17 Inside This Special Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Wall Street Journal Special Report on VoIP (Marcus Didius Falco) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 22:21:49 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Wall Street Journal Special Report on VoIP [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This special issue of the Digest is devoted to VOIP phone service. It will appear in the Telecom Archives in the special reports section. My thanks to Marcus Falco and John McMullen (johnsmac group) for allowing us to use it. PAT] * Original: FROM..... John McMullen From the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107350810527282200,00.html?mod=sr%2Dtechnology2004%2D1%5F2 SPECIAL REPORT: TECHNOLOGY Ready for Prime Time A new Internet-based phone technology has an un-catchy acronym: VOIP. But don't be fooled: It could make dramatic changes in the way businesses operate. By PETER GRANT Bruce Cumming hardly ever touches his office phone anymore. When he wants to call someone, Mr. Cumming simply clicks on the name in the contact list in his computer's Microsoft Outlook program. The number rings and, when someone answers, he talks to them on his speaker phone. The vice president of National Money Mart Co., a financial-services firm based in Victoria, British Columbia, also uses his computer to check voice mail, set up conference calls, and forward calls to his cellphone, home phone or any other number when he leaves the office. Recently, on a trip to National Money's Philadelphia office, Mr. Cumming plugged his laptop into the data network there and it became his office phone, with all the features that it offers back home. If someone called his number in Victoria, his laptop rang in Philadelphia. "When I called out, people would look at their caller ID and see my Victoria number," Mr. Cumming says. "They'd say, 'I thought you were in Philadelphia.'" These phone features became available earlier this year after National Money Mart installed a phone system from Mitel Networks Corp. that uses a new Internet-based phone technology known as VOIP, or voice over Internet protocol. It's not a catchy name, but get used to it all the same. At the very least, telecom experts say, most business phone systems eventually will convert to VOIP for cost savings and the wide range of new features the technology offers, like improved conference calling, and combining voice and e-mail messages on one directory, and, eventually, video phones. At most, they say, the technology could make dramatic changes in the way businesses operate, comparable to those made by the Internet and the PC. Second Chance VOIP works by transforming voice into data and then transmitting it over the Internet or some other data network in the same way text, photos and e-mail are sent. Introduced in the mid-1990s, it was one of the many new technologies that initially overpromised and underdelivered, creating great frustration for early adopters and huge losses for early investors. Some of the earliest businesses that installed VOIP were very critical of the sound quality. And even today, there are occasional kinks like echoes and shuttering sounds if data is lost in transmission. Still, enough improvements have been made to prompt businesses to take a second look at VOIP as a way of increasing efficiency and productivity and cutting costs. By the end of this year, about 20% of the new phones being shipped to U.S. businesses will use VOIP technology, according to Yankee Group, a technology consulting firm based in Boston. By 2007 that figure should exceed 50%, and eventually almost all of the new phones shipped will use VOIP, Yankee Group predicts. Almost all of the research and development being done by phone-system developers -- including Mitel, based in Kanata, Ontario, Cisco Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif., Nortel Networks Corp. of Brampton, Ontario, and Avaya Inc. of Basking Ridge, N.J. -- is on VOIP. "The technology is ready for prime time," says Malcolm Collins, president of Nortel's enterprise networks division. VOIP can make a wide range of existing phone features easier to use, because when voice is turned into data it essentially becomes another application on the computer. For example, many conventional business phone systems give workers the ability to see a log of their calls or to program phones to ring at home or on their cellphones. But activating these features means pushing a bunch of buttons on the telephone. With VOIP, setting them up just takes a couple of clicks of the mouse. Setting up a conference call with standard phones often requires the assistance of an operator. With VOIP, it involves a simple click-and-drag operation on the computer screen, putting a cursor on the names of the conferees. As people join and exit the call, their names are added or subtracted on the screen. Features also can be combined with other data applications. For instance, voice mail and e-mail can be combined in a single directory. "It makes it easy for a lawyer who's been at a deposition all day and has to travel out of town," says Bill Costello, technology chief at Banner & Witcoff. "They can download their master mailbox to their laptop and head for the airport." The Washington-based law firm installed an Avaya VOIP system a year ago. Then there are features that weren't possible on conventional phone systems that allow for customization. Take the police department of Bend, Ore., which installed a Cisco VOIP system starting two years ago. Police investigators wanted to verify that a suspect they were seeking was at a particular phone number in California. Technicians were able to set up a call so that it wouldn't be identified on the other end as coming from the police department, says Steve Meyers, the city's information technology director. Instead, it showed the call coming from a phony name and number. The suspect "picked up the phone and they talked to him briefly," says Mr. Meyers. "They knew where he was." Another plus for VOIP is its portability. VOIP phones with a particular phone number can be taken anywhere, connected to a broadband connection and still receive calls at the same number. That means employees can easily and inexpensively move desks or work from home or a hotel and still get all the calls directed at their work phone numbers. They keep all the features that their work phones have, like four-digit calling to other extensions. It's a cost-conscious manager's dream, because moving employees from one location to another can be done without a technician. In October, when Vegas.com, a business that runs one of the biggest Las Vegas Web sites, moved its operations to a larger building in a suburban office park, employees lost very little time, thanks to the VOIP phone system the company purchased from Nortel. "We did it in groups of four," says Howard Lefkowitz, president of Vegas.com, a unit of Greenspun Media Group, Henderson, Nev. "Employees unplugged their phones, carried them across the street and they worked." There are also savings on long-distance bills, given that VOIP calls between offices cost the same as sending e-mail. The long-distance bill of Banner & Witcoff dropped so much that the law firm received a call from a long-distance representative at AT&T Corp. after it installed its VOIP system. "They were concerned that we switched carriers," says Mr. Costello. Always Within Reach VOIP phone systems are proving especially useful in businesses that rely heavily on roving employees, like a hotel or warehouse. Using cordless VOIP phones, workers can stay in touch with managers as well as enter data in the business's computer system. A maid in a hotel, for instance, can use her phone to let the front desk know when a room is cleaned or when she's running out of shampoo and conditioner bottles. The nurses at Erlanger Health System, which operates a medical center in Chattanooga, Tenn., have been responding to patient calls faster since the hospital installed a VOIP system a year ago, says John Haltom, the center's network manager. They now make their rounds with a cart that contains a laptop with an attached phone. They use the laptop to enter patient reports. A nurse doesn't have to go back to his or her station to see that a patient has been ringing the buzzer for 15 minutes, because the calls go immediately to the phone. "It takes the ball and chain off them," Mr. Haltom says. VOIP also is making big changes in call centers, in some cases enabling companies to replace big centralized facilities with virtual operations. For instance, all of JetBlue Airways' reservations agents work from home using VOIP phones hooked into high-speed Internet connections. Call centers also have begun to add features so agents can go from instant messaging to e-mail to phone communication quickly. Some businesses have set up systems to recognize certain incoming numbers and give preferred customers special treatment. Eventually, these new VOIP features in call centers may reduce the numerous annoyances consumers often experience when calling them, like having to give an agent account numbers and personal information after having already punched them into the phone. Ravi Sethi, president of Avaya, says the company already has installed some of these new applications in its own call center. "The number of abandoned calls went down," he says. "People were happier." VOIP will trigger even bigger changes to the workplace in the future, telecom experts predict. More employers will follow JetBlue's lead and allow employees to work from home. The use of branch offices will likely become more popular, since VOIP greatly reduces the cost of interoffice phone calls. And more companies will begin the practice of "hoteling," cutting space costs by assigning desks to employees who travel a lot on a short-term basis. "You come into the office, log into any phone and it takes on the appearance of your own phone," says Robert Filby, a manager of the consulting firm Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, which acquired a VOIP system from Cisco. "The [VOIP] technology lends itself to that." Businesses also can expect a wide range of new features. Major telecom companies and small start-ups are busy developing new software that will incorporate video phones, voice recognition, wireless technology and other applications into VOIP systems. "It's just like the Internet itself," says Steve Dimmit, a marketing vice president with SBC Communications Inc., which has begun offering VOIP systems to its business customers. "People are going to come up with applications we haven't thought of before." -- Mr. Grant is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's New York bureau. Write to Peter Grant at peter.grant@wsj.com --------------------------------------------------------------- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107350780635649000,00.html?mod=article-outset-box Technical Adviser By LEE GOMES Taking Net Calls for a Test Ride Psst. Wanna make phone calls cheap and even free? Then remember these four letters: VOIP. Voice over Internet protocol, or VOIP, is the latest rumble in the continuing Internet earthquake. By using the Internet to transmit digitized telephone signals, VOIP is making possible all manner of low- or even no-cost alternatives to traditional phone service, often with just-as-good quality. This is a user report on two of these offerings. The executive summary: Try them both, since you can do so for free. The first is from Vonage Holdings Corp., which calls itself "the broadband phone company." At the prices this Edison, N.J., operation is offering local and long-distance telephone service, it's little wonder why regular phone companies are worried about VOIP. Vonage's rates are low. Its most expensive regular plan is $35 a month, which allows you to make unlimited calls in the U.S. and Canada at no additional cost, and to call much of the rest of the world for five cents a minute. And that's all you pay, since Vonage's services are currently untaxed. You can use Vonage if you have any sort of broadband Internet connection, either a cable modem or DSL. Vonage ships you an adapter that is the size of a paperback, which connects via a cable to your broadband modem. Then, you plug any standard telephone into a phone jack in the back of the Vonage adapter. Your phone will now act like it's plugged into the regular phone network, letting you make and receive calls to and from any other phone. My Vonage unit worked just like it was supposed to, right out of the box; I got a dial tone the first time I picked up the headset. The one difference is that you need to dial 1 and then the area code all the time, even when making local calls. How good is the voice quality? It's going to depend on the quality of your local broadband link. Since I have a great DSL connection, my Vonage phone sounded essentially the same as my regular telephone. Others aren't going to have the same experience. When chatting with Chip Cummins, a Vonage customer in Kingwood, Texas -- and a monster VOIP phone buff -- his words would cut out in mid-sentence so often that we had to switch over to regular phones. Since Internet-service providers and broadband connections vary so greatly, it's hard to know in advance what your experience will be like. The good news here is that Vonage gives you a free two-week trial period. And Vonage is worth checking out for reasons other than the low prices. For instance, you can call a local number to check your voice-mail messages or you can check them online, and can even have them e-mailed to you as sound file attachments. My favorite Vonage trick: When traveling to a place that also has a broadband connection, anywhere in the world, take your Vonage adapter with you. A phone plugged into it will act just like your home phone, sending and receiving calls at your regular home number, for no extra charge. When you sign up for Vonage, you can either transfer your current telephone number to your Vonage set or the company can give you a new one. While some people may want to go all-Vonage right away, I would recommend the latter course, at least initially, so you can be assured you are comfortable with the voice quality. Later, if you want, you can transfer your current landline number, severing ties to your telephony past. A very different approach to VOIP is Skype, a free and very popular program, from a group of programmers in Denmark, that you download onto your PC. You hook up a PC-style headphone (with separate plug for the earpieces and microphone) to the sound card on your PC. Then, you can talk for free with anyone else in the world who also is running Skype and sitting, similarly equipped, in front of his or her PC. When Skype works, it's great. But the software is very hit and miss, both in terms of making connections and in the quality of the link once it's there. Considering the price tag, though, it's hard to complain. And the Skype folks promise continual improvements. (The programmers plan to offer a professional version of Skype to companies for a fee.) Whatever its problems, Skype already is making one valuable contribution to the world of telephony: When Skype is working right, the sound quality is awesome -- like rich CD audio compared with the tinny AM radio of regular phone calls. The problem with regular phones is part hardware -- neither the microphones nor speakers used in phones are anything remotely resembling audiophile quality -- and part software, in that the standards and specifications used to transmit voice signals don't allow for much quality to begin with. There probably isn't a lot that can be done with existing landline standards, since the industry is so mature. But with any luck, engineers in the much newer worlds of both mobile and VOIP telephone service will pay attention to voice quality as they introduce new generations of service. Skype sounds as good as it does, in part, because the headphones made for PCs are vastly better than the sort used in most telephones, either standard or mobile. That got me wondering about sound quality on existing house phones; I noticed a dramatic difference, even on the same line, between my Panasonic cordless handset (poor) and the AT&T model (much better). Which are the best phones to use for sound quality? Readers are welcome to send in recommendations, which will be passed along in a future column. In that spirit, a recent column about browser shortcuts (Technical Adviser, Oct. 20) omitted, due to authorial ignorance, one of the most useful shortcuts of all. With recent versions of Internet Explorer, if you simply type in the address bar the name of the site you want to go to, such as "Yahoo," and then, while holding down the "Control" key, press "Enter," Explorer will automatically fill in everything else, including the "http://www" beforehand and the ".com" afterward. Try it with "Vonage" or "Skype." Your friends will say, "Cool, dude!" And it is. Write to Lee Gomes at lee.gomes@wsj.com Copyright 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The 'johnmacsgroup' Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Dow-Jones and Wall Street Journal. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml "When you come to the fork in the road, take it" - L.P. Berra "Always make new mistakes" -- Esther Dyson "Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" - Pierre Abelard "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- Arthur C. Clarke "You Gotta Believe" - Frank "Tug" McGraw (1944 - 2004 RIP) John F. McMullen http://www.westnet.com/~observer [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My thanks once again to Marcus and the johnsmac group for permission to publish this. For those new readers who do not know, *I* have e-coupons available for Vonage. If you click on the link I will send you on request, you will get one month of free service, just for test driving Vonage. Actually you get the second month free. No contracts or other obligations. To get an e-coupon for a month of free Vonage service, just send a note marked 'not for publication' to me and request it. ptownson@telecom-digest.org You'll be helping me and the Digest. Thanks! PAT] ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #17 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jan 12 13:39:02 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0CId2P18980; Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:39:02 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:39:02 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401121839.i0CId2P18980@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 #18 TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:39:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 18 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #415, January 12, 2004 (Angus TeleManagement) Students' Data on Web, and N.Y.U. on Defensive (Monty Solomon) Leaving Dial-Up Business, Microsoft Aims MSN.com at Yahoo (M. Solomon) Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots (Steven J Sobol) Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots (Kilo Delta One Sierra) "Superman TV" and Telephones (Lisa Hancock) Re: Caller ID and Spying??? (Paul Vader) Re: More on NANP Numbering Compared to Europe (BV124@aol.com) Re: More on NANP Numbering Compared to Europe (Bob Goudreau) Re: Automated Attendant Systems (Jake Dempsey) ATT Slams Again (jdj) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 10:22:25 -0500 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #415, January 12, 2004 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 415: January 12, 2003 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca ** CYGCOM INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES: www.cygcom.com ** GROUP TELECOM: www.360.net ** JUNIPER NETWORKS: www.juniper.net ** PRIMUS CANADA: www.primustel.ca ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** TELUS: www.telus.com ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Primus Launches Local VoIP Service ** Vonage Partners With 360 ** Telus Workers Hold Second Strike Vote ** Spectrum Auction to Start February 9 ** Bernard Courtois to Head ITAC ** Quebecor Takes Back Videotron Telecom ** SaskTel Unveils Network Spending Plans ** RIM Prepares $900 Million Stock Issue ** Class Actions Against BCE/BCI Dismissed ** Nortel Wins Verizon VoIP Deal ** Rogers Wireless Shows Gains in 4Q Subscribers ** Bell Must Negotiate Over Buyouts ** Avotus to Buy Bill Management Developer ** Canada-Vietnam VoIP Service Planned ** Motorola Adopts Certicom Wireless Security ** C-Com Wins Mideast Contract for Satellite Gear ** Telemanagement Online Available Now ============================================================ PRIMUS LAUNCHES LOCAL VoIP SERVICE: Primus Telecommunications Canada has begun providing local residential telephone service over high-speed Internet connections. TalkBroadband offers Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Hamilton, Calgary, Edmonton, or Vancouver local numbers, but is available anywhere in Canada. ** Prices range from $19.95 to $34.95 a month, depending on the option package. The service can be bundled with special long distance packages, including unlimited Canada/U.S. calling for $20 a month. ** TalkBroadband does not yet provide E911 service. Primus hopes to offer it soon, within a given number's home calling area. VONAGE PARTNERS WITH 360: Telecom Update has learned that U.S. VoIP provider Vonage will work with Group Telecom/ 360networks to offer its service in Canada later this year. Vonage will retail the consumer offering; 360networks will provide switching and transmission infrastructure and Canadian telephone numbers. TELUS WORKERS HOLD SECOND STRIKE VOTE: The conciliation process between Telus and 10,700 members of the Telecommunications Workers Union ends today. The TWU is holding a strike vote, and a legal strike or lockout is possible February 3. (See Telecom Update #358, 412) SPECTRUM AUCTION TO START FEBRUARY 9: The 2.3/3.5 GHz spectrum auction, originally announced for January, is now scheduled to begin on February 9. Twenty applicants have already qualified as bidders; another five are pending. Deposits total about $40 Million. http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/insmt-gst.nsf/vwGeneratedInterE/sf08115e.html BERNARD COURTOIS TO HEAD ITAC: Bernard Courtois, who retired as Bell Canada Executive Counsel last month, has been named President and CEO of the Information Technology Association of Canada. He replaces Bill Bergen, the former Oracle Canada executive who left the ITAC post after only a few months in office. QUEBECOR TAKES BACK VIDEOTRON TELECOM: Quebecor Media has bought back the Carlyle Group shares of Videotron Telecom, in a deal worth about $125 million. A company representative told reporters that Videotron was now considering offering residential telephone service but had not made a final decision. SASKTEL UNVEILS NETWORK SPENDING PLANS: SaskTel says it will spend $121 million in 2004 to maintain and upgrade its network. Plans include expanding digital cellular coverage to 94% of the population and building an IP network that can support voice and Centrex-like features. RIM PREPARES $900 MILLION STOCK ISSUE: Research In Motion has announced plans to sell nine million shares, worth about $900 million at current prices. RIM says the funds will go to R&D, expansion, and possible acquisitions. ** Nextel, a U.S. cellco, has launched RIM's BlackBerry 7510, which combines BlackBerry's e-mail and PDA features with Nextel's iDen push-to-talk wireless service. iDen is offered in Canada by Telus under the brand name Mike. CLASS ACTIONS AGAINST BCE/BCI DISMISSED: The Ontario Superior Court has dismissed two $1-billion class action lawsuits brought by shareholders in Bell Canada International, a BCE subsidiary that is winding up operations. (See Telecom Update #351, 398) NORTEL WINS VERIZON VoIP DEAL: Verizon Communications, the largest U.S. phone company, says it will sign a five-year contract with Nortel Networks to evolve its national network to packet switching technology. Analysts estimate the value of the deal at US$5 Billion. ROGERS WIRELESS SHOWS GAINS IN 4Q SUBSCRIBERS: Rogers Wireless gained a net 172,700 subscribers in the fourth quarter, 14% more than during the same period in 2002. Monthly disconnects (postpaid) fell to 1.99%. ** Rogers Cable added 35,400 Internet subscribers (22% fewer than a year ago) bringing its total to 790,500. BELL MUST NEGOTIATE OVER BUYOUTS: The Canada Industrial Relations Board has confirmed that Bell Canada cannot offer "Voluntary Separation Packages" to employees without consulting their union, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Bell had asked the Board to reconsider the ruling, made last year. AVOTUS TO BUY BILL MANAGEMENT DEVELOPER: Avotus Corporation, a Mississauga-based telecom management company, has signed a letter of intent to buy Formity Systems, a New Jersey company that develops communications expense management software. CANADA-VIETNAM VoIP SERVICE PLANNED: Montreal-based Can-Tel VoIP Enterprise, which describes itself as "a Canadian company of Vietnamese origin," says it will soon introduce prepaid calling card programs targeting Vietnamese and other Asian communities across Canada. MOTOROLA ADOPTS CERTICOM WIRELESS SECURITY: Motorola says its A760 smartphone will utilize Virtual Private Network technology from Certicom, a Mississauga-based supplier of wireless security. C-COM WINS MIDEAST CONTRACT FOR SATELLITE GEAR: Ottawa-based C-Com Satellite Systems has signed an agreement with a Kuwait reseller for distribution of its mobile antenna platform across the Middle East. TELEMANAGEMENT ONLINE AVAILABLE NOW! As promised, Angus Telemanagement Group today launches a premium service that gives Telemanagement subscribers exclusive online access to current and past issues of Telemanagement, Editorials, On the Line columns, feature reports, and more. ** Special Charter Subscriber rates are being offered for a limited time. For full details, go to www.angustel.ca/teleman/tm-sub-online.html. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2003 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 00:41:53 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Students' Data on Web, and N.Y.U. on Defensive By KAREN W. ARENSON Three years ago, when Brian Frank entered New York University, he signed up for intramural basketball, providing his name and his university identification number, which was also his Social Security number. Yesterday morning, Mr. Frank, who is now a senior, learned from N.Y.U. that these details had been posted on the Internet. He was among about 1,800 N.Y.U. students who received the same e-mail notification from the university. In some cases, students' phone numbers were posted, too. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/10/nyregion/10identity.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 01:28:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Retreating From Dial-Up Business, Microsoft Aims MSN.com at Yahoo Retreating From Dial-Up Business, Microsoft Aims MSN.com at Yahoo By JOHN MARKOFF Microsoft said yesterday that it was repositioning its money-losing MSN Internet service operation to compete more directly with Yahoo's personalized Web portal and America Online's broadband premium service. At the same time, it is planning a new MSN premium service, priced at $9.95 monthly and modeled after Apple Computer's .Mac Internet-based customer support service. The strategy shift was announced by Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates, in a speech in Las Vegas on the opening night of the annual Consumer Electronics Show. The shift represents a concession by Microsoft, which has invested billions trying to unseat America Online as the leading Internet service provider. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/technology/08soft.html ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 00:00:35 -0600 Joe@nospancity.com wrote: > If the web site tests the line and says it's eligible why not place > the order on-line so you don't have to deal with the "morons." You still have to deal with them. The simple solution is to find a reputable ISP that resells Verizon that will be willing to deal with Verizon when (not if) they screw up. The trick is never to deal with the telco directly. Or you can just do what I did, and get cable. JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services 22674 Motnocab Road * Apple Valley, CA 92307-1950 Steve Sobol, Geek In Charge * 888.480.4NET (4638) * sjsobol@JustThe.net ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 12 Jan 2004 14:34:20 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots > If the web site tests the line and says it's eligible why not place > the order on-line so you don't have to deal with the "morons." Because if I key my phone number into the web site -- it says it IS NOT available. If I put another number in from same building, same cable it say sit is. And dslreports.com shows me roughly 6000 feet from the CO. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: "Superman TV" and Telephones Date: 12 Jan 2004 07:01:25 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I saw an old episode of the TV "Superman" (mid 50s) and noticed how today's phones would've made a difference. First, the bad guys following Lois had to choose between following her (or let her get away) or calling some associates. The debated this and finally chose to follow Lois. On the way, they passed a drug store and one guy left the guy to use the phone in there. Obviously no cell phones then. But today, how many drugstores have payphones in them? Back then it was something normal (our local drugstore had a phonebooth in the back, complete with a seat, light, and adjustable fan, and we often used it.) Second, when Lois Lane arrived home at her apartment, she didn't stop to check her ans machine for messages, as everyone does today. I'll bet a great many old TV shows and movies had plot twists based on someone urgently trying to phone another person but couldn't reach them because they were on the road. With cell phones that's all gone. Of course back then, businesses had secretaries to take messages. Nice apartment buildings had switchboards and would take messages for the residents. ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Caller ID and Spying??? Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:42:50 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations desiv writes: > As far as I know, Caller ID is data sent over the phone line from the > phone company. When my mom called this lady, QWest detects that this > woman is on the phone, and forwards the call and ANI info to Callwave. > They (Callwave) then sends it to this woman's PC. So, if this my mom If this other guy was calling and trying to get past call-blocking, he might, if he was behind a PBX or on an ISDN line, reprogam the number emitted by their system. Telemarketers do this all the time, and I think the rules which make it illegal came into effect on january 1st. > Now, I'm not asking how HE did it (if he did) ... What I want to know > is how would that be possible??? Caller-ID isn't perfect, but in this particular case it looks like some sort of database corruption -- maybe this callwave thingie mixed up information from two different calls? > Something like call forwarding or transferring?? Some way someone > could monitor phone calls??? Your punctuation marks are getting to the 'wearing underwear on your head' stage. Calm down. Of all the things this *could* be, I think tracing and monitoring is the least likely by far. If someone working for a security company wanted to do that, you'd never know it was happening if they had any skills at all. * * PV something like badgers -- something like lizards -- and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: BV124@aol.com Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 01:17:17 EST Subject: Re: More on NANP Numbering Compared to Europe I was given to understand that Area Code "224" was an overlay to Area Code "847". Am I wrong? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That may be correct, I do not know. Having washed my hands of the whole ugly scene called 'Chicago' officially in 1999 with only one very short, limited visit since, in the year 2001, I have more or less lost track of things there. If 224 is 'only' an overlay as compared to a complete change of area code once again, then I guess that is a point in favor of the widely- scattered (from Newfoundland through the mid-south Pacific Ocean) but hardly inclusive (no Mexico, no Cuba) "North American" numbering plan. Actually, I had heard somewhere (maybe an Ameritech public relations blurb) that 847 had been edged to the west, starting over around Arlington Heights/Glenview somewhere while the 'north shore' area around Glencoe, Highland Park, Evanston all 'migrated' (was forced into) 224. Maybe someone who *actually lives there* can comment. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau (address withheld at reader's request) Subject: Re: More on NANP Numbering Compared to Europe Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 01:38:20 -0500 [As usual, please omit my email address. Thanks.] >> My number in Paris has remained the same for 20 years now. >> Friends of mine in the states >> have endured 3, 4 or more area code changes during this time. > I think you'll find that the number of people living in areas that > have undergone that many NPA splits is proportionally very tiny > compared to the number who have undergone no changes at all. (Mark & > Co., are there actually *any* areas at all that have undergone *four* > splits since 1984? PAT complained about having four area codes over > the years, but bear in mind that he moved to different cities at least > a couple of times, which isn't at all the same as having your number > change due to an area code split. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not remember the *exact* order of > things from back when I was living in Chicago but let us take a > hypothetical person living in Evanston/Skokie, IL for thirty years or > so. They began with 312 for all of northern Illinois. Then they > went to 708 when all suburbs were split away from Chicago. Then they > would have gone to 847 when the northern suburbs were split away from > the southern/western suburbs. Now they have gone to 224 when the > northeastern suburbs were split away from the northwestern suburbs. > That would appear to be four potential area code splits in a bit over > twenty years wouldn't it? No, it would actually be three splits (one original area code and three subsequent ones caused by splits), if the above scenario were correct. But I don't think it is, because I believe that NPA 224 is actually an OVERLAY on NPA 847, and the PLs on nanpa.com seem to confirm that. Thus, anyone with an existing phone number there will at worst have undergone only two area code changes in the last almost-60 years (312 to 708 to 847), and will never have to change again until the NANP expands beyond 10 digits (which looks at least 40 years out now, if not further). Two numbering changes in a century sounds like a pretty stable numbering plan to me! Bob Goudreau Cary, NC [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you are going to think of it that way (only two changes in sixty years) then you should probably recall that sixty years ago, when 312 became obligitory they had been able to use just seven digits prior to having to add 1-312 to the front end of it. There was a time when even 312 was not needed. PAT] ------------------------------ From: JakeD@rosestudios.com (Jake Dempsey) Subject: Re: Automated Attendant Systems Date: 12 Jan 2004 01:44:02 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Shameless self plug ... but the Rose Unified messaging platform may fit your bill. http://www.rosetechnologies.com/Rosetech/RoseComm/CallManager/index.htm You can give it a look see. If you want you can keep folks in menus typing passwords and pin numbers for hours. Give us a call. 425-637-2344 just hit 0 for the operator and ask for Jake or Chad. Carl Navarro wrote in message news:: > On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 02:30:33 GMT, JamminDJ > wrote: >> Hello, I am a tech consonant for a computer help desk at a mid to >> large size university. Currently all calls to the centre go through an >> initial auto attendant system, then are forwarded to dept. depending >> on need. One of these options is password change. This is all done by >> human operator right now, we take their SSN numbers and get fed a new >> password out. This becomes quite tiresome, and some higher ups have >> actually threatened to quit due to the infinite number of calls for >> change password requests. My question is, is there a piece of software >> or hardware, capable of taking a purely numeric SSN number, feeding to >> one of our mainframes, and spit out the purely alphaic password? I >> know it can be done, this is evident in the CVS 'Rapid Refill' >> system. I just wonder if there is any third party software that can do >> this, and do it at a university price. > I have never done this, but Amanda does simple comma delimited or ODBC > compliant database lookups, depending on which system you buy. Try > www.taa.com and look at Amanda @work.group or Amanda Portal. The > former is fairly inexpensive for what it does, about $2500 retail, and > the latter about $5200 for 4 port systems. > Carl Navarro >> Thank you for your time, >> Paul Miller ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: ATT Slams Again Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 04:42:39 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Anyone want to do business with ATT? This might be of interest: Looks like ATT is indulging in more creative revenue enhancement. I was again (soft)slammed by ATT, switched again from residential to business long distance. This time, they refuse to cancel the charges. I got a business bill in October for a prorated amount of the $25.00 they charge people who do not make any long distance calls. I also got a residential bill for the same period. I called ATT "sales" and wound up with a self-proclaimed telephone expert who would not cancel the business account and who started in with the insults and innuendo almost from the start. He also betrayed his total ignorance of how LEC's operate, which he claimed to be a certified expert in, with comments like, "How do you know what the classcode is? Did you walk into the central office and check your line?" He didn't know what "switch" meant. He stumbled on "LEC", too. He really went out of his way to be as offensive as possible. I guess he was only half right--he's certifiable, at least. I got ATT to block long distance service on 6 October but ATT continued to bill until they cut off service on 21 October. The LEC had just got rid of all their experienced help and was unable to terminate the primary long distance service until 10 October. I spent approx 2.5 hours getting passed around to people who had no clue as to what to do and would not admit to it. I was an ATT customer since 1971. They can thank their "salesman" and their slamming that I and my businesses will forever have nothing to do with them. I will never recommend any of their services. I have sent a written complaint to CAPUC, as this is in CA. I noted that ATT is also charging their residential customers fees for not making long distance calls starting this month. This is the second time they have slammed me, switching from residential to business without even the courtesy of a notice. Seems like ATT is in trouble -- if they have to start slamming and charging fees to customers not making enough calls. (I wonder how their stock fares?) ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #18 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jan 13 17:25:23 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0DMPNm26130; Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:25:23 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:25:23 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401132225.i0DMPNm26130@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 #19 TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:25:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 19 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Norvergence Bait and Switch (Kim Barker Craven) IBM Breaks U.S. Patent Record; Tops List Eleventh Consecutive (Solomon) Democratizing the Media, and More (H. E. Taylor) Analog Phone Line Question (Dmitry) MCI's Current Market Status (Brett Nelson) Executone ACD Reporting (ab) Re: Wireless and Internet Phones not Yet Reliable For 911 (John Bartley) Re: "Talibanism in Technology" (Jay Hennigan) Re: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot (John R. Covert) Re: Caller ID and Spying??? (Nick Landsberg) Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots (Rich Greenberg) Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots (Carl Navarro) Re: More on NANP Numbering Compared to Europe (Paul Vader) Re: NANP Numbering; Joey's Advice to the Unwashed Masses (jbl) Access America Telemanagement (Satchel Paige) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:38:11 -0500 Subject: Norvergence Bait and Switch From: Kim Barker Craven Hi Patrick, I found your name when doing a search for Norvergence. I wanted to find out what you can tell me about them. I signed on with them in August, 2003 for telecom services for my home-based business for a what turns out to be too-good-to-be-true rate. Included was T1 connection, unlimited long distance on land lines and cell phones. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a case of bait and switch, when at the minute of installation, with the installer out at the street they called and said T1 was not available in my residential area, but they would provide cable (we had dsl) which is, and I quote, "almost as good" as T1. They said my contract would reflect a discount and they would fax revised contract right over. The revived contract never came but the bills persist. What really galls me is they delivered a Matrix Soho box which I am supposed to pay $200/mo for 5 years to rent. We have not used this box since day one. It appears to be nothing more than a router/firewall. Am I correct? I am trying to cancel service but they are unresponsive. Further their financing company, Dolphin capital, is threatening to ruin my credit rating because I refuse to pay for the box. What can you tell me about these characters? Thanks you for your interest. Kim Barker Craven President CREATIVE SERVICES Strategic Marketing & Graphic Design 64 Bower Road, Madison, CT 06443 203.318.9000 / fax 203.318.9001 kim@creativeservices.info www.creativeservices.info [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not mean to sound hateful to the folks at Norvergence; I really don't. But I am not a human Google search program. I have spent **all day today** -- since 10 AM Tuesday morning, seeking out and pulling all the Norvergence references -- bad or good, but mostly bad -- out of our archives to give to Mike Sullivan who has agreed to represent me pro-bono as needed in a pending lawsuit by the Norvergence people against myself. You see, they called again yesterday with demands, etc. First their lawyer, and I did not return his call. Then Ms. Susan Carol, who described her job as attempting to get accurate PR about the firm out on the net. I returned her call, and found myself 'getting volunteered' into a conference phone call on January 19 with some executives at Norvergence. I asked John Levine what I should do; also Mike Sullivan. John Levine suggested using 47 USC 230 to stop them dead in their tracks (pertinent section says no electronic publisher can be held liable for messages written by others; in other words absolute immunity) but my first thought was to try and be a little kind and more pleasant. After all, I personally have no knowlege of Norvergence and no reason to just give them bad coverage. Mike Sullivan suggested gathering up everything in the archives about the company and forwarding them to him for review, which I did earlier today, starting about eight hours ago. :( The more I did that, struggling with emacs and archives files of humongous size, the more irritated I got, to the point that now I don't really care if I ever talk to those folks at Norvergence again or not. John may have been correct: refer them to 47-USC-230 and let it go at that; even though that's *not* the way I believe the Digest should be handled. I have Ms. Carol's biography of Alex Wolf, an executive at Norvergence and I may publish that here soon to see if that will smooth things over a little. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:12:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: IBM Breaks U.S. Patent Record; Tops List 11th Consecutive Year IBM Breaks U.S. Patent Record; Tops List for Eleventh Consecutive Year; More than 25,000 IBM innovations patented since 1993 - Jan 12, 2004 12:14 PM (BusinessWire) ARMONK, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 12, 2004--IBM earned 3,415 U.S. patents in 2003, breaking the record for patents received in a single year and extending its run as the world's most innovative company to eleven consecutive years. Led by growth in patents that fuel the company's latest on demand computing and services offerings, IBM eclipsed the nearest company by more than 1,400 patents. During the past eleven years, IBM innovations have generated more than 25,000 U.S. patents -- nearly triple the total of any U.S. IT competitor during this time and surpassing the combined totals for Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, Intel, Apple, EMC, Accenture and EDS. IBM is the only company to receive 3,000 patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office in a single year, passing that milestone each of the past three years. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40168237 ------------------------------ From: H. E. Taylor Organization: Organization? What organization?! Subject: Democratizing the Media, and More Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:30:29 -0800 Greetings, Here is a clip from a Dan Gillmor article that may be of interest. Are we in a 'post-broadcast culture'? Is there a tectonic shift happening here or just more 'technology will save us' wishful thinking? -het 2004/01/11: DanGillmor: Democratizing the Media, and More The broadcast culture assumes that most of us are "consumers" of mass media. We are merely receptacles for what Hollywood, the music industry and even our local daily newspaper decide we should view, hear or read. The post-broadcast culture is a democratization of media, and it comes at things from the opposite stance. It says that anyone also can be a creator, not just a consumer. There's a world of difference. [...] http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001654.shtml "The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." -Eden Phillpotts PV FAQ: http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/energy/pv_faq.html H.E. Taylor http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/ ------------------------------ From: shark_1968@yahoo.com (Dmitry) Subject: Analog Phone Line Question Date: 12 Jan 2004 12:25:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I have a live analog telephone line and can dial out just fine, but I don't know what the phone number is to dial in. Is there a number I can dial in Washington D.C area that would tell me the number I am calling from? I realize I can call any number with caller ID, but I've heard that Telco has a number which provides that information also. Thank you in advance, Dmitry ------------------------------ From: Brett Nelson Subject: MCI's Current Market Status Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 20:04:46 -0500 Organization: Bell Sympatico Over the past few months I have received several telemarketing pitches from MCI. The rates are great, but ... The company reputation was terrible, prior to bankruptcy. How are they now? Is their billing accurate? Are the conversions timely and without interruption? Are they prompt to answer and resolve customer service problems? Feedback welcome. ------------------------------ From: bothbeckers@yahoo.com (ab) Subject: Executone ACD Reporting Date: 12 Jan 2004 20:12:04 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anyone out there know anything about reporting for the Executone Custom Plus ACD? I recently inherited reporting responsibility for 3 of them, and am frustrated by the archaic process of connecting via modem to acquire data. Anyone know what database platform Executone employed? I'd love to query the table(s) directly and forego the modem madness. I know these boxes are pretty old, but assume they're not without other means of obtaining data. Thanks for any help. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:57:17 PST From: John Bartley or K7AAY@ARRL.NET Subject: Re: Wireless and Internet Phones not Yet Reliable For 911 Pat wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Again, talking about Vonage for a > minute. > When I got my Vonage account several months ago, the Vonage people > stressed to me that I should register my '911 service' with them as > soon as possible. If you travel around a lot, and take the ATA with > you, then you are correct, it is not yet perfected. But as soon as I > gave them my street address, it went on the 911 PSAP records that way. > I got back email a few days later confirming that my address had been > registered, and the same day I got a letter from the City of > Independence telling me they had also recorded my street address for > public safety purposes based on the request from Vonage. However, I > have never moved anywhere or had the box out of service, except to > reboot it a couple of times. PAT] All this may be true, but how quickly will it be answered? In the PSAP for my county, the call comes in on a non-emergency number. Not all PSAPs can prioritize IP-orignated 911 calls alongside 911 calls from the wireline PSTN. I'd suggest calling the local non-emergency number, asking for a supervisor, and then finding out if your IP-originated calls will be answered just like 911 calls from wireline users. John E. Bartley, III K7AAY telcom admin, PDX, USA - Views mine. palmwireless (dot) cjb (dot) net Wireless FAQ for PalmOS(r) This post is quad-ROT13 encrypted. Reading it violates the DMCA. Dilbert is a documentary. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is all sort of a moot point in my case; here is why. The City of Independence Police Department Administrative number 332-1700 is answered by the same *one person* (depending on time of day/day of week) who responds to 911 calls for police and the Montgomery County Sheriff and the Sheriff's administrative number 330-1000. In other words, one person does all the 911 and the administrative phone work for the City of Independence and the County of Montgomery. Coffeyville however has their own police department and 911 dispatcher, also a single person (per time of day and day of week) who does it all, including the Sheriff sub-station there. When you live in a rural area of s.e. Kansas with a total (county) population of less than thirty thousand people -- eight thousand people live here in our town -- you can get away with that. I am not sure, but I think she answers the 'oh' zero calls on the city hall centrex as well. I have never called 911 since I believe 911 should be for *dire emergencies* only and not just to ask questions, etc, and the couple of times I have called 332-1700 (police) or 332-2500 (city clerk) I have never had it ring more than two times. I think once I was told that on average, the phone person gets a total of perhaps twenty calls per day on all the lines she supervises, or less than one call per hour. I am not that worried about it, especially when I look out my window across the street and see the Police Chief raking up leaves in his widowed mother's back yard (house catty-corner from me [where he used to live as as a small child, and she still resides.]) By the way, I am sort of shocked to hear you suggest I should use Vonage to dial 911 'just to test it out or ask a supervisor about it'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jay Hennigan Organization: Disgruntled Postal Workers Against Gun Control Subject: Re: "Talibanism in Technology" Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 18:06:01 -0800 On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 19:47:33 -0500, Marcus Didius Falco wrote: > From: K.Ellis > To: David Farber > Sent: Jan 10, 2004 11:24 AM > Subject: "Talibanism in Technology" > Interesting read. > "Talibanism in Technology" > deals with seven reasons why women in technology are invisible > http://www.dqindia.com/content/special/103022602.asp I disagree with much of the article, particularly as it relates to technology in modern times. The online community is far less dependent on the classic "networking" addressed in the article of after-work time, golf on the weekends, etc. These things may still play a role in gender discrimination in conventional brick-and-mortar companies, but to give it a technical slant is misleading. The online technical community networks through email, web pages, netnews articles, and text messaging. These media are for the most part blind to gender and race issues although some inference could be made based on the names involved. The references given are also ancient and irrelevant to modern technology, going back to the time of the cotton gin and Taj Mahal. Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Administration - jay@west.net WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323 WB6RDV NetLojix Communications, Inc. - http://www.netlojix.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:00:40 EST From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot Here is the list of Florida virtual numbers from the Vonage "Add Virtual Number" page. When you select a state, you can then select any area code in that state, and then once you've selected an area code, you can select one of these exchanges (or you can leave it at "any location"). You then press "Next" and before it goes on, it confirms that it will give you a number in the exchange you want (unless you picked "any"). Now, I don't think that the "Keys" are all one exchange, so that does look like a crap shoot. But in all other cases, if you select an exchange that is a local call to your mother, you'll get a number in that exchange. As another reader already suggested, use the web site at http://members.dandy.net/~czg/search.html to find out what is local to your mother. Just put in the area code and first three digits of her number, for example 321 455, and click on "search". You'll get a page listing the rate center for that exchange, which in the case of the example is "Cocoa, FL". If you click on the name of the rate center, another page comes up showing a list of other rate centers which are local to Cocoa. Good luck. 305 Keys 786 Miami 813 Plant City, Tampa Central, Zephyrhills 772 Port St. Lucie, Stuart, Vero Beach 561 Belle Glade, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, Delray Beach 954 Coral Springs, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pompano Beach 941 Bradenton, North Port, Palmetto, Sarasota, Venice 727 Hudson, New Port Richey, St. Petersburg, Tarpon Springs 321 Apopka, Cocoa, Cocoa Beach, East Orange, Eau Gallie, Geneva, Kenansville, Kissimmee, Melbourne, Montverde, Orlando, Oviedo, Reedy Creek, Sanford, Titusville, West Kissimmee, Winter Garden, Winter Park 904 Fernandina Beach, Jacksonville, Jacksonville Beach, Orange Park, Ponte Vedra Beach, St. Augustine 863 Lake Wales, Lakeland, Mulberry, Winter Haven /john ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Subject: Re: Caller ID and Spying??? Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 22:42:43 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Paul Vader wrote: > desiv writes: >> As far as I know, Caller ID is data sent over the phone line from the >> phone company. When my mom called this lady, QWest detects that this >> woman is on the phone, and forwards the call and ANI info to Callwave. >> They (Callwave) then sends it to this woman's PC. So, if this my mom > If this other guy was calling and trying to get past call-blocking, he > might, if he was behind a PBX or on an ISDN line, reprogam the number > emitted by their system. Telemarketers do this all the time, and I > think the rules which make it illegal came into effect on january 1st. >> Now, I'm not asking how HE did it (if he did) ... What I want to know >> is how would that be possible??? > Caller-ID isn't perfect, but in this particular case it looks like some > sort of database corruption -- maybe this callwave thingie mixed up > information from two different calls? [Snip] I would agree with the database corruption theory. The way the caller-name service works is that there is a dip into a (large) database system which looks up the name based on the calling number. If the calling number was shown correctly but the name was not, then there was some kind of screwup in the database or in communicating with the database, e.g. the responses to two different queries got transposed by this "callwave thingie." Nick Landsberg "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots Date: 12 Jan 2004 14:34:09 -0500 Organization: Organized? Me? In article , Kilo Delta One Sierra wrote: >> If the web site tests the line and says it's eligible why not place >> the order on-line so you don't have to deal with the "morons." > Because if I key my phone number into the web site -- it says it IS > NOT available. If I put another number in from same building, same > cable it say sit is. Its quite possible that this is correct if your line is connected to the CO by any one of several devices under the generic name of "Pair-gain", which enables n copper wires to service n+m phone lines. One of the more common types of these is the SLC-96 which services 96 telephones over 3 T-1 lines (= 6 copper pairs). The store may have a direct copper connection back to the CO. Rich Greenberg Work: Rich.Greenberg atsign worldspan.com + 1 770 563 6656 N6LRT Marietta, GA, USA Play: richgr atsign panix.com + 1 770 321 6507 Eastern time zone. I speak for myself & my dogs only. VM'er since CP-67 Canines:Val(Chinook,CGC,TT), Red & Shasta(Husky,(RIP)) Owner:Chinook-L Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/ Asst Owner:Sibernet-L ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:20:35 -0500 Organization: Airnews.net! at Internet America On 12 Jan 2004 14:34:20 GMT, kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) wrote: >> If the web site tests the line and says it's eligible why not place >> the order on-line so you don't have to deal with the "morons." > Because if I key my phone number into the web site -- it says it IS > NOT available. If I put another number in from same building, same > cable it say sit is. > And dslreports.com shows me roughly 6000 feet from the CO. Giving the telco the benefit of the doubt, it could be that DSL is "not available" because your line is already being used by pair gain devices like subscriber carrier. You need to point out to them that it's not a distance problem, so what will it take to get DSL on your line ... Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: More on NANP Numbering Compared to Europe Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:16:37 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations BV124@aol.com writes: > I was given to understand that Area Code "224" was an overlay to Area >Code "847". Am I wrong? You're not wrong. It's not used much though - 224 has existed since late 2001, and I've never met anyone with a 224 number. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That may be correct, I do not > know. Having washed my hands of the whole ugly scene called 'Chicago' > officially in 1999 with only one very short, limited visit since, in > the year 2001, I have more or less lost track of things there. If 224 > is 'only' an overlay as compared to a complete change of area code > once again, It is indeed an overlay, but not in Chicago -- 847 is used in the suburbs only. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I use the word 'Chicago' in this context I am talking about the politics of the entire metropolitan area, which is how things are at there. The stench goes way beyond Howard Street on the north or Cicero Avenue on the west. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jbl Subject: Re: NANP Numbering; Joey's Advice to the Unwashed Masses Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:55:09 -0700 Organization: On the desert Reply-To: jbl@spamblocked.com In , Joey Lindstrom wrote: > Tuesday, January 6, 2004, 12:47:27 PM, Earle Robinson wrote: >> Here in France if I dial a number, and there is no call waiting on >> that line, I get a busy signal, just as in the states. But, all I need >> do is to punch the 5 on the touch pad and hang up. ... > You are intimating that this service is unavailable here (later, in > your original post, you clearly state that we "don't have" this > feature). In fact we do, and depending on the phone company you're > with, it might be pay-per-use, or a flat-fee charged monthly, or may > be included in a service bundle. But we do have this feature. > Granted, it takes three keys rather than one, but hey. In fact, here in Arizona's Qwestland we do it with one key. If a local number is busy I get a recording (played over the busy signal) informing that I can dial "3" and hang up to get called back when the number is free, and that it will cost me $.75. What it doesn't say is that since I have this feature in my service bundle, I don't actually get charged any fee (as you say). /JBL ------------------------------ From: dor@writeme.com (Satchel Paige) Subject: Access America Telemanagement E-Reunion Plans Date: 12 Jan 2004 16:12:09 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anyone out there who used to work at Access America Telemanagement? Whether it was in California (Originally as Access West), Illinois or Connecticut. (Where else were they located?) Anyone remember Michael and Jarie Shocket or Will Musco? Hows about The Barnard's: Jim, Jim Jr. and Billy? What is Richard Petty (not the former race car driver)up to these days? Sean Crilly John Chaloupka Linda Lewin James Magnone Ron Sherman Ron Lewis Henry Braithwaite Murry Morganstein Marianne Mote Tom Quigly Add more names. Let's have a reunion. I thought those were great times. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #19 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jan 13 23:52:09 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0E4q9j27734; Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:52:09 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:52:09 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401140452.i0E4q9j27734@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 #20 TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:52:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 20 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Norvergence (Alex Wulf) Re: Norvergence Bait and Switch (J Kelly) Response to Norvergence Posting (ashoverman@ekno.com) Re: Very important Problem! (John R Levine) Interview on the 19th with Norvergence (scapr) Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Re: Caller ID and Spying??? (desiv) Re: MCI's Current Market Status (Joseph) Re: Analog Phone Line Question (Michael D. Sullivan) PluggedIn: TV Shoppers Get New Education in Microchips (Monty Solomon) WB Network Goes For Made-For-TV Movies (Monty Solomon) AT&T Renews Contract for Prepaid Phone Cards (Monty Solomon) Spinning Yarns Around the Digital Fire: Storytelling, Dialogue (Solomon) Globalization of Prurience: Internet and Degradation of Women (Solomon) High Court Gives Fax Firm a Busy Signal (Monty Solomon) Supreme Court Restricts Phone Lawsuits (Monty Solomon) Oscar "Screener" Found on Internet, Academy Says (Monty Solomon) FCC Seeks to Limit F-Word on US Airwaves - Sources (Monty Solomon) 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: norvscam@hotmail.com (Alex Wulf) Subject: Re: Norvergence Date: 13 Jan 2004 12:50:47 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Email discussing Norvergence has been coming in heavily all afternoon/evening since I mentioned earlier today I was still having trouble with them. The next four or five messages all deal with Norvergence; not in a positive light. This first message is from Alex Wulf, not to be confused with Alex Wolf an executive of Norvergence. More from Mr. *Wolf* later this issue. PAT] ====================== Chad, Let me start off by saying that no reasonably intelligent person should ever sign up for Norvergence's current offering. I would advise you to stay as far away from this company as possible. I'll explain. In order to properly asses Norvergence's offer you need to know exactly what your getting and how it works. You should also do a quick check with other competing offers. Norvergence Scam - How it works: Norvergence is effectively a reseller/wholesaler of voice and data. They resell local loop T-1's from Quest, AT&T and others. (for smaller customers they just switch the longdistance service over to Norvergence). Then they buy usage (minutes) from these companies on a wholesale basis. A current survey of wholesale prices indicates that wholesale rates for domestic longdistance calling is less than .01 (one cent) per minute and falling. As a retail customer you may be paying .$03, $.05, $ .10 per minute or higher, so its easy to see how Norvergence makes money. Many other companies sell domestic calling for as little as $.02 -.03 (2-3 cents) a minute to retail customers, so regardless of what you do, you should shop before you sign. Additionally some of the competition doesn't require a contract, or if they do it's a 1 or 2 year deal, not the 5 years that Norvergence is demanding. Norvergence used to call themselves "the strategic alliance of Nortel Networks." It took Nortel a little while to figure this out but once they did Nortel sued Norvergence because they didn't stop. Nortel won so they stopped dead in their tracks. There was never any strategic alliance. They had just bought some equipment from Nortel and then didn't end up paying for it for over a year. Some partnership!! Normally when the other party agrees with your statements, they issue a joint press release. The press release was issued solely by Norvergence, to put their spin on it and do some damage control. Norvergence states they have 1200 or 1300 employees, about 600-700 of them are cold calling telemarketers and another 250-350 are outside field sales people trying to get you to sign up. First they call you and tell you that they are screening you to see "if you qualify" and then when you see the sales person they'll tell you there's very few people "getting approved" for this offer, so you should put in your "application" right away. They realize that it they can't scam you on the first or second try and you don't sign, that you've figured things out and won't sign with them so they end up leaving you alone. You'll never get a straight answer to questions that you ask. Usually something like "why worry, its free unlimited calling", just sign up. It's a reverse sell that works well with small businesses without an IT or Telecom department to vet the offer. Norvergence will use high pressure tactics to get you to sign right away. Take your time and get some competitive offers. Norvergence has also added 'unlimited' cell phones to their program. Same thing here again, you sign a firm and irrevocable 5 year lease. They buy the minutes wholesale as if all these phones were Norvergence corporate phones and you get one monthly lease payment. This deal is especially not good for cell phones where prices have been dropping 25-40% over the last few years and continue to drop. And if you want to keep your number you may not be able and if you do at the end of 5 years you may not be able to get it back because the number will belong to Norvergence, since they are the customer not you, due to the lease arrangement. Some other companies with very competitive (and many times lower than Norvergence) rates are Paetec, IDT, and XO communications to name a few. Vonage and 8x8 also have interesting unlimited calling packages for business. Even Verizon has unlimited local and LD business calling for $89 per line with NO contract. In fact most carriers will be offering a full suite of unlimited calling packages by the end of the year. Prices are going even lower. So what Norvergence does is save by not having any billing system. You make a monthly lease payment to a Bank (not Norvergence) which includes the price of the Matrix (made by Adtran) and also includes the leased price of all your usage (you no longer get a detailed bill with all of your calls). So it's like taking a 5 year loan to buy phone service. This is generally not a good idea to begin with, but there are more serious issues when you go ahead with this at Norvergence. First of all their price guarantee (for further price reductions) is hollow; it has to be someone with "EXACTLY" the same service. And if Norvergence doesn't think it's exactly the same, then you'll never get a price reduction. Second, once you sign up, that's it. You can't get out of the deal for 5 years. You can't even withhold payment to Norvergence, because once you sign the lease and get installed, Norvergence sells the lease to a bank and they get all their money for the 5 years of telecom and internet service up front. You get stuck with the payments and a worthless Adtran IAD (aka Matrix). So if your service stinks or if Norvergence goes out of business, you have no recourse. The bank will come after you for the payment. Read the lease, there is no out to stop making payment even if Norvergence goes bankrupt. Also there is no reference in the banks lease document to the "No Risk Addendum" which the bank never sees, but that offers you some very slippery worded "guarantees". Once Norvergence goes under your stuck. And if you think that's not a possibility. You should look at who's running the company and what's happened to all of the other companies they've run for a few years, where all the money disappeared and they filed for bankruptcy. This company is run by two people who are notorious in New Jersey for running telecom scams Tom Salzano ( Thomas Salzano ) and his brother Peter Salzano. Some of their former companies had at the time the highest fines ever levied by the FCC. ALL of those companies are bankrupt, and all the money went missing. Just do a look-up of these guys and their former companies: Cash Back Rebates, National Telecommunications, Inc., Parcel Consultants, Minimum Rate Pricing, Inc. But the executives at this company are living in huge luxury estates and some are having other custom estates built. These are not the kind of people I would trust with my money. There are better deals out there, don't get sucked in. You'll regret it later -- for the rest of the 5 years. Hope this helps. Alex N-Line@juno.com wrote in message news:: > Patrick, > You seem to have the most insight to this company. (From looking at > forums.) They've approached us with their "service" and I'm in the > process of trying to figure out if they are reputable. > Can you help? > Chad > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would suggest two things: one, look > and scan through our back issues file for December just past and > read some of the messages there, none of which are very favorable. I > also suggest you wait a day or two while this inquiry from you makes > the rounds on comp.dcom.telecom (and other participating newsgroups) > and see if some of the readers wake up and respond to you directly; > again, the most recent replies were not very favorable from Norvergence's > point of view. The company seems rather litigous, or anxious to sue > anyone who gives them a bum rap. For instance, they threatened to sue > me if I did not remove the most disparaging messages about them from > our archives. I did not remove the messages, but its not that they did > not try to make me (short of suit), including an inquiry they made of > MIT's legal counsel. I'd review their contract they'll ask you to sign > as a condition of getting the 'Matrix box' **very carefully** and > let's see if any readers write you direct with responses. PAT] ------------------------------ From: J Kelly Subject: Re: Norvergence Bait and Switch Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 18:47:49 -0600 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Reply-To: jkelly@newsguy-nospam-.com On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:38:11 -0500, Kim Barker Craven wrote: > Hi Patrick, > I found your name when doing a search for Norvergence. I wanted to > find out what you can tell me about them. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not mean to sound hateful to the > folks at Norvergence; I really don't. But I am not a human Google > search program. I have spent **all day today** -- since 10 AM Tuesday > morning, seeking out and pulling all the Norvergence references -- bad > or good, but mostly bad -- out of our archives to give to Mike Sullivan Pat, speaking of Google, why not simply use Goolge to do that job for you?? Either a site specific search of the archives for the term "norvergence" or use google groups to search it out on comp.dcom.telecom - http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=norvergence&btnG=Google+Search&meta=group%3Dcomp.dcom.telecom.* Less than 60 seconds and you have found all relevant articles. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That's what I did; grep vol/iss Norvergence but then I copied them out to be inserted in email to Michael Sullivan. My old obsolete computer, combined with my old, obsolete and quite deseased brain made it quite a day of adventure and hard work. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Response to Posting on Norvergence Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 20:52:22 +0000 From: ashoverman@ekno.com Mr. Townson, I was recently recruited by Norvergence and within one hour of the first seminar, I knew it was BAD! What are your experiences with the company or any other knowledge that you have. They have taken money from me as well as my dignity and self-esteem. I just want to know more about this "company" that scammed me. Thank you, Robert [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Robert, I am sorry to hear about how you got hassled with your money, dignity and self-esteem getting ripped off. Reading your message reminded me of how that company which sold encyclopedias door to door years ago operated. The company would run help-wanted ads in the Chicago Tribune (20-30 years ago) seeking 'leaders with a positive outlook on life' who wanted to travel all over the USA for an 'educational' organization demonstrating and selling products to help children get a decent start and ahead in life. Well, know who would not want to do something decent like that, and make 'lots of money' and 'see the country' in the process. To apply, you were to go in person to this office downtown in person, and be prepared to go into training the very same day. The guys showed up, in droves, and many nice young ladies also. If you observed closely, there were many things amiss right from the start. The guys who showed up to fill out the simple-minded application which never got checked or looked at more than once or twice were always neat and clean although often times with older clothes that had seen better times. They all sincerely thought this would be their chance; their way to make money and be a success in life. The phone which was always ringing was answered by an older lady with way to much cosmetics and powder/rouge/lipstick on her only by phone number (as in 'this is RANdolph 6-2345' etc.) She would never say anything except give the street address and tell you to come in and fill out an application. If she was trying to give out an application to one of the guys when the phone happened to ring again, she would roll her eyes upward in disgust. It was a shabby, tiny office in 1960 in downtown Chicago in a decrepit old building even back then. After you received your (at best) five minute 'interview' and got hired you were told to report the next morning for your week of training. You would be leaving for sites unknown, so please bring your suitcase. You officially went on the payroll once you made your first encyclopedia sale. The company gave you ONE meal a day (as an advance against future wages) and three or four of you shared a room in a flophouse motel overnight (also an advance against your wages). If you actually *sold* a set of books going door to door in whatever strange community they took you to, you were damn lucky. But the numbers were with the company, obviously, a million young guys all going door to door in strange communities someone was bound to sell something every day. The guys were told (or soon learned, out of desparation) to *lie* in their sales tactics. Generally the 'team leaders' as the ones who drove the cars were called, would just drop you off in a totally unfamiliar area in a strange town and advise you they would be back to get you at 6 pm that night. So you went with your one or two books (out of the volume; encyclopedias were in 20-25 volume sets of bound books) door to door making up stories about how you were working your way through school and you got points for all the books you could sell, etc. They told the customers the books were 'free', being given by the company to help chidren in their education; you could have a 'free' set of books (entire volume, 25 books in all) if you wanted. People would agree but then fail to read the contract they were given which called for a payment of several hundred dollars *every year* for the next several years for the 'updating service' which went along with the books. People found out the hard way when a 'loan company' called them who had advanced the money to the encyclopedia company called them trying to collect. A bunch of crummy books which fell apart in your hands a few days after you 'bought' the 'free' set of books and the updating service. If you sold a set of books or maybe two sets after months on the road, then good for you. If you grew weary of sharing a flophouse motel room with two or three other guys and eating a cheeseburger and fries for dinner each night, then you dropped out of this marvelous job opportunity. I guarentee you that your first one or two sales commissions went back to the company entirely to pay for your room and board along the way. *Maybe* by the third sale you actually were able to pocket a few dollars for yourself. Most guys did not last long enough to make three sales, or even one or two sales, that is, unless they were really clever and knew how (and wished to) lie and cheat. And for the guys who dropped out of the 'program' early on -- with no sales commissions and lots of debts to the company for board and room and food, the company gave them (had to, under federal law) a bus ticket from the nearest bus station back to their home town (or where they had signed on with the company.) Of course that bus ticket was just one more 'cash advance' against commissions to be paid back eventually. And many of the 'crew leaders' were not above making suggestions about how the young person could pay back their indebtedness from the 'advances' they had been given for food and lodging (if you want to refer to what they ate and the flophouse lodging as 'board and room') with advances of their own (sad smile). Lisa Minter's brother (a few years older than herself) fell into this trap once. You talk about loss of dignity and self-esteem; the encyclopedia door to door sales company did that to many kids in the 1950's - 70's era. I do not know if they are still around or not -- prolly not -- since no one bothers to actually buy encyclopedias these days when they can Google just as easily. I think now they are doing the same thing with computer sales door to door (get a free one if you promise to buy upgrades all the time). And of course the rotten to the core magazine sales people are still out there, working their tails off for a nightly 'cash advance' of a cheesburger and a crummy motel room they share with several other guys. Parents, read this! Protect your older teens against this kind of rotten activity. DO NOT let them go on these 'adventures' for employment. The younger guys are too trusting about life. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jan 2004 21:05:58 -0500 From: John R Levine Subject: Re: Very Important Problem! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The opening quote is from a letter I forewarded to John Levine that I had received from Susan Carol, who handles some public relations for Norvergence. PAT] > Thanks for returning my call so quickly today. I am glad you are > interested in interviewing the COO at Norvergence. [TEL Ed: Then John Levine replied to me:] Did you say you wanted to interview this guy? It's hard to imagine that you did. If you didn't, just write back and say she misunderstood, the Telecom Digest doesn't do interviews. 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. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John further suggested I should refer Norvergence to the provision in federal law which gives absolute immunity to ISP's and BBS operators. The way I feel now maybe I will. PAT] ------------------------------ From: scapr Subject: Interview on the 19th With Norvergence Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 15:05:51 -0500 [TEL Ed: This is the full letter from Susan Carol I got in email yesterday, in which I was 'volunteered' to be in a phone interview with folks at Norvergence. PAT] Patrick, Thanks for returning my call so quickly today. I am glad you are interested in interviewing the COO at Norvergence. Just let me know what time on the 19th may work for you. I will be at their headquarters of Norvergence that day so I can be on the call with you and we'll both learn more about the Matrix Gateway, Norvergence history and operations. Below is the bio which is online for Alex Wolf. He is looking forward to answering your questions directly. Regards, Susan Chief Operating Officer: Mr. Alexander L. Wolf. Formerly of Nortel Networks, (2000-2001) Mr. Wolf was a Senior Executive within Nortel Networks' Emerging Markets Group. Mr. Wolf's areas of responsibilities within that Nortel Division have included Business and Market Planning, Operational Planning & Realization, Carrier Product Portfolio Development & Deployment, and Operational Support System Planning & Implementation. While at Nortel, Mr. Wolf also played a major role in helping emerging companies develop comprehensive business & financial plans to support Seed and Stage A operations. Due to the close relationship between Nortel and NorVergence, Executive Management allowed Mr. Wolf to join NorVergence in October 2001. This has facilitated interaction between the two firms based on previous roles and relationships. Before joining Nortel Networks, Mr. Wolf was Head of Northeast Sales Operations for Payback Training Systems, Inc., (1999) and pioneer in the E-Learning industry that grew to $10 million in revenues before his departure for Nortel. Mr. Wolf has more than 7 years of experience within the Telecommunications and Data-Communications industries. Previously, Mr. Wolf held leadership positions with Datatec (1998) managing the sub-contractor relationship to the IBM account, and Siemens, (1995-1998) where he developed and implemented cutting-edge technology solutions for some of the largest Global 100 firms. Susan Carol Associates Celebrating 15 Years in Communications www.scapr.com (540) 659-0843 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This Alex Wolf referred to in Ms. Carol's message is obviously not the same 'Alex Wulf' who began this issue of the Digest today. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 14 Jan 2004 00:00:36 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots > Its quite possible that this is correct if your line is connected to > the CO by any one of several devices under the generic name of > "Pair-gain", which enables n copper wires to service n+m phone lines. I had repair test distance - 9500 feet. So it looks like the DSL folks have it wrong. I'm not served by SLC - I'm in the city proper and there aren't any SLC installs here in Providence proper that I'm aware of. ------------------------------ From: desiv Subject: Re: Caller ID and Spying??? Organization: Comcast Online Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 01:37:06 GMT Nick Landsberg wrote in message news:telecom23.19.10@telecom-digest.org: > Paul Vader wrote: >> desiv writes: >>> As far as I know, Caller ID is data sent over the phone line from the >>> phone company. When my mom called this lady, QWest detects that this >>> woman is on the phone, and forwards the call and ANI info to Callwave. >>> They (Callwave) then sends it to this woman's PC. So, if this my mom >> If this other guy was calling and trying to get past call-blocking, he >> might, if he was behind a PBX or on an ISDN line, reprogam the number >> emitted by their system. Telemarketers do this all the time, and I >> think the rules which make it illegal came into effect on january 1st. >>> Now, I'm not asking how HE did it (if he did) ... What I want to know >>> is how would that be possible??? >> Caller-ID isn't perfect, but in this particular case it looks like some >> sort of database corruption -- maybe this callwave thingie mixed up >> information from two different calls? > [Snip] > I would agree with the database corruption theory. The way the > caller-name service works is that there is a dip into a (large) > database system which looks up the name based on the calling number. > If the calling number was shown correctly but the name was not, then > there was some kind of screwup in the database or in communicating > with the database, e.g. the responses to two different queries got > transposed by this "callwave thingie." > Nick Landsberg > "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so > ingenious" - A. Bloch Yeah, database corruption makes sense. Just a heck of a coincidence that it happend to match this other person, who has a totally different last name and happens to be involved in a messy situation. I guess that's why they call it a coincidence. At least a 1 in 60,000 chance (Approx. number of people in the calling area), but a chance nontheless. People win the lottery with worse odds.. :-) Thanx for helping explain Caller ID. desiv ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: MCI's Current Market Status Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:52:32 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NOcom On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 20:04:46 -0500, Brett Nelson wrote: > Over the past few months I have received several telemarketing pitches > from MCI. The rates are great, but ... > The company reputation was terrible, prior to bankruptcy. How are > they now? > Is their billing accurate? > Are the conversions timely and without interruption? > Are they prompt to answer and resolve customer service problems? > Feedback welcome. Well considering MCI/Worldcom and its rivals Sprint and AT&T I wouldn't go directly with any of 'em. You can get lots better deals through many resellers who may use any of the above services. Personally I wouldn't trust MCI or Sprint as far as I can spit. I don't think AT&T has any great virtures either. remove NO from .NOcom to reply [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We really have some great choices these day's don't we? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Analog Phone Line Question Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 02:07:50 GMT On 12 Jan 2004 12:25:48 -0800, Dmitry posted the following to comp.dcom.telecom: > Hi, > I have a live analog telephone line and can dial out just fine, but I > don't know what the phone number is to dial in. Is there a number I > can dial in Washington D.C area that would tell me the number I am > calling from? > I realize I can call any number with caller ID, but I've heard that > Telco has a number which provides that information also. > Thank you in advance, > Dmitry Dmitry, A couple of numbers that work here in the DC area at the moment (just tried them) are 1010732-1-770-988-9664 and 1-800-555-1140. The latter one will provide you with a lot of information (line number and a bunch of other stuff I can't interpret) as well as the calling number, which is identified by ANI (pronounced "Annie"). I have no idea who the sponsor of these numbers is. I probably got them from Telecom Digest at one point or another and keep them in my PDA. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD, USA Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That toll free number, 800-555-1140 also works fine here in my town. I bet it will for everyone. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:10:05 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: PluggedIn: TV Shoppers Get New Education in Microchips By Daniel Sorid SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Chip makers have long had a major marketing dilemma: everyone loves cool gadgets, but few care to know whose microchip, whether it be a signal processor or power amplifier, gives life to the device. To all but truly devoted geeks, circuits are simply far too complicated to be interesting. Unless, that is, the chip is a microdisplay, chips used in a new breed of thin televisions. Choosing a television used to be as easy as picking your favorite brand -- say Sony, Philips or Panasonic -- and then picking a size -- 19-inch, 27-inch, or bigger. Today, microdisplays are complicating the process, and it's becoming well worth it for TV shoppers to do some research -- you could call it homework -- on the semiconductor technologies that have already reshaped the marketing of television. Not since the "Intel Inside" stickers that signal the microprocessor used in personal computers has a chip technology become such a key consumer marketing tool. Microdisplays, as their name suggests, are tiny video displays whose images can be blown up to fill a big-screen television screen. TVs built with microdisplays are expensive, but they're considerably cheaper than plasma-based television sets. The most popular microdisplay technology in the market today is the digital light processor, a technology owned by Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE:TXN), whose name has a stronger association with calculators than fancy TVs. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40181611 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:11:17 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: WB Network Goes For Made-For-TV Movies By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES, Jan 13 (Reuters) - As it struggles to reverse a sharp ratings decline in its target audience, the youth-oriented WB network is moving into an area largely forsaken by the bigger broadcasters -- made-for-TV movies. The 9-year-old network, owned by Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) and Tribune Co. (NYSE:TRB), announced the appointment of its first executive in charge of original movie programming, cable veteran Tana Nugent Jamieson. As a senior vice president for programming and made-for-TV movies, she will report to WB's executive vice president for drama development, Carolyn Bernstein. Jamieson comes from Time Warner-owned cable movie and sports channel TBS, where she served as vice president of original programming and movies. She is credited with developing the successful TBS thriller, "Red Water," one of the highest-rated original movies on basic cable last year. The first film on Jamieson's slate will be an adaptation of the Samantha character from the "American Girls" books series, a project seen as appealing to one of WB's chief constituencies, young female viewers. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40178165 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:05:54 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AT&T Renews Contract for Prepaid Phone Cards AT&T Renews Contract for Prepaid Phone Cards with World's Largest Retailer For Sixth Consecutive Year, Wal-Mart Selects AT&T as Primary Provider of Advanced Prepaid Phone Cards MORRISTOWN, N.J., Jan. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- AT&T today announced that for the sixth consecutive year, it has been selected as the exclusive provider of advanced prepaid phone cards to SAM's Club and Wal-Mart Stores. The terms of this new agreement extend the AT&T and Wal-Mart contract for prepaid phone cards through January 31, 2005. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40179012 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:13:55 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Spinning Yarns Around the Digital Fire: Storytelling and Dialogue Spinning yarns around the digital fire: Storytelling and dialogue among youth on the Internet by David Huffaker Contents From early literacy to digital fluency Collaborations and clubhouses Empowering children's voices Message boards as learning tools Instant messaging isn't a fad Blogs and bloggers Conclusion http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_1/huffaker/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:16:28 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Globalization of Prurience: The Internet and Degradation of Women by Indhu Rajagopal with Nis Bojin Abstract This paper explores some key questions: How does the Web facilitate the production and dissemination of pornographic materials? How, and why, does pornography that depraves and corrupts unwary children, and exploits women, go untrammeled through the Web? Contents Introduction The Web that ensnares A conceptual framework Conclusion http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_1/rajagopal/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:21:21 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: High Court Gives Fax Firm a Busy Signal Justices decline to rule on Fax.com's claim that a ban on unsolicited transmissions violates its free-speech rights. By Alex Pham, Times Staff Writer Supreme Court to Fax.com Inc.: Take us off your list. The nation's high court on Monday refused to hear a case claiming a 1991 federal ban on unsolicited commercial faxes violates free-speech rights. That closed off a key defense for the closely held Aliso Viejo company, which faces multiple lawsuits and fines for sending out junk faxes. By refusing to hear Fax.com's appeal, the Supreme Court left intact the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which bans junk faxes. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fax13jan13,1,4428752.story ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:10:59 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Supreme Court Restricts Phone Lawsuits By GINA HOLLAND Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that regional telephone companies cannot be sued under federal antitrust law, with its lucrative promise of triple damages to winners, by consumers alleging anticompetitive practices. Justices blocked an avenue for people to sue over claims that phone companies are not cooperating with government-ordered competition. The case arose in New York, where AT&T customer Curtis Trinko filed a class action lawsuit against Verizon Communications, formerly Bell Atlantic, arguing that Verizon provided poor service to AT&T, resulting in phone outages at the man's office. Verizon blamed software glitches. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40180387 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:11:07 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Oscar "Screener" Found on Internet, Academy Says By Bob Tourtellotte LOS ANGELES, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Hollywood's greatest fear became a reality on Tuesday as film industry officials said a digital version of an Oscar "screener" was seen on the Internet after months of industry squabbling over whether sending out the videos to Academy Award voters would lead to movie piracy. A copy of Sony Pictures Entertainment's "Something's Gotta Give" that was sent to an Oscar voter was found to be downloadable from the Internet to a home PC, a spokesman for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40178697 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:11:27 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC Seeks to Limit F-Word on US Airwaves - Sources (First paragraph of this story contains language that may be offensive to some readers.) By Jeremy Pelofsky WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell has proposed barring the word "fuck" from most radio and broadcast television, regardless of the context, sources close to the issue said on Tuesday. The proposal would overturn an October FCC staff decision that ruled the word was not indecent when U2 rocker Bono used it while accepting an award during the 2003 live broadcast of the "Golden Globe Awards" on the NBC television network. To succeed, Powell will have to garner at least two other votes for the proposal and the four other FCC commissioners are now considering the issue, the sources said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40181215 ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #20 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jan 14 14:35:03 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0EJZ2j02959; Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:35:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:35:03 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401141935.i0EJZ2j02959@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 #21 TELECOM Digest Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:35:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 21 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson My Email With Norvergence (Robert Johnson) Anti-Spam Conference at MIT Coming Soon! (Monty Solomon) Boston's Next Exciting Technology Platform -- RFID (Monty Solomon) "Bush in 30 Seconds" Winning Ads (Monty Solomon) Sony Handhelds Get FCC Nod (Monty Solomon) EFFector 16:37: EFF Defends Right to Own Smart Card Technology (Solomon) 800/555-1140 was Re: Analog Phone Line Question (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Habeas.com and Spam? (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Maps of Central Office Locations (John E. Connerat) Re: Wireless and Internet Phones not Yet Reliable For 911 (John Bartley) Re: FCC Seeks to Limit F-Word on US Airwaves - Sources (Laura Halliday) Re: FCC Seeks to Limit F-Word on US Airwaves - Sources (Me) Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots (yeltrabnhoj@email.com) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: My Email With Norvergence From: Robert Johnson Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 10:09:14 -0800 (pat can you remove my email address) I emailed Norvergence to see exactly what their product offering was about, they denied it was a VoIP offering, yes say it uses compression ... hmm, how about that, two mutually incompatable statements, then again, I think TELECOM Digest Readers ought to see for themselves. From: Timothy Mack Subject: RE: Questions about your Service Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:09:00 -0500 Mr. Johnson, The Norvergence cost savings solution is not a VoIP solution. As our website states, it is a patented hardware solution that uses compression and encryption to get a voice transmission of far greater quality and the most secure data transmission utilizing the full bandwidth available on a T-1 circuit. The most obvious benefit is the savings in cost over a standard trunk line/PBX or fractional/integrated T-1 solution, as well as savings on cellular service. If you would like to set up a meeting with one of our representatives to further discuss how this solution can benefit your business, please follow the link below. Complete and submit the brief form, and you will be contacted by someone in our scheduling department for an appointment. Thank you for your interest in Norvergence. http://www.norvergence.com/CS_Form/form.cfm -----Original Message----- From: Roe Ventola Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 10:33 AM To: Timothy Mack Subject: FW: Questions about your Service Roe Ventola Vice-President of Sales Support Ext 4535 866-217-6678 voice 866-742-6678 Fax Norvergence.com -----Original Message----- From: Rashan Thompson Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 10:30 AM To: Roe Ventola; Scott Bufton; Beverly Thomas Subject: FW: Questions about your Service -----Original Message----- From: Robert Johnson Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 12:52 AM To: customerservice Subject: Questions about your Service After reading your site, I am having trouble figuring out exactly what your product is, if it is simply a VoIP solution why isn't it marketed as such?, and what is the advantage for purchasing your product/service over ordering either a Fractional T-1 that carries both data and voice, or ordering two seperate T-1's for whatever purpose? Robert Johnson Robert K. Johnson Jr. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 00:21:51 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Anti Spam Conference at MIT Coming Soon! NOTHING BUT NET By Alex Salkever Yahoo's Risky Antispam Gambit It's bypassing the Internet's standards body and implementing its own tech solution, a unilateral move that many experts criticize. On Jan. 16 some of the e-mail business' biggest brains will gather on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus at Spam Conference 2004 . The one-day powwow will mark the event's second year and will feature 18 presentations from a wide variety of spam fighters. The conference is quickly becoming a hot ticket. Top-level technology executives from the Big Four Internet service providers that handle the majority of e-mail traffic in the country -- Microsoft's MSN ( MSFT ), Yahoo! ( YHOO ), America Online ( TWX ), and Earthlink ( ELNK ) -- will probably attend. So will a host of academics and company officials from the plethora of antispam software, hardware, and services outfits that have sprung up over the past two years. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the body that oversees the adoption and application of new tech standards to the Internet, will be represented by none other than Eric Raymond, the open-source guru and Linux legend. http://businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2004/tc20040113_3442_tc047.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:50:18 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Boston's Next Exciting Technology Platform -- RFID Radio frequency identification is poised to revolutionize retail, starting with the lowly pallet By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff, 1/12/2004 When a stubble-faced man strolls into a drugstore hunting for a Mach3Turbo razor, Gillette Co. executives say the chances are as high as one in 10 that it will be out of stock. That problem, multiplied across an industry nettled by theft and product shrinkage through the supply chain, costs businesses an estimated tens of billions of dollars a year in North America alone -- not to mention the enmity of frustrated customers. But it has also sparked a new technology application, emerging from the Boston area and gaining a toehold on both sides of the Atlantic, that could spawn one of the biggest industries of the next five years. This new killer app, called radio frequency identification, or RFID, is being tested not in the clean rooms of cutting-edge research labs but on commonplace crates and shipping pallets in trucks and warehouses. By beaming a signal from bookmark-sized tags to interrogator devices, called readers, RFID heralds a new era of products smartly tracked through distribution and shelves amply stocked at point of sale. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/01/12/bostons_next_exciting_technology_platform/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 22:58:18 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: "Bush in 30 Seconds" Winning Ads Press Release http://www.bushin30seconds.org/release-winner.html Winning Ads http://www.bushin30seconds.org/ Finalists http://www.bushin30seconds.org/finalists.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 00:18:18 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Sony Handhelds Get FCC Nod By Richard Shim Staff Writer, CNET News.com A trio of handheld computers from Sony Electronics has received wireless regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission. The grant for the three Clie devices came down from the U.S. federal agency last week. While Sony representatives declined to comment on the handhelds or their availability, wireless products are generally released shortly after the FCC deems that they do not interfere with other products. In the past three years, Sony has announced new handhelds in March. http://news.com.com/2100-1041-5140474.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:37:24 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 16:37: EFF Defends Right to Own Smart Card Technology EFFector Vol. 16, No. 37 January 12, 2004 donna@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 276th Issue of EFFector: * EFF Defends Right to Own Smart Card Technology * Californians: Come to an Important E-Voting Meeting * EFF Secures Protection for ReplayTV Clients * EFF Comments on Intel's Draft Policy for LaGrande "Trusted Computing" Initiative * EFF Helps eVisa Win Ninth Circuit Appeal, Right to Use English Language * Nominate a Pioneer for EFF's 2004 Pioneer Awards * New EFF T-Shirts, Hot Off the Presses * Deep Links (15): What Happens in Vegas, Stays...in an FBI Dossier? * EFF Court Docket: 02.03.04 - MGM v. Grokster; 02.09.04 - OPG v. Diebold * Staff Calendar: 01.13.04 - Wendy Seltzer speaks at IDLELO First African Conference on the Digital Commons, Cape Town, South Africa; 01.22.04 - Fred von Lohmann speaks at "Washington in the West" Conference, Long Beach, CA * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/16/37.php ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 15:27:47 GMT From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: 800-555-1140 was Re: Analog Phone Line Question Organization: Excelsior Computer Services > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That toll free number, 800-555-1140 > also works fine here in my town. I bet it will for everyone. PAT] Hmm. Just tried it from a cell phone, and the ANI was *not* my cell number. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I tried *my* cellular phone also from here, and it did not return correct results either. However my Vonage phone did have the correct results, and my wireline phone as well. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:53:25 GMT From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: Habeas.com and Spam? Organization: Excelsior Computer Services Recently I've started getting a lot of spam (well, not a lot, but perhaps a half-dozen messages a day) signed by "Habeas.com." Habeas' website advertises that it is "sender warranted email," and that one of the main uses of the website is deliver spam-free e-mail. Does anyone know if they are for real? Should I report the spam to them? Should I just block anything that has Habeas headers in it? (So far, I've never received any legitimate e-mail with Habeas headers.) Thanks. -Joel Hoffman (joel@exc.com) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:04:25 -0500 From: John E. Connerat Subject: Maps of Central Office Locations I am trying to determine the location of the central office for the 404-624-xxxx area. At one time, Mapquest had a reasonably good map service that allowed you to type in the area code and exchange, and it would show you the approximate central office location for the information that you typed in. I can no longer find that service on Mapquest. Is it available anywhere else? I am trying to troubleshoot a DSL connection and I do not know how far away the service location (404-624-xxxx) is from BellSouth's central office in that neighborhood. It may come as no surprise, but the DSL "helpdesk" has no idea either. Thanks, John Connerat A ------------------------------ From: John Bartley Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:23:37 -0800 Subject: Re: Wireless and Internet Phones not Yet Reliable For 911 > On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:57:17 PST, John Bartley wrote: >> All this may be true, but how quickly will it be answered? In the >> PSAP for my county, the call comes in on a non-emergency number. Not >> all PSAPs can prioritize IP-orignated 911 calls alongside 911 calls >> from the wireline PSTN. >> I'd suggest calling the local non-emergency number, asking for a >> supervisor, and then finding out if your IP-originated calls will be >> answered just like 911 calls from wireline users. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is all sort of a moot point in my > case; here is why. The City of Independence Police Department > Administrative number 332-1700 is answered by the same *one person* > (depending on time of day/day of week) who responds to 911 calls for > police and the Montgomery County Sheriff and the Sheriff's > administrative number 330-1000. In other words, one person does all > the 911 and the administrative phone work for the City of Independence > and the County of Montgomery. Coffeyville however has their own police > department and 911 dispatcher, also a single person (per time of day > and day of week) who does it all, including the Sheriff sub-station > there. When you live in a rural area of s.e. Kansas with a total > (county) population of less than thirty thousand people -- eight > thousand people live here in our town -- you can get away with that. I > am not sure, but I think she answers the 'oh' zero calls on the city > hall centrex as well. I have never called 911 since I believe 911 > should be for *dire emergencies* only and not just to ask questions, > etc, and the couple of times I have called 332-1700 (police) or > 332-2500 (city clerk) I have never had it ring more than two times. I > think once I was told that on average, the phone person gets a total > of perhaps twenty calls per day on all the lines she supervises, or > less than one call per hour. > I am not that worried about it, especially when I look out my window > across the street and see the Police Chief raking up leaves in his > widowed mother's back yard (house catty-corner from me [where he used > to live as as a small child, and she still resides.]) By the way, I > am sort of shocked to hear you suggest I should use Vonage to dial > 911 'just to test it out or ask a supervisor about it'. PAT] Please read what I wrote, which was: I'd suggest calling the local *non-emergency* number [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Good point, my bad. Thanks for the correction. PAT] ------------------------------ From: marsgal42@hotmail.com (Laura Halliday) Subject: Re: FCC Seeks to Limit F-Word on US Airwaves - Sources Date: 14 Jan 2004 09:39:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Monty Solomon wrote in message news:: > (First paragraph of this story contains language that may be > offensive to some readers.) > By Jeremy Pelofsky > WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Communications Commission > Chairman Michael Powell has proposed barring the word "f***" from most > radio and broadcast television, regardless of the context, sources > close to the issue said on Tuesday... Thus codifying the bizarre double-standard of U.S. television, totally weirded out on sex and language, but turning a blind eye to violence of all kinds. The standards in other countries are a little saner. Most countries consider the context and time of day. An example that comes to my mind immediately was Phoenix, done by the ABC some years ago (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103511/). Among other things it had nudity, violence and profanity. But the show was about the Major Crimes Squad of the Melbourne Police (not the nicest of people themselves...), tracking down some obscene scum who had set off a car bomb. Again, not very nice people. In context, it was completely appropriate. Edited to U.S. standards it would have lost all its impact. Laura Halliday VE7LDH "Que les nuages soient notre Grid: CN89mg pied a terre..." ICBM: 49 16.05 N 122 56.92 W - Hospital/Shafte ------------------------------ Reply-To: Me From: Me Subject: Re: FCC Seeks to Limit F-Word on US Airwaves - Sources Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:42:35 GMT Jeeez, Count on Michael Powell and the FCC to tackle the really important and earth shattering issues of the day. Monty Solomon wrote in message news:telecom23.20.18@telecom-digest.org: > (First paragraph of this story contains language that may be > offensive to some readers.) > By Jeremy Pelofsky > WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Communications Commission > Chairman Michael Powell has proposed barring the word "fuck" from most > radio and broadcast television, regardless of the context, sources > close to the issue said on Tuesday. > The proposal would overturn an October FCC staff decision that ruled > the word was not indecent when U2 rocker Bono used it while accepting > an award during the 2003 live broadcast of the "Golden Globe Awards" > on the NBC television network. > To succeed, Powell will have to garner at least two other votes for > the proposal and the four other FCC commissioners are now considering > the issue, the sources said. > - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40181215 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I would credit Powell with having a modicum of good taste in his vocabulary skills. *That word* has only appeared in this Digest twice; once many years ago in the early 1980's then yesterday. Today's message from 'me' makes number three. Halliday thoughtfully blocked it out in her reply. That word, like 'kike' and 'nigger' should certainly be used in context when appropriate, but avoided in routine discussion. That's my opinion; not to say I have never used the F-Word when IMO it was 'warranted' in anger, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ From: yeltrabnhoj@email.com Subject: Re: Verizon DSL - Idiots Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 18:18:02 GMT Organization: (reverse to reply) (John Bartley, K7AAY, Portland OR) On 10 Jan 2004 15:46:33 GMT, kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) wrote: > Verizondroids tell me it's not available, that I'm close to 5 miles from the > CO. > Now I know for a fact that I'm nowhere near 5 miles from the > CO. More like a mile maximum. So I went on their web site and sure > enough I get the 'future notification' page. I plug in the phone > number of the restaurant below me which is served on the same cable > group, same CO and guess what, it's available. Their test reads like you are 5 miles out, probably because of a) lines adequate for voice, but not higher frequencies, or b) a 'pair gain' device, which 'gains a pair' for another phone user, at the cost of the higher frequencies needed for DSL. The copper wiring of phones is really old tech, and telcos don't want to spend the $$ on 'physical plant' if they can avoid it. However, there are ways to game the system. You could order a second phone line with DSL, then drop the first and move the old number to the new line. You can also start kvetching about 'poor fax performance', 'fax calls ring through and answer but don't connect', 'snow and black horizontal lines and bars on faxes'. The tariffs, regulations under which the phone companies are REQUIRED to deliver, often have fax performance standards included, because fax is such an old technology. However, DSL came late to the game, and by then the telcos figured out if they induced state PUCs to leave performance standards for DSL out of the tariffs, they would be under less pressure to deliver. Nobody but a fool goes into a federal counterrorism operation without duct tape - Richard Preston, THE COBRA EVENT. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You know, this stalling for time rather than invest money and time in needed repairs is nothing new with telco. Back in the early 1970's as Illinois Bell was getting ready for the new phone system called 'ESS' (Electronic Switching) they would not do anything they didn't absolutely have to do to repair the old crossbar, panel and stepping switch mechanisms. My office phone in those days was WEbster-9-4600 on a stepping switch I think, in the WABash central office. Over fifty years old, the 'Wabash Cannonball' as it was often- times called, did not get its name from nothing. If you had the phone to your ear when you called any number in the downtown area that was not one of the 'newer' (at that time) crossbar offices, you *always* got a loud bang in your ear as the call was setting up. And if it got to be too noisy (because for example, the switch train derailed on the way to its destination) you just hung up and dialed again. I asked my service rep Miss Prissy (she was trained directly by Ernestine) if the company's intent while waiting for 'the day' (of cutover to ESS) was to just let Wabash go to hell and do nothing. Miss Prissy was understandably shocked by my phraseology. But it was true; at least two calls or maybe three had to be made to get inside plant work done in those latter days of stepping switch 'service'. PAT] ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #21 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jan 15 16:31:06 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0FLV6r09724; Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:31:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:31:06 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401152131.i0FLV6r09724@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 #22 TELECOM Digest Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:31:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 22 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson More Than One-Third of Internet Users Now Have Broadband (Monty Solomon) Cingular, AT&T Wireless in Merger Talks - Sources (Monty Solomon) 'Meetups' for 900+ Senatorial Congressional Gubenatorial (Monty Solomon) Explore Mars With The Program That NASA Scientists Use (Monty Solomon) EPIC Alert 11.01 (Monty Solomon) Re: Habeas.com and Spam? (Jack Hamilton) Re: Habeas.com and Spam? (John Levine) Re: Habeas.com and Spam? (Phil Earnhardt) Re: Habeas.com and Spam? (Tom Betz) Re: Habeas.com and Spam? (Dave Garland) Re: My Email With Norvergence (Dave Temkin) Re: My Email With Norvergence (Phil Earnhardt) Re: My Email With Norvergence (John R. Covert) Re: My Email With Norvergence (Hank Karl) Re: Anti Spam Conference at MIT Coming Soon! (Mark Crispin) Last Laugh! Simple.Net -- The Fine Print (Gordon S. Hlavenka) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 02:31:54 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: More Than One-Third of Internet Users Now Have Broadband 146 million (69%) Adults in U.S. Are Now Online; 37% of Them Have Broadband Connections ROCHESTER, N.Y., Jan. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- The numbers of adults who are online at home, in the office, at school, library or other location continue to grow at a modest rate. Broadband use is growing much more rapidly. In research among 2,033 adults surveyed by telephone in November and December 2003, Harris Interactive(R) found that 69% of adults are now online, up from 67% in late 2002, 64% in late 2001, 63% in 2000 and 56% in 1999. When we first began to track Internet use in 1995, only 9% of adults reported they were online. Internet access increases at home and at work This growth in Internet penetration is a result of increased Internet access at both home and work. The proportion of adults who are now online at home has risen to 61%, up from 57% in 2002 and 52% in 2001. Those online at work have risen modestly to 31% from 28% in 2002 and 2001. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401142048_PRN__NYW113 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 02:34:25 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cingular, AT&T Wireless in Merger Talks - Sources By Jessica Hall PHILADELPHIA, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Cingular Wireless is in talks to acquire AT&T Wireless Services Inc. ( NYSE:AWE ), using the financial power of its two parent companies to create the United States' largest wireless telephone company, people familiar with the situation said on Wednesday. There is no formal offer on the table, but the negotiations between Cingular and AT&T Wireless, respectively the No. 2 and No. 3 U.S. carriers, have progressed significantly beyond the on-again-off-again talks over the past year, the sources said. T-Mobile and other carriers also have expressed interest in AT&T Wireless, but Cingular has been the most aggressive and vocal about its desire to forge a deal, the sources said. Suggesting a bidding war could be on the horizon, Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc. ( TOKYO:9437 ) and Nextel Communications Inc. ( NASDAQ:NXTL ) have also approached AT&T Wireless, and Britain's Vodafone Group Plc (LSE:VOD) is expected to consider a similar deal, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday evening, citing people familiar with the matter. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401150550_RTR_N14253190 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 02:47:33 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: 'Meetups' for 900+ Senatorial, Congressional Gubenatorial Meetup.Com Opens 'Meetups' for 900+ Senatorial, Congressional, Gubenatorial Candidates in over 500 Races Nationwide NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 14, 2004--Meetup Inc. today announces it has enabled Meetups for the supporters of every declared Senatorial, Congressional and Gubernatorial candidate running for office in 2004. Meetups are monthly events that take place at local establishments (restaurants, bars, cafes, libraries, community centers) in just about every city and small town in the United States. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401142040_BWR__BW5680 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 09:03:39 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Explore Mars With the Program That NASA Scientists Use Explore Mars with the program that NASA scientists use to operate Spirit http://mars.telascience.org/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 08:02:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EPIC Alert 11.01 ======================================================================= E P I C A l e r t ======================================================================= Volume 11.01 January 14, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington, D.C. http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_11.01.html ====================================================================== Table of Contents ====================================================================== [1] US-VISIT Launched; U.S. Pushes for Passenger Info [2] Defense Department Report Blasts Total Information Awareness [3] Judge Sides With EPIC on FOIA Quick Review, But Rules for DOJ [4] FOIA Document Covers Palladium Privacy, Unique Identifier Issues [5] Officials Question DC Police Handling of Political Demonstrations [6] News in Brief [7] EPIC Bookstore: The Naked Crowd [8] Upcoming Conferences and Events http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_11.01.html ------------------------------ From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:32:27 -0800 Organization: Copyright (c) 2004 by Jack Hamilton. Reply-To: jfh@acm.org joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote: > Recently I've started getting a lot of spam (well, not a lot, but > perhaps a half-dozen messages a day) signed by "Habeas.com." Habeas' > website advertises that it is "sender warranted email," and that one > of the main uses of the website is deliver spam-free e-mail. Does > anyone know if they are for real? Should I report the spam to them? > Should I just block anything that has Habeas headers in it? (So far, > I've never received any legitimate e-mail with Habeas headers.) The company is for real, and one of their employees has been active on one of the mail admins' mailing lists. Their business principle: Sell poetry to be included in outgoing mail headers. The poetry is copyrighted, and malefactors who fake their poetry can be pursued under the copyright laws -- apparently an easier thing to do than pursuing an anti-spam action. For details, see: They claim to have had some legal victories. You should report the spam to them, and maybe they'll do something. There's nothing in their methodology that prevents spam from being sent, or headers from being forged. Jack Hamilton jfh@acm.org If men are to wait for liberty until they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever. - Lord MacCaulay ------------------------------ Date: 15 Jan 2004 06:27:09 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Recently I've started getting a lot of spam (well, not a lot, but > perhaps a half-dozen messages a day) signed by "Habeas.com." Habeas' > website advertises that it is "sender warranted email," and that one > of the main uses of the website is deliver spam-free e-mail. Yes, Habeas is real, and someone has been sending out buckets of spam for bogus drugs with equally bogus Habeas marks. They are, to put it mildly, not happy about it. In the short run they're adding every address sending forged Habeas spam to their DNSBL, which is not a bad one to use to block spam. In the longer run they're trying to figure out who's behind the spam, which will be tricky since it's all sent through hijacked PCs and points back to a web site in China. They've sued people before for misusing their mark and if they can figure out who to sue, they will most certainly sue this one. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web ------------------------------ From: Phil Earnhardt Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 08:26:55 -0700 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:53:25 GMT, joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote: > Recently I've started getting a lot of spam (well, not a lot, but > perhaps a half-dozen messages a day) signed by "Habeas.com." Habeas' > website advertises that it is "sender warranted email," and that one > of the main uses of the website is deliver spam-free e-mail. Does > anyone know if they are for real? Should I report the spam to them? There is a link on their home page to report abuses. Apparently, Habeas has already been alerted about those spam messages. Habeas.com has a press release on their website about the abuses. That release and follow-up has been recently discussed in the newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email under the thread: "habeas.com notices..." You can subscribe to the newsgroup or put that string into www.deja.com to use the deja/google archive to see the discussion. Short summary: a spammer has hijacked a number of computers and is sending out Habeas watermark e-mails from these machines. Habeas has been unable to stop these e-mails yet; they have instead created a list of the IP addresses where such messages are coming from. There has been discussion of the value of the watermark if spammers are willing to forge it -- that someone must also use this blacklist to get Habeas filtering. I recommend anyone interested in the topic read the discussion there. > Should I just block anything that has Habeas headers in it? (So far, > I've never received any legitimate e-mail with Habeas headers.) According to the postings in the discussion, that's exactly the strategy that some e-mail admins are taking. Last year, there apparently was a spammer, Topica, who had a Habeas license and was sending out spam with it. Apparently, Topica's Habeas license was pulled at some point. One can see press releases on the habeas.com website announcing when Topica signed up, but there are no announcements about pulling their service. It's also unclear if Topica was sued by Habeas for damaging the credibility of their service. All agree: Habeas must vigirously pursue their copyright if their service is going to gather trust in the industry. They must locate and litigate against this new spammer. And, IMHO, they must litigate against companies who buy a Habeas license and then use it to send out spam. > -Joel Hoffman > (joel@exc.com) --phil [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some time ago, that Topica outfit made an offer to me to purchase the telecom mailing list; they offered me a dollar for each name on the list; they said they would take it over but keep me as the moderator/editor. I did not know as much about them as I do now, but I am surely glad I did not accept their offer. They said they could help with distribution problems. Its sort of scary to think about now. At the time, when I investigated the list of discussion groups Topica was sponsoring, it seemed like a good oppor- tunity for the Digest. Pardon me for thinking. And that was even back before the onset of my brain desease. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tom Betz Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:48:03 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Anything joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote in news:telecom23.21.8@telecom- digest.org: > Recently I've started getting a lot of spam (well, not a lot, but > perhaps a half-dozen messages a day) signed by "Habeas.com." Habeas' > website advertises that it is "sender warranted email," and that one > of the main uses of the website is deliver spam-free e-mail. Does > anyone know if they are for real? Should I report the spam to them? > Should I just block anything that has Habeas headers in it? (So far, > I've never received any legitimate e-mail with Habeas headers.) You can Habeas' statement on the matter here: and more discussion of this event here: It's not really Habeas-warranted. It looks to be either a) an attack on Habeas' reputation or b) a "joe-job" on notorious spammer Alan Ralsky, who operates the advertised domains -- the current NANAE and SPAM-L consensus is that it's a disgruntled partner of Ralsky trying to bring Habeas' legal team down on him. |I always wanted to be someone,| Tom Betz, Generalist | |but now I think I should have | Want to send me email? | |been a wee bit more specific. | | ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:59:21 -0600 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote: > Recently I've started getting a lot of spam (well, not a lot, but > perhaps a half-dozen messages a day) signed by "Habeas.com." Habeas' > website advertises that it is "sender warranted email," and that one > of the main uses of the website is deliver spam-free e-mail. Does > anyone know if they are for real? Yes, they are for real. The way their system works is a copyrighted/ trademarked message (a haiku!) is embedded in the mail headers. Mailers using this are supposed to be *verified* opt-in or pre-existing business relationship. http://www.habeas.com/servicesComplianceStds.html So far, they have won at least one lawsuit against a spammer who was using their mark without complying. They also appear to maintain an online blacklist of violators who don't straighten up, which can be used by ISP mail systems for spamblocking. How well the system works (and whether or not they can successfully nail offshore spammers) is another question. ------------------------------ From: dave@ordinaryworld.com (Dave Temkin) Subject: Re: My Email With Norvergence Date: 15 Jan 2004 06:34:03 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com You are incorrect in saying that they're mutually inclusive (compression & IP). I can send compressed voice over: ATM MPLS Frame Relay and even POTS (though the reasons for that would be beyond me). My guess is that they're doing VoATM, from the talks that they deliver a DSL-like service (which is based on ATM) Robert Johnson wrote in message news:: > (pat can you remove my email address) > I emailed Norvergence to see exactly what their product offering was > about, they denied it was a VoIP offering, yes say it uses > compression ... hmm, how about that, two mutually incompatable > statements, then again, I think TELECOM Digest Readers ought to see > for themselves. > From: Timothy Mack > Subject: RE: Questions about your Service > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:09:00 -0500 > Mr. Johnson, > The Norvergence cost savings solution is not a VoIP > solution. As our website states, it is a patented hardware solution > that uses compression and encryption to get a voice transmission of > far greater quality and the most secure data transmission utilizing > the full bandwidth available on a T-1 circuit. > The most obvious benefit is the savings in cost over a > standard trunk line/PBX or fractional/integrated T-1 solution, as well > as savings on cellular service. > If you would like to set up a meeting with one of our > representatives to further discuss how this solution can benefit your > business, please follow the link below. Complete and submit the brief > form, and you will be contacted by someone in our scheduling > department for an appointment. > Thank you for your interest in Norvergence. > http://www.norvergence.com/CS_Form/form.cfm > -----Original Message----- > From: Roe Ventola > Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 10:33 AM > To: Timothy Mack > Subject: FW: Questions about your Service > Roe Ventola > Vice-President of Sales Support > Ext 4535 > 866-217-6678 voice > 866-742-6678 Fax > Norvergence.com > -----Original Message----- > From: Rashan Thompson > Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 10:30 AM > To: Roe Ventola; Scott Bufton; Beverly Thomas > Subject: FW: Questions about your Service > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert Johnson > Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 12:52 AM > To: customerservice > Subject: Questions about your Service > After reading your site, I am having trouble figuring out exactly what > your product is, if it is simply a VoIP solution why isn't it marketed > as such?, and what is the advantage for purchasing your > product/service over ordering either a Fractional T-1 that carries > both data and voice, or ordering two seperate T-1's for whatever > purpose? > Robert Johnson > > Robert K. Johnson Jr. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A note I got from Vonage one day said their service would work on dial-up just as well as cable or DSL. But I had to wonder, why would anyone dial through their ISP just in order to (then) dial up a voice connection? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Phil Earnhardt Subject: Re: My Email With Norvergence Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 08:33:00 -0700 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 10:09:14 -0800, Robert Johnson wrote: > The Norvergence cost savings solution is not a VoIP > solution. As our website states, it is a patented hardware solution > that uses compression and encryption to get a voice transmission of > far greater quality and the most secure data transmission utilizing > the full bandwidth available on a T-1 circuit. It would be interesting to know exactly what patents Mr. Ventola is discussing. What exact patent numbers? Who owns the patents? If Norvergence doesn't own the patents, do they have some exclusive license to use them? > Robert K. Johnson Jr. --phil [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The big huge package I got from the Norvergence lawyers when they served me had several pages of exhibits inside it referring to their patents. Let me see if I can find it in my files somewhere ... The Patent was granted to them in Docket Number RM-613 and was entitled "Reliable Converged Voice, Video and Data Over Packet" and was invented by "Skemer, et al" . They asked (in the 131 page document submitted) that the Patent Appli- cation not be published pursuant to 35 USC 122 (b)(2). This was filed on 10-17-2003 by Rick Martin, Patent Attorney, of 416 Coffman Street in Longmont, CO 80501 Phone 303-651-2177 and attorney Martin asked that the filing fee of $810.00 be charged to his patent office account Deposit Account number 50-0617, and that the Director of Patents was authorized to charge/credit the above account as needed. I am not going to sit here and type in all the pages. Anyone who is interested in this invention "Reliable Converged Voice, Video and Data over Packet" invented by a Mr. Skemer, et al can inquire of the Patent Office about Docket Number RM-613 filed on 10-17-2003 or perhaps ask attorney Martin. Maybe Mr. Skemer would tell you about his scheme. Or perhaps our very own Bill Levant of Blue Bell, PA could explain some of the above mumbo-jumbo I typed in, all of which is just as clear as mud. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:43:18 -0500 (EST) From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: My Email With Norvergence > they denied it was a VoIP offering, yes say it uses compression > hmm, how about that, two mutually incompatable statements What's mutually incompatible about that? VoIP stands for "Voice over IP" meaning that the data is carried in packets specifically using the IP protocols (TCP/IP and UDP/IP). It's possible to purchase a point-to-point T1 line that is NOT in any way associated with the internet (or in which some fraction of it goes to the internet and some fraction goes point-to-point) and send data over the point-to-point portion of the T1 line using some other protocol rather than IP, possibly just raw compressed data packets. In fact, I'm familiar with products dating way back into the early 80s which could be used on point-to-point data circuits to provide compressed voice connectivity between PBXs -- long before VoIP was even invented. /john ------------------------------ From: Hank Karl Subject: Re: My Email With Norvergence Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 15:06:44 -0500 Organization: NETPLEX Internet Services - http://www.ntplx.net/ You don't need VoIP to do compression. VoFR uses compression but is not IP. H.320 uses compression (e.g. G.722) but not IP. On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 10:09:14 -0800, Robert Johnson wrote: > (pat can you remove my email address) > I emailed Norvergence to see exactly what their product offering was > about, they denied it was a VoIP offering, yes say it uses > compression ... hmm, how about that, two mutually incompatable > statements, then again, I think TELECOM Digest Readers ought to see > for themselves. > From: Timothy Mack > Subject: RE: Questions about your Service Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:09:00 -0500 > Mr. Johnson, > The Norvergence cost savings solution is not a VoIP > solution. As our website states, it is a patented hardware solution > that uses compression and encryption to get a voice transmission of > far greater quality and the most secure data transmission utilizing > the full bandwidth available on a T-1 circuit. > The most obvious benefit is the savings in cost over a > standard trunk line/PBX or fractional/integrated T-1 solution, as well > as savings on cellular service. > If you would like to set up a meeting with one of our > representatives to further discuss how this solution can benefit your > business, please follow the link below. Complete and submit the brief > form, and you will be contacted by someone in our scheduling > department for an appointment. > Thank you for your interest in Norvergence. > http://www.norvergence.com/CS_Form/form.cfm > -----Original Message----- > From: Roe Ventola > Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 10:33 AM > To: Timothy Mack > Subject: FW: Questions about your Service > Roe Ventola > Vice-President of Sales Support > Ext 4535 > 866-217-6678 voice > 866-742-6678 Fax > Norvergence.com > -----Original Message----- > From: Rashan Thompson > Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 10:30 AM > To: Roe Ventola; Scott Bufton; Beverly Thomas > Subject: FW: Questions about your Service > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert Johnson > Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 12:52 AM > To: customerservice > Subject: Questions about your Service > After reading your site, I am having trouble figuring out exactly what > your product is, if it is simply a VoIP solution why isn't it marketed > as such?, and what is the advantage for purchasing your > product/service over ordering either a Fractional T-1 that carries > both data and voice, or ordering two seperate T-1's for whatever > purpose? > Robert Johnson > > Robert K. Johnson Jr. ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: Anti Spam Conference at MIT Coming Soon! Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:26:50 -0800 Organization: University of Washington On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Monty Solomon wrote: > Yahoo's Risky Antispam Gambit > It's bypassing the Internet's standards body and implementing its own > tech solution, a unilateral move that many experts criticize. Yahoo is one of the biggest spammers. My private domain at home was hit with a denial of service attack from their bulk.scd##.yahoo.com domains. Hundreds of SMTP connections in rapid fire, all to an address ("ashutosh") that doesn't even exist, swamped my DSL line. When I blackholed that netblock at my router, Yahoo moved the origin of the spam to a different netblock; the familiar whack-a-mole game. I finally had to search out all of Yahoo's netblocks and block them all. I contacted Yahoo repeatedly to get them to stop, and ran up against a brick wall every time. It was clear that they didn't care. I believe that the sole purpose of Yahoo's "anti-spam" conference is to sabotage any legitimate attempt at blocking spam. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:25:18 -0600 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelectronics.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Last Laugh! Simple.Net -- The Fine Print Today I got one of those "Cash this and sign up" checks in the mail. This one was for $3.25 (whoopee) from Simple.net -- cashing the check would sign me up for internet dialup at $17.95/month. Of course I ripped it and tossed it, but for some reason I decided to read the "Terms of Offer" sheet it came with. Wow! Here's an interesting quote: > This fee will be billed... preferably on your local phone bill > through ESBI, Integretel, ACI or other. Alternatively, the fee may > be billed directly by invoice, on your utility bill, credit card, or > by other methods. You also agree that we may bill the fee by ACH > debit from the account that the enclosed check has been deposited > into ... I love that they've invented a check that _takes money out_ of your account when you deposit it; the last time I heard of something like that was in the Infocom game "Bureaucracy" (by Douglas Adams of HGTTG fame). Can you imagine the fun you'd have once you gave Integretel authorization to dip straight into your checking account? I shudder to think. As I said I already ripped the check. Now, I think I'll go burn the pieces, just to be on the safe side. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Gordon, you live around the Chicago area don't you ... if I lived there I would have taken that check for $3.25 to one of the currency exchanges on the south side of Chicago and cashed it there; just scribbled some name on the back side of it and offered the cashier a tip of a dollar so so for her assistance. Maybe Simple.net would have sent their ACHs to the currency exchange's bank account. The company must have assumed you were sort of simple also! PAT] ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #22 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jan 15 19:19:49 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0G0Jnx10706; Thu, 15 Jan 2004 19:19:49 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 19:19:49 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401160019.i0G0Jnx10706@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 #23 TELECOM Digest Thu, 15 Jan 2004 19:19:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 23 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson VOIP, Video-Conferencing Apps Face Security Risk (Marcus Didius Falco) Curious About Call Routing Through Vonage (Christopher R. Sabine) Re: 800-555-1140 was Re: Analog Phone Line Question (BV124@aol.com) Re: 800-555-1140 was Re: Analog Phone Line Question (Justin Time) Re: Analog Phone Line Question (J Kelly) Re: Analog Phone Line Question (No Spam) Re: MCI's Current Market Status (Nick Landsberg) Re: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot (John Levine) Re: AT&T Reserving Numbers For Customers Who do Not Exist (BCDIO) Re: Caller ID and Spying??? (Daniel W. Johnson) Re: Maps of Central Office Locations (Dink) Interested in Publishing Articles in Digest (Ijaz Ahmed) Free Source of Telecom Classifieds (Steve Christie) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 03:43:56 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: VOIP, Video-Conferencing Apps Face Security Risk (eWeek) http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1435890,00.asp http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,3048,a=116401,00.asp VOIP, Video-Conferencing Apps Face Security Risk January 13, 2004 Multimedia applications such as voice over IP telephony and video conferencing could be vulnerable to security breaches because of flaws in the way a major telephony standard is being used. Some vendors' implementations of the H.323 protocol, an International Telecommunications Union standard for communication among telephony and multimedia devices, are vulnerable to denial of service attacks and, to a lesser extent, the execution of code and system takeovers through buffer overflows, according to an article advisory issued Tuesday by the United Kingdom's National Infrastructure Security Co-Ordination Centre (NISCC). Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. were the only vendors to issue patches and advisories as of Tuesday afternoon, even though products from several other vendors also could be at risk. RELATED LINKS Senator Preps Bill to Define VOIP, Curb FCC A Giant Leap for VOIP Microsoft Connecting Web Conferencing with IM Cable, Phone Industry Move to Sell VOIP Services Avaya, Polycom Partner on Desktop Video Conferencing As part of a series of security bulletins it issued on Tuesday, Microsoft released one rated "critical" for its Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000 software, pointing to a flaw in the H.323 filter that could allow an attacker, through a buffer overflow, to take over control of the system. Microsoft issued a batch of security bulletins on Tuesday. To read more about the vulnerabilities, click here. Cisco, of San Jose, Calif., in a security advisory said that all products that run Cisco's IOS network system software and support H.323 packet processing are affected by a vulnerability that can cause denial of service attacks. Cisco supports H.323 in its IOS software with version 11.3T and later. Other vendors that identified potential vulnerabilities were Nortel Networks Inc., Radvision Corp. and Tandberg. Avaya Inc., Lucent Technologies, Fujistu Ltd. and Hewlett-Packard Co. told the NISCC that they are investigating whether their products are vulnerable to the security flaw. Among those reporting that their products are not vulnerable were Apple Computer Inc., CyberGuard Corp., eSoft Inc., Hitachi Ltd., the NetBSD Project, Objective Systems Inc., Red Hat Inc., Symantec Corp. and uniGone. In the United States, the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center also issued an advisory about the vulnerabilities in H.323 implementations. It noted that one possible workaround, along with vendor patches and upgrades, is to block ports 1720/tcp and 1720/udp on network parameters. According to CERT, more than 50 vendors had not yet reported whether their products were vulnerable. Check out eWEEK.com's Security Center at security.eweek.com for security news, views and analysis. Copyright (c) 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Ziff Davis Media. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Christopher R. Sabine Subject: Curious About Call Routing Through Vonage Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 19:03:21 -0500 Hello all. I just opened an account with Vonage about three weeks ago, and the service is working great for me with my Broadband connection. However, I discovered a few oddities about how calls seems to be routed through the Vonage network. First, my Vonage number is in Columbus, Ohio, and my ANI is consistent with my Vonage account. However, when I tried to use Vonage to call an in-state toll-free number in Ohio, I got a fast busy. I was able to determine that toll calls are routed through New York, despite my ANI and Vonage number being in Columbus and the corporate headquarters of Vonage being in Edison, NJ, a different LATA from New York. Also, I do have occasion to make international calls using Vonage. When When I made a call to Norway and another to New Zealand, the ring tones were NANP-like ESS tones, not those you associatd with Norway or New Zealand. I'm just wondering if this is a product of a direct connection of a VOIP gateway. Thanks, Chris. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You will run into those oddities about intra-state and interstate calling of 800 numbers using Vonage. The whole system of inter/intra 800 calling was devised long ago, and I doubt telco will change it. To the *called party* (who is the one paying for the call, you are NOT in Ohio, regardless of what your phone tries to tell them. Vonage customers are all 'in' New York/New Jersey, etc regardless of their physical location. For instance, I am in Kansas. My 'real' Vonage number is (in effect) a 'virtual' number in the 415 area code, just like your Vonage number in Ohio is a 'virtual' number. But assuming you are somewhere in Ohio, why waste the 'minutes' you bought with your Vonage account when you could call the toll-free number from your direct landline phone at no charge. And if you are NOT in Ohio, then why not call the company on their *non-Ohio only toll free* number -- in other words, their toll number -- using Vonage since you paid for it already anyway? And regards your international calls, I *think* Vonage is just giving you a 'dummy ring' while in the background they are completing your call. Do you get answers on your international calls? By the way, any person or company who wants to try Vonage for a month free (the second month) should email me and get an e-coupon to use for free service. I will send you a link to click on to get Vonage on a trial basis after you get the little Cisco ATA box from them. Send a not for pub note to ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu and ask. PAT] ------------------------------ From: BV124@aol.com Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 18:19:18 EST Subject: Re: 800-555-1140 was Re: Analog Phone Line Question Just tried it on my cell (AT&T Wireless) in the 818 NPA and my landline (Pacific Bell) also in the 818 NPA. It answered back with ANI = "00818-XXX-XXXX for the landline and ANI = "62818-XXX-XXXX for the cell. Hmmmm. ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: 800-555-1140 was Re: Analog Phone Line Question Date: 15 Jan 2004 05:52:02 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote in message news:: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That toll free number, 800-555-1140 >> also works fine here in my town. I bet it will for everyone. PAT] > Hmm. Just tried it from a cell phone, and the ANI was *not* my cell > number. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I tried *my* cellular phone also from > here, and it did not return correct results either. However my > Vonage phone did have the correct results, and my wireline phone as > well. Uhmm, could it be the ANI being reported was for the trunk from the wireless carrier that carried the call? That's the problem with ANI and cell phones that 9-1-1 centers have been having for years. Rodgers Platt ------------------------------ From: J Kelly Subject: Re: Analog Phone Line Question Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:04:01 -0600 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Reply-To: jkelly@newsguy-nospam-.com On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 02:07:50 GMT, Michael D. Sullivan wrote: > On 12 Jan 2004 12:25:48 -0800, Dmitry posted the following to > comp.dcom.telecom: >> Hi, >> I have a live analog telephone line and can dial out just fine, but I >> don't know what the phone number is to dial in. Is there a number I >> can dial in Washington D.C area that would tell me the number I am >> calling from? >> I realize I can call any number with caller ID, but I've heard that >> Telco has a number which provides that information also. >> Thank you in advance, >> Dmitry > Dmitry, > A couple of numbers that work here in the DC area at the moment (just > tried them) are 1010732-1-770-988-9664 and 1-800-555-1140. The latter > one will provide you with a lot of information (line number and a > bunch of other stuff I can't interpret) as well as the calling number, > which is identified by ANI (pronounced "Annie"). I have no idea who > the sponsor of these numbers is. I probably got them from Telecom > Digest at one point or another and keep them in my PDA. > Michael D. Sullivan > Bethesda, MD, USA > Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That toll free number, 800-555-1140 > also works fine here in my town. I bet it will for everyone. PAT] I get what sounds like a remote dial tone when it is all done. I didn't try to dial to see what would happen. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I got the same thing! Sounds a lot like a loop-around doesn't it? Well, I know one old phreak who took the 'dial tone challenge' and discovered no matter what digits were pressed, he could not break dial tone. No matter what, on his landline phone, either of his cellular phones or his Vonage phone. It just wouldn't work ... and inspired by the pleasant surprise he found from years gone by with the old Unitel network of United Airlines and its local loop-around/WATS extender line in Chicago, he tried furiously all the things in his bag of tricks to get past that remote dial tone. Alas, nothing. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 18:09:43 -0500 From: No Spam Subject: Re: Analog Phone Line Question Michael D. Sullivan responded to Dmitry on the subject of Re: Analog Phone Line Question on Wed, 14 Jan 2004 02:07:50 saying: > On 12 Jan 2004 12:25:48 -0800, Dmitry posted the following to > comp.dcom.telecom: >> Hi, >> I have a live analog telephone line and can dial out just fine, but I >> don't know what the phone number is to dial in. Is there a number I >> can dial in Washington D.C area that would tell me the number I am >> calling from? >> I realize I can call any number with caller ID, but I've heard that >> Telco has a number which provides that information also. >> Thank you in advance, >> Dmitry > Dmitry, > A couple of numbers that work here in the DC area at the moment (just > tried them) are 1010732-1-770-988-9664 and 1-800-555-1140. The latter > one will provide you with a lot of information (line number and a > bunch of other stuff I can't interpret) as well as the calling number, > which is identified by ANI (pronounced "Annie"). I have no idea who > the sponsor of these numbers is. I probably got them from Telecom > Digest at one point or another and keep them in my PDA. > Michael D. Sullivan > Bethesda, MD, USA > Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That toll free number, 800-555-1140 > also works fine here in my town. I bet it will for everyone. PAT] Actually, the toll-free number (800-555-1140) says that it's giving you ANI, but it appears to belabelling Calling Party Number as ANI in some cases. The two are very different. (I called it and it read the Calling Party Number I have programmed in my PBX, not the ANI or Billing Telephone Number that is sent out through the network.) This would explain Dr. Joel's experience from his cell phone as well. If you are trying to identify a residence line, or a POTS line in a small business, it is probably safe to use, but it will not work reliably for a business with a PBX and ISDN-PRI trunks, or analog trunks in a hunt group. Joshua My opinions are my own and not necessarily that of my employer although sometimes we agree. ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Subject: Re: MCI's Current Market Status Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 04:19:58 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Joseph wrote: > On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 20:04:46 -0500, Brett Nelson > wrote: {Much snipped] > Well considering MCI/Worldcom and its rivals Sprint and AT&T I > wouldn't go directly with any of 'em. You can get lots better deals > through many resellers who may use any of the above services. > Personally I wouldn't trust MCI or Sprint as far as I can spit. I > don't think AT&T has any great virtures either. > remove NO from .NOcom to reply > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We really have some great choices these > days don't we? PAT] And we have Judge Green to thank for it, Pat. "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Block ------------------------------ Date: 15 Jan 2004 06:31:31 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Vonage Virtual Number Crap Shoot Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Now, I don't think that the "Keys" are all one exchange, so that does > look like a crap shoot. But in all other cases, if you select an > exchange that is a local call to your mother, you'll get a number in > that exchange. I think that Bellsouth has been doing some long overdue rate center merging and the Keys are now treated as one rate center. See http://members.dandy.net/~czg/lca.php?exch=219350 The guy is claiming that Vonage's support told him that you can't pick a rate center. That seems hard to believe. ------------------------------ From: BCDIO@aol.com Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 15:59:20 EST Subject: Re: AT&T Reserving Numbers For Imaginary Customers Mr. Townson - I am trying to secure an 800 number for my small business that is in its start-up phase. I hired a private investigator and having done some investigating myself found that the number's resporg is Worldcom WilTel 01 and that the party being billed is AT&T. AT&T continues to reserve the number over and over and I cannot get Worldcom to release the number to my business. I found an article online at the link below to which you commented in a "Moderator's Note:" stating... "One thing AT&T is still doing that the FCC is going to make them quit doing before long is reserving numbers for imaginary customers who do not exist. They are doing this with 'good' numbers they want to hang on to. I've tried to get 800 numbers for customers of my service only to have the RESPORG tell me that the number 'belongs to' AT&T. When you dial it, it goes to intercept, and no actual customer ever seems to show up, yet the number keeps getting reserved over and over for sixty days at a time. I recently talked directly to a staff attorney at the FCC who asked me to call him personally with a list of 800 numbers in this category and I am compiling them now. PAT" (See http://digest.textfiles.com/TELECOMDIGEST/vol13.iss0801-0844.txt) AT&T is not "selling" the number and Worldcom claims that they cannot release it. Can you tell me who to contact at the FCC and/or if this is now legal for AT&T to do. Your comments are from 1993, and the law may have changed since then. All assistance would be appreciated!!! Sincere thanks, Beth-Anne [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What I would say now, eleven years after that note above was written is that it would appear AT&T and Worldcom are still at their old tricks. You might wish to speak with an 800 number recovery specialist for assistance on this matter. I would suggest you contact Judith Oppenheimer for professional assis- tance on this. Ms. Oppenheimer deals with resporgs all the time and knows how to get things done through them. Ms. Oppenheimer is in New York City, and to email her, go to http://telecom-digest.org and there on the front page of our web site, look for her picture and a short mention. Click on the picture or the email link. In fact you can email her at the address http://1800TheExpert.com which should also work fine. Please mention that you read about her in TELECOM Digest. Good luck with getting the number released. PAT] ------------------------------ From: panoptes@iquest.net (Daniel W. Johnson) Subject: Re: Caller ID and Spying??? Date: 14 Jan 2004 12:13:12 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com desiv wrote in message news:: > Just a heck of a coincidence that it happend to match this other > person, who has a totally different last name and happens to be > involved in a messy situation. One question: Is there any chance that your mother's friend has received a phone call from that "other person" at some point? (I noticed that the friend seemed to recognize the name, anyway.) > I guess that's why they call it a coincidence. At least a 1 in 60,000 > chance (Approx. number of people in the calling area), but a chance > nontheless. People win the lottery with worse odds.. :-) If the database corruption happened at Callwave and the other person had called the friend, the "60,000" can be replaced by the number of people who have called the friend. ------------------------------ From: Dink Subject: Re: Maps of Central Office Locations Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 16:38:10 -0600 Organization: Frijoles Refritos On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 12:04:25 -0500, John E. Connerat wrote: > I am trying to determine the location of the central office for the > 404-624-xxxx area. At one time, Mapquest had a reasonably good map > service that allowed you to type in the area code and exchange, and it > would show you the approximate central office location for the > information that you typed in. > I can no longer find that service on Mapquest. Is it available > anywhere else? > I am trying to troubleshoot a DSL connection and I do not know how far > away the service location (404-624-xxxx) is from BellSouth's central > office in that neighborhood. It may come as no surprise, but the DSL > "helpdesk" has no idea either. > Thanks, > John Connerat http://www.dslreports.com/coinfo This will show a map. As you put the mouse pointer on one of the CO tiny squares on the map, the CO name is displayed in a tip and on the status bar. Just mouse around until you find the square whose CO name matches the one returned by the NPA-NXX search. Elsewhere on this site, you can enter the full number and street address and receive an estimate of the CO distance. ------------------------------ From: ijaz ahmed Subjet: Submitting Articles to TELECOM Digest Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:28:05 +0500 Articles About Telecommunication Dear Sir / Madam Hi ! Happy New Year to you . My name is Ijaz Ahmed . I am a 35 years, male from Lahore, Pakistan. I am working in Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited Since last 13 years . I am a Graduate and working as an Engineering Superviser in PTCL . I am an Ericsson Expert . I have a lot of Telecommunication trainings and International working experience in United Arab Emirated , and China in the fields of Telecommunication . I have worked in China Ericsson ( China ) , Emirates telecommunication Corporation ( UAE ) . I have also been selected for Ericsson Dallas ( USA ) . Dear Sir / Madam I have also worked in the Research & Development section of telecommunication for many years . I have written some articles about different fields of telecommunication like Mobile communication , wireless communication , satellite communication , transmission media used in communications , computers networking techniques such as Wans , Lans and Mans , TCP/IP and other Protocols used in communication after readings a lot of books and after years of practical trainings and work in the different fields of telecommunication . I would request you to please publish some of my work , so that people who have an idea about computer networking and modern telecommunications could get benefit from my work . My articles in the telecommunication will definately be appreciated by the knowledge loving persons . If you allow me , i will send some of my articles by fax or e-mail to you so that you can publish it for the benefit of knowledge loving reader . My e-mail is : ijaz18@hotmail.com My Home Address is : 502 RAZA BLOCK , ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN, LAHORE, PAKISTAN My Phone number is :+ 92 300 410 2217 Thanks & take care. Waiting for your reply. Ijaz Ahmed TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for writing to the Digest. I would be pleased to examine some of your writing about your telecom experiences in the places you mentioned, and about telecom engineering in general. Submit your articles to ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu and I request that you use *only* ascii text for your articles and no html in your submissions. Please make a reasonable effort -- to the extent of your knowledge of English grammer -- to edit and format your material as you see it done in this and other issues of the Digest. Perhaps the editors/publishers/moderators of other newsgroups/Digests on internet who read this message will want to correspond with you also. Thanks again for writing from Pakistan. In addition to this public reply, I also sent email to Mr. Ahmed. PAT] ------------------------------ From: steven.christie1@ntlworld.com (Steve Christie) Subject: Telecom Classifieds Date: 15 Jan 2004 14:55:31 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Free posting of global telecom classifieds - http://www.telecomclassifieds.net ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #23 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jan 16 01:29:56 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0G6TuO12236; Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:29:56 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:29:56 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401160629.i0G6TuO12236@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 #24 TELECOM Digest Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:30:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 24 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: My Email With Norvergence (Alex Wulf) Re: My Email With Norvergence (Stanley Cline) Re: Norvergence Bait and Switch (Alex Wulf) Re: Habeas.com and Spam? (Nick Landsberg) Re: Habeas.com and Spam? (Jay Hennigan) Re: Curious About Call Routing Through Vonage (John A. Covert) Re: 800-555-1140 was Re: Analog Phone Line Question (Clarence Dold) Re: Caller ID and Spying??? (desiv) 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: norvscam@hotmail.com (Alex Wulf) Subject: Re: My Email With Norvergence Date: 15 Jan 2004 14:48:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Robert, It's actually not a VoIp offering. It's Voice-over-ATM. The box that they use on the customer prem is a standard Adtran box that converts standard TDM voice and Data traffic to ATM. The voice is then compressed using the ADPCM standard to 32k per voice channel, thereby compressing up to 24 voice channels to 768k or half a T-1. The rest of the T-1 is then available for internet. There is no magic here. But besides the technical issue. Why would you want to deal with a company that is less than honest with you before you're even a customer? Just wait till you sign up with a 5 year commitment and see what kind of customer service you get for a $89 T-1. There are plenty of other companies out there offering discount services without having to deal with the likes of Norvergence. Alex Robert Johnson wrote in message news:: > (pat can you remove my email address) > I emailed Norvergence to see exactly what their product offering was > about, they denied it was a VoIP offering, yes say it uses > compression ... hmm, how about that, two mutually incompatable > statements, then again, I think TELECOM Digest Readers ought to see > for themselves. > From: Timothy Mack > Subject: RE: Questions about your Service > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:09:00 -0500 > Mr. Johnson, > The Norvergence cost savings solution is not a VoIP > solution. As our website states, it is a patented hardware solution > that uses compression and encryption to get a voice transmission of > far greater quality and the most secure data transmission utilizing > the full bandwidth available on a T-1 circuit. > The most obvious benefit is the savings in cost over a > standard trunk line/PBX or fractional/integrated T-1 solution, as well > as savings on cellular service. > > If you would like to set up a meeting with one of our > representatives to further discuss how this solution can benefit your > business, please follow the link below. Complete and submit the brief > form, and you will be contacted by someone in our scheduling > department for an appointment. > Thank you for your interest in Norvergence. > http://www.norvergence.com/CS_Form/form.cfm > -----Original Message----- > From: Roe Ventola > Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 10:33 AM > To: Timothy Mack > Subject: FW: Questions about your Service > > Rob Ventola > Vice-President of Sales Support > Ext 4535 > 866-217-6678 voice > 866-742-6678 Fax > Norvergence.com > -----Original Message----- > From: Rashan Thompson > Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 10:30 AM > To: Roe Ventola; Scott Bufton; Beverly Thomas > Subject: FW: Questions about your Service > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert Johnson > Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 12:52 AM > To: customerservice > Subject: Questions about your Service > After reading your site, I am having trouble figuring out exactly what > your product is, if it is simply a VoIP solution why isn't it marketed > as such?, and what is the advantage for purchasing your > product/service over ordering either a Fractional T-1 that carries > both data and voice, or ordering two seperate T-1's for whatever > purpose? > Robert Johnson > > Robert K. Johnson Jr. ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: My Email With Norvergence Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 23:44:07 UTC Organization: Roamer1 Communications - Dunwoody, GA, USA Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org In article , Robert Johnson wrote: > I emailed Norvergence to see exactly what their product offering was > about, they denied it was a VoIP offering, yes say it uses > compression ... hmm, how about that, two mutually incompatable When I looked at the specs for the MATRIX box from the brochure on their web site, it just screamed "voice over ATM". What exactly is so revolutionary about VoATM? (To their credit, it does appear they've implemented some proprietary compression, but the core of the voice offering definitely appears to be VoATM.) Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ From: norvscam@hotmail.com (Alex Wulf) Subject: Re: Norvergence Bait and Switch Date: 15 Jan 2004 14:58:12 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Kim, Well its clearly a case of bait and switch. You should contact the Connecticut's Dept of Public Utilities as well as the Attorney General's Office to report this fraud. By the way what kind of box did they send you anyway? MFG, Model etc? Its more than likely some retail box that's available for under $100. What's clear is that they haven't developed some special product. They've just switched your lines over to Norvergence for toll calling and are probably paying your DSL/Cable/Cell bill. In exchange for that they give you a 5 year lease (they like to call it a rental). You obviously don't need the box to make it work. That was just part of the sales scam to make you think they actually developed some custom hardware or whatever lies they like to post on their website. It also is the box they're lieing to the finance company about -that is worth thousands of dollars and that's why they loan the money for it. They're just a communications reseller. Good Luck. Alex Kim Barker Craven wrote in message news:: > Hi Patrick, > I found your name when doing a search for Norvergence. I wanted to > find out what you can tell me about them. > I signed on with them in August, 2003 for telecom services for my > home-based business for a what turns out to be too-good-to-be-true > rate. Included was T1 connection, unlimited long distance on land > lines and cell phones. > Unfortunately, it turned out to be a case of bait and switch, when at > the minute of installation, with the installer out at the street they > called and said T1 was not available in my residential area, but they > would provide cable (we had dsl) which is, and I quote, "almost as > good" as T1. > They said my contract would reflect a discount and they would fax > revised contract right over. The revived contract never came but the > bills persist. > What really galls me is they delivered a Matrix Soho box which I am > supposed to pay $200/mo for 5 years to rent. We have not used this box > since day one. It appears to be nothing more than a router/firewall. > Am I correct? > I am trying to cancel service but they are unresponsive. Further their > financing company, Dolphin capital, is threatening to ruin my credit > rating because I refuse to pay for the box. > What can you tell me about these characters? > Thanks you for your interest. > Kim Barker Craven > President > CREATIVE SERVICES > Strategic Marketing & Graphic Design > 64 Bower Road, Madison, CT 06443 > 203.318.9000 / fax 203.318.9001 > kim@creativeservices.info > www.creativeservices.info > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not mean to sound hateful to the > folks at Norvergence; I really don't. But I am not a human Google > search program. I have spent **all day today** -- since 10 AM Tuesday > morning, seeking out and pulling all the Norvergence references -- bad > or good, but mostly bad -- out of our archives to give to Mike Sullivan > who has agreed to represent me pro-bono as needed in a pending lawsuit > by the Norvergence people against myself. You see, they called again > yesterday with demands, etc. First their lawyer, and I did not return > his call. Then Ms. Susan Carol, who described her job as attempting > to get accurate PR about the firm out on the net. I returned her call, > and found myself 'getting volunteered' into a conference phone call > on January 19 with some executives at Norvergence. I asked John Levine > what I should do; also Mike Sullivan. > John Levine suggested using 47 USC 230 to stop them dead in their > tracks (pertinent section says no electronic publisher can be held > liable for messages written by others; in other words absolute > immunity) but my first thought was to try and be a little kind and > more pleasant. After all, I personally have no knowlege of Norvergence > and no reason to just give them bad coverage. Mike Sullivan suggested > gathering up everything in the archives about the company and > forwarding them to him for review, which I did earlier today, starting > about eight hours ago. :( The more I did that, struggling with emacs > and archives files of humongous size, the more irritated I got, to the > point that now I don't really care if I ever talk to those folks at > Norvergence again or not. John may have been correct: refer them to > 47-USC-230 and let it go at that; even though that's *not* the way I > believe the Digest should be handled. > I have Ms. Carol's biography of Alex Wolf, an executive at Norvergence > and I may publish that here soon to see if that will smooth things > over a little. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 00:16:05 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Phil Earnhardt: [Snip to Pat's Note:] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some time ago, that Topica outfit made > an offer to me to purchase the telecom mailing list; they offered me > a dollar for each name on the list; they said they would take it over > but keep me as the moderator/editor. I did not know as much about them > as I do now, but I am surely glad I did not accept their offer. They > said they could help with distribution problems. Its sort of scary to > think about now. At the time, when I investigated the list of > discussion groups Topica was sponsoring, it seemed like a good oppor- > tunity for the Digest. Pardon me for thinking. And that was even > back before the onset of my brain desease. PAT] Ah, so now we have one data point about how much spammers are willing to pay for a mailing list. Let's see, if 1% of the people on a list of 1,000 are gullible then they are spending $1,000 to attract to attract 10 people to their scams. Thus, the average person who "bites" must net them at least $100. Probablty more. The "hit rate" is probably way lower tha 1% tho, thus, the "phish who bites" is probably gonna get soaked for something like a thousand bucks or more. Then again, there may be more money in re-selling that list to 10 or 100 other spammers then in spamming itself. "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well they told me at that time that what they paid was (a) proportionate to the size of the list, and (b) what they thought the list was worth in their sole opinion. Smaller lists got more money per name; larger lists got less per name. (Larger lists likely to have more no-good names, etc.) And of course in the case of exploder addresses on the list, they only would pay one dollar, regardless of only one 'real' name on the list or a thousand names. In other words if I mail to 'telecom-exploder@your-site' and you in turn automatically distribute the Digest to a few hundred people (as IBM used to do years ago before the then sysadmin got in a snit and started pitching the Digest in the waste basket without handing it out at all) then I would still get only one dollar for that entry. And Topica had a few spies on our list here at one time and I guess what they did was wise up and discover they didn't have to pay me anything, they could just manually make up their own mailing list from names they found in messages, etc. Of course, if I had 'signed on the dotted line' in those days, then they would have been the official possessor of whatever this thing is worth, they could have changed my passwords and I would have been out in the cold anytime they so chose. Part of the deal, you see, where the dollar per name as concerned was I was to deliver the names to them *on their server* then begin administering the Digest *on their server* at their leisure, etc. I am quite certain some day I would have awakened, gone to my computer and found out that my password did not work any longer, and telecom was their 'property'. That's how they wanted to do it, I am sure, which puts a different light on the 'dollar per name' angle. Topica approached lots and lots of moderated Usenet newsgroups in 1995-97 and made offers like that to the group moderators/list custodians. That was no big secret, you could look on the Topica home page in those days and click on a link where they told you how to do it: 'Moderators and list managers, click here to be in partnership with Topica and make money from your list'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jay Hennigan Organization: Disgruntled Postal Workers Against Gun Control Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 20:55:25 -0800 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some time ago, that Topica outfit made > an offer to me to purchase the telecom mailing list; they offered me > a dollar for each name on the list; they said they would take it over > but keep me as the moderator/editor. I did not know as much about them > as I do now, but I am surely glad I did not accept their offer. They > said they could help with distribution problems. Its sort of scary to > think about now. At the time, when I investigated the list of > discussion groups Topica was sponsoring, it seemed like a good oppor- > tunity for the Digest. Pardon me for thinking. At one time, Topica operated bonafide discussion mailing lists, with membership by request/subscription. They were ethical and honest, and made their money with a small advertising .sig line appended to the messages. They have morphed into a full blownspam-for-hire outfit and are now widely blacklisted. TTBOMK any legitimate mailing lists they once hosted have moved on. Those that haven't moved don't have very good propagation as Topica's netblocks are filter fodder worldwide. They made an attempt to hide their spamming under different domains than topica.com, one of the first and most notorious being email-publisher.com. Now they've stooped to spamming their spamming services, bragging that they comply with the new you-CAN-SPAM law. Opinion is that their spammed advertisement itself isn't compliant. Rule Number One. Go figure. You made a wise choice. Most of the 'net didn't see it coming and defended them for some time. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah, and look how many of the old moderated newsgroups are not even around any longer that we had back in the 1980-90's on account of Topica's dirty trick buying out so many moderators, who sold out their discussion groups for the fifty or hundred dollars it made them. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 00:42:28 EST From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Curious About Call Routing Through Vonage Patrick wrote: > why waste the 'minutes' you bought with your Vonage account when you > could call the toll-free number from your direct landline phone at > no charge Calls to 800-service numbers are free from Vonage phones on all rate plans. > from your direct landline Maybe your landline is being used by someone else, or maybe you only have Vonage service at your current location. > you get the little Cisco ATA box from them. I thought new customers get the new Motorola box. /john [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well John, there will *always* be some reason that no other phone is available momentarily for one reason or another. I guess this theoretical person didn't have a cell phone to use either, and there was no payphone close, or there was but the weather in Boston was sub-zero at the time so he was disinclined to go outside. I myself would have been inclined in those circumstances to either walk to a pay station or told the other person to please let *me* use the landline phone, etc. Regards the 'new Motorola box', in the nearly one year that I have been with Vonage, I got the Cisco ATA-186 box. Maybe the new 'new customers' are getting Motorolas, I do not know. Are you still getting those horrible bitter cold conditions there you had most of last week? PAT] ------------------------------ From: dold@800-555-11.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: 800-555-1140 was Re: Analog Phone Line Question Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:29:27 UTC Organization: a2i network Justin Time wrote: > joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote in message > news:: >>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That toll free number, 800-555-1140 >>> also works fine here in my town. I bet it will for everyone. PAT] >> Hmm. Just tried it from a cell phone, and the ANI was *not* my cell >> number. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I tried *my* cellular phone also from >> here, and it did not return correct results either. However my >> Vonage phone did have the correct results, and my wireline phone as >> well. > Uhmm, could it be the ANI being reported was for the trunk from the > wireless carrier that carried the call? > That's the problem with ANI and cell phones that 9-1-1 centers have > been having for years. I once chased that down as some kind of a hack of my company voicemail. We had an 800 number for voice mail access, and a _lot_ of the ANIs were the same. I checked against all of the employee ANIs. Not there. Called it, reorder tone. Sent it to PacBell fraud, Cellular One trunk. At that time, anyone in the San Francisco Bay Area that used a Cellular One cell phone showed an ANI of 510-893-0781, even if they weren't in the 510 area. It also caused grief for my daughter, stuck on a lonely road in the middle of the night, when she called AAA for road service. The ANI caused her to get routed to a center in Oakland, and they were not at all helpful, not being able to figure out where she was, and claiming... anyway, that wound up with her recording being played for all of the AAA reps in three offices, and a change in procedures. I just tried the 800-555-1140 from my AT&T cell phone and it reports my ANI as 62+ my cell phone number. From my office phone, it returns the main ANI, not my DID office number, just like CID does. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: desiv Subject: Re: Caller ID and Spying??? Organization: Comcast Online Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 03:28:38 GMT True ... I'd asked that before and she said no. (Well, my mom said that her friend said NO). He's never called. But I work Network support, so I take that with a grain of salt. (Of course I didn't load any non-standard software on my computer ... :-) And since I've never used CallWave, I'm not sure how accurate it is ... Let's say he did call her once, if only to see who answered the phone and then hung up. (Giving her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he called and she never talked to him.) Then it's just the number of people in her database, and she might not have noticed other glitches. She possibly only noticed the one with his name, since she didn't see it very often, if ever, on the CallWave app. OK, so we go from 1 in 60,000 to 1 in a personal phonebook database ... :-) You're right, much easier to handle. desiv > One question: Is there any chance that your mother's friend has > received a phone call from that "other person" at some point? (I > noticed that the friend seemed to recognize the name, anyway.) >> I guess that's why they call it a coincidence. At least a 1 in 60,000 >> chance (Approx. number of people in the calling area), but a chance >> nontheless. People win the lottery with worse odds.. :-) > If the database corruption happened at Callwave and the other person > had called the friend, the "60,000" can be replaced by the number of > people who have called the friend. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #24 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jan 16 15:15:04 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0GKF3x16123; Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:15:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:15:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401162015.i0GKF3x16123@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 #25 TELECOM Digest Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:15:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 25 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: "Wireless Hacks", Rob Flickenger (Rob Slade) Re: Anti Spam Conference at MIT Coming Soon! (John Levine) Re: Anti Spam Conference at MIT Coming Soon! (Mark Crispin) Credit Counseling Telescam Phone Calls (Mark Crispin) Re: Caller-ID and Spying (Lisa Hancock) Re: Habeas.com and Spam? (John Bartley) Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent (Monty Solomon) Still Another Norvergence Complaint/Inquiry (Ken Lyle) 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: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 08:24:44 -0800 Subject: Book Review: "Wireless Hacks", Rob Flickenger BKWLSHCK.RVW 20031110 "Wireless Hacks", Rob Flickenger, 2003, 0-596-00559-8, U$24.95/C$38.95 %A Rob Flickenger %C 103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA 95472 %D 2003 %G 0-596-00559-8 %I O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. %O U$24.95/C$38.95 707-829-0515 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005598/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005598/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005598/robsladesin03-20 %P 286 p. %T "Wireless Hacks" Unlike most pieces that simply list the various wireless standards, chapter one provides excellent coverage of both regulations and protocols, giving clear and practical explanations of the benefits and drawbacks of the various conventions, and recommending the best one for any particular purpose. This sets the tone for the book as a whole, providing advice and information that far exceeds details and suggestions found in other wireless works. (I must say, though, that the exegesis of Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum and Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum is still lacking.) Chapter two shows how to use Bluetooth (mostly with cell phones, Mac OS X, and Linux) for some amazing applications. Descriptions of many monitoring tools are furnished in chapter three, starting with system utilities. There is solid guidance on using these instruments in combination for best effect. Antennae, cables, and the use of minimalist equipment as routers and infrastructure is covered in chapter four. Five deals with antennae in more detail. Long distance point-to-point links are examined in chapter six. Wireless security, in chapter seven, discusses the usual WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) cracks and SSID (Station Set IDentifier) issues, but also reviews SSH (Secure SHell) and tunnelling. For anyone dealing seriously with wireless networks, there is a wealth of information collected here that you will only find elsewhere after prolonged searching. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2003 BKWLSHCK.RVW 20031110 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. - Oscar Wilde http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ Date: 16 Jan 2004 14:03:05 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Anti Spam Conference at MIT Coming Soon! Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > My private domain at home was hit with a denial of service attack from > their bulk.scd##.yahoo.com domains. Hundreds of SMTP connections in > rapid fire, all to an address ("ashutosh") that doesn't even exist, > swamped my DSL line. Just wondering, how long ago was that? > I believe that the sole purpose of Yahoo's "anti-spam" conference is > to sabotage any legitimate attempt at blocking spam. Hmmn. Yahoo isn't putting on a conference, anti-spam, pro-spam, or otherwise. What leads you to think that they are? >> Just wondering, how long ago was that? > The whack-a-mole game with Yahoo's netblocks took place last November. Odd, I'll talk to them. >> I believe that the sole purpose of Yahoo's "anti-spam" conference is >> to sabotage any legitimate attempt at blocking spam. >> Hmmn. Yahoo isn't putting on a conference, anti-spam, pro-spam, or >> otherwise. What leads you to think that they are? > The article implied that Yahoo had called that conference. You must have read a different article than the rest of us. The one we read made it quite clear that the conference is by and at MIT. Yahoo is giving away domain keys software, but that's unrelated to the conference. Regards, John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY http://www.taugh.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:52:42 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time) From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: Anti Spam Conference at MIT Coming Soon! Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On Fri, 16 Jan 2004, John Levine wrote: >> My private domain at home was hit with a denial of service attack from >> their bulk.scd##.yahoo.com domains. Hundreds of SMTP connections in >> rapid fire, all to an address ("ashutosh") that doesn't even exist, >> swamped my DSL line. > Just wondering, how long ago was that? The whack-a-mole game with Yahoo's netblocks took place last November. As far as I know, the attack is still ongoing. Something is still hitting the SMTP port, but it's not getting anywhere because it's now blocked at the DSL modem. I can tell from the lights when there's incoming traffic but nothing outgoing. >> I believe that the sole purpose of Yahoo's "anti-spam" conference is >> to sabotage any legitimate attempt at blocking spam. > Hmmn. Yahoo isn't putting on a conference, anti-spam, pro-spam, or > otherwise. What leads you to think that they are? The article implied that Yahoo had called that conference. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I was told that Yahoo wanted the conference -- which is going on today (Friday, January 16), as I write this -- and they (Yahoo) made a gift to MIT to underwrite the costs associated with the conference and the expenses of some of the main participants, but that Yahoo was not 'in control of' nor dictating the 'direction' the conference went or the conclusions to which the participants arrived. Perhaps by Monday or Tuesday of next week, someone who participated or observed the conference will write a report to the Digest readers. All we can really do, IMO, is keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best. As much as I personally take a libertarian attitude toward the net and the people who make it up, the problems associated with spam have gotten *so bad* that something has to give. I am reminded of how our inner city neighborhoods in large cities have gotten, and comparisons to the internet. Some of the lousiest (in terms of violent crime and general filthy living conditions) in our cities *used to be* among the finest years ago. The internet used to be that way also. People in Chicago, for example, of the 1920-30's era would find it absolutely unthinkable how far certain areas of the south and west sides have disintegrated in more recent years. People who were around the net in 1980-85 would find how the net has gotten in 2003-04 to be just as 'unthinkable'. You old timers remember, I am sure, how the idea of any kind of government controls on the net back in 1980-85 would have been met with horrified messages about Hitler, et al from so many quarters. The Anarchists will take care of themselves, thank you, no government need apply. Who could have imagined in 1980-85 that there would be serious thought given to government controls on the net. It was absolutely unthinkable. But by the mid to late 1990's as the concept of government control on how email could be sent and by whom became more 'thinkable' it was mostly too late. I consider a conference like the one at MIT to be a sort of last-ditch stand or effort by the Anarchists to do their own thing, to protect their real-estate from the gangs of mauruders who have tried to take it over. And I hope pride and personal ego does not cause a null effect on the whole thing; that some compromise or consensus can be achieved. Let's just bite the bullet and do what has to be done to reform the net and restore it to its rightful glory. If at least there can be some standards set, a few things that everyone can agree on. Spam won't disappear overnight, like some magic act, but every dent made will help. The inner city neighborhoods got into their condition because the very same problems, pride, ego, politics standing in the way. We are now seeing *massive* efforts made to at least partially restore their status as decent places to live. Maybe the internet won't have to get that bad -- go that far -- before we all get our acts together. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Credit Counseling Telescammers Ignoring Do-Not-Call list Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 10:47:13 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing So much for the Do-Not-Call list. I've been on it since inception. At 9:29AM today I got a prerecorded telemarketing call with a useless Caller ID (404-523-0000). The robot thought that the Qwest No Solicitation announcement was a human answering the call, and proceeded to babble its spiel. By the time it rung and I picked up the phone it was at the tail end, so the only thing that I caught was that it was a prerecord for some credit counseling scam. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mark, did you try 404-523-0000 to see if anyone was there? Four zeros following a prefix *can* be valid. For example, there is a NNN-0000 number here in Independence. It seems like an odd number, but they do have them and often times they are working. And also, was the credit counseling service a non-profit? Aren't there different rules for some of those places like charities and politicians? PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Caller ID and Spying??? Date: 16 Jan 2004 11:52:59 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com desiv wrote > For the phone number, it shows my mom's number. BUT for the name, it > shows someone else's name!!! I think there's a software bug in the display. It's showing the name from one call, and the number from another. It's possible that maybe one of the calls came in without the name and simply reused the prior one. Or some strange call came in and fouled the memory. Try calling the computer with the caller-ID suppressed, or from someone who has an unlisted number. See how it handles that. If you can get a conventional simple caller-ID device, try hooking that up to the line and calling it a few times from various phones and seeing the output. ------------------------------ From: John Bartley Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 08:47:18 -0800 Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? Correspondent wrote: > Recently I've started getting a lot of spam (well, not a lot, but > perhaps a half-dozen messages a day) signed by "Habeas.com." Habeas' > website advertises that it is "sender warranted email," No, sir, it does not. It offers individual users and customers a way to pass through properly configured filters reliably, as well as an enforcement mechanism which actively pursues violators, but it relies on a) you, your sysop or ISP to properly design a filter, and b) receipients of spam abusing it's copyright to report it. > and that one > of the main uses of the website is deliver spam-free e-mail. No, their purpose is to alow its users to send spam-free e-mail. > Does anyone know if they are for real? Yes, they are. I receive many e-mails signed with Habeas, and not yet one spam. > Should I report the spam to them? I'd make sure to report these violations to Habeas at http://habeas.com/report > Should I just block anything that has Habeas headers in it? (So far, > I've never received any legitimate e-mail with Habeas headers.) No, I would not. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think it matters any longer to report individual instances of spam; everyone knows how bad it has gotten and you just clutter up the help desks and spam report desks of the world. Its like calling the police on the west side of Chicago to report your purse was snatched. Police very politely take your report, and maybe even put out a flash bulletin on the radio ('be on the lookout for man described as thus and so') to humor you so you think they are 'going to put an end to crime'. Like with spam, it does not go away because of anyone's 'report' to a help desk somewhere. Yes, there is something to be said for keeping statistics and hope- fully assigning individual responsibility for individual crimes. But spam will be greatly reduced when the main players -- for example, at the conference today -- decide it will end. Hopefully the main players won't let personal politics and ego prevent them from doing thier jobs. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 14:44:42 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent By Marguerite Reardon Staff Writer, CNET News.com Two Internet entrepreneurs are suing Network Solutions and Register.com for infringing on their e-mail and domain naming patent. Troy K. Javaher and Frank M. Weyer, operating under the newly formed company Nizza Group, on Monday filed a patent infringement lawsuit in U.S. District Court in California against the two domain registrars. The suit accuses Network Solutions and Register.com of selling rights to Web URLs and e-mail addresses that infringe on a patent that was granted to Javaher and Weyer on Dec. 20, 2003. The patent covers the method of assigning URLs and e-mail addresses of members of a group such that the "@" sign is the dot in the URL. For example, if a group used a so-called third-level URL, www.john.smith.com, the e-mail address would be john@smith.com. In the complaint, Nizza Group specifically indicates that Network Solutions and Register.com are infringing the patent by selling rights to URLs and e-mail addresses under the .name domain. The .name domain is called a third-level domain, because it uses an extra dot, as in the case of john.smith.name. Even though the database of .name domains is owned and operated by Global Name Registry (GNR), it was not named in the lawsuit. http://news.com.com/2100-1038-5141810.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How in the *hell* could those turkeys have been granted a patent on December 20, *2003* for a system which has been in common use for about twenty years? What was the Patent Office thinking about when they granted the patent in that case? Maybe I could go apply for a patent on the system of Usenet newsgroups, telling them I thought of it first when I invented the Internet, then sue all the other guys who 'infringed on my ideas'. Geeze. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ken Lyle Subject: Norvergence Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 13:58:01 -0500 Pat, I left you a message on your cell. Our Lawyers suggested I find all the info I can on Norvergence on the web about complaints. Your page seems to have the most on it. Like I said on your voicemail, there is no real way for me to prove who I am to you. We are a company in PA www.bscable.com We signed up for Norvergence and it immediately turned into a nightmare. I am trying to email or call everyone who complained about them on your site to find out what kind of luck they had getting out of this or if they had to sue Norvergence. Trying to get all my ducks lines up in a row. Are you allowed to send me a file of everything you had on them on your website? What if I had our Lawyer call you to prove to you that they do not represent Norvergence in any way? I take it from reading this that Norvergence is trying to sue you to take these posts down? I I don't understand how they could do that. It's free speech. Your not posting it, anyone who can access your site is posting it. They are not allowed to express their opinions? This whole thing is getting bigger and crazier the more I read into it. I thought we were alone here, but apparently we are not! Any info would be appreciated! Thank you, Ken Controller B.S. Cable Co., Inc. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You don't have to have your lawyer call me to prove anything. To get all I know at this point about Norvergence just go through the Telecom Archives ( http://telecom-digest.org ) since around the first of December searching for the articles about them; There are plenty -- most are unfavorable -- and help yourself to all you want. Especially look in the past two weeks, in the section of the Archives called TELECOM_Digest_Online through the thousand or so messages there during the past month. You'll find your letter of inquiry today in there also. Each time I send out an issue of the Digest (as I will with this one) the archives is auto-updated including the Digest Online feature. PAT] ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #25 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Jan 17 23:49:16 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0I4nGB23177; Sat, 17 Jan 2004 23:49:16 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 23:49:16 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401180449.i0I4nGB23177@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 #26 TELECOM Digest Sat, 17 Jan 2004 23:49:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 26 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Diebold Gets Stay in California (Monty Solomon) Push Into Living Room is a Gamble (Monty Solomon) Cell Phone Cameras Share Blotchy Moments (Monty Solomon) CBS Shields Pigskin Fans From Ads (Monty Solomon) Re: Credit Counseling Telescammers Ignoring Do-Not-Call list (Wesrock) Re: Credit Counseling Telescammers Ignoring Do-Not-Call list (jbl) Re: Credit Counseling Telescammers Ignoring Do-Not-Call list (R.T.Wurth) Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent (Paul Vader) Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent (Barry Margolin) Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent (Rahul Dhesi) Re: Norvergence (Paul Vader) Place Name for 610-388 (Carl Moore) Wireless Home Networks (Michael Quinn) ITT TEL-TREX Model 320 CORTELCO - Questions About Unit (Chad) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 13:40:13 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Diebold Gets Stay in California By Kim Zetter SACRAMENTO, California -- Delay was the order of the day in California Thursday as the secretary of state's Voting Systems Panel, or VSP, postponed announcing any sanctions against Diebold Election Systems. Voting activists from across California converged on the secretary of state's office to see what action, if any, the government would take against Diebold for violating voting-system certification laws and to see whether the state would certify the company's latest touch-screen voting machines. But the VSP tabled its decision for a second time, a move that frustrated activists who hoped the panel would decertify the Diebold machines currently used in California and bar the company from selling new machines in the state. At least four counties recently purchased the new touch-screen model, the AccuVote-TSx, and are waiting for it to be certified for the March and November elections. TSx certification was made conditional in November on the results of a statewide audit of Diebold machines. The audit was conducted after the state discovered that the company had placed uncertified software on some touch-screen machines used in elections. The audit, completed last month, revealed that the company had installed uncertified software upgrades in all 17 counties using its touch-screen or optical-scan machines. But the panel decided not to take action against Diebold until more information could be collected. http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61947,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 17:39:40 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Push Into Living Room is a Gamble By Ed Frauenheim and Richard Shim Staff Writer, CNET News.com LAS VEGAS--Computer companies face major obstacles in the consumer electronics market despite optimistic claims that it represents a promising new frontier for a waning PC industry. Practically all the major PC manufacturers are expanding into home entertainment products, specifically targeting the flat-panel television sets that have boomed in the last year. Large computer makers such as Gateway, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have entered the TV market, hoping to undercut traditional electronics leaders such as Sony, Philips and Panasonic. In the near term, the strategy may pay off: With their direct distribution systems and other cost efficiencies, computer companies are well-positioned to lower prices on these products while still maintaining profit levels that exceed the margin range of 8 percent to 15 percent historically earned from PCs. However, if prices on flat-panel sets plummet as expected, it is unclear how the computer companies will respond to extreme competition in an unfamiliar territory. Already, the average price for flat-panel TVs in the 26-to-30-inch category has dropped from about $6,700 in 2002 to roughly $3,200 at the end of last year, according to research firm iSuppli/Stanford Resources, and will likely plunge to about $1,800 by the end of this year with increased competition. In addition to the PC companies, other players such as Samsung, Motorola and Epson are joining the flat-panel rush. http://news.com.com/2100-1003-5137997.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 12:52:17 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cell Phone Cameras Share Blotchy Moments By BRUCE MEYERSON AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- The photos are grainy, blotchy and blurry, but for millions of people now toting cell phones with built-in digital cameras, it doesn't seem to be about the megapixels _ or at least not yet. Tens of millions of these less-than perfect pictures were snapped and e-mailed from cell phones in the United States during 2003, the first full year such services were available. News organizations are publishing cell photos from their readers to help cover stories. And an untold number of mobile phone snapshots are being posted daily to "moblogs," a visual form of the online journals better known as Web logs, or blogs. In short, corny as it sounds, cellular photography seems to be about adding new immediacy to the old Kodak pitch, "share the moment." But much as this country has lagged Asia and Europe in many facets of the mobile phone revolution, cell photography is still a rather niche hobby in the United States _ a major challenge for wireless companies desperate to generate new revenues from non-voice services. Of the roughly 75 million camera phones shipped worldwide in 2003, only 6 million went to the United States, compared with more than 35 million to Japan, according to Strategy Analytics Ltd., a British consulting firm. Likewise, North America accounted for just 1.7 million of the world's 24 million "active" users of camera phones, compared with a combined 21.6 million in Japan and South Korea. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40209433 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 13:28:45 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: CBS Shields Pigskin Fans From Ads Reuters 12:55 PM Jan. 16, 2004 PT LOS ANGELES -- U.S. football fans will not see ads featuring scantily clad vegetarians or a political attack on President Bush during February's Super Bowl after CBS said on Thursday that advocacy advertisements were out of bounds on professional football's biggest day. The network, over the years, has rejected dozens of advertising proposals by advocacy groups, which argue that the network only airs controversial messages that it agrees with. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,61949,00.html ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 10:58:48 EST Subject: Re: Credit Counseling Telescammers Ignoring Do-Not-Call list In a message dated Fri, 16 Jan 2004 10:47:13 -0800 Mark Crispin writes: > So much for the Do-Not-Call list. I've been on it since inception. > At 9:29AM today I got a prerecorded telemarketing call with a useless > Caller ID (404-523-0000). The robot thought that the Qwest No > Solicitation announcement was a human answering the call, and > proceeded to babble its spiel. > By the time it rung and I picked up the phone it was at the tail end, > so the only thing that I caught was that it was a prerecord for some > credit counseling scam. > -- Mark -- > http://staff.washington.edu/mrc > Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. > Si vis pacem, para bellum. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mark, did you try 404-523-0000 to see > if anyone was there? Four zeros following a prefix *can* be valid. > For example, there is a NNN-0000 number here in Independence. It seems > like an odd number, but they do have them and often times they are > working. And also, was the credit counseling service a non-profit? > Aren't there different rules for some of those places like charities > and politicians? PAT] During the last month or two I have been having dealings with a local firm (in the 405 area code and Oklahoma City metropolitan exchange) with the number 858-0000. Seems to be just as valid and functional as any other number. (Their literature gives their fax number as 858-0001. I haven't had occasion to try it.) Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: jbl Subject: Re: Credit Counseling Telescammers Ignoring Do-Not-Call list Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 14:28:44 -0700 Organization: On the desert Reply-To: jbl@spamblocked.com In , Mark Crispin wrote: > At 9:29AM today I got a prerecorded telemarketing call with a useless > Caller ID (404-523-0000). The robot thought that the Qwest No > Solicitation announcement was a human answering the call, and > proceeded to babble its spiel. I got my first one since the DNC list went into effect this week also, again a "credit counseling" service. The one to my "home" line disconnected when I answered live; the one to my "office" line was happy to put its whole message onto voice mail. Mine came in as "unknown caller"; no number. So not only was this a DNC violation (I verified that my numbers have been on the list since last June), but also a TCPA violation, since these were prerecorded. I filed the DNC violations on the government DNC web site. (You can get there from links on the www.ftc.gov home page.) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: . . . > . . . And also, was the credit counseling service a non-profit? > Aren't there different rules for some of those places like charities > and politicians? PAT] There are some which claim to be tax exempts, though in some cases research as shown that this is a lie. In any case, these are only front ends for profit-making organizations; if you get "credit counseled" your account gets turned over to a for-(big)profit company that does the bookkeeping chore of taking your monthly check and disbursing the funds to the creditors (maybe) for a fee. /JBL ------------------------------ From: rwurth@att.net (R. T. Wurth) Subject: Re: Credit Counseling Telescammers Ignoring Do-Not-Call list Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 00:29:30 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet In article , Mark Crispin wrote: > So much for the Do-Not-Call list. I've been on it since inception. > At 9:29AM today I got a prerecorded telemarketing call with a useless > Caller ID (404-523-0000). The robot thought that the Qwest No > Solicitation announcement was a human answering the call, and > proceeded to babble its spiel. [...] > -- Mark -- Part of the credit counseling scam is that the for-profit operators set up a non-profit front-end recruiter that performs the "community service" of "helping debtors out" invariably by referring them to the for-profit remittance agent. This arrangement has the recently-added bonus of providing exemption from Do Not Call lists. Rich Wurth / rwurth@att.net / Rumson, NJ USA ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:45:38 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Monty Solomon writes: > used a so-called third-level URL, www.john.smith.com, the e-mail > address would be john@smith.com. This is patentable?! * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent Organization: Looking for work Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 03:47:26 GMT In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > The suit accuses Network Solutions and Register.com of selling rights > to Web URLs and e-mail addresses that infringe on a patent that was > granted to Javaher and Weyer on Dec. 20, 2003. The patent covers the > method of assigning URLs and e-mail addresses of members of a group > such that the "@" sign is the dot in the URL. For example, if a group > used a so-called third-level URL, www.john.smith.com, the e-mail > address would be john@smith.com. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How in the *hell* could those turkeys > have been granted a patent on December 20, *2003* for a system which > has been in common use for about twenty years? Although I think the patent is kind of silly, I'm not sure I agree with you that the system "has been in common use". They're not trying to patent the general system of email addresses, just a very specific kind of email address that is linked to a subdomain and a database of forwarding addresses. Can you provide a handful of examples of systems where the maintainer of automatically arranges for email addressed to @ to be relayed to the owner of .? Try to include some examples from two decades ago (the very birth of the DNS system), since you claim this system has been in use that long. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA ------------------------------ From: c.c.eiftj@DomainXReg.usenet.us.com (Rahul Dhesi) Subject: Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 13:48:29 UTC Organization: a2i network Monty Solomon writes: [ quoting cnet.com ] > The patent covers the > method of assigning URLs and e-mail addresses of members of a group > such that the "@" sign is the dot in the URL. For example, if a group > used a so-called third-level URL, www.john.smith.com, the e-mail > address would be john@smith.com. I began allocating subdomains to users approximately in 1994 or 1995. I had quite a few customers who had an email address of the form joeuser@rahul.net and a domain of the form joeuser.rahul.net. The domain of the form joeuser.rahul.net would typically have an "A" record in DNS pointing to the user's static dial-up IP address. I don't recall offhand if any of these subdomains of the form joeuser.rahul.net pointed to any web site. From a DNS point of view, however, the scheme was the same as the one described above. And once an "A" record was created in DNS, if any of these users had ever run a web server on his home machine while dialed in, that web site would automatically have appeared as http://joeuser.rahul.net/ . email address = USER@rahul.net domain with A record = USER.rahul.net home machine web site, if any = http://USER.rahul.net/ The earliest instance of this scheme that I can find in the CVS log for rahul.net is: revision 1.7 date: 1994/09/11 05:17:18; author: dhesi; state: Exp; lines: +3 -3 originmm.rahul.net The DNS entry added on that day ws: originmm IN A 192.160.13.189 The reverse DNS entry is also in RCS for the zone 13.160.192.in-addr.arpa : 189 IN PTR originmm.rahul.net. > From my billing records for user 'originmm', email address 'originmm@rahul.net': 10 Sep 94: originmm: ip start date was (none), changed to: 1994/09/10 10 Sep 94: originmm: host IP address was (none), changed to: 192.160.13.189 10 Sep 94: charge $5 : customized domain originmm.rahul.net So on or around September 10 or 11, 1994, both the domain originmm.rahul.net and the email address originmm@rahul.net existed. Due to the openness of the systems in those days, all of this was freely publicized. Anybody doing 'finger' would have seen users logged in, and if this user had been logged into the UNIX shell at that time, people would have seen the host name originmm.rahul.net. Anybody doing a DNS query, or a zone transfer (and zone transfers could be done by all in those days) would have easily seen the DNS information. The general subdomain scheme was public knowledge because it was sent to anybody requesting subscription information. I don't mind mentioning the specific user 'originmm' because this account is no longer an active account and there is no privacy violation here. (Note: My email address in this posting is valid for email replies only if the original Subject line (below) is preserved: Subject: Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent If you use any other subject line, your email to me will bounce back, and the bounce will suggest an alternative email address.) Rahul [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So Barry, I was a little off in saying *twenty years ago*, but I knew I had seen that addressing method a long time before the turkeys gobbled up the patent on it. As Rahul says it was happening in the early/middle 1990's. So how could they have gotten their patent if the patent examiner, et al had done his homework? PAT] ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Norvergence Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:43:13 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Ken Lyle writes: > Pat, > I left you a message on your cell. Our Lawyers suggested I find all > the info I can on Norvergence on the web about complaints. Your page > seems to have the most on it. What is it with all these people bothering Pat Townson with Norvergence queries? If I was paranoid, I might think these were attempts to get him to say something bad on the record, which wouldn't stand up to the defenses a compiler of a mailing list has. Oh wait, I *am* paranoid. My vote is to silently toss anything further concerning requests for information about Norvergence. If someone is asking you directly and calling on your cellphone, they're not telcom digest subscribers. * P.S. On the other hand, it is amusing in a black comedy sort of way. * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Two points, Paul. For people 'like that', I never state any opinion of my own. My sentences are always phrased, 'reports I have read say,' or 'the attornies tell me,' etc. I do not wish to be accused of practicing law, or practicing slander either for that matter. Second point: most of the people who ask me directly or call on the phone never even heard of TELECOM Digest, let alone subscribe to it. Most new netizens these days never heard of Usenet either, only http://whatever, which they use liberally for the various things they like on the net. Many of the guys, however, do stick around once they get a comprehensive (and hopefully correct) answer to their inquiry. And here at Telecom Education School I can always be assured of correct answers from our 'faculty' if I get it wrong or pass over it. Do you remember back about 1990 or so when an article by Monty Solomon in the Digest said 'it is estimated that X million Americans use the net each day' and my reply to that was 'wait fifteen years or so until the entire country is wired if you think things are a mess now ...' Well we are now getting to that point, where things are a mess; relatively sophisticated people are finding out how dumb they are on telephones and they are all asking at once. But regards doing manual searching for people, I agree that has gotten a bit ridiculous. People with no idea at all of the extent of our archives are always saying 'send me whatever you have on topic X ...' I have to tell them to look it up for themselves, but at least I answer; I don't just toss it in the wastebasket. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:22:16 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Place Name for 610-388 610 area, part of old 215 in southeastern Pennsylvania, includes the Delaware-Pennsylvania border. Recently, I made a call from my home (via AT&T) to a phone on 610-388, which is along the Delaware border (is local to Wilmington, Del.) and reaches up to a stretch of U.S. 1. AT&T bill which includes that call has arrived, and it gives the place name as Chadds Ford (do not recall seeing Chadds Ford in that context before), but nanpa.com (and the old phone books for that area) give 388 (which is a holdover from the 215 area) as Mendenhall. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:37:34 -0500 From: Michael Quinn Organization: Booz Allen Hamilton Subject: Wireless Home Networks The recent articles on DSL availabilty prompted me to check with Verizon yet again to see if Verizon had at last made DSL available in my neighborhood in Northern VA. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had, and with a little bit of searching discovered a wireless hub and small wireless USB adaptors at buy.com on sale for about $35 each. The wired versions -- either conventional NIC cards using CAT 5 cable or the HPNA stle which use phone lines are both more expensive and the former of course entails running and terminating cables. Three colleagues, all more knowledgeable and opinionated than me, have strongly warned against the more expedient wireless solution because of security vulnerabilities. I thought these things were range limited Part 15 devices, and I live on a culdesac where someone "cruising for hots spots" would be pretty conspicuous. Would appreciate any ideas or experiences, good or bad, that the readership would be willing to share, either here in the Digest or off net. TD is a teriffic resource. Thanks, Mike Quinn Springfield VA quinnm@bah.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for your kind words about the Digest. If you go with wireless solutions to *anything*, I suggest you make certain your security is **very tight** at all times. From years ago where the technique of 'cruising for dial tone' was a commonplace activity -- people drive down the street with a cordless handset listening for dial tone from *your* cordless phone then proceed to make a few long distance or premium charge (a/c 900 for example) calls on your bill -- to more modern times where like the naked man in Toronto they drive down the street with a laptop PC and a WiFi connection downloading kiddie porn behind your back, and then when postal inspector Zipp or FBI Inquisitor Laws get to your house you wind up taking the rap for it because *their* knowledge of computers is so woefully lacking (like any police officer) -- well, you don't want to get in that kind of mess, I am sure. If you go wireless then KEEP IT LOCKED UP TIGHTLY. Or better still, keep it all wired, and still keep yourself locked up. I still have to giggle a little about the day the FBI came here to my house during that Cameraware scam, and the Inquisitor said to me in a self righteous tone of voice, "well yes, I agree with you that spam can be a bad problem but the spammers do not send out kiddie porn." Oh yeah? Keep a good firewall up all the time, either wired or wireless. That's IMO, and note, there is no 'H' as the third letter there; that's because I do not give Humble opinions. PAT] ------------------------------ From: c.warren@wdtc.biz (Chad) Subject: ITT TEL-TREX MODEL 320 CORTELCO - Questions About Unit Date: 17 Jan 2004 17:02:58 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Does anyone know anything about this system? I cannot find a site with any specs on it. I am not sure, but I do believe it is an older system. I found it for sale online. I am just looking for a small pbx for a home business. I have 2 toll free lines which are currently being forwarded to our home business line. One goes directly to our main business line and the other uses distinctive ring from the Telco. I would like to have an auto attendant and voice mail. I don't have much money to spend on one. Does anyone know if you can hookup an auto attendant and voice mail to this model? The ITT Tel-Trex Model 320 from Cortelco? Any help or sugesstions would be appreciated. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #26 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jan 18 17:18:08 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0IMI8327724; Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:18:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:18:08 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401182218.i0IMI8327724@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 #27 TELECOM Digest Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:18:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 27 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Rants From A Current Norvergence Employee (K) All-Xeros Numbers (Bruce Howells) Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent (Christopher Wolf) Re: Wireless Home Networks (Joey Lindstrom) Re: Wireless Home Networks (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Equipment For Emulating POTS (John Sasso) 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: theman242424@hotmail.com (K) Subject: Rants From A Current Norvergence Employee Date: 17 Jan 2004 23:36:05 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I saw some posts by employees talking about how much they love this company ... I dont like to lie and I dont like when people lie around me so they can make a buck. I fully realize that this post might lose my job with my own company but I really don't care. Im not going to lecture about the technology ... I will tell you the little that I know though. You see, they don't tell the phone appointment setters (inside sales reps) anything about how this crap works. Ignorance is bliss ... It seems like we use some kind of ATM technology to offer free long distance, no land line charges and incoming toll free calls. But we might be acting like a reseller in some cases ... I'm not sure about that. The cell phone service we resell. We can get deals from ATT and Verizon because we get it in bulk. So they can eliminate roaming, I hear by combining the carriers and networks. So from what I hear, the technology isn't crap; the major fear I would have in signing up is that 5 year lease. Some jerkoff said that telecom prices were going up. :) Thats BS. Telecom prices have been going down and I expect them to drop significantly as the major providers switch to voice over IP and Data technology ... It certainly isnt going up. When was the last time they raised the pricee on CD players or other technology? So you can judge for yourself about the product. I have talked to customer service and they said they dont get much complaints about the matrix. I think cells are a bigger concern. This company sucks. Its actually quite amusing though how bad the culture of a company can be. Norvergence is located in the shithole of a city of Newark, New Jersey. They occupy two buildings, one at 550 Broad and another quickly expanding one at 570 Broad. I work at 570 Broad. The base salary for the experienced inside sales people is 40K, 30K if you are totally inexperienced. I was told the average total package was 70-80K. Yeah, thats BS. I'm thinking now that the average is 50-55. You can make a 100K but thats not average. Thats my guess. The lies first start with the recruiters that spend the entire time pitching to you and making you feel special. But this company has so many screwed up rules to rape employees ... let me give you an example. If you are late by one minute in a two week period you get docked 1,000 dollars. Who does that? No one does that! So many people; if they are late will just quit right there. I know I will. As an inside sales rep you are required to get on the phones and call and set appointments. Your bonus is tied directly into how many appointments that you set are kept. The salary isnt bad for the skill level required, (though it isn't the easiest thing in the world to get hung up on all day long). And if you can't make one or two appointments per day they say you will be fired. The 570 building defintely has some over qualified people due to the crappy economy. They also have some smooth talking non educated people. Of our training class about half so far has quit or been fired. Really they hired people with hardly any filterring. Now back to the company culture. It feels like grade school. They not only monitor your phone for personal calls but they dont even let you use your cell phones on the premises for breaks. The fat short white guys with big bellies that run the floor look like they belong on the Sopranos. The majority of people below them are black. Supervisors for the inside sales are people that showed that they were great at setting appointments. Now I shouldnt be too hard on the management of 570. They are a world away from the 550 office. I have heard stories of that place. I heard that place feels like prison. The employees get half as much desk space and are treated like cattle ... you have to raise your hand to go to the bathroom. Seriously. Why? Well, to get government grants Norvergence has a prison work program. I have also heard there is a welfare to work program to get more grants in the "empowerment zone" in Newark. I should mention that I havent met these people yet. The reason being that the managers have arranged the breaks between the offices to be at different times so employees dont interact. In fact, there are several different departments that are told not to speak to others from the other departments. Training inside sales goes at a different time than the regular people so they dont learn that some of the stuff told in training was a lie. Customer service goes a different time from them. In the 550 building I hear it is extremely aggressive and they act like prison guards. Funny because there are a few professional-like people in that building as well. I have heard stories of people that have ran to work so fast so they are not late and have collapsed out of exertion and gone to the hospital. Here is another thing. If you quit or are fired you don't get your commissions. So that means whenever you leave you will lose about 3 weeks of commissions. Why? They do this so they can try to hook you into staying. As you can see the company was designed in a very machiavellian sort of way. They have other little gimmics to steal a little bit of your commission. Let's say I book a corporation for a visit and the corporation happens to sign on and have 300 locations. I should get paid for the 300 locations (which would be spectacular). But the commission for that is the same as the commission for 40. If it was a fair deal they would give you a year off of work if you made a deal like that. Also we have a Q and A department that has these stupid bureaucratic rules of questions that we need to have answered and recorded. This is done as they think that the sales reps might be lying. But its done stupidly. Im not sure if these methods are very good at all for building a company as everyone there hates the culture and there is a huge turnover. Anyone that says they love their job is a complete liar. They might love the money but no one loves the job. And the only people that love the money are people that didn't really have the qualifications or education to get a high paying corporate job. In terms of Nortel ... We dont pitch Nortel anymore. But I have seen an older script that said, "Hello, we are calling from Nortel Networks". I thought that was somewhat shady. I'm not sure about the agreement that Norvergence had with them before but they clearly are not friendly any more. I should make it clear that there are some quality individuals that work there, employees and supervisors. There are some very cool individuals. There are some knowledgeable honest people that work there ... but its the corporate culture that the executives formed that worries me. So I will be looking for other work in my extra hours ... but in the mean time I will be setting appointments. You don't have to buy the product but I think you should definitely get the appointment. :) That way Norvergence will pay its employees and not make money. -M [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you very much for sharing your experiences as an employee of Norvergence with us. There is really nothing I can add except to say I hope Mr. Solzano or Mr. Wolf or a person they designate will favor us with a reply/rebuttal if they wish to do so. I am sure that not a hundred percent of everything you said above is in the proper context; none of us, when we are angry speak in the proper context, even if what we say is otherwise truthful as far as it goes. So Wolf, Solzano or designee, the floor is yours if you want. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 11:15:32 -0500 From: Bruce Howells Subject: All-Zeros Numbers There's been an ongoing thread about numbers ending in four zeros; yes, they are of course valid. A couple jobs back, our hunt-group lead was (area code suppressed since I don't know who currently owns these numbers) NXX-891-0000, and our primary inbound FAX (aging myself and this story by saying "our singular inbound") was NXX-890-0000. Yep, *five* zeros. We all spent quite a bit of time convincing folks that these were real, and not missing-data placeholders. (If you recognize these numbers ... drop me a hello!) -Bruce Howells, bhowells@earthlink.net ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 18 Jan 2004 05:36:32 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent > Can you provide a handful of examples of systems where the maintainer > of automatically arranges for email addressed to > @ to be relayed to the owner of .? Try to > include some examples from two decades ago (the very birth of the DNS > system), since you claim this system has been in use that long. > Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu > Arlington, MA That's been built into Sendmail for as long as I can remember. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 00:33:29 -0600 From: Christopher Wolf Subject: Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent > From: Barry Margolin > Subject: Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent > Organization: Looking for work > Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 03:47:26 GMT > In article , Monty Solomon > wrote: >> The suit accuses Network Solutions and Register.com of selling rights >> to Web URLs and e-mail addresses that infringe on a patent that was >> granted to Javaher and Weyer on Dec. 20, 2003. The patent covers the >> method of assigning URLs and e-mail addresses of members of a group >> such that the "@" sign is the dot in the URL. For example, if a group >> used a so-called third-level URL, www.john.smith.com, the e-mail >> address would be john@smith.com. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How in the *hell* could those turkeys >> have been granted a patent on December 20, *2003* for a system which >> has been in common use for about twenty years? > Although I think the patent is kind of silly, I'm not sure I agree > with you that the system "has been in common use". They're not > trying to patent the general system of email addresses, just a very > specific kind of email address that is linked to a subdomain and a > database of forwarding address. > Can you provide a handful of examples of systems where the maintainer of > automatically arranges for email addressed to @ to > be relayed to the owner of .? Try to include some examples > from two decades ago (the very birth of the DNS system), since you claim > this system has been in use that long. Roadrunner did it 4 or 5 years ago when I had a residential account with them. Although they described it as working in the opposite direction, i.e. if your login(email) was foofoo, you could access your web site with either www.rr.com/foofoo or www.foofoo.rr.com I think this feature is basically built into Apache, isn't it? ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 22:21:10 -0700 From: Joey Lindstrom Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Organization: Telus Sucks! Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks On Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:37:34 -0500 Michael Quinn wrote about Wireless Home Networks: > Three colleagues, all more knowledgeable and opinionated than me, > have strongly warned against the more expedient wireless solution > because of security vulnerabilities. I thought these things were > range limited Part 15 devices, and I live on a culdesac where > someone "cruising for hot spots" would be pretty conspicuous. Would > appreciate any ideas or experiences, good or bad, that the > readership would be willing to share, either here in the Digest or > off net. TD is a teriffic resource. Michael, If you take the time to properly secure your wireless network, you'll have little to worry about. The problem is, many don't. I can drive around my neighbourhood and find six or seven unprotected networks with my laptop in a radius of just a few blocks (I can successfully connect to these networks and start websurfing, or downloading porn, or spamming, or anything I want). Typically, a wireless network by default has no encryption or other protections turned on. You need to turn all this stuff on yourself. To start, you need to set your "SSID", which is a unique string of text that differentiates "your" network from somebody else's. Many folks don't do this, and leave it at the default. When I cruise my neighbourhood, I see a lot of networks named "DEFAULT" or "LINKSYS". You should change this to something else, and to be safe it should be something that doesn't uniquely identify your location (ie: don't use your house number as part of the name of your SSID, or your business name if using it at work, etc.). Not all access points/routers support this, but if possible, you should DISABLE SSID BROADCAST. If you do this, this will deter all but the most determined hackers -- your network won't be visible to others (without specialized software) even if your encryption isn't turned on. But you definitely wanna turn this on. The most-common encryption standard is "WEP", or "Wired Equivalent Privacy" (I think). This has to be turned on at your access point. You'll have to give your access point an encryption key, and you'll have to use the same encryption key on all computers in your network. 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. There is a new wireless standard called "WPA" (WiFi Protected Access, I think), which is supposed to be one heck of a lot more robust - so far as I know, nobody's managed to break it yet. However, support for this new standard is not yet universal. 1) Your access point/router needs to support it. I think most new Linksys hardware supports it, either out of the box or with a firmware upgrade (I recently upgraded my Linksys "g" router to the latest firmware and this added WPA support). 2) Each PC needs to support it. For those PC's running Windows XP, you can update your system via Windows Update and your system will support WPA natively, regardless of what wireless adapter card(s) you've got. For PC's running other operating systems, your need to make sure that your wireless adapter card(s) support this, either in hardware or software. If it doesn't say it does, then it probably DOES NOT (but check with your dealer and/or the manufacturer's website). If all points in your network support WPA, then activating it is actually easier than activating WEP (fewer things to choose, and thus fewer possible mismatches), and it's far more secure. Joey Lindstrom ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 18 Jan 2004 05:33:33 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for your kind words about the > Digest. If you go with wireless solutions to *anything*, I suggest > you make certain your security is **very tight** at all times. From > years ago where the technique of 'cruising for dial tone' was a > commonplace activity -- people drive down the street with a cordless > handset listening for dial tone from *your* cordless phone then > proceed to make a few long distance or premium charge (a/c 900 for > example) calls on your bill -- to more modern times where like the > naked man in Toronto they drive down the street with a laptop PC > and a WiFi connection downloading kiddie porn behind your back, and > then when postal inspector Zipp or FBI Inquisitor Laws get to your > house you wind up taking the rap for it because *their* knowledge > of computers is so woefully lacking (like any police officer) -- well, > you don't want to get in that kind of mess, I am sure. If you go > wireless then KEEP IT LOCKED UP TIGHTLY. Or better still, keep it all > wired, and still keep yourself locked up. > I still have to giggle a little about the day the FBI came here to > my house during that Cameraware scam, and the Inquisitor said to me > in a self righteous tone of voice, "well yes, I agree with you that > spam can be a bad problem but the spammers do not send out kiddie > porn." Oh yeah? Keep a good firewall up all the time, either wired > or wireless. That's IMO, and note, there is no 'H' as the third > letter there; that's because I do not give Humble opinions. PAT] First thing to do is set it so the SSID isn't broadcast but has to be hand coded on each machine. Granted, it'll fly across the air but it's one more layer. The current WEP is what, 128 bit? That works out to 16 bytes -- not a stretch to crack. Many wireless routers now have built in firewalls. They allow you to set only the MAC addresses of the attached computers as being able to access the net. Unfortunately you can also sniff this information out as it's embedded in every packet flying out in the air. Then there are of course solutions like Blue Socket. Unfortunately I don't think they fit into the budget of most people. Part of the problem we're going to see with Wi-Fi is a mixing of standards. Cisco has already started with the LEAP stuff. It is why I will not install wireless routers anywhere in my home or office. I will instead string cable and punch down the CAT-5 terminations myself. ------------------------------ From: John Sasso Subject: Equipment for Emulating POTS Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 04:43:12 GMT Organization: Road Runner I am looking for an "affordable" device that can simulate analog POTS lines for a Cisco Network Academy lab. The device should have a capacity for, say, 16 to 32 POTS lines. I checked out the ADTRAN Atlas 550, which is very extensive in its features but is quite pricey ($3500-$4000); I am primarily concerned about the POTS capability. Any recommended hardware that serves the purpose would be greatly appreciated! --john ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #27 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jan 19 14:09:08 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0JJ98c03757; Mon, 19 Jan 2004 14:09:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 14:09:08 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401191909.i0JJ98c03757@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 #28 TELECOM Digest Mon, 19 Jan 2004 14:09:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 28 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #416, January 19, 2004 (Angus TeleManagement) Re: Place Name for 610-388 (Lisa Hancock) Re: Place Name for 610-388 (Jerry Wolf) Re: Wireless Home Networks (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Re: All-Zeros Numbers (Nick Landsberg) Re: All-Zeros Numbers (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) E-Commerce Report: Television Commercials Come to Web (Monty Solomon) Patent Lawyer Puts Claim to Entire Internet (Monty Solomon) Cops Use GPS Device to Nab Texas Fugitive (Monty Solomon) America Online to Showcase TopSpeed Technology (Monty Solomon) Bell Labs Technology Would Give Consumers Greater Control (M Solomon) Companies Tossing Aside Consumers' Freedoms (Monty Solomon) Don't Bank on Privacy (Monty Solomon) Northwest Gave U.S. Data on Passengers (Monty Solomon) Last Laugh! Dagwood's Trouble With Telemarketers (Lisa Minter) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 09:43:20 -0500 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #416, January 19, 2004 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 416: January 19, 2003 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca ** CYGCOM INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES: www.cygcom.com ** GROUP TELECOM: www.360.net ** JUNIPER NETWORKS: www.juniper.net ** PRIMUS CANADA: www.primustel.ca ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** TELUS: www.telus.com ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Telus Service Levels Recover ** Security Hole Affects VoIP Systems ** Q3 2003 Telecom Statistics Released ** Bell-Cisco Alliance to Promote IP Adoption ** Telus to Make Final Offer to TWU ** Bell Union Seeks Conciliation ** Gigabit Net Planned for Ottawa Schools ** 25% of Tested Wi-Fi Products Fail ** CRTC Deregulates More Private Line Routes ** Nortel Debt Upgraded ** RIM Prices Public Offering ** Microcell to Buy Nortel Gear ** Cogeco Revenue Rises ** Telehop Reports Increased Calling ** Call Centre Conference Seeks Speakers ** Telemanagement Online Available Now ============================================================ TELUS SERVICE LEVELS RECOVER: Telus says it is now meeting or exceeding CRTC standards for customer service. It says that its business office and repair contact centres "are now performing better than at any time since the 1999 merger of Telus Alberta and BC Telecom." SECURITY HOLE AFFECTS VoIP SYSTEMS: The UK National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre has identified security vulnerabilities in the H.323 protocol used in many VoIP systems. Cisco, Microsoft, and Nortel Networks have issued advisory notices. Microsoft rates the problem as "critical." www.uniras.gov.uk/vuls/2004/006489/h323.htm Q3 2003 TELECOM STATISTICS RELEASED: This morning in The Daily, Statistics Canada releases a summary of its Q3 2003 report on the telecommunications services industry. The full report will be posted later this week. www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/040119/d040119c.htm BELL-CISCO ALLIANCE TO PROMOTE IP ADOPTION: Bell Canada and Cisco Systems have announced an alliance to expand Bell's IP/MPLS network, offer "co-marketed integrated IP products and services," and help large and mid-sized businesses migrate existing networks to IP. TELUS TO MAKE FINAL OFFER TO TWU: Telus says it will submit a final offer to the Telecommunications Workers Union today, two weeks ahead of the legal deadline. Telus and the TWU are in a cooling off period after which either party could give 72 hours notice of a strike or lockout. BELL UNION SEEKS CONCILIATION: The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union is seeking federal conciliation in its negotiations with Bell Canada. The union and Bell resumed negotiations last week. GIGABIT NET PLANNED FOR OTTAWA SCHOOLS: Telecom Ottawa has won a ten-year contract from the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board to provide 1 Gbps connections to 154 schools and other facilities by this summer. 25% OF TESTED WI-FI PRODUCTS FAIL: The Wi-Fi Alliance, which tests wireless LAN equipment for interoperability and conformance with 802.11 standards, says that it has now given its seal of approval to more than 1,000 products. Over 25% of the products submitted for review failed. www.wi-fi.org CRTC DEREGULATES MORE PRIVATE LINE ROUTES: In Telecom Decision 2004-2, the CRTC "forbears from regulating" ILEC high-capacity private lines on additional routes now served by competitors. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2004/dt2004-2.htm NORTEL DEBT UPGRADED: The Dominion Bond Rating Service has upgraded Nortel Networks' trend from "negative" to "stable." RIM PRICES PUBLIC OFFERING: On Thursday, Research In Motion increased the size of its public offering from 9 million to 10.5 million shares, to be sold for US$78.25 per share, raising approximately $789 million MICROCELL TO BUY NORTEL GEAR: Microcell Solutions has extended its supply agreement with Nortel Networks to cover purchase of additional GSM and UMTS core wireless network equipment for $70 million by 2006. COGECO REVENUE RISES: For the three months ended November 30, Cogeco Cable had revenue of $128 million, 11% more than in the same period last year. One-time charges of $44 million resulted in a net loss of $40 million. Cogeco added 17,439 Internet subscribers (8.5%) and 7,239 cable customers (0.9%). TELEHOP REPORTS INCREASED CALLING: Telehop Communications, a Toronto-based dial-around long distance provider, says it carried 137 million minutes of traffic in 2003, an 82% increase over 2002. CALL CENTRE CONFERENCE SEEKS SPEAKERS: Advanstar Communications, organizers of the International Call Center Management conference in Chicago August 10-12, have issued a call for speakers. Submissions are due February 11. www.advanstartech.com/cfp/ TELEMANAGEMENT ONLINE AVAILABLE NOW! Angus TeleManagement Group has launched a premium service that gives Telemanagement subscribers exclusive online access to current and past issues of Telemanagement, Editorials, On the Line columns, feature reports, and more. ** Special Charter Subscriber rates are being offered for a limited time. 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If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Place Name for 610-388 Date: 18 Jan 2004 16:26:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Carl Moore wrote > 610 area, part of old 215 in southeastern Pennsylvania, includes the > Delaware-Pennsylvania border. Recently, I made a call from my home > (via AT&T) to a phone on 610-388, which is along the Delaware border > (is local to Wilmington, Del.) and reaches up to a stretch of U.S. 1. > > AT&T bill which includes that call has arrived, and it gives the place > name as Chadds Ford (do not recall seeing Chadds Ford in that context > before), but nanpa.com (and the old phone books for that area) give > 388 (which is a holdover from the 215 area) as Mendenhall. Chadds Ford is in that area. My phone books says "Mendenhall". Verizon has been consolidating some small suburban exchanges. It's possible this was merged together. In the suburbs, an exchange usually serves several towns, and town municipal and postal boundaries do not match. It is quite often that someone's phone exchange, mailing town, and muncipality are all different. For instance, you could be in the Jenkintown phone exchange (now TUrner, ESsex, and MElrose), but be in the Elkins Park post office and Cheltenham Township, but be in a place commonly called Melrose Park. ------------------------------ From: sl_jerry1@hotmail.com (Jerry Wolf) Subject: Re: Place Name for 610-388 Date: 19 Jan 2004 06:44:07 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I grew up just east of there and can confirm that Chadds Ford and Mendenhall are within a few miles of each other. At least back in the 50's and 60's, telephone exchanges in that then-rural area spanned multiple communities, so the name given to an exchange was kinda arbitrary. That area has experienced tremendous growth in population as farms were turned into housing. Perhaps such exchanges changed their names as a result of changing population patterns. Carl Moore wrote in message news:: > 610 area, part of old 215 in southeastern Pennsylvania, includes the > Delaware-Pennsylvania border. Recently, I made a call from my home > (via AT&T) to a phone on 610-388, which is along the Delaware border > (is local to Wilmington, Del.) and reaches up to a stretch of U.S. 1. > AT&T bill which includes that call has arrived, and it gives the place > name as Chadds Ford (do not recall seeing Chadds Ford in that context > before), but nanpa.com (and the old phone books for that area) give > 388 (which is a holdover from the 215 area) as Mendenhall. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 15:48:58 GMT From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks Organization: Excelsior Computer Services > Three colleagues, all more knowledgeable and opinionated than me, have > strongly warned against the more expedient wireless solution because > of security vulnerabilities. I thought these things were range limited If you set up your WiFi network properly, it's no more unsecure than anything else you're probably running. A really determined cracker can get to your computer from the Internet through whatever firewall you have set up, or can even splice a connection into your cable somewhere. Crackers don't need you to be running a wireless network to get into your system. The real problem with wireless is that most people don't install any sort of encryption. -Joel ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Subject: Re: All-Zeros Numbers Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 01:39:15 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Bruce Howells wrote: > There's been an ongoing thread about numbers ending in four zeros; > yes, they are of course valid. A couple jobs back, our hunt-group > lead was (area code suppressed since I don't know who currently owns > these numbers) NXX-891-0000, and our primary inbound FAX (aging myself > and this story by saying "our singular inbound") was NXX-890-0000. > Yep, *five* zeros. We all spent quite a bit of time convincing folks > that these were real, and not missing-data placeholders. > (If you recognize these numbers ... drop me a hello!) > -Bruce Howells, bhowells@earthlink.net I just have to re-tell this war story about 4 zeros on the end of a phone number. Way back when, before ESS and stuff, the phone company would try to hand out the lowest digit numbers to the numbers most often dialed. The reason being that, for dial pulse (rather than touch tone), the high numbers used up more time on the equipment. (0 is ten pulses). In those days, you would see pay-phones with numbers such as XXX-YYY-9987 because it was unlikely that anyone would be dialing pay-phones at a large frequency. I presume that big businesses had to pay a premium for numbers like MElrose 6-1000. When a system called "MLT" (mechanized line testing) was being developed to replace the test desk in the early 80's, the program was written in Fortran (because of all the compute intensive stuff which was necessary to figure out what the problems on the line were). The system worked for years without a major hitch. It got to the point that multiple MLT computers were hooked into multiple CO's for redundancy. So, if you reported a trouble on (e.g.) XXX-YYY-1111 and the primary MLT machine was down, the request would be routed to another machine which could also access XXX-YYY. (all routing was point-to-point in those days) Well, one day, a trouble report came in on ... XXX-YYY-0000. Within the space of seconds, all MLT machines which could access XXX-YYY crashed and had to be restarted (manually in those days). Those who are ancient computer geeks, will recognize something here. Fortran has arrays with "1-based" subscripts, i.e. the base of the array starts with NNX[1]. In other languages, the base of the array starts with NNX[0]. Internally, the software used the last 4 digits of the phone number to index into the array. NNX[0000] caused the machine to crash. ("There will never be a number ending in all zero's ... and even if it were, it would be a pay-phone, so who cares.") The upstream systems were programmed to try an alternate machine if the first one did not respond with an acknowledgment within a fraction of a second (the actual test took longer, but acknowledgement of the request was within milliseconds). They then blissfully forwarded the request to the next machine in the list which could handle XXX-YYY. Maybe I should cross-post to the Risks Digest ? :) Nick Landsberg "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 15:52:40 +0000 (GMT) From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: Re: All-Zeros Numbers Organization: Excelsior Computer Services > There's been an ongoing thread about numbers ending in four zeros; > yes, they are of course valid. A couple jobs back, our hunt-group When I was in high school, I had a parent with a phone number ending in -0000. A teacher wanted a parent-teacher conference, and when I gave the teacher the number, I got punished and had to stay after school for lying. -Joel ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 00:13:42 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: E-Commerce Report: Television Commercials Come to the Web E-COMMERCE REPORT By BOB TEDESCHI January 19, 2004 TELEVISION commercials, in all their big, loud glory, are coming to the Web. Beginning tomorrow, more than a dozen Web sites, including MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, will run full-motion video commercials from Pepsi, AT&T, Honda, Vonage and Warner Brothers, in a six-week test that some analysts and online executives say could herald the start of a new era of Internet advertising. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/19/technology/19ecom.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 01:36:54 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Patent lawyer puts claim to entire Internet By Kieren McCarthy The Net's two biggest registrars of domain names are being sued for infringing an email and domain name patent granted last month. The lawsuit, filed yesterday in California, claims Network Solutions and Register.com are liable for selling, specifically, .name domains. It claims undisclosed monetary damages and an injunction against the sale of any more domains. US patent 6,671,714 - "Method, apparatus and business system for online communications with online and offline recipients" - is owned by Frank Weyer and Troy Javaher, both of Beverly Hills in California, was filed in November 1999 and approved on 30 December 2003. Frank Meyer is a patent lawyer who is heading the case himself and who recently set up the company Nizza Group to act as prosecutor. He has told the press that he is hoping to work with the two registrars and licence his naming method rather than prevent the sale of domains. No wonder, because the only way this patent case will ever be won is if the US court system is as hopelessly incompetent as the Patent Office. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34949.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 02:00:11 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cops Use GPS Device to Nab Texas Fugitive DALLAS -- Federal marshals were bringing a fugitive con man back to Texas this weekend from Dillon, Mont., where they ended his flight toward the Canadian border. Finding 64-year-old Bobbie McCoy Burress was easy: They just had the rental company switch on the global positioning device in his rented car. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/17/cops_use_gps_device_to_nab_texas_fugitive/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 08:54:28 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: America Online to Showcase TopSpeed Technology America Online to Showcase TopSpeed Technology Throughout Super Bowl XXXVIII, Featuring Unparalleled Ad Poll Giving Millions of Fans a Chance to View and Vote for Their Favorite Super Bowl XXXVIII Commercials DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 19, 2004-- Super Bowl@AOL to Give Fans Behind-the-Scenes Access to Super Bowl Week Events in Houston and Extensive Football Video from NFL@AOL Newly Designed AOL.com to Offer Non-Members Free Access to NFL and Entertainment Content on the Web January 26-February 3 New AOL Commercials to Premiere Featuring AOL(R) TopSpeed (TM) Technology and the Teutuls, Stars of Breakout Hit Show "American Chopper" Millions of Super Bowl fans will have the chance to relive their favorite ads immediately following the game and vote for their choice for the best in AOL's biggest ever AOL Ad Bowl poll, according to America Online, sponsor of the AOL TopSpeed(TM) Super Bowl XXXVIII Halftime Show. The event is expected to be the largest Super Bowl advertising poll in history, with voting open to both AOL members, through AOL Keyword: Super Bowl, and on the Web through the AOL.com(R) service. Last year, AOL hosted a similar commercial showcase which generated more than 5.6 million streams in 36 hours. Early results of this year's poll will be available within hours after the big game. The AOL Ad Bowl gives fans on AOL and AOL.com the opportunity to view ads that premiere during Super Bowl XXXVIII immediately after the game and cast their votes for their favorite. The final results of the AOL Ad Bowl will be announced on February 2. Fans will also be able to view classic Super Bowl ads and vote for their favorite from January 23-28. The AOL Ad Bowl is part of a comprehensive package of Super Bowl events designed to promote AOL TopSpeed technology, the built-in Web accelerator in AOL 9.0(R) Optimized that allows consumers to get where they want to go on the Internet faster--up to five times faster for dial-up users when compared to a standard dial-up connection*. These offerings include Super Bowl@AOL--a destination giving fans up close and behind-the-scenes access to the events surrounding the big game as well as extensive football video from NFL@AOL; access to a wide array of Super Bowl content via the Web on a newly designed AOL.com; and a series of new ads highlighting TopSpeed featuring the stars of Discovery Channel's breakout hit show "American Chopper." - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40217755 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 08:59:26 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Bell Labs Technology Would Give Consumers Greater Control Bell Labs Technology Would Give Consumers Greater Control over Their Privacy When Using Mobile Devices - Jan 19, 2004 08:30 AM (BusinessWire) BERKELEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 19, 2004-- New Location Privacy Approach Outlined at Mobile Data Management 2004 Conference Researchers from Lucent Technologies' (NYSE:LU) Bell Labs have developed new software technologies that would enable users to tightly control how their location information is shared when using location-enabled mobile devices such as cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). In a paper to be presented here at the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Mobile Data Management, Bell Labs researchers will describe a method for users to specify what location information is shared, and when, with whom, how and under what circumstances. Today's location-based services promise incredible access in an ever-increasingly connected world, but they do not support the possibility that a user's willingness to share location data may depend on a range of factors including recent and current activities, time of day, and who is requesting the data -- in other words, an individual's context. Bell Labs' newly developed Privacy-Conscious Personalization (PCP) framework relies on user preferences to intelligently infer context such as working or shopping, and then determines with whom location information should be shared. When a user's location or other information is requested, it is analogous to someone making a query of a database. In this case, the request is checked against the user's preferences and filtered through a high-performance rules engine, known within Bell Labs as "Houdini," before any action is taken. Since location and other mobile services require near-real-time performance, this entire process can take a few milliseconds or less. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40218518 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 09:19:10 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Companies Tossing Aside Consumers' Freedoms By Dan Gillmor Mercury News Technology Columnist The digital revolution has been all about empowering people, to use technology in ways that broaden our horizons and our freedom. So when the tech industry began moving into consumer electronics, there were reasons to expect great things. The consumer electronics companies, by and large, have sold closed boxes that deliberately limit customers' options. This is by tradition, in part for simplicity and ease of use, but also to placate an entertainment industry that tramples customers' rights in the name of curbing copyright infringement. I've been hoping that the tech industry will bring its better traditions into the living room -- expanding customers' flexibility and creativity, not curbing them. At the giant Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, the evidence was mixed. While new technology is adding some useful features to consumer electronics, tech companies -- by embracing Hollywood-dictated restrictions on how digital content is used -- have allied themselves with a greedy cartel at the expense of their own customers. http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/7739841.htm http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/dan_gillmor/7739841.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 09:29:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Don't Bank on Privacy Most bank Web sites fall short when it comes to customer privacy, convenience and responsiveness, a study found. By Richard Burnett Sentinel Staff Writer Tina Williams knows little about what her bank does with her personal information. The privacy policy is wordy and tough to decode. She doesn't read it when it arrives in the mail. She also doesn't read the disclosure statements when she's banking online. "Like most other privacy policies, it is long and boring and confusing," said the substitute schoolteacher, who lives in Lake Mary. "My feeling is, as long as you don't share my personal information the wrong way, I'll trust you. Luckily, so far, I haven't had any problem." Online-banking customers deserve better, however, according to a new study of banks' online operations. Despite banks' increasing Internet savvy, too many financial institutions still fall short when it comes to customer privacy, convenience and responsiveness, according to a report by The Customer Respect Group, a research and consulting firm based in Bellevue, Wash. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/orl-bizbanksonline14011404jan14,1,7297658.story ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 23:16:44 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Northwest Gave U.S. Data on Passengers Airline Had Denied Sharing Information For Security Effort By Sara Kehaulani Goo Washington Post Staff Writer Northwest Airlines provided information on millions of passengers for a secret U.S. government air-security project soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, raising more concerns among some privacy advocates about the airlines' use of confidential customer data. The nation's fourth-largest airline asserted in September that it "did not provide that type of information to anyone." But Northwest acknowledged Friday that by that time, it had already turned over three months of reservation data to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ames Research Center. Northwest is the second carrier to have been identified as secretly passing travelers' records to the government. The airline industry has said publicly that it would not cooperate in developing a government passenger-screening program because of concerns that the project would infringe on customer privacy. But the participation of two airlines in separate programs demonstrates the industry's clandestine role in government security initiatives. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26422-2004Jan17.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 23:26:01 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Last Laugh! Dagwood's Trouble With Telemarketers In the Sunday Independence Reporter for 1/18 Comic pages the 'Blondie' comic had Dagwood (apparently) getting a call from a telemarketer and retaliating by putting the family name and phone number on the national do not call list. Blondie approves of this and smiles sweetly at Dagwood as the family dog looks on. At last, says Dagwood, no more dinner interuptions and he can take his naps in peace. Blondie tells him how wonderful that sounds. Then the doorbell rings and Dagwood goes to answer the door. Standing in the doorway is a string of a dozen or so door-to-door salesmen and sales ladies carrying their wares, pots and pans, insurance policies, electronic items, etc. Like a chorus in unison they all say "We're B---A---C---K !" I have to wonder if the new rules will make *enough* of a dent in phone sales that many companies will return to the door-to-door sales routine. Lisa Minter Editor, Yahoo Telecom News ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #28 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jan 21 00:02:49 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0L52mj11563; Wed, 21 Jan 2004 00:02:49 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 00:02:49 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401210502.i0L52mj11563@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 #29 TELECOM Digest Tue, 20 Jan 2004 23:59:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 29 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson PluggedIn: Digital Media on TV, Anywhere and Anytime (Monty Solomon) Motorola Reports Fourth-Quarter; Full-Year 2003 Financial (M Solomon) Microsoft Lightens Up on Teen's Mikerowesoft Site (Monty Solomon) America's Opinion of AOL (Rob) Fax And Friction (Eric Friedebach) The Qwest Spirit of Service Bye Bye Qwest (ahinsp1@hotmail.com) Re: Wireless Home Networks (John Bartley) Re: All-Zeros Numbers (Robert Weller) Re: Place Name for 610-388 (Stanley Cline) 800 Number Transfer (Yin) Re: Companies Tossing Aside Consumers' Freedoms (Nick Landsberg) Adding Invoicewatch.com (rjbabich) 411 - Directory Assistance Least Call Routing Whitepaper (Whitepaper) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:51:20 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: PluggedIn: Digital Media on TV, Anywhere and Anytime By Ben Berkowitz LOS ANGELES, Jan 20 (Reuters) - It's as though every electronics company that knows anything about data and networking had the same idea: Build a box to connect the TV to a home network and pull digital audio and video off the PC. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas recently, conventioneers could not turn a corner without seeing a device -- wired or wireless, with a hard drive or without, audio only or audio and video -- to transport digital music, photos and videos to the home entertainment center. While the idea is not necessarily new, a combination of new and faster wireless technologies, lower costs for hard drives and other components and the growing popularity of digital media has combined to create a land rush in the category. And those rushing in to grab a piece of what could be very lucrative territory acknowledge that the new technology is daunting and must be made as user-friendly as possible. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40235457 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:52:18 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Motorola Reports Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2003 Financial * Fourth-quarter sales of $8.0 billion, up 4 percent vs. the prior-year quarter, up 17 percent sequentially vs. the third quarter * Fourth-quarter GAAP earnings of $.20 per share vs. earnings of $.08 per share in the prior-year quarter * Fourth-quarter earnings, excluding special items, of $.17 per share vs. earnings of $.13 per share, excluding special items, in the prior-year quarter * Fourth-quarter positive operating cash flow of $0.9 billion * Ratio of debt to net debt plus equity improved to 0.3 percent from 19.6 percent in the prior-year quarter(1) * First-quarter 2004 guidance: - Sales: $6.4 to $6.8 billion - GAAP earnings per share: $.05 to $.07 per share SCHAUMBURG, Ill., Jan. 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) today reported sales of $8.0 billion in the fourth quarter of 2003 and net earnings of $489 million, or $.20 per share, presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). This represents an increase in sales of 4 percent from $7.7 billion in the year-ago quarter, up 17 percent sequentially from the third quarter. Motorola reported GAAP net earnings in the year-ago quarter of $174 million, or $.08 per share. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40240333 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:36:24 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Microsoft Lightens up on Teen's Mikerowesoft Site (In U.S. dollars unless noted) TORONTO, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) indicated on Tuesday it might have overreacted to the Web site of Canadian teenager Mike Rowe who had added the word "soft" to his name and registered the address mikerowesoft.com. "We take our trademark seriously, but in this case maybe a little too seriously," Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said. "We appreciate that Mike Rowe is a young entrepreneur who came up with a creative domain name, so we're currently in the process of resolving this matter in a way that will be fair to him and satisfy our obligations under trademark law," Desler said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40237298 ------------------------------ From: rob51166@yahoo.com (Rob) Subject: America's Opinion of AOL Date: 20 Jan 2004 04:57:04 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com What's the general view of AOL in the US? I use them on their broadband package here in the UK and find them really good -- but expensive (GBP27.99 or USD50/month for broadband is not cheap, even in Europe, where things are generally more expensive than in the USA). However, they're often seen as something of a joke and as a simpleton's version of the internet as they use their own software, instead of using IE or NN. Hmm ... Just thought I'd ask! :-) Rob ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: Fax And Friction Date: 20 Jan 2004 11:05:17 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Seth Lubove, 01.20.04, Forbes.com LOS ANGELES - Pity the hapless travel agent or car dealer whose fax advertisement happens to appear on a fax machine belonging to one Ben Livingston of Seattle, Wash. A self-described "small-claims warrior," Livingston has made a side business out of suing these companies and many more for the sin of sending him unsolicited fax ads, better known as junk faxes. "Rather than just hang up, recycle or delete, I've been filing small claims against these obnoxious marketers," Livingston declares on his Web site, which also offers an 11-chapter guide on how to turn tables on telemarketers, junk faxers and spammers. To further humiliate the businesses, Livingston posts all the court documents and letters he sends, in which he typically demands a standard $500 fine, or $1,500 if the fax was sent knowingly. In all, he says he's collected about $6,000 in three years. Now, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, Livingston and a small army of plaintiffs, attorneys and self-appointed activists have more license to go after businesses that send them junk faxes. In refusing during the week of January 12 to hear a case that claimed the 1991 federal ban on unsolicited faxes violates free-speech rights, the high court let stand a lower-court ruling involving a lawsuit filed by the state of Missouri against Fax.com. The suit accused Fax.com, once the largest fax blaster in the U.S., of illegally sending unsolicited ads to fax machines in the state. http://www.forbes.com/2004/01/20/cz_sl_0120faxes.html Eric Friedebach /Mars: northern Nevada without the legal brothels/ ------------------------------ From: ahinsp1@hotmail.com Subject: The Qwest Spirit of Service Bye Bye Qwest Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 03:27:27 GMT I recently moved to Phoenix, AZ. This is my first experience with Qwest, (formerly known as USWorst according to my sister in Oregon. Now I know where they got that name.) As I am only staying in this apartment temporarily until my house is ready (in 4 months or so). I decided to grit my teeth and suffer with dialup. From time to time I toyed with the idea of DSL, but Qwest DSL is a bad deal with only a 256K download provided in their basic service. Last week my speed dropped to 28K. After checking my system, downloading the latest modem drivers, etc., I decided to order DSL. Guess what? After 5 months of showing my line as qualifying for DSL, it is now shown as not qualifying. I suspected that my line had been multiplexed; this was confirmed by a call to Qwest tech support. The phone rep went through all of the blather about them not being required to provide 52k for modems, etc. I told him that I knew all about voice line tariffs but that I had 52K for 5 months and that they had made a change to the line that effectively cut my service in half while still charging me the same. He told me that they would try to see if they could get me a pair that was not multiplexed. I suppose that is more than they have to do. Unfortunately, I never heard from them again. Just got a flyer from Cox Cable in the mail today. My internet service will be up by 7pm tomorrow and my Qwest phone number will be ported to Cox by next Wed. Bye Bye Qwest. This is what Qwest gets for the "We don't care, we don't have to. We're the telephone company." attitude. The next time I see one of their ads spouting off about the Qwest "Spirit of Service" I am going to vomit. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Southwestern Bell (SBC) is just as bad. I dealt with them for a long time here in Independence, and listened to their lies and their stalls. They were getting around 50-60 dollars each month for DSL out of me *and* another 40 something for phone service. I finally decided to switch to our local phone company (Prairie Stream) since they offer the full package of features for $29 per month and include a hundred minutes of 'anywhere/anytime' long distance for free in the same package. Plus which, when you call them after one or two rings a *live person* answers to help you. SBC tried to claim I was 'not eligible' for porting my numbers to Prairie Stream since I had a freeze on my account. I got that removed after wading through voice mail hell and waiting ten minutes or so on hold. Prairie Stream then tried to convert my account, only to have SBC claim once again I was 'not eligible' for conversion since I had DSL on my line. Their oh-so-precious and perfect DSL. And if I wanted to keep that on my line (and they, in their arrogance could not see why I would not want to) therefore I had to stay with them until hell froze over. I told them to get their DSL out immediatly, and I got turned on by our local cable company, Cable One. (Although Coffeyville and a couple other towns here in our county have Cox.) And Cable One even gives me a discount since I already have their radio/television cable service. Cable One is going to start telephone service here in Independence rather soon also, but I sort of like Prairie Stream. Since I finally got free totally from Southwestern Bell, they have bombarded me on average once per week with all sorts of offers trying to induce me back, including a couple months of free DSL, phone service for $29 per month -- full service, unlimited features, fifty dollar VISA shopping cards, no installation fees, etc. You should watch and see what happens when Cox tries to port your phone number from Qwest. I'll bet anything Qwest -- in the old Bell tradition -- first tries to stall you, or claims they do not have to release your line, and then once you have been ported, they try to lure you back with all sorts of outrageous offers of free or reduced price service, and gift cards, etc. Good for you, getting that monkey off your back! PAT] ------------------------------ From: John Bartley Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 11:20:30 -0800 Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks On Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:37:34 -0500, Michael Quinn wrote: > The recent articles on DSL availabilty prompted me to check with > Verizon yet again to see if Verizon had at last made DSL available in > my neighborhood in Northern VA. I was pleasantly surprised to see > that they had, and with a little bit of searching discovered a > wireless hub and small wireless USB adaptors at buy.com on sale for > about $35 each. The wired versions -- either conventional NIC cards > using CAT 5 cable or the HPNA stle which use phone lines are both more > expensive and the former of course entails running and terminating > cables. Instead of HPNA, suggest looking at HomePlug http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020815.html > Three colleagues, all more knowledgeable and opinionated than I, have > strongly warned against the more expedient wireless solution because > of security vulnerabilities. They are _good_ friends of yours. > I thought these things were range limited Part 15 devices, They are. Which means, nada, to anyone with a high gain directional anywhere near to LOS. I made a six mile hop once with a three story hotel wing blocking the direct LOS, so LOS ain't absolutely required. > I live on a cul-de-sac where someone "cruising for hot spots" would > be pretty conspicuous. 'Robert X. Cringely' made his work over a distance of seven miles, and did it with a Pringles can antenna, not the high-gain 802.11b antenna anyone can buy from HRO nowadays. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/about/ http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010712.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020207.html And, here, he documents a passive repeater which can be nailed up in a tree, anywhere within LOS. If a wardriver finds your network, this device, needing no power on the tree, retransmits your signal to wherever he is, giving him time to crack it at his leisure. In 24 hours (appx.), even a no-volume network sends enough traffic to be cracked, just from ID signals from the wireless access point (which I will call a 'WAP/hub' henceforth). http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010628.html Oh, BTW, Utah students made 802.11b work at 82 miles. http://classes.weber.edu/wireless/Default.htm > Would appreciate any ideas or experiences, good or bad, that the > readership would be willing to share, either here in the Digest or > off net. 1. Make sure to change the network name from the default setting. 2. Turn on the highest level of security possible. 3. Turn the WAP/hub off every night and leave it off when not in use. 4. Manually generate the encryption keys. 5. Set up a VPN. > TD is a teriffic resource. Yep. John Bartley, K7AAY http://celdata.cjb.net ------------------------------ From: Robert Weller Subject: Re: All-Zeros Numbers Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 13:44:19 -0800 I have two friends with "quad zero" home phone numbers. One also has a cell phone number with 5 zeros, and his Airphone number has s-e-v-e-n zeros! Bob [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I cannot understand how someone would get seven zero numbers, even if the zeros were not consecutive (that is were in the area code and the rest of the number in various orders. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Place Name for 610-388 Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 22:57:22 UTC Organization: Roamer1 Communications - Dunwoody, GA, USA Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org In article , Carl Moore wrote: > (via AT&T) to a phone on 610-388, which is along the Delaware border > (is local to Wilmington, Del.) and reaches up to a stretch of U.S. 1. > AT&T bill which includes that call has arrived, and it gives the place > name as Chadds Ford (do not recall seeing Chadds Ford in that context > before), but nanpa.com (and the old phone books for that area) give > 388 (which is a holdover from the 215 area) as Mendenhall. More than likely the person you called also has AT&T LD and the bill shows the city associated with the other end's billing address instead of the actual rate center name as defined by NANPA. Before I dropped AT&T LD a few years ago I noticed that calls to my parents in 706-866, who also had AT&T LD at the time, were listed on AT&T bills as "Ft Oglthrp GA" (which, oddly enough, is how "Fort Oglethorpe" was spelled by BellSouth on their local bill) instead of "Rossville GA" (which is the rate center name as defined by NANPA, etc.), but calls to customers of other LD carriers in 706-866 were listed as "Rossville GA". I also noticed differences in the way New Orleans was spelled ("New Orlens LA" vs. "Neworleans LA") on calls to a known AT&T LD customer vs. calls to cell phones and so on in New Orleans... I've seen a couple of small LD carriers show calls to my home POTS line as being to "Chamblee GA" and not "Atlanta NE GA" since they apparently don't know about Atlanta's rate center consolidation yet... ;) Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ From: yinhchew@yahoo.com (Yin) Subject: 800 Number Transfer Date: 19 Jan 2004 15:37:29 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi! I wonder if anyone of you might know about how to resolve this situation: We have a 800 number with a telecom company now. We are in the middle of transfering that over to another telecom company. This telecom company would not release it because of a billing dispute that is pending. It seems that we have to resolve it before this is done. However, they seems reluctant to give more help to resolve it and I feel that they are stalling for time. Is there any way to transfer the 800 number away so that at least this is secure? Thanks. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am not sure. I *think* when the telco *claims* you still owe them money that is the one exception to the rules on porting numbers. After all, if they cannnot get you to pay them when they have the number turned on and working, that is the one bit of arm-twisting they still have available to them. You really should consult with our resident 800 number portability/recovery expert, Judith Oppenheimer. If it can be done legally (porting a number when there is a delinquent balance due) Judith can handle it for you. Look at http://1800TheExpert.com and send her email from there. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Subject: Re: Companies Tossing Aside Consumers' Freedoms Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 03:32:32 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet See response below the article: Monty Solomon wrote: > By Dan Gillmor > Mercury News Technology Columnist > The digital revolution has been all about empowering people, to use > technology in ways that broaden our horizons and our freedom. So when > the tech industry began moving into consumer electronics, there were > reasons to expect great things. > The consumer electronics companies, by and large, have sold closed > boxes that deliberately limit customers' options. This is by > tradition, in part for simplicity and ease of use, but also to placate > an entertainment industry that tramples customers' rights in the name > of curbing copyright infringement. > I've been hoping that the tech industry will bring its better > traditions into the living room -- expanding customers' flexibility > and creativity, not curbing them. > At the giant Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, > the evidence was mixed. While new technology is adding some useful > features to consumer electronics, tech companies -- by embracing > Hollywood-dictated restrictions on how digital content is used -- have > allied themselves with a greedy cartel at the expense of their own > customers. > http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/7739841.htm > http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/dan_gillmor/7739841.htm Agreed with almost all the points, but as I see how others use computers in general, I get the distinct feeling that they don't WANT to know what else it (that box on their desk) it can do, but are willing to accept the defaults that the manufacturer has shipped. For example, several acquaintances have computers (yep, windows of some ilk is the OS) and expensive high-res monitors, yet they have never reset their screen resolution from the default 800x600. Even after I have pointed it out, they then tell me that "web pages look funny" at the new (higher) resolution, so they go back to 800 X 600. This attitude will probably permeate down to any devices which the general populace uses. They will mostly use whatever settings the manufacturer has as defaults. Lemmings will be lemmings, and this is how Microsoft made its fortune. Give people more choice and they, by and large, will be more confused ... because the folks who purvey the products make it seem like it's a black art and if you change an option, then they can't support it, etc. Sort of sounds like alchemy, doesn't it? About time we took this out of the realm of alchemy into an engineering discipline. What does any of this have to do with telecom, anyway? :) "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ Reply-To: From: rjbabich Subject: Adding Invoicewatch.com Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 15:07:57 -0700 I really liked your site and wanted to know if you would be so kind to list our news site on Telecom Billing, Invoicewatch.com, its a non-profit discussion site. Also, can you add telesoft.com? We are a Telemanagement vendor. We will add your site to our News and Research section on both sites. Thanks, Ron Babich Director of Business Development and Marketing Telesoft Corp. 3443 N. Central Ave. Suite 1800 Phoenix, AZ 85012 Voice: (800) 456-6061 Ext 1111 Fax: (602) 308-1300 Email:mailto:rjbabich@telesoft.com Web: http://www.telesoft.com/ ------------------------------ From: whitepaper@1800teledeal.com (411 Whitepaper) Subject: 411 - Directory Assistance Least Call Routing Whitepaper Date: 19 Jan 2004 20:22:03 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com NEWS RELEASE CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JANUARY 20, 2004 TeleDeal Inc. has released a 411 Whitepaper that all Corporate Telecom Users should have a copy of. The 411 Whitepaper can be found at: http://1800teledeal.com/pbx.pdf Via 411 Least Call Routing, 80% savings are possible on 411 Directory Assistance calls. An intro $.29/411 call rate is provided vs. $1.50 for many large RBOCs and $2.49 for IXCs such as Sprint and MCI. A Free Trial and convenient month to month terms are available. The $.29 rate includes toll-free 800# transport to the 411 Call Center. The 411 Call Centers are U.S. based based vs. lower quality offshore 411 Call Centers. 411 Whitepaper Summary: The 411 Whitepaper provides details on how a Telecom Manager or Telecom Consultant for a business can bypass costly 411 / NPA-555-1212 Live Operator Directory Assistance Services from Local and Long Distance Telephone Providers and Least Call Route (LCR) 411 calls to the lower priced and higher quality U.S. Directory Assistance Call Center. LCR is also known as Automatic Route Selection (ARS). Benefits: 80% typical savings with "ONE" Low Nationwide 411 Rate versus "MULTIPLE" Higher rates from numerous Telco providers. A state by state comparison of TeleDeal's intro 411 Rate ($.29) versus Local and Long Distance Provider 411 Rates is shown. Complete and simple PBX programming details are provided. Also noted are details about blocking Directory Assistance Call Completion(DACC)for even greater 411 savings. Directory Assistance is an "Eligble Service" under the federal E-Rate program for Schools & Libraries additional discounts of up to 90% could then apply to the $.29 411 rate. This Whitepaper can be obtained by sending an email to: whitepaper@1800teledeal.com or downloading a copy at: http://1800teledeal.com/pbx.pdf ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #29 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jan 21 17:50:11 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0LMoBQ16081; Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:50:11 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:50:11 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401212250.i0LMoBQ16081@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 #30 TELECOM Digest Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:50:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 30 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: America's Opinion of AOL (Paul) Re: America's Opinion of AOL (Joseph) Re: America's Opinion of AOL (Rich Greenberg) Re: All-Zeros Numbers (Robert Weller) Re: All-Zeros Numbers (Charles Cryderman) Re: Wireless Home Networks (Stan) Enhanced Services Adoption Rate (nix) Using Calling Card to Dial Internet Access From Hotel? (Joe Blo) Merlin Legend with Voice Server (Jacob) Is LD by the Minute Going the Way of the Dodo? (Paul) Triennial Review Order (Kaputnik) Ring Through to POTS (NJ) 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: Paul Subject: Re: America's Opinion of AOL Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 11:24:28 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Personally, I think they're scumbags. It is almost impossible to cancel service with them. I witnessed a friend of mine on the phone with them for an hour trying to cancel his son's AOL account. Seems she kept "losing" the account info while he was on the line. You know, that crazy computer system, gosh darn ... She made him repeat his full name, address, account number, credit card number, blood type, etc. at least 4 times during the call. They really try to wear you out. Even though it was the parent's credit card on the account, AOL had the nerve to tell him they were not authorized to cancel the account and the son would need to do it. But the son is not 18 yet, so go figure. Their intent, in my opinion, is to get you to just hang up in disgust and live with the bill for another month. -- Paul Rob wrote in message news:telecom23.29.4@telecom-digest.org: > What's the general view of AOL in the US? I use them on their > broadband package here in the UK and find them really good -- but > expensive (GBP27.99 or USD50/month for broadband is not cheap, even in > Europe, where things are generally more expensive than in the USA). > However, they're often seen as something of a joke and as a > simpleton's version of the internet as they use their own software, > instead of using IE or NN. > Hmm ... Just thought I'd ask! :-) > Rob [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Like telco, you find good and bad in the customer service area at AOL. Some are total dumbos, like they were imported from the telemarketing unit to fill in for a short time, while a few others are sort of sharp mentally. PAT ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: America's Opinion of AOL Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 12:09:38 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NOcom On 20 Jan 2004 04:57:04 -0800, rob51166@yahoo.com (Rob) wrote: > What's the general view of AOL in the US? I use them on their > broadband package here in the UK and find them really good -- but > expensive (GBP27.99 or USD50/month for broadband is not cheap, even in > Europe, where things are generally more expensive than in the USA). > However, they're often seen as something of a joke and as a > simpleton's version of the internet as they use their own software, > instead of using IE or NN. Most people in the know seem to think of AOL as "the Internet with training wheels." AOL has most of its "clients" usually pretty dumbed down. Features that most net users take for granted are lacking in the AOL versions of things like web browser, news reader, email client, etc. It's usually the case that you can get an equivalent offering from a "real" Internet Service Provider at less cost than going through AOL. Some people who are really not very computer savvy will start out with AOL even though the standard internet tools are for the most part very easy-to-use. Then again people should use what works for them. I've used Eudora for email for over 10 years and have used Agent for about as long. I've gone through starting with one of the original versions of Netscape (that could fit on less than a 1.44 floppy!) and am currently using MicroSloth Internet Exploder. Bottom line is you use what you "grew up with" or whatever's comfortable whether that's AOL for some or using the "clients" that you use. remove NO from .NOcom to reply [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is one reason why as the USA now seriously starts to get wired up, the AOL customer as well is growing proportionatly. More and more and more guys are getting on the net for the first time in their lives and their level of intelligence gets them up to the level of AOL or Yahoo for their ISP service, and that is about all. Computers and the internet are at the phase in their development that the telephone was at around 1920 through recent years. People insisted they wanted a phone, but had no real idea how it worked, or why, just how to get numbers on it and talk, etc. I talk to a lot of younger guys here in Independence who have 'grown up all their lives' with a computer and net connectivity in their homes and treat it like the phone; a utility device for communications, nothing more. They know how to get on Yahoo or AOL to use the chat rooms, not much else. And some of them feel that is 'too complicated to learn or use on a regular basis'. Lisa Minter, for example, 'grew up with' Yahoo Messenger. Yahoo is even easier to use than AOL in my opinion, and as spam-ridden or more than AOL. Why do you feel AOL and Yahoo are targeted by so many spammers? (AOL claimed once a billion pieces of spam in a month ... imagine that!) Spammers want to go where the audience reception will be best. PAT] ------------------------------ From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: America's Opinion of AOL Date: 21 Jan 2004 07:16:16 -0500 Organization: Organized? Me? In article , Rob wrote: > What's the general view of AOL in the US? I use them on their Many of us feel that the purpose of AOL is to give experienced internet users a group to make ethnic jokes about. Rich Greenberg Work: Rich.Greenberg atsign worldspan.com + 1 770 563 6656 N6LRT Marietta, GA, USA Play: richgr atsign panix.com + 1 770 321 6507 Eastern time zone. I speak for myself & my dogs only. VM'er since CP-67 Canines:Val(Chinook,CGC,TT), Red & Shasta(Husky,(RIP)) Owner:Chinook-L Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/ Asst Owner:Sibernet-L ------------------------------ From: Robert Weller Subject: Re: All-Zeros Numbers Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 21:36:16 -0800 Hello Pat, Oops. I meant NINE zeros. Airphone is a private network, so you can choose ANY 10-digit number. Most people choose their home or office phone numbers for easy memorization, but the choice is truly arbitrary. One can choose, for example, 500-000-0000 (nine zeros). I suppose that someone beat out my friend for 000-000-0000 (ten zeros), so he had to settle for nine! One dials the Airphone access number over the PSTN, and then enters the subscriber's Airphone number. Bob Weller TELECOM Digest Editor noted in reply to Robert Weller about Re: All-Zeros Numbers on Mon, 19 Jan 2004 13:44:19 -0800 > I have two friends with "quad zero" home phone numbers. One also > has a cell phone number with 5 zeros, and his Airphone number has > s-e-v-e-n zeros! > Bob > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I cannot understand how someone would > get seven zero numbers, even if the zeros were not consecutive (that > is were in the area code and the rest of the number in various > orders.) PAT] ------------------------------ From: Charles Cryderman Subject: Re: All-Zeros Numbers Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:52:47 -0500 In TD V23 #28 Dr. Hoffman wrote: > When I was in high school, I had a parent with a phone number ending > in -0000. A teacher wanted a parent-teacher onference, and when I > gave the teacher the number, I got punished and had to stay after > school for lying. Well Joel, good thing it wasn't today. They are now sending kids to be prosecuted for dang near anything. I read about a girl that was taken to jail just for not wanting to change her shirt. Chip Cryderman ------------------------------ From: Stan Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 04:14:39 GMT Organization: RoadRunner - Carolina Considering this thread, I had a recent experience and I ask the group for advice. While setting up my new iPaq, I tried to access the wireless router in my house in order to download content from the internet without having to place the device in its docking cradle. Granted, it's not a feature that I would use while at home, but I was playing. I have WEP enabled on my network, and no amount of combinations of the iPaq menu selections and entering my key manually would permit me access. I'm not really concerned about that right now. While playing with the options, I found that three of my neighbors apparently have wireless networks in their houses as well. This is not an apartment building, this is a subdivision in a former cornfield. Plenty of space between houses. While apparently one of my neighbors read the manual and set up some security, the other two networks were named "Linksys" and "Netgear". It looks like someone got some new toys for Christmas and didn't bother to change one setting out of the box. Without any effort at all (and I mean really NO effort ... automatic wireless is an option on the iPaq), I accessed Mr. Netgear's broadband connection and started surfing the web, using Internet Explorer built into the device. 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? Thanks ... -Stan Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote in message news:telecom23.28.4@telecom-digest.org: >> Three colleagues, all more knowledgeable and opinionated than me, have >> strongly warned against the more expedient wireless solution because >> of security vulnerabilities. I thought these things were range limited > If you set up your WiFi network properly, it's no more unsecure than > anything else you're probably running. > A really determined cracker can get to your computer from the Internet > through whatever firewall you have set up, or can even splice a > connection into your cable somewhere. Crackers don't need you to be > running a wireless network to get into your system. > The real problem with wireless is that most people don't install any > sort of encryption. > -Joel [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well my suggestion is that if you find out who they are that you send them an *unsigned, anonymous* email telling them about it. In fact if you can get into NetGear or Linksys you can probably send them email in their own names using their mail client. Just send email from Mr. NetGear to Mr. NetGear discussing your findings and then let nature take its course. Stress to them both that you did nothing to harm their computers or their reputation (if you have not) and that as a 'concerned friend' you feel it should be mentioned. Go back in a few days and see if they have renamed their networks or done some kind of encryption. If not, then repeat your message once again. If they have done something, but it is a hopelessly simple and easily breakable solution, then write them again, but be encouraging and pleasant, and offer to help them make it better. When and if the day comes that *you* cannot break in, then the job has been done. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nix Subject: Enhanced services adoption rate Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 22:17:59 -0800 Hi, Just wanted to find out if there is a source of information that show adoption rates for various CLASS 5 services. Namely Call Waiting. Even anecdotal information will suffice. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: techman41973@yahoo.com (Joe Blo) Subject: Using Calling Card to Dial Internet Access From Hotel? Date: 20 Jan 2004 23:09:24 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com 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? Thanks. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, that is possible but it is also possible and more likely that the hotel is playing games with calling cards, 1010, or 800 numbers, or anything that does not make extra money for the switchboard downstairs. Mrs. Brown, the manager of the first apartment I lived in back in the 1960's once said to me, "well the switchboard doesn't make any money for the owners, but you have to have one for the guests." But these days, every square inch of space in a motel/hotel is expected to be a profit center for the owners. Every square inch of floor space except maybe the elevator or mechanical lift between floors. And watch, someday there may be coin operated elevators as well. Lord knows having a human being sitting in the car in a chair operating the lift got to be too expensive so that got eliminated thanks to Otis and others. I would look at the politics of the hotel first instead of the possible signal degredation. You might also look at dialing the number manually *then* turning on your modem once the remote modem has answered and see what happens then. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jacobbec@yahoo.com (Jacob) Subject: Merin Legend With Voice Server Date: 21 Jan 2004 02:19:17 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, I would like to integrate an Amanda Voice mail ( equipped with six analog ports) with a Telephon switch type Lucent Merlin Legend communication system (Release 5.0), so I am asking what I have to do from the Telephon switch side to perform the integration and how I could configure Lucent Telephon switch for that? What should I do on the Amanda Side ? Note that I am new to Lucent Telephon switch operation and to the voice mail Integration so, any Urls and sample guides and configurations will be very appreciated. Best Regards, Jacob ------------------------------ From: Paul Subject: Is LD by the Minute Going the Way of the Dodo? Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 11:47:09 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com In our area, SBC is now advertising $20/month per *business* line, unlimited long distance. For our little company, that means for $80/mo. I can have unlimited LD on our 4 lines. Seems too good an offer from the "evil empire". Sure, it's got a one year term, but heck, still a good deal. This is the grid of what they are offering here in Ohio: http://www05.sbc.com/Products_Services/Business/Catalog/1,,13--12-1-13,00.html Can anyone find a "gotcha" in the $20 plan? Why do they even offer the $50/mo plan with 3.5 cents/min.? To think two or three years ago we had $500+ bills every month, now we have sub $200 bills with ECG Telecom. I almost hate to switch from ECG since they are the first LD company in 10 years that has been decent and affordable. -- Paul ------------------------------ From: johnkaputnik@yahoo.com (Kaputnik) Subject: Triennial Review Order Date: 21 Jan 2004 11:43:37 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Where can I find talking points on how states are affected by the TRO? I need the talking points in layman's terms. Any help would be appreciated, thanks. JK ------------------------------ Subject: Ring Through to POTS From: NJ Organization: Please send all replies to the NG Date: 21 Jan 2004 19:32:05 GMT Hi, I was wondering if there are services available that will allow you to get a local number that would ring through to another number. Example: Let's say my cell phone number is 123-555-1234, but I don't want to give that out or print it on my business cards. Can I get a phone number (that can later be ported if necessary) that would ring to the cell phone (or any other number I designate)?? Thank you for your assistance, and my apologies if I have misused the terminology, I am not a phone expert. :) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, just get a number with Call Forwarding (or better still, delayed Call Forwarding) on it. Or as my last choice (because it is remote and you have no user control over it) a 'Remote Call Forwarded' line. That last choice is good if you want a number in a distant phone exchange for your callers. The first two choices are better if all you need is a local number behind which to secrete or hide your cell phone number. Delayed call forwarding is best IMO since if you are at your home and forget to turn on the forwarding when you go out (taking your cell phone along) your calls will reach there anyway after 3-4 additional rings. If you do not have a deseased brain like myself and can remember to turn on call forwarding each time you leave home then get a 'regular' call forwarding type phone line. As an example, our taxicab service here in Independence uses a call- forwarded line to reach the dispatchers. '6019' is a *well known* number here for a taxicab. But the dispatchers (who work from their homes) do not wish to be bothered by calls for cabs when they are off duty. So when a dispatcher goes on duty the 6019 line is call- forwarded to his home number; when he goes off duty at the end of his shift, another dispatcher notifies him and 'pulls' the 6019 number to *his* home line and starts taking calls from people who want a cab. (Then he uses *his* radio to call one of the drivers on the street, etc). Even though I happen to know the phone numbers of Betty or Ernie or Grover, all I *need to know* (and all the general public needs to know) is 'You want a cab? Then call 6019." Betty and Ernie also have a distinctive ring number (which is where the 6019 number is call-forwarded) so they know before they answer which answer-phrase to use, either 'good morning, this is I-Cab' or 'hello' or whatever they say. The other cab company (City Cab) does more or less the same thing, 1581 rings a call diverter in his home which redials his cell phone number. That's the other thing you can do, is buy a call diverter (see http://www.sandman.com for details, send mail to Mike there) but although these give you full control over the cloaking of one number by calling another number, call forwarding from telco is less expensive. Telco call forwarding costs each month the cost of the phone line (get a minimum outgoing package) and three or four dollars for the call forwarding option added to the line. I hope this has answered your questions. PAT] ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #30 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jan 22 00:36:32 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0M5aWQ17943; Thu, 22 Jan 2004 00:36:32 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 00:36:32 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401220536.i0M5aWQ17943@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 #31 TELECOM Digest Thu, 22 Jan 2004 00:36:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 31 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: America's Opinion of AOL (Clarence Dold) Re: America's Opinion of AOL (Lightspeed Technical Support) Re: America's Opinion of AOL (Nick Landsberg) Re: America's Opinion of AOL (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Re: Is LD by the Minute Going the Way of the Dodo? (Kilo Delta One) Re: Is LD by the Minute Going the Way of the Dodo? (John Levine) Re: Is LD by the Minute Going the Way of the Dodo? (SELLCOM Tech) Re: All-Zeros Numbers (Joey Lindstrom) Re: All-Zeros Numbers (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Using Calling Card to Dial Internet Access From Hotel? (Stan Cline) Re: Ring Through to POTS (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Wireless Home Networks (SELLCOM Tech support) Re: Wireless Home Networks (Joey Lindstrom) Re: Is LD by the Minute Going the Way of the Dodo? (Joey Lindstrom) 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: dold@AmericaXsX.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: America's Opinion of AOL Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 23:13:15 UTC Organization: a2i network Paul wrote: > Personally, I think they're scumbags. It is almost impossible to > cancel service with them. I witnessed a friend of mine on the phone > with them for an hour trying to cancel his son's AOL account. Seems > she kept "losing" the account info while he was on the line. You > know, that crazy computer system, gosh darn ... After having AOL for many years, I disconnected without problem a month or so ago. There was a slight detour as the agent offered some minor free service, which struck me as less than the mailers that come out all the time. That was it. The service is gone. No hassle. I don't think I ever actually used AOL, but my daughter was as attached to her AOL user name as I am to my rahul account, even thought I pay more for it than I should. She decided that "free" was better, so now I get to read an advertisement at the bottom of every one of her emails. I don't think I ever had a complaint about AOL service, other than once when she sent the same email to everyone in her mail address book, which triggered some internal spam control and blocked her account. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 15:46:09 -0800 From: Lightspeed Technical Support Subject: Re: America's Opinion of AOL > Personally, I think they're scumbags. It is almost impossible to > cancel service with them. I witnessed a friend of mine on the phone > with them for an hour trying to cancel his son's AOL account. Seems > she kept "losing" the account info while he was on the line. You > know, that crazy computer system, gosh darn ... > She made him repeat his full name, address, account number, credit > card number, blood type, etc. at least 4 times during the call. They > really try to wear you out. Even though it was the parent's credit > card on the account, AOL had the nerve to tell him they were not > authorized to cancel the account and the son would need to do it. But > the son is not 18 yet, so go figure. > Their intent, in my opinion, is to get you to just hang up in disgust > and live with the bill for another month. > -- Paul Don't know about the US, but my wife worked in billing at AOL Europe. The call centre down in Waterford had a department referred to as either "the cancellation department" or "the member save department" (depending whether or not one was talking to a customer.) These guys were paid commission for every account they stopped from cancelling, and were authorised to use all sorts of incentives to entice people to stay on (my wife's job included auditing all the freebies that the member save department was giving away.) mike. ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Subject: Re: America's Opinion of AOL Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 01:31:00 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet [ Much Snipped ] Our esteemed moderator wrote, in part: > (AOL claimed once a billion pieces of spam in a month ... > imagine that!) Pat, It's more like 2.4 Billion pieces of SPAM per DAY which hits AOL now, according to an article regarding the recently passed "Right to Spam" bill. That's an average of 100,000,000 per hour. At those rates, we can forget about the usual peaking factors I normally use for computing BHCA, it's a steady stream. That's almost 30,000 pieces of junk Email every second. Anyone care to venture a guess as to how much CPU power it takes to run their SPAM filter and how many CPU's are dedicated to just that? Or how much disk space they need to store all of that SPAM assuming that the Junk mail folder is cleared out on average once per day? I bet yahoo is in the same boat. The Resident Skeptic and Professional Paranoid. ======================= "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 22 Jan 2004 01:39:48 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: America's Opinion of AOL > Many of us feel that the purpose of AOL is to give experienced > internet users a group to make ethnic jokes about. Hey -watch it. I had been a Cox subscriber until I told them to take their sub-par network out of my @#(*&@#$& house. Too damned expensive for what I was getting. Then I needed some way to at least check email. Installed AOL 9.0 and it's not bad really. As much as I've slammed it it works reasonably well. It does dumb down many things but I can deal with that temporarily. And the nice thing - it's free, free, free until the 1st of March. One nice thing about AOL is that any Time/Warner content is free, stuff like Time and a few other online magazines that are normally subsciption only. But once I get the DSL installed I'll just ditch it. But UPS tried delivering my DSL stuff today. As many times as I've told them that they should try to deliver before 5PM they never do. ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 22 Jan 2004 01:35:31 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Is LD by the Minute Going the Way of the Dodo? > In our area, SBC is now advertising $20/month per *business* line, > unlimited long distance. For our little company, that means for > $80/mo. I can have unlimited LD on our 4 lines. Seems too good an > offer from the "evil empire". Sure, it's got a one year term, but > heck, still a good deal. This is the grid of what they are offering > here in Ohio: Be careful. I noticed that around here Verizon is offering business customers in RI $38 a month for unlimited. In the fine print on the ad you see that normal line charges apply. Not sure what the RI line charge is but it's probably still a savings for business since it also includes unlimited local and LD. Usually it's about .02 for local calls so you'd have to make 31+ hours of outgoing local a month to justify the $38. That doesn't even factor LD. Sounds like a fairly good deal for you though. Just beware. ------------------------------ Date: 22 Jan 2004 04:23:36 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Is LD by the Minute Going the Way of the Dodo? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > http://www05.sbc.com/Products_Services/Business/Catalog/1,,13--12-1-13,00.html > Can anyone find a "gotcha" in the $20 plan? If you don't make many international calls, it does look like a good deal. I see they also have a total package for $59 for the first line and $44 for each add'l line, so maybe that's cheaper. > Why do they even offer the $50/mo plan with 3.5 cents/min.? The $50 is total, not per line. If you have three or more lines that each make less than $20/mo of calls, this plan is better. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner http://iecc.com/johnl Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Is LD by the Minute Going the Way of the Dodo? Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 04:38:56 GMT Paul posted on that vast internet thingie: > In our area, SBC is now advertising $20/month per *business* line, > unlimited long distance. For our little company, that means for > $80/mo. I can have unlimited LD on our 4 lines. Some fear that the land line phone may be heading the way of the typewriter. Steve http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Talkswitch, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Minuteman UPS systems If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:47:00 -0700 From: Joey Lindstrom Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Organization: Telus Sucks! Subject: Re: All-Zeros Numbers Tuesday, January 20, 2004, 10:02:49 PM, editor wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I cannot understand how someone would > get seven zero numbers, even if the zeros were not consecutive > (that is were in the area code and the rest of the number in various > orders. PAT] The toll-free number for Super 8 Hotels is 1-800-800-8000. This of course is non-consecutive but it's still seven 0's. Another valid number would be 1-800-800-0000, and indeed when I dial that number, it's answered by an autoattendant who says "thank you for calling PC Connection". That's got eight 0's. Similarly, combinations like 1-810-800-0000 and 1-710-700-0000 would all be valid - all with seven 0's. Back to the original poster (sorry, lost your name): Up until the late 1980's (or was it early 1990's?), the city of Calgary (where I live) had phone numbers that all began with "2" - that is, all phone numbers were in the format 2xx-xxxx. Finally, they ran out of such numbers in the 403 area code, and began assigning central office codes that began with other digits (note: at this time, only "nnx" format office codes were used. Later, "nxx" codes were used, and that gave Calgary 18 more codes that began with "2". "200" and "211" are not used.) The first such code was 569. Around about that time I moved to a new place, and since we didn't have number portability at that time, and since I was moving to a new central office area, I had to get two new phone numbers -- one for my voice line, and one for my BBS. The numbers assigned were: 569-0000 569-0008 I figured the first one should be used by the BBS: it was easier to remember, and it would likely attract crank callers anyways - better to have them listen to my modem's screams than wake me up at 3am. I used the latter as my voice line. I didn't ask for an "easy to remember" number on this occasion, but it's possible that this might not have been a random assignment. My previous BBS number was 248-9999, and I *HAD* requested that number (and paid a monthly surcharge for the privilege), so when I moved to a new location, it's POSSIBLE that somebody at the phone company went looking for a similarly easy to remember number to replace it. Nobody ever told me so, and I no longer had to pay that monthly premium for a "special" number. It's just as likely this happened by chance. (Please don't try calling any of the numbers mentioned: I haven't had those numbers for about a decade and I'd rather you didn't bother the new holders of those numbers.) Anyway, the reason I mentioned the bit about all numbers beginning with "2": a couple of months after getting these numbers, I had reason to call somebody at the billing office of the phone company, which was located in Edmonton (which had all of its numbers begin with "4", btw). I spoke to a lady and she said she would phone me back, and would I please give her a number she could reach me at? Certainly, I said, and gave her 569-0008. After a brief pause, she said "I thought you said you lived in Calgary". "I do," said I. "Well, that number can't be right, because ALL numbers in Calgary begin with '2'," she replied, in a very prissy manner. I had to spend the next couple of minutes convincing this lady that I wasn't jerking her around: she thought I was some sort of crank, and that I was giving her a fake phone number for some reason. And she worked for the PHONE COMPANY. :-) Eventually, she agreed to hang up and phone me back directly, just to prove I was really at that number. Lily Tomlin woulda been proud of her. Joey Lindstrom ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 22:14:59 -0600 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelectronics.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: All-Zeros Numbers Dr. Hoffman wrote: > When I was in high school, I had a parent with a phone number ending > in -0000. A teacher wanted a parent-teacher onference, and when I > gave the teacher the number, I got punished and had to stay after > school for lying. When I was in high school, I knew that xxx-9979 (where xxx was any local exchange) was some kind of test number that would _always_ return a busy signal. We students had to fill out cards each year containing, among other things, our home phone number. I always put down a 9979 number. I know it saved me at least once, because I was sent up for some offense and the dean gave up dialing after about half an hour and told me to go back to class :-) It'd be interesting to know what that number was testing, if anybody out there has a clue ... This was in the mid-1970s, the CO was then 312-832 (now 630-832). -- Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It was testing the busy signal generator, that is, the equipment causes you to hear busy signals. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Using Calling Card to Dial Internet Access From Hotel? Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 01:42:22 UTC Organization: Roamer1 Communications - Dunwoody, GA, USA Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org In article , 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? If the calling card involved uses VoIP at any point during the call, it definitely could -- but AFAIK, the Wal*Mart/Sam's AT&T cards don't use VoIP ... but things are subject to change. ;) I've seen calling cards that would complete data calls fine but only at v.34 speeds on lines known to get good v.90 connections on other calls, and others that would work for data calls only sometimes, only for domestic calls, or only for calls to specific areas (usually smaller towns, which are more likely to be "off-net" for wholesale VoIP carriers and so handed off directly to a standard circuit-switched IXC.) I doubt the hotel had anything to do with it. Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 22:41:25 -0600 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelectronics.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Ring Through to POTS NJ wrote: > I was wondering if there are services available that will allow you to > get a local number that would ring through to another number. > Example: Let's say my cell phone number is 123-555-1234, but I don't > want to give that out or print it on my business cards. Can I get a > phone number (that can later be ported if necessary) that would ring > to the cell phone (or any other number I designate)?? In other words, you want to abstract your phone number. I've actually got a double-abstraction set up at the moment ... I used to own a retail store. When I closed the store, I wanted to keep the phone number (630-691-xxxx) in case I manage to reopen some day. But the number is served by a different CO than my home office number (630-832-xxxx). So I ordered "Remote Call Forwarding" on that line. This immediately forwards all calls to the original number to my home office; there is no physical presence for the store number anyplace. But I'm not always in the office, so I have "Busy Line Transfer" and "Alternate Answering" on the office line. These two services transfer all calls to my cellphone if the office line is busy or unanswered after 4 ring cycles. People mostly call me on the 691 number. That's always forwarded to the 832 number; if I'm on the phone or on the road that bounces to the cellphone. I use the cellphone voicemail to take messages. To retrieve messages, I pick up my office phone and dial my own number -- That's busy (since I'm calling from it) so it forwards to the cellphone, which is off when I'm in the office so it goes to voicemail, where I punch in my PIN and pull messages without using airtime. SBC charges me $19.50/month for RCF, and 60 cents each for BLT and AA. Plus whatever the usage charges are for the forwarded calls -- last month that was about ten bucks. (630-691 and 630-832 are in adjacent COs so all the calls are local.) BTW you can abstract your email also; buy yourself a domain someplace (they can be had for $10/year or less) and have the mail forwarded to your real email address. That way, when you change ISPs you don't have to tell everybody your new email address; just update the forwarding with your domain registrar. The downside to this, of course, is that spam follows you just as easily as people :-/ Fortunately I find that Mozilla's bayesian filter trashes spam pretty effectively for me. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 04:36:50 GMT Stan posted on that vast internet thingie: > 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?" Well, it might be a "neighborly" thing to visit with some of your closer neighbors and tell them what you noticed coming up on your computer. Be prepared to be a really really good neighbor and maybe set up their wireless networks for them. You might make a good friend or two. Steve at SELLCOM http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Talkswitch, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Minuteman UPS systems If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:01:04 -0700 From: Joey Lindstrom Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Organization: Telus Sucks! Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks Wednesday, January 21, 2004, 4:14:14 PM, editor wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well my suggestion is that if you > find out who they are that you send them an *unsigned, anonymous* > email telling them about it. In fact if you can get into NetGear or > Linksys you can probably send them email in their own names using > their mail client. That's a rather large assumption, Pat. Even if I find somebody's unprotected network, and they've got sharing turned on and are mostly unsecure, it's *HIGHLY* unlikely I'm going to be able to use their mail client unless: 1) They've installed some sort of Remote Desktop service, and 2) Have not secured it with a username/password (and most of them won't let you run them that way). Only then will I be able to use THEIR mail client to do anything. (Well, unless I'm a REALLY devious bastard and try to shoehorn in one of those "backdoor trojan" programs, which essentially is the same thing as a Remote Desktop service except it would be installed by me, not by the owner of the machine. However, doing this is NON-trivial and I personally wouldn't know how to do this, nor would probably most people here.) If they've got file sharing turned on without passwording, I might be able to steal their files from their hard drives and figure out what their email address is, but that's about it. (All of this assumes Windows operating systems - and in this case, it's about 99.99% likely. Anyone using a more robust operating system is also probably smart enough to turn on router security.) Pat, I know you love the sound of your own voice, but please: reserve your comments for things you know something about. Joey Lindstrom ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:07:41 -0700 From: Joey Lindstrom Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Organization: Telus Sucks! Subject: Re: Is LD by the Minute Going the Way of the DoDo? Wednesday, January 21, 2004, 4:14:14 PM, Paul wrote: > In our area, SBC is now advertising $20/month per *business* line, > unlimited long distance. For our little company, that means for > $80/mo. I can have unlimited LD on our 4 lines. Seems too good an > offer from the "evil empire". Sure, it's got a one year term, but > heck, still a good deal. This is the grid of what they are offering > here in Ohio: > http://www05.sbc.com/Products_Services/Business/Catalog/1,,13--12-1-13,00.html > Can anyone find a "gotcha" in the $20 plan? Why do they even offer > the $50/mo plan with 3.5 cents/min.? > To think two or three years ago we had $500+ bills every month, now > we have sub $200 bills with ECG Telecom. I almost hate to switch > from ECG since they are the first LD company in 10 years that has > been decent and affordable. I'd suggest calling up ECG Telecom and ask for a sales rep. Not a droid, but an actual sales rep -- you know, the type of guy that might actually drop in on you once in a while and see how things are going. Explain to him/her what you just said -- about how you've been very happy with ECG but that you're quite tempted by this new offer. After a bit of back and forth, you may find that ECG will be willing to match the offer (or at least come close). It's not always about the cheapest price. If you're getting outstanding service, it's WORTH paying a bit more. Only you can decide just how MUCH more, though. While I have no experience with SBC, you'll find plenty of people here who will tell you absolute horror stories about their (alleged) customer service: you should assume worst-case scenario and that you WILL see a drop in customer service quality. Is the price difference worthwhile? Joey Lindstrom ------------------------------ 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #31 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jan 22 16:15:20 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0MLFKQ22439; Thu, 22 Jan 2004 16:15:20 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 16:15:20 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401222115.i0MLFKQ22439@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 #32 TELECOM Digest Thu, 22 Jan 2004 16:14:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 32 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Cingular Wireless Reports 4th-Quarter; Full Year Results (Monty Solomon) eBay Inc. Announces 4th-Quarter; Full Year Financial (Monty Solomon) QUALCOMM Announces First Quarter Fiscal 2004 Results (Monty Solomon) Liberty Media Now 2nd-Ranked Voter at News Corp (Monty Solomon) New Search Engine Taps Into Social Networks (Monty Solomon) Nokia Closes 2003 With Excellent Fourth Quarter (Monty Solomon) AT&T Announces 4th-Quarter and Full-Year 2003 Earnings (Monty Solomon) AT&T Wireless Reports 4th-Quarter and Full Year Results (Monty Solomon) BellSouth Reports Fourth Quarter Earnings (Monty Solomon) Can Cingular Connect With AT&T Wireless? (Eric Friedebach) U.S. Judge Denies Qwest Ex-Execs Separate Trials (Eric Friedebach) Re: Ring Through to POTS (NJ) Re: Wireless Home Networks (Rich Greenberg) Re: Wireless Home Networks (Andrew Bell) Re: America's Opinion of AOL (Clarence Dold) Re: Habeas.com and Spam? (totojepast) Re: All-Zeros Numbers (Joseph) Request for Info on Auto-Ack (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 00:54:04 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cingular Wireless Reports Fourth-Quarter and Full Year Results, Cingular Wireless Reports Fourth-Quarter and Full Year Results, Launches Network Expansion and Customer Service Initiatives - Jan 21, 2004 05:10 PM (PR Newswire) * Fourth-quarter net adds total 642,000 to reach more than 24 million cellular/PCS subscribers; full-year net adds total 2.1 million, up substantially from the previous two years. * Revenues grow 5.6 percent to $3.9 billion in the fourth quarter reaching $15.5 billion for 2003. * Cellular/PCS data revenues grow 85 percent versus the fourth quarter of 2002 -- More than 1 billion SMS messages delivered during the quarter. * Cingular's nationwide GSM/GPRS network conversion continues to progress ahead of schedule, now available to 93 percent of company's operational POPs. ATLANTA, Jan. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Cingular Wireless LLC, the United States' second largest wireless company, today reported fourth-quarter results that include continued strong subscriber growth and additional progress in its nationwide GSM/GPRS network overlay. For the three months ended December 31, 2003, Cingular, a joint venture between SBC Communications (NYSE:SBC) and BellSouth Corporation (NYSE:BLS), achieved net subscriber additions of 642,000, bringing its nationwide cellular/PCS customer base to over 24 million. Gross adds in the fourth quarter totaled 2.6 million, the second highest quarter in Cingular's history -- bested only by third-quarter 2003's 2.7 million. Churn was 2.8 percent, in line with third-quarter 2003 results. Porting requests under wireless local number portability rules implemented in November were below expectations and not a significant factor in the quarter's results. For the full year 2003, Cingular Wireless added 2.1 million subscribers, the strongest annual net add total in the company's history. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40261334 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 00:55:10 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: eBay Inc. Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2003 Financial SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 21, 2004-- Company Reports Record Q4 Net Revenues of $648 Million; Achieves Q4 GAAP Diluted EPS of $0.21 and Pro Forma Diluted EPS of $0.24; Raises 2004 Net Revenue Guidance to $3 Billion eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY)( www.ebay.com ), The World's Online Marketplace, reported financial results for its quarter and full year ended December 31, 2003. eBay reported record consolidated Q4-03 net revenues of $648.4 million, up 57% year over year; record operating income of $203.1 million, up 78% year over year; and record pro forma operating income of $218.5 million, up 65% year over year. Operating income was 31% of net revenues and pro forma operating income was 34% of net revenues. Consolidated net income in Q4-03 was $142.5 million, or $0.21 per diluted share. eBay's pro forma consolidated net income, excluding certain items, was a record $157.0 million, or $0.24 per diluted share. These results exceeded the company's guidance of $590 million for net revenues, $0.19 for earnings per diluted share and $0.21 for pro forma earnings per diluted share. For the full year, eBay generated consolidated net revenues of $2.17 billion, a 78% increase over the $1.21 billion reported in 2002. Consolidated net income increased 77% year over year to $441.8 million, or $0.67 per diluted share. On a pro forma basis, eBay reported a 94% increase in consolidated net income year over year to $494.6 million, or $0.75 per diluted share. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40259580 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 00:56:35 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: QUALCOMM Announces First Quarter Fiscal 2004 Results Revenues $1.2 Billion, EPS $0.43 Revenues $1.2 Billion, EPS $0.51 Excluding QSI Segment SAN DIEGO, Jan. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM) today announced its first quarter fiscal 2004 results ended December 28, 2003. Revenues were $1.2 billion in the first fiscal quarter, up 37 percent sequentially and 13 percent year-over-year. First fiscal quarter net income was $352 million and earnings per share were $0.43, up 21 percent and 23 percent sequentially and up 46 percent and 43 percent year-over-year, respectively. Revenues excluding the QUALCOMM Strategic Initiatives (QSI) segment were $1.2 billion in the first fiscal quarter, up 39 percent sequentially and 13 percent year-over-year. First fiscal quarter net income excluding the QSI segment was $419 million and earnings per share were $0.51, up 77 percent and 76 percent, respectively, compared to the prior quarter, and both up 21 percent year-over-year. Detailed reconciliations between total QUALCOMM results and results excluding QSI are included at the end of this news release. Prior period reconciliations are presented on our Investor Relations web page at www.qualcomm.com . - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40258768 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 07:45:43 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Liberty Media Now 2nd-Ranked Voter at News Corp By Kenneth Li and Sonali Paul NEW YORK/MELBOURNE, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Liberty Media (NYSE:L) cut a deal on Wednesday to become the second-largest voting shareholder in News Corp (AUS:NCP) (NYSE:NWS), placing U.S. cable maven John Malone at the centre of power in Rupert Murdoch's media empire. Analysts said Liberty would be able to outvote the Murdoch family if it converted further ordinary shares into voting shares and that Malone may be positioning himself for such a move as insurance on his friendship with the News Corp chairman. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40265753 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:39:44 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: New Search Engine Taps Into Social Networks By Chris Gaither, Globe Staff, 1/21/2004 SAN FRANCISCO -- Google, the most popular Internet search engine, ranks results by polling all of cyberspace to find the most relevant information. But a new start-up thinks your friends' opinions should count more. Eurekster Inc. is trying to build a business by combining two of the Internet's hottest trends: search and social networking. When it launches today after several months of beta testing by consumers, the service at Eurekster.com will let users invite their friends by e-mail to try the search engine. The cluster of friends and friends-of-friends then becomes a social network whose Internet search queries shape the results of all its members. Eurekster gets results like a normal search engine but ranks them according to the interests you and your friends have shown through past searches. For example, if many people in a social network use Eurekster to seek information about the Boston Red Sox, the websites they visit most will rise to the top in future Red Sox searches. Eurekster also lists queries that members of your social network have made -- although it doesn't say who made them -- and recent websites they have visited. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/01/21/new_search_engine_taps_into_social_networks/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:43:37 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Nokia Closes 2003 with Excellent Fourth Quarter HELSINKI, Finland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 22, 2004-- - Nokia Mobile Phones grows sales and delivers record profits for Q4 and full year 2003 - Nokia Networks demonstrates good profitability in Q4 due to strong seasonality and favorable product mix as well as impact of restructuring measures Highlights 4Q 2003 (all comparisons are year on year): Net sales decreased 1% to EUR 8.8 billion (up 8% at constant currency) Nokia Mobile Phones net sales increased 4% to EUR 7.0 billion (up 15% at constant currency) Nokia Mobile Phones volumes grew 20% to 55.3 million units, leading to an estimated 38% market share Mobile phone industry volumes were an estimated 145 million units Excellent profitability with Nokia Mobile Phones pro forma and reported operating margins of 24.7% and 24.4%, respectively Color-screen phones made up half of Nokia Mobile Phones volumes Nokia Networks sales were EUR 1.7 billion, exceeding Nokia expectations Nokia Networks pro forma and reported operating margins improved to 12.1% and 2.4%, respectively Pro forma EPS (diluted) grew 12% to EUR 0.29; reported EPS (diluted) grew 14% to EUR 0.25 Highlights full-year 2003 (all comparisons to full-year 2002): Net sales decreased 2% to EUR 29.5 billion (up 7% at constant currency) Nokia Mobile Phones net sales were up 2% to EUR 23.6 billion (up 12% at constant currency) Nokia Mobile Phones volumes grew 18% to 179.3 million units Total mobile phone industry volumes grew 16% to an estimated 471 million units Nokia's estimated mobile phone market share was slightly above 38% Nokia Mobile Phones achieved record pro forma operating margins of 23.6% (reported 23.2%) Nokia Networks sales decreased 14% to EUR 5.6 billion with a pro forma operating margin of - 4.2% (reported -3.9%) Pro forma EPS (diluted) decreased 4% to EUR 0.79, reported EPS (diluted) grew 6% to EUR 0.75 Nokia's Board of Directors will propose a dividend of EUR 0.30 per share for 2003 (EUR 0.28 per share for 2002). - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40267511 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:44:08 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AT&T Announces Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2003 Earnings AT&T Announces Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2003 Earnings: Board of Directors Authorizes the Repurchase of Up to $3 Billion of Debt - Jan 22, 2004 06:50 AM (PR Newswire) * Fourth-quarter earnings per diluted share from continuing operations of $0.43; Full-year earnings per diluted share from continuing operations of $2.36 * Fourth-quarter revenue of $8.1 billion; Full-year revenue of $34.5 billion * Fourth-quarter operating income of $633 million; Full-year operating income of $3.7 billion BEDMINSTER, N.J., Jan. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AT&T (NYSE:T) today announced its fourth-quarter and full-year 2003 earnings. The company reported income from continuing operations of $340 million, or earnings per diluted share of $0.43, for the fourth quarter of 2003. The company's current-quarter income from continuing operations compares to a loss of $611 million, or a loss per diluted share of $0.79, in the fourth quarter of 2002, which included more than $1.2 billion of asset-impairment charges. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40267560 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:45:06 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AT&T Wireless Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results 2003 Operating Free Cash Flow Exceeds $1 Billion - Jan 22, 2004 07:16 AM (BusinessWire) REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 22, 2004--AT&T Wireless (NYSE:AWE) said today its fourth quarter 2003 services revenue grew 4.4 percent from the year-ago quarter to $3.904 billion. Full-year services revenue of $15.659 billion increased 8.1 percent over 2002, meeting the company's guidance for the year. For the fourth quarter, net loss per share (EPS), was ($0.03) per share compared with ($0.05) per share in the year ago quarter. Earnings per share for the year was $0.16, compared with a 2002 fiscal year net loss per share of ($0.87). Fourth quarter OIBDA (defined as operating income before depreciation and amortization) was $890 million, a decrease of 2.6 percent over the same period last year. The quarter-over-quarter decline in OIBDA was driven by both planned events, including a new brand advertising campaign, support of local number portability (LNP) and additional restructuring charges; and unplanned events, such as higher than expected costs tied to both LNP and a newly installed customer relationship management software platform. These factors also contributed to a 160 basis point quarter-over-quarter decline in OIBDA margin, from 24.4 percent last year to 22.8 percent in this fourth quarter. (See Attachment A) Consistent with the company's previous guidance for growth in the mid- to high teens, full-year OIBDA, excluding licensing costs impairments, climbed 17.1 percent to $4.477 billion, from $3.822 billion in 2002. 2003 OIBDA margin, excluding licensing costs impairments, was 28.6 percent, a 220 basis-point increase from 2002's OIBDA margin, excluding licensing costs impairments, of 26.4 percent. Full year OIBDA for 2003 was $4.394 billion, up 76.2 percent from 2002 full year OIBDA of $2.493 billion. Operating free cash flow for the year was $1.03 billion. (See Attachment B) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40267976 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:46:23 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: BellSouth Reports Fourth Quarter Earnings * 4 million long distance customers * 1.5 million high-speed Internet customers * 642,000 Cingular Wireless net additional customers * 345,000 Latin America net additional customers ATLANTA, Jan. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- BellSouth Corporation (NYSE:BLS) reported earnings per share (EPS) of 43 cents in the fourth quarter of 2003, including special charges totaling 8 cents (see below). This compared to reported EPS of 31 cents in the fourth quarter of 2002, which included special charges totaling 14 cents (see below). For the fourth quarter, consolidated revenues increased 0.9 percent to $5.7 billion compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Net income was $787 million compared to $574 million in the same quarter a year ago. In accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), BellSouth's reported consolidated revenues and consolidated operating expenses do not include the company's 40 percent share of Cingular Wireless. Normalized results include BellSouth's 40 percent proportionate share of Cingular's revenues and expenses. Normalized EPS of 51 cents increased 13.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2003 compared to 45 cents in the same quarter a year ago. Normalized revenues were $7.3 billion, an increase of 4.1 percent versus the fourth quarter of 2002. Normalized net income was $949 million, compared to $846 million in the same quarter a year ago. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40268361 ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: Can Cingular Connect With AT&T Wireless? Date: 22 Jan 2004 10:13:17 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Aude Lagorce, 01.21.04, Forbes.com NEW YORK - As Valentine's Day approaches, even telecom operators show they aren't immune to a little romance. Rumors about who is wooing whom in the industry have been swirling since late last year, but speculation became reality Jan. 20 when second-ranked U.S. operator Cingular Wireless reportedly made a $30 billion all-cash proposal to free-spirited single AT&T Wireless. So, would this be a marriage from hell or a perfect match? Neither. Not a case of love at first sight, the proposed merger sounds more like a blind date set up by a well-meaning friend: The two parties have things in common, but there's no guarantee of bliss. http://www.forbes.com/2004/01/21/cx_al_0121awe.html Eric Friedebach /Mars: northern Nevada without the legal brothels/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Question for Eric: Lately you have been using as your .sig file the commentary about Mars and northern Nevada. I was wondering if you (or anyone else reading this) have been looking at the visuals of Mars from the NASA web site? They might make for an interesting discussion here in the Digest. PAT] ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: U.S. judge denies Qwest ex-execs separate trials Date: 22 Jan 2004 10:17:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com 01.21.04 DENVER (Reuters) - A federal judge Wednesday denied requests by four former Qwest Communications International Inc. executives to put them on trial separately on charges that they improperly inflated the phone company's revenues. The decision by U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn paves the way for the trial to begin in federal court in Denver on Feb 17. http://www.forbes.com/newswire/2004/01/21/rtr1221391.html Eric Friedebach /Mars: northern Nevada without the legal brothels/ ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Ring Through to POTS From: NJ Organization: Please send all replies to the NG Date: 22 Jan 2004 11:56:17 GMT Yes, I have my own domain :) Check out http://spamex.com for addresses you can just throw-away. I use them for signing up for contests, etc ... Gordon S. Hlavenka wrote in comp.dcom.telecom: > BTW you can abstract your email also; buy yourself a domain someplace > (they can be had for $10/year or less) and have the mail forwarded to > your real email address. That way, when you change ISPs you don't > have to tell everybody your new email address; just update the > forwarding with your domain registrar. The downside to this, of > course, is that spam follows you just as easily as people :-/ > Fortunately I find that Mozilla's bayesian filter trashes spam pretty > effectively for me. ------------------------------ From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks Date: 22 Jan 2004 08:37:22 -0500 Organization: Organized? Me? In article , Stan wrote: > Considering this thread, I had a recent experience and I ask the group > for advice. > While setting up my new iPaq, I tried to access the wireless router in > my house in order to download content from the internet without having > to place the device in its docking cradle. Granted, it's not a feature > that I would use while at home, but I was playing. > I have WEP enabled on my network, and no amount of combinations of the > iPaq menu selections and entering my key manually would permit me > access. I'm not really concerned about that right now. > While playing with the options, I found that three of my neighbors > apparently have wireless networks in their houses as well. This is not > an apartment building, this is a subdivision in a former > cornfield. Plenty of space between houses. > While apparently one of my neighbors read the manual and set up some > security, the other two networks were named "Linksys" and > "Netgear". It looks like someone got some new toys for Christmas and > didn't bother to change one setting out of the box. Without any effort > at all (and I mean really NO effort ... automatic wireless is an > option on the iPaq), I accessed Mr. Netgear's broadband connection and > started surfing the web, using Internet Explorer built into the > device. > 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? I would try to locate them and inform them of the exposure. If your portable has a way to see the signal strength of the signal, you can walk around the 'hood and see which house the signal is strongest near. Once informed, if they choose not to fix it, then its their problem. And if they ask "what were you doing accessing my network?", just reply that you weren't, but you spotted theirs while setting yours up. Its for just this reason that my rather small network is all wired with no wireless. Rich Greenberg Work: Rich.Greenberg atsign worldspan.com + 1 770 563 6656 N6LRT Marietta, GA, USA Play: richgr atsign panix.com + 1 770 321 6507 Eastern time zone. I speak for myself & my dogs only. VM'er since CP-67 Canines:Val(Chinook,CGC,TT), Red & Shasta(Husky,(RIP)) Owner:Chinook-L Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/Asst Owner:Sibernet-L ------------------------------ From: Andrew Bell Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:44:22 -0500 Pat - please delete my email address if you post this. On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:01:04 -0700 Joey Lindstrom replied to TELECOM Digest Editor's Note on Re: Wireless Home Networks: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well my suggestion is that if you >> find out who they are that you send them an *unsigned, anonymous* >> email telling them about it. In fact if you can get into NetGear or >> Linksys you can probably send them email in their own names using >> their mail client. > That's a rather large assumption, Pat. Even if I find somebody's > unprotected network, and they've got sharing turned on and are mostly > unsecure, it's *HIGHLY* unlikely I'm going to be able to use their > mail client unless: > 1) They've installed some sort of Remote Desktop service, and > 2) Have not secured it with a username/password (and most of them > won't let you run them that way). > Only then will I be able to use THEIR mail client to do anything. > (Well, unless I'm a REALLY devious bastard and try to shoehorn in one > of those "backdoor trojan" programs, which essentially is the same > thing as a Remote Desktop service except it would be installed by me, > not by the owner of the machine. However, doing this is NON-trivial > and I personally wouldn't know how to do this, nor would probably most > people here.) A workable assumption here is that someone uninformed enough to run an access point in fully default mode is ALSO too uninformed to have set any passwords or applied any patches to their PC. It is, in fact, trivial to load such a trojan in that environment. > If they've got file sharing turned on without passwording, I might be > able to steal their files from their hard drives and figure out what > their email address is, but that's about it. (All of this assumes > Windows operating systems - and in this case, it's about 99.99% > likely. Anyone using a more robust operating system is also probably > smart enough to turn on router security.) Like I said ... > Pat, I know you love the sound of your own voice, but please: Wow. Pot, meet kettle. > reserve your comments for things you know something about. Joey, that comment was entirely uncalled for. Pat was a bit off on the details, since it's not a matter of getting into the WAP itself that is required, but he quite accurately pointed out the potential to take over someone's mail client through an unprotected network access. Andrew [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As far as using defaults is concerned, I have never yet changed from using the Windows default name of WORKGROUP as the group name for my computers (where 'Network Neighborhood' looks at the machines close around it.) I do not know if that is a bad thing or not, but my Canadian consultant tells me since I have a Linksys firewall up and running 'not to worry about it'. Still, the firewall has a couple leaks in it sometimes, where unwelcome visitors have slipped through ports that were open trying to get into my files, even though (at the time of their arrival) Zone Alarm told me visitors had arrived and were attempting unsuccessfully to loot my files. That has happened twice, both times when I was chatting on Yahoo Messenger. I don't really know what to do. Both times, I told the persons to get away from the computer, they both apologized profusely of course, and I did not see them again, or have I? PAT] ------------------------------ From: dold@AmericaXsX.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: America's Opinion of AOL Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 16:21:25 UTC Organization: a2i network Kilo Delta One Sierra wrote: > One nice thing about AOL is that any Time/Warner content is free, > stuff like Time and a few other online magazines that are normally > subsciption only. But once I get the DSL installed I'll just ditch it. 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. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: totojepast@atlas.cz (totojepast) Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? Date: 22 Jan 2004 08:54:02 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com >> Recently I've started getting a lot of spam (well, not a lot, but >> perhaps a half-dozen messages a day) signed by "Habeas.com." Habeas' >> website advertises that it is "sender warranted email," and that one >> of the main uses of the website is deliver spam-free e-mail. > Yes, Habeas is real, and someone has been sending out buckets of spam > for bogus drugs with equally bogus Habeas marks. > They are, to put it mildly, not happy about it. In the short run > they're adding every address sending forged Habeas spam to their > DNSBL, which is not a bad one to use to block spam. In the longer run > they're trying to figure out who's behind the spam, which will be > tricky since it's all sent through hijacked PCs and points back to a > web site in China. They've sued people before for misusing their mark > and if they can figure out who to sue, they will most certainly sue > this one. Does anybody know why Anne P. Mitchell was ousted from Habeas.com? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Isn't Anne Mitchell involved with one of the netizen organizations fighting spam? Just a guess, but maybe she got on their nerves. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: All-Zeros Numbers Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:12:21 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NOcom On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 22:14:59 -0600, Gordon S. Hlavenka wrote: > When I was in high school, I knew that xxx-9979 (where xxx was any > local exchange) was some kind of test number that would _always_ > return a busy signal. We students had to fill out cards each year > containing, among other things, our home phone number. I always put > down a 9979 number. I know it saved me at least once, because I was > sent up for some offense and the dean gave up dialing after about half > an hour and told me to go back to class :-) In New England New England Tel/NYNEX/Verizon most big city exchanges you could end with 9991 and receive busy. Used to be that calling many exchanges with 9992 produced re-order as well. In that area for S-X-S exchanges if you dialed NXX-XX99 you would also get busy-back as well. Of course that all went away when the exchanges were converted to ESS. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - remove NO from .NOcom to reply ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 05:40:44 -0700 From: TELECOM Digest Editor The auto-ack should have shown you the mess that the one message TDE> arrived in. You are damn lucky I even found it; most of what TDE> like that is just spam, and I do not read it. Then he responded to me this morning: > As others have mentioned to you, the auto-ack no longer works. No, others have not mentioned that to me. > I just checked with a friend of mine, who got a copy of the message > you're referring to - both were sent at the same time (he was BCC'd). > He reports no mangling of subject line or anything else. > As I've told you before, there is something seriously wrong with your > mail setup. Your much-heralded auto-ack hasn't worked in months, and > if something is mangling subject lines, it's happening at your end, > not the sending end. Either the server at massis or Levine's server > is doing the mangling. Well no, I have not been told the auto-ack is broken once again. Not that it couldn't be, just that I have not been told if it is. And most of the legitimate mail I get here arrives just fine. Levine's server only comes into play when mail is addressed to @telecom-digest.org and not when mail is addressed to @massis.lcs.mit.edu. If mail coming through from anywhere is addressed to the former address, then John Levine's server sees it first and forwards it here. Mail from anywhere addressed to the latter address just comes here directly; John's server has nothing to do with it. But when mail gets here (either direct to massis or forwarded/remailed via John [telecom-digest.org]) it then goes through spam assassin first. Mail which does meet my qualifications (and I keep the point score level sort of low) then goes on to the auto-ack. That which does not meet my qualifications goes unanswered (with no auto-ack) into the spam file. It is very rare that spam assassin makes a wrong decision. More often than not, the spam gets an auto-ack and goes into my legitmate file, since I would rather be imposed upon and have to toss spam out manually than to accidentally miss a legitimate letter of inquiry, etc. I always scan (at least in a cursory way) what went to the spam file before I flush it out. Your letter in question went through the routine into the legitimate file, but with a subject line showing all the criteria of spam or otherwise junk mail. Because *your name* and site showed up in a legible way, I ignored the subject line which was illegible gibberish, and chose to read it anyway. I really feel it must have been the spam filtering mechanism *on your end* which chose to dump out the auto-ack, but who knows. To all readers: we are fighting a losing battle here I think. Please consider using this criteria: If you legitimatly write me and (1) do not recieve an auto-ack and (2) see your message printed in the Digest same day or next day [unless you asked it to be non-pub] *then* under those conditions please resubmit your message to me but include a line at the top saying 'I did not recieve an auto-ack earlier for this'. Somehow try to let me know if your legitimate message got tossed. (I'll then either reconstruct it or ask you to send it again to a different email address.) Somehow try to let me know if you have been in the past getting auto-acks and they suddenly stopped arriving, etc. Maybe someday, somehow, the intelligent folks of the net who work to 'kill spam' will find a way to deal with all this. But if my auto-ack thing is not working correctly, I would like to hear from more than just one person saying that. PAT ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #32 ***************************** 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #33 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jan 23 03:05:04 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0N853n25508; Fri, 23 Jan 2004 03:05:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 03:05:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401230805.i0N853n25508@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 #34 TELECOM Digest Fri, 23 Jan 2004 03:05:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 34 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson For Those in the Fast Lane, MSN Tries to Smooth the Way (Monty Solomon) The Electronic Verification Is in the Mail (Monty Solomon) Google Spawns Social Networking Service (Monty Solomon) Microsoft Quarterly Revenue Tops $10 Billion (Monty Solomon) Town Uses Website List to Shame Scofflaws (Monty Solomon) TI Technology Makes 802.11a/g Affordable for Consumers (Monty Solomon) One Phone Line and Multiple Extensions plus Vonage? (howard) Re: Habeas.com and Spam? (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Re: Phantom DSL Reprised (Gary Breuckman) Re: Wireless Home Networks (Gene S. Berkowitz) Re: Wireless Home Networks (sidd@situ.com) Norvergence (NorV) Information Confirmation Request (Dan Pham) Re: Is LD by the Minute Going the Way of the Dodo? (John David Galt) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 00:32:05 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: For Those in the Fast Lane, MSN Tries to Smooth the Way By WILSON ROTHMAN THE assumption of many providers of high-speed Internet service today is that you are a power user; that is, you don't need any help. You manage your e-mail with a free service like Hotmail or Yahoo , or know how to set up a POP3 account in Outlook. You already have software to protect you from hackers, viruses and spyware. You have a working knowledge of Photoshop (or at least Photoshop Elements) and you share pictures with family members at Ofoto. Google is your research hub, you download movie trailers at QuickTime.com, and you may even subscribe to a streaming music service like Rhapsody. You're a Net veteran, and all you require of your service provider is an always-on connection to a fat Internet pipeline. If you don't feel all that savvy, AOL and MSN sympathize with you. They suggest that although you have graduated to broadband, you might still need the full online-service software package you used in your dial-up days. Both companies have introduced software-and-service packages known as "bring your own access" - geared mainly toward Windows users, and offered at a lower monthly fee than their dial-up plans -- to complement high-speed Internet access. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/22/technology/22stat.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 00:49:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Electronic Verification Is in the Mail By MARK GLASSMAN January 22, 2004 ENSURING the integrity of a Microsoft Word document can be tricky. Hackers and pranksters have made a hobby of exposing security flaws in the software, often altering what appear to be protected files. But a new service shores up security with an adage that is at once novel and old-fashioned: let the post office handle it. The Postal Service, Microsoft and a technology company called Authentidate have developed a system called Electronic Postmark for verifying that a document's content is the same as when a user saved it. The service, introduced in October, is in some ways more a notary public's stamp than a postmark, intended particularly for those affixing their electronic signatures to documents relayed online. After downloading a free add-on program, or plug-in, for Word, a user can purchase Electronic Postmarks and insert them into any Word document. The plug-in is compatible with Word XP and Word 2003. Once the document is signed, the Postmark locks it down, preventing further changes within Word. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/22/technology/circuits/22post.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 00:51:31 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Google Spawns Social Networking Service By Stefanie Olsen Staff Writer, CNET News.com Google tip-toed into the hot market of online social networks with the quiet launch of Orkut.com on Thursday. The search company, which is expected to go public this year, is flexing its power with its Internet fans by constantly offering new services, including comparison shopping and news search. Orkut could be the clearest signal that Google's aspirations don't end with search. http://news.com.com/2100-1026-5146006.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:31:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Microsoft Quarterly Revenue Tops $10 Billion Launch of Office 2003 and Strength in PC Market Fuels Demand for Desktop Software REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced record revenue of $10.15 billion for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2003, a 19% increase over $8.54 billion in the prior year. Operating income for the second quarter was $1.48 billion, compared to $2.23 billion in the prior year. Net income and diluted earnings per share for the second quarter were $1.55 billion and $0.14 per share. These results include stock based compensation expense of $2.17 billion (after-tax) or $0.20 per share, of which $1.48 billion (after-tax) or $0.14 per share related to the completion of the employee Stock Option Transfer Program. For the previous year, net income and earnings per share for the second quarter were $1.87 billion and $0.17 per share, including stock based compensation expense of $709 million (after-tax) or $0.07 per share, a $282 million (after-tax) or $0.03 per share charge for investment impairments, a $126 million or $0.01 per share tax benefit from the reversal of previously accrued taxes, and $141 million (after-tax) or $0.01 per share legal charge related to the state antitrust and unfair competition class action lawsuits. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40276969 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:43:05 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Town Uses Website List to Shame Scofflaws By Mark Pothier, Globe Staff, 1/21/2004 Sabina Maziarz knew she would pay a penalty when a $400 check she wrote in November to the Sharon School Department bounced, but did not realize her name and address would be posted on the Internet for all to see. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/01/21/town_uses_website_list_to_shame_scofflaws/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think they should take care doing this. The Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (signed into law during President Carter's administration *flatly prohibits* the publication of debts. You are allowed to contact the person you claim is the debtor, but you are not permitted to contact any third parties for the purpose of collection. Skip tracers/bill collectors, for example when calling me to find out your whereabouts, can ask me how to locate you if I know, but they are *not* permitted to say WHY they want to contact me other than 'I have some personal business I need to speak with him about.' I am not permitted (if I were licensed in the practice of debt collection) to run a printed announcement that you owe me X dollars on account of a check that bounced for example. One exception later passed was based on a decision that social good takes precedence. For example, the landlord of an apartment building with a master utility meter (gas or water as an example) becomes late in paying his utility bill, and the gas service is scheduled for cut off. Its obviously not the tenants' fault, yet they might well suffer from the cutoff of utilities. So the utility companies *are* permitted to 'post a building' (make a public announcement of cutoff) to enable, under the law, tenants to withhold their rent money for the purpose of paying the money for rent directly to the utility company. I do not *think* there are any exceptions made for bounced checks to municipalities, etc. In any event, I would be leary of making a public posting of someone with a bounced check for collection purposes. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 21:50:10 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TI Technology Makes 802.11a/g Affordable for Consumers wONE(TM) Universal Router Technology Delivers Optimal Solution for Multimedia Home Networking DALLAS, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE:TXN) (TI) today unveiled wONE, a universal router software technology that delivers simultaneous 802.11g and 802.11a operation from a single chipset (CPU, MAC, baseband and RF). Until now, most dual-band routers and access points (APs) were too expensive for mass consumer adoption since they required two chipsets in order to maintain simultaneous operation. With TI's wONE software, manufacturers can offer dual-band routers at an affordable price to the consumer market, making universal connectivity of 802.11a, 802.11g and 802.11b in the home a reality. This all-in-one router solution offers extreme flexibility and versatility to protect the end-users' existing investments of 802.11b or 802.11g devices while technology-proofing future network applications using 802.11a. (See http://www.ti.com/wone .) Together with TI's 802.11 silicon solutions, wONE allows manufacturers to deliver the ideal router for multimedia home networking, telecommuters, small business offices and small location hotspots. For example, in a single household, the son can watch a streaming video from an 802.11a-enabled media center or personal video recorder (PVR), while the daughter uses an 802.11b PDA to instant message friends, and at the same time Mom or Dad is using an 802.11g embedded mini-PCI card in a laptop to check e-mails over the VPN. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401051700_PRN__DAM009A ------------------------------ From: cscapella@yahoo.com (howard) Subject: One phone line and multiple extensions + vonage? Date: 22 Jan 2004 19:05:59 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello everyone, I am about to start up a new office in which I plan on having about 4 phones, possibly more in the future. My question is: Is it possible to have only 1 phone line that can go to any extension and handle multiple incoming or outgoing calls simultaneously and integrate with Vonage? Obviously I want to reduce my local phone company expenses. Would I be using a phone system like the ATT 4-Line KSU-less phone system to tie it all together? Thanks for you help, Howard ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 03:31:04 GMT From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: Re: Habeas.com and Spam? Organization: Excelsior Computer Services > 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. "on the line" is putting it mildly. I had never heard of Habeas until I started getting spam with their headers. Now my only connection with them is that I block allow anything with their headers. -Joel ------------------------------ From: Gary Breuckman Subject: Re: Phantom DSL Reprised Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:16:31 -0600 Organization: Puma's Lair - catbox.com In article , Nick Landsberg wrote: > 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. COVAD, at least here, offers business services only. The difference is that the business DSL is usually symmetric (SDSL) for example 768/768, as opposed to the typical telco residential DSL that might be 128/700 or 256/700. Also, the 'business DSL' usually has static IP addresses, perhaps a block of 8 (5 usable) at that price. The assumption (perhaps not always valid) is that a business wants to run a server or other needs (like PCANYWERE or VPN) where they need static IP's, and need higher outgoing speeds than the usual web-browsing residential user. COVAD also obtains a separate pair for the DSL, unlike the telco DSL which usually piggybacks on a voice circuit, which might help with the distance limitations. I'm not saying that justifies the higher price, but at least part of it, and explains it. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > 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] Well, as I said there are differences. If I was the provider and you did that, I would say "fine, we'll call it residential for you. The price is the same, and you've already signed the 3-year contract ..." -- Gary Breuckman ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 00:21:48 -0500 In article , joey@telussucks.info says: > Wednesday, January 21, 2004, 4:14:14 PM, editor wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well my suggestion is that if you >> find out who they are that you send them an *unsigned, anonymous* >> email telling them about it. In fact if you can get into NetGear or >> Linksys you can probably send them email in their own names using >> their mail client. > That's a rather large assumption, Pat. Even if I find somebody's > unprotected network, and they've got sharing turned on and are mostly > unsecure, it's *HIGHLY* unlikely I'm going to be able to use their > mail client unless: > 1) They've installed some sort of Remote Desktop service, and > 2) Have not secured it with a username/password (and most of them > won't let you run them that way). > Only then will I be able to use THEIR mail client to do anything. No need to use their mail at all. If they've got file sharing on, they probably have a printer available. Just print a note letting them know ... Nothing scares the s**t out of people faster than when their equipment starts up on its own ... --Gene ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks From: sidd@situ.com () Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 02:03:39 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com In article , John Bartley wrote: > 1. Make sure to change the network name from the default setting. > 2. Turn on the highest level of security possible. > 3. Turn the WAP/hub off every night and leave it off when not in use. > 4. Manually generate the encryption keys. > 5. Set up a VPN. May I suggest, instead of the above ... haul some cat5 ? ------------------------------ From: csx130mph@yahoo.com (Dan Pham) Subject: Norvergence (NorV) Information Confirmation Request Date: 22 Jan 2004 21:27:13 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I am hoping to confirm the following or to get the truth from individuals who have knowledge of it. I was recently told that Mr. Jim Smith, the Vice President of Sales for Norvergence, was fired on or about January 16, 2004. The supposed reason behind his termination was because it cost Norvergence millions of Dollars to hire and train many outside sales representatives; yet, their retention of these sales reps as employees was very low. They would usually resign or get terminated in a few months. Supposedly, Norvergence blamed Mr. Jim Smith for all of this turnover at the company. Can anyone confirm that Jim Smith was fired? If so, are the reasons above true? What is the retention percentage Norvergence has for it's outside sales reps? If Jim Smith was fired, who actually fired him? Who replaced him? Norvergence seems to have a reputation for being unreasonably strict on employees. Does it now want to be "kinder and gentler" to it's employees? ------------------------------ From: John David Galt Subject: Re: Is LD by the Minute Going the Way of the Dodo? Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:04:02 -0800 Organization: Diogenes the Cynic Hot-Tubbing Society Paul wrote: > Can anyone find a "gotcha" in the $20 plan? The small print in their TV ads says "voice only". Fax and modem calls aren't allowed under the plan. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #34 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jan 23 14:34:23 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0NJYNT29092; Fri, 23 Jan 2004 14:34:23 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 14:34:23 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401231934.i0NJYNT29092@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 #35 TELECOM Digest Fri, 23 Jan 2004 14:35:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 35 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Reviewing 3G Licence Conditions (Peter R. Webb) Re: One Phone Line and Multiple Extensions + Vonage? (DevilsPGD) Re: One Phone Line and Multiple Extensions + Vonage? (email@crazyhat) VoIP and Firewalls (Dave Greenfield) AT&T Wireless Shrinks Its Dowry (Eric Friedebach) Re: America's Opinion of AOL (Rob) Re: The Electronic Verification Is in the Mail (Jack Hamilton) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Reviewing 3G Licence Conditions in Europe Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 11:32:12 -0000 From: Peter R. Webb Reviewing 3G Licence Conditions Regulatory and Commercial Implications of Reviewing 3G Licences in Europe 21st & 22nd April 2004 Marriott Kensington, London The background to this conference: It has been three years since European mobile operators won their 3G licences. Operators have adjusted to stock market falls and funding constraints, GPRS has given a new lease of life to existing 2G networks, and operators who have launched 3G networks are finding teething problems impacting service reliability, and are still to demonstrate a 3G killer application to make 2G obsolete. As a consequence major operators have tried to re-negotiate the obligations attached to their licence rights. This visiongain conference will bring together the key stakeholders involved in, and impacted by, the debate surrounding 3G rollout obligations. Participants will be able to engage in the debate, and have their say on 3G licence obligations, their alternatives and the future of 3G services. Speakers from major players within the 3G arena will include: Robert Mourik, Senior Manager, Public Policy, Vodafone Rui Lemos Pereira, Vice President, Regulatory Affairs, T-Mobile Intl Christer Hammarlund, Principal Admin, DG Info Society, European Commission Andrea Camanzi, Senior Vice President, Regulatory Affairs, Telecom Italia Steve Jordan, Head of European Regulatory Policy, mmO2 Joachim Lcking, Deputy Head of Unit, DG Competition, European Commission Graham Louth, Director of Spectrum Markets, Ofcom (UK) Jaroslav Kubista, Director, External Affairs, Eurotel Vincenzo Monaci, Commissioner for Networks & Infrastructures, Agcom (Italy) Marc Furrer, Director General, Federal Office of Comm (Switzerland) Geraldine Philippe, General Counsel, Comfone Magnus Axelsson, Senior Advisor, Post-och telestyrelsen -PTS (Sweden) Key themes discussed at Reviewing 3G Licence Conditions : - Why 3G licence conditions need to be reviewed and what adjustments are needed? - How to create the right regulatory environment to encourage 3G rollout? - What actions are needed to facilitate investment in infrastructure and services? - The benefits and risks of spectrum trading. How will attending this event benefit you ? ** Debate the future of 3G telephony with key industry decision-makers; ** Anticipate and influence regulatory changes in 3G rollout; ** Prepare for business opportunities in 3G services. Who should attend Reviewing 3G Licence Conditions? By industry sector: Telecom operators Vendors Equipment manufacturers By job title: Head of Strategy and Business Development Head of Regulatory Affairs Head of Corporate Affairs General Counsels Telecoms Policy Analysts Legal services Consultants Head of Public Affairs Head of Infrastructure and Networks Head of Spectrum Policy Head of Strategic Policy Regulatory/Legal Affairs Staff Also included in this 2 day event is a pre conference work shop, ideal for pre-event networking: Strategies for re-negotiating rollout conditions; 20th April 2004 - Led by: Imogen Bailey, Edelman Key themes will include: - Identifying the decision-makers; - Where to find external support for campaigning? - The role of pressure groups and think tanks; - Developing strategies for impact. Places at this event are strictly limited so book your place now. To make a booking on this event, please contact me via phone or email. Book early to secure a place. Ensure your organisation's success with the advent of 3G. Attend this conference and book your place TODAY. - PRICING - Attend the: 2 Day conference with interactive workshop - ONLY GBP1400 plus VAT 2 Day conference - ONLY GBP1099 plus VAT Workshop only - ONLY GBP650 plus VAT - BOOKINGS - Booking is easy, simply contact Peter Webb on: Telephone: +44 (0)20 8767 6711 Fax: +44 (0)20 8767 5001 Email: mailto:peter.webb@visiongain.com Please find below the conference agenda. To book your place at Reviewing 3G Licence Conditions simply give me a quick ring or email me stating whether you require a single place or a group booking. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Regards, Peter Webb Account manager Email peter.webb@visiongain.com Full conference agenda: Day One Wednesday 21st April 2004 Conference Day One Chair Stephen Pentland Partner Spectrum Strategy Consultants 8:30 Registration and coffee 9:00 Opening remarks from the Chair THE RATIONALE FOR REVIEWING LICENCE OBLIGATIONS What were the objectives behind 3G licence conditions in Europe, to what degree have obligations been met and is there scope for re-negotiation? Regulators, operators and other players involved in the market will give their views on 3G rollout, competition issues and how to make 3G a success. 9:10 KEYNOTE The EU's perspective on reviewing licence obligations and on 3G rollout What were the objectives of 3G rollout at European level in terms of coverage, services provided, markets? How does the Regulatory Framework on Electronic Communications cover licence conditions and 3G rollout? What are the respective roles of the EC and the National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs)? Christer Hammarlund Principal Administrator DG Information Society, European Commission 9:50 The Swedish perspective on reviewing licence obligations What were the regulator's objectives in terms of 3G rollout in Sweden? How are Swedish operators complying with their obligations? Are operators' strategies influencing the States' communications policy? How to respond to licensees' bid for a softening of their obligations? To what level are 3G services available in Sweden and are they successful? Magnus Axelsson Senior Advisor Post-och telestyrelsen - PTS 10:20 Challenges and successes in 3G rollout: the Irish experience The licensing process for 3G in Ireland and rollout obligations. How are the licence obligations fulfilled in Ireland? The current state of 3G services offer in Ireland: success or failure? Encouraging sharing of sites and infrastructure to facilitate rollout. Some future challenges for the regulator. Jim Connolly Senior Manager, Spectrum Management, Competition & International Strategy Comreg & Chairman, CEPT ECC Working Group Frequency Management 10:50 The Swiss experience as former President of IRG and as President of CEPT The Swiss experience of licensing process: choices and rollout conditions. The relations between the regulator and the operators. Operators' strategies for re-negotiating obligations: how to respond? The importance of international dialogue for regulators: the role of the CEPT and ERG/IRG. Marc Furrer Director General Ofcom, Switzerland 11:20 Coffee and discussion 11:40 Competition aspects of 3G rollout within the European Regulatory Framework How to implement EC competition rules in 3G rollout? The competition assessment of network sharing as a way to ease 3G rollout conditions Possible future competition concerns in 3G services Joachim Lcking, Deputy Head of Unit Telecommunications and Post; Information Society Coordination DG Competition, European Commission 12:20 Licence obligations and implementation of 3G rollout in the UK Communications Act The competition aspects of the UK Communications Act How to implement competition rules in 3G rollout? Is there scope in the Act for a relaxation of 3G licence obligations? 3G and 3G like services: how to regulate? Richard Eccles, Partner Bird & Bird 12:50 Lunch 14:10 Comparing the Japanese and European rollout conditions and 3G markets: NTT Docomo's view The process of 3G licensing in Japan: issues at stakes with the beauty contest. The future of 3G services: time scale for rollout and vision for 3G How do license conditions in Europe compare with the licensing process in Japan? How to adapt to local markets and varying national regulations? Senior Representative NTT DoCoMo Inc. 14:50 A vision for the 3G world and its prerequisites What are customer expectations for 3G services? How will the deployment of 3G services impact on the market place? What rollout conditions can facilitate deployment of 3G services? What are the other policy prerequisites for a successful deployment of 3G services? Is a review of licence conditions necessary for a successful rollout? Rui Lemos Pereira Vice President Regulatory Affairs T-Mobile International 15:30 Coffee and discussion 15:50 Licence obligations: is a review necessary? What are the optimum rollout conditions for a successful 3G rollout? Does the investment needed to comply with the obligations make business sense? How to deal with competitive licensees? Andrea Camanzi Senior Vice President Regulatory Affairs Telecom Italia 16:30 A successful case of re-negotiation: Eurotel What were the original licence conditions? How were the relation with the regulator when re-negotiating conditions? What were Eurotel's objectives when re-negotiating licence obligations? The expected benefits from a delayed 3G rollout in the Czech Republic. Jaroslav Kubista Director External Affairs Eurotel 17:10 Close of Day Day Two Thursday 22nd April 2004 Conference Day Two Chair Marina Wiggs Senior Manager Spectrum Strategy Consultants 8:40 Registration and coffee 9:10 Opening remarks from the chair 9:20 Creating the licence conditions for a successful 3G rollout: overview of the Italian case What were the regulator's objectives in terms of 3G rollout in Italy? How was the hybrid licensing method organised? How successful has the rollout been in Italy so far? Is there a case for a review of licence obligations? Vincenzo Monaci Commissioner for Networks and Infrastructures Agcom (Italian Communications Regulatory Authority) 10:00 Vodafone's perspective on 3G licences and rollout What licence conditions can ensure optimum 3G rollout? Negotiating rollout obligations with various national regulators. Adapting 3G strategy to local markets. Future challenges in 3G rollout for operators. Robert Mourik Senior Manager Public Affairs Vodafone 10:40 Coffee and discussion 11:00 The case for infrastructure sharing: a way to facilitate rollout conditions? The pros and cons of infrastructure sharing. What are the issues in terms of competition law? The European Commission's position on infrastructure sharing. Do license obligations allow sharing? Chris Watson, Partner Allen & Overy 11:40 IT infrastructure requirements for 3G rollout Using effective IT infrastructure to deliver 3G mobile data services Multi-channel multi-modal portals, cost effective operational and business support systems, managing the plethora of devices Do operators' rollout schedule influence IT infrastructure providers' business strategy? Chris Bray e-Business Executive IBM Wireless 12:15 Lunch SPECTRUM TRADING: a solution to ease operators' licence obligations? This session will review the opportunities and the risks at stake in spectrum trading and whether it can be a solution to help the deployment of 3G services. It will look in particular at the way regulators have responded to the ideas so far and to the opportunities operators expect from it. 13:20 Preparing a new regulatory framework for spectrum management The results of the consultation by Ofcom and the Radiocommunications Agency. Autonomy and harmonisation. Proposals for trading and liberalisation. Timetable for implementation. Graham Louth Director of Spectrum Markets Ofcom (UK) 14:00 Business expectations from spectrum trading in 3G Benefits and risks from spectrum trading. Would it facilitate 3G rollout? What would be the benefits for customers? Steve Jordan, Head of European Regulatory Policy MmO2 & Chair of GSM Europe regulatory working group 14:40 Challenges and options in introducing spectrum trading in Europe Practical challenges in the introduction of spectrum trading. Would it make the business case for 3G more appealing? What changes to the industry structure may result? Moves towards introduction of spectrum trading. The benefits of a harmonised approach to spectrum trading regulation in Europe. Amit Napgal Senior Consultant, Analysys, & Project Manager - Study on introduction of spectrum trading in Europe for the European Commission 15:20 Coffee and discussion 15:40 The UK spectrum trading proposals How are the options constrained by the Communications Act? What scope would there be for deriving value from a spectrum trade? What scope would there be for interference management being dealt with by private treaty? What is the likely impact on 3G? Tony Ballard, Partner, Head of telecoms group Field Fisher Waterhouse FORESEEING FUTURE REGULATORY CHALLENGES 16:10 The legal implications of WLAN in 3G rollout Is WLAN a threat to 3G? Is there a reaction on the regulators side possible? Should there be a reaction in order to protect 3G licensees? Geraldine Philippe General Counsel Comfone 16:40 Digital rights management in 3G services: do rollout obligations influence operators' strategies? The current dispositions within the European framework on electronic communications. Digital rights strategies for operators and content providers. Will 3G services face more challenges in terms of digital rights management than 2G and 2.5G? Ian Penman Partner New Media Law LLP 17:10 Close of conference Pre conference interactive workshop Strategies for re-negotiating rollout conditions Workshop Leader: Imogen Bailey, Director Technology Edelman The objective of this workshop is to look into companies' strategies in approaching public bodies to ensure optimum conditions to deploy 3G services. It will provide expert insight into how to optimise relations with regulators and government bodies in the process of 3G deployment. Professionals with experience of managing public affairs campaign and lobbying strategies will give first-hand examples in a business-orientated, interactive meeting. Workshop schedule 8:40 Coffee and registration 9:10 Identifying the decision-makers The respective roles of EU institutions and national bodies: governments, national regulatory authorities (NRAs). The role of telecom regulators vs. competition authorities in issues related to 3G. 10:30 Coffee and discussion 11:00 The role of pressure groups and think tanks Where to find external support for campaigning? Which organisations are involved in influencing public campaigning (trade associations, independent think tanks, private consultants)? Finding the right level group: when to contact pan-European and/or national organisations? 12:30 Networking lunch 13:30 Developing strategies for impact How to approach different bodies? How to build negotiation strategies to ensure results? What makes a successful public affairs campaign? Tools to achieve re-negotiation of regulatory conditions in the wireless sector. 15:00 Coffee and discussion 15:30 Case studies Each session will include time for questions and roundtable discussions. Benefits of attending: Improve your knowledge of government and regulatory bodies acting in 3G Find out about strategies to improve campaigns related to wireless issues Learn new negotiation techniques from concrete examples About Edelman: Edelman is the world's largest independent public relations firm, with 1,800 professionals in 39 offices. Edelman' s services in London include : Corporate relations, Investor relations, media analysis, Media relations, media training, monitoring and evaluation, Online Solutions. Edelman's technology department is lead by Imogen Bailey. Sectors covered by Edelman's clients in London include: Mobile Communications, Data storage, Semiconductors, Chips, Software applications. - BOOKINGS - Booking is easy, simply contact Peter Webb on: Telephone: +44 (0)20 8767 6711 Fax: +44 (0)20 8767 5001 Email: mailto:peter.webb@visiongain.com Regards Peter Webb Account manager Email peter.webb@visiongain.com Terms & Conditions Cancellations/substitutions and name changes: All bookings carry a 50% liability after the booking has been made, by post fax, email or web. There will be no refunds for cancellations received on or after one month before the start of the conference (e.g. cancellation on or after 20th January for a conference starting on 20th February). If you decide to cancel after this date the full invoice remains payable. Conference notes, which are available on the day, will be sent to you. Unfortunately we are not able to transfer places between conferences and executive briefings. However if you are unable to attend the event you may make a substitution/name change at any time as long as we are informed in writing by e-mail, fax or post. Name changes and substitutions must be from the same company and are not transferable between companies or countries. Indemnity: visiongain Ltd reserve the right to change the conference/executive briefing content, timing, speakers or venue without notice. The event may be postponed or cancelled due to acts of terrorism, war, extreme weather conditions, industrial action, acts of God or any event beyond the control of visiongain Ltd. If such a situation arises we will endeavour to reschedule the event. However, visiongain Ltd cannot be held responsible for any cost, damage or expenses, which may be incurred by the customer as a consequence of the event being postponed or cancelled. We therefore strongly advise all customers to take out insurance to cover the cost of the registration, travel and expense. ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: One Phone Line and Multiple Extensions + Vonage? Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:20:28 GMT In message <> cscapella@yahoo.com (howard) did ramble: > I am about to start up a new office in which I plan on having about 4 > phones, possibly more in the future. My question is: Is it possible > to have only 1 phone line that can go to any extension and handle > multiple incoming or outgoing calls simultaneously and integrate with > Vonage? > Obviously I want to reduce my local phone company expenses. Would I > be using a phone system like the ATT 4-Line KSU-less phone system to > tie it all together? > Thanks for you help, Short answer, yes I believe that this would work. -- In the 60's people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal. ------------------------------ From: noname Subject: Re: One Phone Line and Multiple Extensions + Vonage? Organization: ATCC Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 15:16:22 GMT In article , cscapella@yahoo.com says: > Hello everyone, > I am about to start up a new office in which I plan on having about 4 > phones, possibly more in the future. My question is: Is it possible > to have only 1 phone line that can go to any extension and handle > multiple incoming or outgoing calls simultaneously and integrate with > Vonage? > Obviously I want to reduce my local phone company expenses. Would I > be using a phone system like the ATT 4-Line KSU-less phone system to > tie it all together? > Thanks for you help, If I'm not mistaken, doesn't the Vonage box provide just one line? If you want to save business costs, let the local phone company drag in a line or two and use them only for incoming. Make the Vonage line outgoing only and default that as the LD line. As to KSU's vs. ksu-less, in my experience the ksu-less are crap. They work fine for a few months and then all hell break loose. Instead, look around for a used KSU system like the Partner Plus, or others on Ebay. Stay far away from any 416 type system though - they are very hard to deal with and use proprietary phones, etc. The Partner stuff can be had cheap but you can even hook standard sets up to it. As an example, I found a Partner Plus system with thirteen Partner phones (5 of which were display phones.) for $550 on ebay a couple years ago. I'd imagine there are similar values. ------------------------------ From: Dave Greenfield Subject: VoIP and Firewalls Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 16:09:28 +0200 Organization: Bezeq International Ltd. Hi all, Has anyone here looked VoIP perimeter security? I'm trying to figure out whether conventional firewalls have the performance & smarts to secure the VoIP perimeter without interfering with VoIP functionality. More specifically are the jitter characteristics and standards-support sufficient to handle a robust, enterprise VoIP deployment, particularly seeing that most firewalls don't implement a SIP/h.323 UA/client, but perform their operations through content inspection. All views can be held on background or for publication -- as you like. I'm really looking more to solicit the minds of leading thinker then engage in a whole PR rigmarole - if you know what I mean. Please reply offline. Thanks, David Greenfield International Technology Editor Network Magazine v 1-516-620--0622 e: dgreenfield@cmp.com IM: NetMagDave (on AIM, Yahoo, and Hotmail) ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: AT&T Wireless Shrinks Its Dowry Date: 23 Jan 2004 10:25:08 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Aude Lagorce, 01.22.04, Forbes.com NEW YORK - In the wake of AT&T Wireless' disappointing fourth-quarter results, a merger with a rival operator now looks more like a shotgun wedding than an alliance of reason. Rumors of consolidation in the wireless telecom industry have long been swirling, but a big merger started looking more probable this week when Cingular Wireless and NTT DoCoMo, Japan's leading mobile operator, both reportedly made bids for AT&T Wireless, the third-largest operator in the U.S. Cingular is co-owned by SBC Communications and BellSouth. In its earnings conference call this morning, AT&T Wireless acknowledged interest from several competitors. Although the firm didn't identify its suitors, it said it would examine the bids, thus confirming speculation that AT&T Wireless is in play. http://www.forbes.com/2004/01/22/cx_al_0122awe.html Eric Friedebach /Mars: northern Nevada without the legal brothels/ ------------------------------ From: rob51166@yahoo.com (Rob) Subject: Re: America's Opinion of AOL Date: 23 Jan 2004 08:32:55 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lightspeed Technical Support wrote in message news:: >> Personally, I think they're scumbags. It is almost impossible to >> cancel service with them. I witnessed a friend of mine on the phone >> with them for an hour trying to cancel his son's AOL account. Seems >> she kept "losing" the account info while he was on the line. You >> know, that crazy computer system, gosh darn ... >> She made him repeat his full name, address, account number, credit > > card number, blood type, etc. at least 4 times during the call. They >> really try to wear you out. Even though it was the parent's credit >> card on the account, AOL had the nerve to tell him they were not >> authorized to cancel the account and the son would need to do it. But >> the son is not 18 yet, so go figure. >> Their intent, in my opinion, is to get you to just hang up in disgust >> and live with the bill for another month. >> -- Paul > Don't know about the US, but my wife worked in billing at AOL Europe. > The call centre down in Waterford had a department referred to as > either "the cancellation department" or "the member save department" > (depending whether or not one was talking to a customer.) These guys > were paid commission for every account they stopped from cancelling, > and were authorised to use all sorts of incentives to entice people to > stay on (my wife's job included auditing all the freebies that the > member save department was giving away.) > mike. BTW, how much would you pay for AOL ADSL in the US? Or any other ISP on ADSL for that matter. TIA! Rob ------------------------------ From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: The Electronic Verification Is in the Mail Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 08:42:56 -0800 Organization: Copyright (c) 2004 by Jack Hamilton. Reply-To: jfh@acm.org Monty Solomon wrote: > The Postal Service, Microsoft and a technology company called > Authentidate have developed a system called Electronic Postmark for > verifying that a document's content is the same as when a user saved > it. The service, introduced in October, is in some ways more a notary > public's stamp than a postmark, intended particularly for those > affixing their electronic signatures to documents relayed online. > http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/22/technology/circuits/22post.html This sounds very similar to the PGP Digital Timestamping Service (http://www.itconsult.co.uk/stamper.htm), which has been around since 1995. In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted comfort and security. And in the end, they lost it all - freedom, comfort and security. Edward Gibbons Jack Hamilton jfh@acm.org ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #35 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Jan 24 13:28:58 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0OISvQ05522; Sat, 24 Jan 2004 13:28:58 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 13:28:58 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401241828.i0OISvQ05522@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 #36 TELECOM Digest Sat, 24 Jan 2004 13:29:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 36 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Consumed: The Treo 600 (Monty Solomon) Study: Ethernet in the City Cuts Carrier Costs (Monty Solomon) Time Is Right For Home Network Appliances, Gadgets (Monty Solomon) A Wireless Deal Could Trouble Gear Makers (Monty Solomon) Dead Cellphone? No Wall Plug? No Worries (Monty Solomon) E-mail Scam Taps Antiterrorist Push, Says FDIC (Monty Solomon) Protect Yourself From Deceptive (Spoofed), Malicious Web Sites (Solomon) 'Exploding' Cell Phone Battery Recalled (Monty Solomon) Legal Battle Over Chat-Room STDs (Monty Solomon) Microsoft Announces Additional Improvements to Protocol (Monty Solomon) Microsoft Settles With Teen Over Web Site (Monty Solomon) Overseas Toll Free Numbers (Michael Quinn) Global Leaders and Thought Leadership in Telecom (Alan Burkitt-Gray) 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: Monty Solomon Subject: Consumed: The Treo 600 Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 23:00:02 -0500 The Treo 600 By ROB WALKER January 25, 2004 As the editor of Gizmodo, a Web log that traffics in the latest news about gadgets from cellphones to laptops, Peter Rojas is bombarded with e-mail from people who want to hear (or spread) the latest gossip about this or that device or innovation. But the anticipation around one particular gizmo stood out over the past year: a so-called smart phone known as the Treo 600, made by PalmOne. The buzz started in June, months before the phone became available in the United States, when a certain photograph was posted on online message boards. The photo of company executives at a press conference had been blown up to highlight a prototype of the device that one of them was holding. "People were going crazy," Rojas says. It's startling that anybody could be excited by the appearance of yet another cellphone -- particularly one that costs around $500. But the Treo 600 is a kind of Swiss Army knife of gadgetry: it's a phone; it's a text-messaging device with a full (if teensy) keyboard; it's a personal digital assistant; it has a camera; and you can use it to surf the Web. It weighs about six ounces. Advertising Age named it the No. 1 'must-have' product for 2004. In a December online poll by M.I.T.'s Technology Review magazine meant to gauge the gift cravings of its readers, smart phones like the new Treo trailed only the iPod. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/magazine/25CONSUMED.html http://www.bargainpda.com/price/default.asp?productID=1161&brandName=Palm&productName=Treo+610&display=priceDetail http://www.bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=1854&showComments=true ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: Study: Ethernet in the City Cuts Carrier Costs Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 23:15:47 -0500 By Marguerite Reardon Staff Writer, CNET News.com Telephone companies could cut their operating costs by 23 percent a year by using Ethernet services in their metropolitan area networks instead of traditional telecommunications services, according to a new study. The study, scheduled to be released Monday, found that carriers could reduce their operational costs by 18 percent during the first year of a three-year network implementation. The potential savings rise to 20 percent in the second year and roughly 24 percent in the third year, according to the study, which was commissioned by the Metro Ethernet Forum, a marketing group made up of equipment vendors and service providers. PointEast Research, which conducted the survey, compiled results based on interviews and data provided by 36 European and North American carriers, including British Telecom, BellSouth, SBC Communications, France Telecom, and Time Warner Telecom. http://news.com.com/2100-1037-5146740.html ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: Time Is Right For Home Network Appliances, Gadgets Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 23:41:53 -0500 By Leslie Walker LAS VEGAS It wasn't Microsoft's data wristwatch, nor the high-tech toilet, nor even the Web-connected bread maker on display here that got me thinking about how the Internet is insinuating itself into the mundane parts of our lives. It was the Internet alarm clock. For years I have wanted to wake up to a bedside clock that displays news headlines and a local weather forecast. When my eyes first open, I don't want music or radio chatter. A brief buzzing sound and short text newscast would ease me out of bed just fine. So I was intrigued at the Consumer Electronics Show last week to see that Salton Inc. has put the digital command post for its new line of networked home appliances inside a clock radio with a CD player and small display screen. You program the $499 clock from a Web page to show your favorite news, sports and stock quotes. You can also use it to remotely turn on the $99 Salton coffee pot in your kitchen, say, using the same radio frequency as cordless phones. Salton calls its stainless steel clock a "home hub." It was one of many master control systems on display here designed to give people a unified way to manage the explosion of new digital devices being hooked up to home networks. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18243-2004Jan14.html ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: A Wireless Deal Could Trouble Gear Makers Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 00:21:56 -0500 By BARNABY J. FEDER The announcement this week that AT&T Wireless, the nation's third-largest cellular company, is for sale adds uncertainty to growth projections for wireless equipment suppliers at an especially sensitive moment for investors, according to industry analysts. Increased demand for wireless networking equipment helped companies like Lucent Technologies ,Motorola ,Nortel Networks and Nokia achieve solid earnings and revenue growth for the last quarter of 2003 and sent stock prices soaring. But some fund managers are worrying that the stocks have climbed so far, so quickly that they will tumble at the slightest disappointment. Indeed, share prices for the major companies in the sector, except Nokia, which reported earnings on Thursday, have already retreated from 52-week highs achieved in recent days. The many unknowns contributing to the uncertainty include who will buy AT&T Wireless, which is based in Redmond, Wash., and when the deal could be completed. Some analysts are not yet convinced that any deal will be struck. The major equipment companies declined to comment on the potential impact of a deal, or did not return calls seeking comment. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/24/technology/24gear.html ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: Dead Cellphone? No Wall Plug? No Worries Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 10:50:54 -0500 By WALTER S. MOSSBERG Cellphones aren't just phones anymore -- they're e-mail machines, cameras, game consoles and more. But all of these new functions just put more stress on one of the phones' main weaknesses -- short-lived batteries. Unless you bulk up your slender phone with a huge extra-size battery, using all the new services can drain power quickly and force you to find a wall plug or car cigarette lighter. But there are several portable chargers on the market that claim to stave off the dreaded dead battery, without requiring you to plug into an electrical outlet. This week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested three of these devices. They range in price from about $6 to $25, and each uses a different method for producing a charge. None replace the phone's battery itself. They replenish the phone's own battery, essentially simulating what happens when you plug in a standard wall charger. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20040114.html ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: E-mail Scam Taps Antiterrorist Push, says FDIC Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 11:21:01 -0500 By Robert Lemos Staff Writer, CNET News.com The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the national insurer of U.S. bank accounts, warned Americans on Friday that a convincing e-mail scam is making the rounds. The fraudulent e-mail claims to be from the FDIC and informs recipients that their bank account has been denied insurance as a result of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security into "suspected violations of the Patriot Act." The USA PATRIOT Act, which was passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, gives broad powers to law enforcement to combat terrorism. http://news.com.com/2100-7349-5146716.html ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: Protect Yourself From Deceptive (Spoofed), Malicious Web Sites Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 11:56:58 -0500 Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 833786 Steps that you can take to help identify and to help protect yourself from deceptive (spoofed) Web sites and malicious hyperlinks SUMMARY When you point to a hyperlink in Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook Express, or Microsoft Outlook, the address of the Web site typically appears in the Status bar at the bottom of the window. After you click a link that opens in Internet Explorer, the address of the Web site typically appears in the Internet Explorer Address bar, and the title of the Web page typically appears in the Title bar of the window. However, a malicious user could create a link to a deceptive (spoofed) Web site that displays the address, or URL, to a legitimate Web site in the Status bar, Address bar, and Title bar. This article describes steps that you can take to help mitigate this issue and to help you to identify a deceptive (spoofed) Web site or URL. http://support.microsoft.com/?id=833786 ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: 'Exploding' Cell Phone Battery Recalled Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 12:01:46 -0500 By Ben Charny Staff Writer, CNET News.com The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued its first-ever recall of a cell phone battery on Friday, sparking new concern about the safety of a gadget in the hands, pockets and purses of 155 million Americans. The voluntary recall affects Kyocera Wireless model 7135 smart phones sold between September and December, bought either online or in stores belonging to Verizon Wireless, Arkansas-based Alltel or Chicago-based US Cellular. The handsets use batteries manufactured by Coslight International Group of Hong Kong, and have a serial number on the underside that begins "-05". San Diego-based Kyocera said on Friday that it is trying to reach all 40,000 people who bought the cell phone in order to arrange for delivery of a free replacement. On four occasions, the batteries in the Kyocera phones have short-circuited and heated up enough to trigger a built-in safety mechanism that vents superheated gases in order to avoid an explosion, according to the safety commission. On Dec. 6, a Philadelphia-area man suffered second-degree burns on his leg when the spare cell phone battery in his pocket vented, it said. In the three other instances, the batteries were connected to the Kyocera 7135, but the phones were not being held or close to a person when they vented, according to Kyocera. http://news.com.com/2100-1039-5146534.html ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: Legal Battle Over Chat-Room STDs Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 12:05:27 -0500 By Randy Dotinga Frustrated by America Online's refusal to interfere with its huge network of chat rooms, public health officials are considering legal action to force AOL and certain websites to warn members about outbreaks of sexually transmitted diseases among gay men who use their services. http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62005,00.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would like to ask Mr. Dotinga *why* are the 'public heath officials' picking on gay guys about this? One cannot get AIDS or other venereal deseases by chatting on a computer, however if people choose to arrange a meeting after a chat room discussion, that is another thing, but not just gay gays. AOL nor any other ISP can do anything about people arranging to meet personally at a later time. That's a purely personal decision, and just limited to gay guys. Why did Mr. Dotinga and wired.com report something like this? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: Microsoft Announces Additional Improvements to Protocol Licensing Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 20:12:56 -0500 Changes Include Simplified Terms and New Cost Structure REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced that it will make additional changes to its Communications Protocol Licensing Program that will further improve the program and make licensing easier and more attractive. The changes respond to feedback and suggestions made by the government and industry through the consent decree compliance process. The new licensing terms will be posted on the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) Web site. The changes, which are part of the company's ongoing effort to improve the program, include shortening and simplifying the license agreement, making approximately 20 protocols available without charge, making other protocols used to perform particular tasks available for a fixed fee or fixed fee per unit, and changing the evaluation program to provide prospective licensees with samples of the technical documentation with no confidentiality restrictions. Microsoft established the MCPP in accordance with the final judgment in its antitrust case with the Department of Justice and a number of State Attorneys General as part of its overall compliance responsibilities under the final judgment. Under the program, third-party developers can obtain licenses to protocol technology developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows(R) family of client and server operating systems. Developers can implement Microsoft's protocol technology in their own server products to improve interoperability with Windows. The MCPP was released in August 2002. To date, 11 companies have taken licenses to implement Microsoft's protocols in their products. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40291257 ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: Microsoft Settles With Teen Over Web Site Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 20:18:41 -0500 SEATTLE, Jan 23 (Reuters) - In the end, it paid to be Mike Rowe. The 17-year-old Canadian teenager who caught the attention of Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ:MSFT) lawyers by registering www.mikerowesoft.com, agreed on Friday to give up his Web site in exchange from some perks from the world's largest software maker. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40301045 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:57:13 -0500 From: Michael Quinn Organization: Booz Allen Hamilton Subject: Overseas Toll Free Numbers Some of the Military departments recently instituted a worldwide community services help line. One of the items that caught my eye in the advisory was access from overseas via an "OCONUS (Outside the CONtintal US) universal free phone at 800-5404-xxxx (with appropriate country specific toll free access codes)". Note the number is 11 digits, not 10 like here in the US. I've heard of intra-country toll free numbers, but not this. Anyone know how this works, or what a country-specific-toll-free-code consists of? Does the user still pay for a local call, and the toll-free number owner picks up the balance of the overseas call cost? This is a nice service, especially for those in isolated locations away from the US. By the way, thanks for all of the responses and suggestions on my query about wireless home networks from last week. I learned a lot; I have more research to do, but will be very security conscious if I choose to go that route. Regards, Mike Quinn Springfield VA ------------------------------ From: Alan Burkitt-Gray Subject: Global Leaders and Thought Leadership in Telecommunications Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:47:19 -0000 I'd be grateful if I ask for Digest readers' help and advice with a project we're working on at *Global Telecoms Business magazine*. Who are the thought leaders in the telecommunications industry in 2004? We want to identify some of the key people who are making and will make most impact on the industry with their strategies, their imagination and their thought leadership. All I want from list members are a couple of names of the people we should be considering. They will already have, or will shortly acquire, world standing in the industry. In September 2004 the team here at *Global Telecoms Business* magazine in London will be producing a publication looking at the key figures in the industry throughout the world and the pressing issues that are facing them. We will profile these top people and their ideas, alongside some analytical chapters and articles looking at the industry's challenges for the next five or ten years. We already have our draft list of the 50 or so people we think are saying the things that are giving the industry sleepless nights, the people who must be listened to by all those who are serious about doing business in telecoms in the future. We will pick the final list on the merits of the individuals and the contributions they are making, or will make, to the industry. It will be a real guide to the future. But I bet I've missed some people, especially those whose main impact is yet to be felt. They might just now be introducing radical ideas into incumbents; they might be running competitive providers which are poised for expansion; they might be in start-ups with extraordinary ideas. On the other hand, they might be financiers or investors with plans to restructure the industry; or lawmakers or regulators who are about to change the competitive framework. They might be working with a supplier of software or hardware or for a content provider with a service or product that will turn the industry on its head. They might be in a university or corporate lab and be about to move into their first Apple-style garage. Send me a couple of names, off list, with details of where I can find them (organization, email address, phone number, whatever you can) and a few words about why you think we should consider them for our list of global leaders in thought leadership in the telecoms industry. Many thanks, Alan Burkitt-Gray Editor, Global Telecoms Business Euromoney Institutional Investor plc, Nestor House, Playhouse Yard, London EC4V 5EX, UK tel +44 20 7779 8518 fax +44 20 7779 8248 e-mail aburkitt@euromoneyplc.com http://www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #36 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Jan 24 15:25:30 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0OKPUq06245; Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:25:30 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:25:30 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401242025.i0OKPUq06245@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 #37 TELECOM Digest Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:25:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 37 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Call For Papers: Ubicomp 2004 (Fahd) Enforcing the Do Not Call List (jmayson@nyx.net) Habeas and Mozilla (Matthew Elvey) Re: One Phone Line and Multiple Extensions + Vonage? (SELLCOM Tech) Difference Between Framed and Unframed T1's (Dana) Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers (Alan Burkitt-Grey) Colorizing the Digest (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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: albinali@cs.arizona.edu (Fahd) Subject: Call For Papers: Ubicomp 2004 Date: 24 Jan 2004 04:03:15 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com CALL FOR PAPERS UBICOMP 2004 The 6th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing 7-10 September, 2004 Nottingham, UK www.ubicomp.org You are invited to contribute original and exciting ideas to UbiComp 2004, the Sixth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing. UbiComp is the premier venue for presenting research and development achievements in the design, implementation, deployment and evaluation of computing technology that migrates beyond our desktops and becomes increasingly embedded in a wide variety of other objects. Submissions to UbiComp 2004 must be original, unpublished work and may not be simultaneously submitted to any other conference or journal. Papers will be included in the Conference Proceedings published by Springer-Verlag in the series Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). Each conference attendee will receive a printed copy of the proceedings; additional copies can be purchased through Springer-Verlag. The proceedings will also be made available through digital libraries. Submissions must be in the LNCS format; full instructions and templates are available at: http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html A Conference Supplement, containing extended abstracts for Interactive Posters, Demonstrations, Videos, Doctoral Colloquium papers, and Workshop and Panel descriptions, will be printed and given to conference attendees. Electronic versions of these materials will also be posted on the UbiComp web site. Submissions for these participation categories must use the ACM SIGCHI conference publications format. Full papers: For Ubicomp 2004 we are soliciting high quality technical papers that describe original, unpublished research on handheld, mobile or ubiquitous computing. Potential areas of interest include: technologies, methodologies and formalisms to support ubiquitous computing and the development of ubiquitous computing applications (e.g. novel devices, system software, software engineering techniques and interaction methods); reports on experiences of designing, developing, deploying and living with ubiquitous computing systems; and, studies of the wider implications of ubiquitous computing. We are particularly seeking papers appropriate to the interdisciplinary community represented at the UbiComp 2004 conference. Submissions should report concrete, transferable results that contribute to our understanding of ubiquitous computing and help advance the state-of-the-art. Papers will be evaluated on the basis of originality, significance of the contribution to the field, technical correctness and presentation. All papers will be peer-reviewed by members of the UbiComp 2004 program committee and by additional members of the ubiquitous computing research community. Papers submitted to UbiComp 2004 must not be under simultaneous review for any other conference, journal, workshop or other publication. Technical papers should be no longer than 18 pages, including an abstract of no more than 100 words, all figures and references, and should be formatted according to the Springer-Verlag LNCS format. In contrast to previous Ubicomp conferences there are no separate categories for long and short papers; all papers will be considered as full papers and should be an appropriate length for their content. Accepted papers will be published in the UbiComp 2004 Proceedings and authors are, of course, required to attend the conference to present their work. UbiComp 2004 submissions should be properly anonymized to facilitate blind reviewing: papers being submitted should not list the authors, affiliations or addresses on the first page -- to preserve formatting, it would be best to leave these sections blank. Author, affiliation and address information should still be filled out on the electronic form for submitting the paper, and final camera-ready copies should have this information included. Authors are also encouraged to take care throughout the entire document to minimize references that may reveal the identity of the authors or institutions. UbiComp 2004 requires electronic submission. Reviewers will be instructed to maintain the confidentiality of all materials for submitted papers throughout the entire reviewing process. Submissions should contain no information that will be proprietary or confidential at the time of publication. Full submission details are available at www.ubicomp.org Deadline for Submission: Papers due midnight GMT on March 12th 2004. Panels: Panels provide a forum in which to examine innovative, provocative, controversial, or late-breaking issues. The best panels are often structured as a debate with an opportunity for audience participation. We are open to innovative formats including live demonstrations and/or technology competitions. Panel proposals should be no longer than 4 pages in the ACM SIGCHI conference publications format, and should include the panel topic, the names of panelists who have agreed to participate, one paragraph biographical sketches describing each panelists' expertise, a position statement by each panelist, an overview of the ways in which the position statements relate to each other, and the proposed structure or format of the panel. If supporting technologies are required, proposals should clearly list these. Abstracts of accepted Panel proposals will be published in the Conference Supplement that will be circulated to attendees at the conference. Further Submission Details to Follow Deadline for Submission: May 7th 2004 Videos: Videos are a great way to present innovations in ubiquitous computing, especially for those systems that would be particularly difficult to deploy at the conference for a live demonstration. Authors who are considering submissions in other participation categories are also encouraged to consider submitting formal videos that illustrate their work. Video submissions should be 4 to 8 minutes long. Longer videos will be subject to stricter review criteria. Authors must also submit a short paper abstract with a maximum of 2 pages in the ACM SIGCHI conference publications format, including all figures and references, for each video submission. A panel of international reviewers will review videos for their technical content, interest and relevance to the ubiquitous computing community, communication effectiveness, and production quality. The video program will be playing continuously at the conference and will be published on a DVD+R and distributed to conference attendees. Abstracts of accepted Videos will be published in the Conference Supplement that will be circulated to attendees at the conference. Further Submission Details to Follow Deadline for Submission: May 7th 2004 Workshops: Workshops provide an opportunity to discuss and explore emerging areas of ubiquitous computing research with a group of like-minded researchers and practitioners. Workshops may focus on any aspect of ubiquitous computing, established concerns or new ideas. The goal of the workshop is to share understandings and experiences, to foster research communities, to learn from each other and to envision future directions. Workshop proposals should be no longer than 4 pages in the ACM SIGCHI conference publications format, and should include a summary of no more than 150 words describing the theme(s) of the workshop, a longer description of the workshop activities and goals, the background of the organizer(s), the maximum number of participants, the means of soliciting participation, and the means of selecting participants. Workshops will be held on September 7th the day before the main conference. Opportunities will be available for the outcome of workshops to be reported to the rest of the UbiComp 2004 conference Abstracts of accepted Workshop proposals will be published in the Conference Supplement that will be circulated to attendees at the conference. Further Submission Details to Follow Deadline for Submission: May 7th 2004 Posters: Posters provide an opportunity for researchers to present work in a more open format where authors interact directly with groups of conference attendees. We especially encourage submission of late-breaking and preliminary results, smaller results not suitable for a full Paper, innovative ideas not yet validated through user studies, student research, and other research best presented in this open format. Poster submissions should include an extended abstract of no longer than 2 pages in the ACM SIGCHI conference publications format, including all figures and references. Submissions may also include a separate description of the poster for review purposes, also limited to two pages; this description is encouraged for posters that have an interactive or visual component that is not easily determined from the abstract. Accepted Poster abstracts will be published in a Conference Supplement that will be circulated to attendees at the conference. Further Submission Details to Follow Deadline for Submission: June 11th 2004 Demonstrations: We seek proposals for demonstrations of ubiquitous computing technologies across the full milieu of everyday life: office, home, street, park, train, automobile, bedroom, bathroom, work, play, desktop, handheld, worn, public, private, community, individual, shared, and personal. We welcome a wide range of submission from scenarios involving innovative solutions of focused tasks as well as playful pursuits. We particularly encourage demonstrations that include participation by conference attendees and provoke discussion about issues within the field of ubiquitous computing. All submissions will be peer-reviewed to ensure a high quality demonstrations program. Research prototypes, provocative concept demonstrations, and commercial products are welcome. However, this forum is not an opportunity for marketing or sales presentations. Presenters must have been directly involved with the development of the system and be able to explain the differentiating and novel contributions of the system. Demonstrations of previously introduced technologies are welcome. Further Submission Details to Follow Deadline for Submission: June 11th 2004 Doctoral Colloquium: The Doctoral Colloquium is a forum in which Ph.D. students can meet and discuss their work with each other and a panel of experienced UbiComp researchers and practitioners. We welcome applicants from a broad range of disciplines and approaches that inform ubiquitous computing, including computer science, engineering, cognitive science, sociology, and related fields. Applicants should be beyond the proposal stage and into their dissertation research. The Colloquium committee will select approximately 10 participants who will be expected to give short, informal presentations of their work during the Colloquium, to be followed by a discussion. Submissions should be no longer than 2 pages including an abstract of no more than 100 words and a description of the work in progress. In addition, a 2-3 paragraph biographical sketch should be supplied. Submissions should be formatted according to the ACM SIGCHI conference publications format. The Doctoral Colloquium will be held on September 7th, the day before the main conference. Doctoral Colloquium papers will be published in the Conference Supplement that will be circulated to attendees at the conference. Further Submission Details to Follow Deadline for Submission: June 11th 2004 Student volunteers: Student volunteers provide the backbone of any successful conference. Accepted volunteers are expected to work in scheduled sessions during the conference, but will also be given great opportunities to attend the program and socialize. All student volunteers will receive a free registration to the conference (including meals & special events). SV Chair: Elaine May Huang, Georgia Tech Deadline for Submission: June 11th 2004 ------------------------------ From: jmayson@nyx.net Subject: Enforcing the Do Not Call List Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 02:02:07 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com I am on the state and national Do Not Call lists. My local phone company is SBC. I changed my local and long-distance calling plans and the net result was I lost "privacy manager" which re-directs private callers to a service that requests their name before passing the call along. The change went into effect sometime today. Between 5 and 7 pm I received calls from three different telemarketers. The first one came up on my CID as "Private Caller". My wife is traveling to a rural part of the state so I decided I had better answer. It was not her. The next two were odd. My CID came up "Incoming Call 000-000-0000". The third caller ticked me off. I told him I wasn't interested and hung up. He called back, commented on my phone manners and asked to speak to my "mommy or daddy". I explained to him I'm 34 years-old and my parents live in another state. I went on to explain I am on the state and national do not call lists. Before I could get that all out he hung up on me. I only challenged the first and third callers (the second time he called) but in both cases when I started to tell them I was on the Do Not Call list, they hung up. What is our recourse? I cannot identify these callers since they're blocking their information. Do I need to play along to get enough information to report them? Before I close let me tell you what gall some do have. Before the national list went into effect, but after I was on the state list, I got a call from a local Austin number. It was a telemarketer. I told him I was on the state's list and he told me he was exempted. I asked how and he said because he was a "registered business". He was selling stock tips, that's hardly a non-profit or political entity. I said I planned to report him and he told me to go ahead, he wasn't afraid of the law and said the state wouldn't touch him. I do know the state PUC has teeth. I was slammed a couple of years ago and the PUC handled my complaint very quickly, not to mention had already fined this company twice then fined them again after my complaint. John Mayson Austin, Texas, USA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some of them can be just awful. Among the worst are the telemarketers from AT&T and SBC (the companies) who use the 'established business relationship already exists' excuse for calling. I received several calls daily over a period of a month or so from a North Carolina number with no name given on the caller ID asking for a person who does not exist (or at least does not possess the phone number of my distinctive ring-ring line). The different callers would call once or twice daily looking for this person, then usually hang up rudely when they found out he was not around here. Never any names were given. After this went on for quite a while, I checked by caller ID and decided to call back and have a *firm* discussion with the people. I rang the long distance number in North Carolina only to reach a recorded message: 'This is AT&T. To reach someone in our sales and marketing area, you must hang up and call us at the offices listed in your phone directory.' The good people at SBC said they could do nothing about it; after all, they met our criteria for putting the call through, at least a phone number was displayed even if not a name. Useless SBC! ... Anyway this went on so long (even while I was talking to SBC I got a call- waiting signal from the AT&T bunch trying to reach the mystery man) I finally called a few numbers in New Jersey for AT&T and eventually reached someone who knew what I was talking about and their excuse for the repeated calls was 'we have a business relationship with (the mystery man) and our phone people just connect with the phone number shown on their computer (a predictive dialer thing) and there is no way we can remove the computer entry, so you will just keep on getting calls. No way to control the computer, indeed! In the course of the conversation she finally figured out a way to 'get the computer under control' but I had to go through hell with her matching up my name, address and ownership of the phone number against her records. And would you believe -- just believe and marvel at this -- before she finally agreed that the calls would stop (in a day or two, as soon as the files are updated), did I want to subscribe to their long distance service? Imagine having brass bedsprings like that! She really thought that despite the hassles I had had with the distinctive ring-ring line on account of her company's calls I would be interested. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Habeas and Mozilla From: Matthew Elvey Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 02:05:23 GMT John Levine wrote: > ... I'm on Habeas' nearly unpaid advisory board... It would be nice if they'd update http://www.habeas.com/configurationPages/mozilla.htm ! I've emailed 'em about it thrice. Mozilla has supported habeas headers for months now: http://www.elvey.com/it/HabeasHeadersInMozilla.html Firstname@lastname . com ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: One Phone Line and Multiple Extensions + Vonage? Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 03:50:04 GMT cscapella@yahoo.com (howard) posted on that vast internet thingie: > I am about to start up a new office in which I plan on having about 4 > phones, possibly more in the future. My question is: Is it possible > to have only 1 phone line that can go to any extension and handle > multiple incoming or outgoing calls simultaneously and integrate with > Vonage? I don't think you can get multiple conversations on one phone line unless I am way behind the times. I don't see how a VOIP could do very well with just a dialup either. Am I missing something major here? Steve at SELLCOM http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Talkswitch, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Minuteman UPS systems If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Vonage only supports one connection at a time; the typical broadband (or high speed cable/DSL) hookup to the net just isn't large enough for more. That's why Vonage does not advertise or support conference calls, although I have tried it by quickly flashing the hook, dialing a second number then doing a quick hook flash again to join the parties and myself, i,e, a 'three-way call'. It works, but the connection sounds like pooh. Now on the other hand, you *can* terminate Vonage on a multiple line phone along with other more conventional service, and you can have 'extension' phones wired in parallel/serial behind the Vonage box, but with *one call/multiple participants on the same call.* I think the Vonage ATA-186 can handle up to a REM of 3. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dana <***@&^&.com> Subject: Difference Between Framed and Unframed T1's Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:17:19 -0900 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com What is the difference between unframed and framed T1's? When would you use one over the other? Which is the more common type used? Thanks. -- Atheism teaches that there is no God, hence no God-given rights. That ideology coupled with a system that believed in the superiority of the state at the expense of the individual was murderously synergistic. ------------------------------ From: Alan Burkitt-Gray Subject: Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 19:08:36 -0000 Michael Quinn asked: > Some of the Military departments recently instituted a worldwide > community services help line. One of the items that caught my eye in > the advisory was access from overseas via an "OCONUS (Outside the > CONtintal US) universal free phone at 800-5404-xxxx (with > appropriate country specific toll free access codes)". Note the > number is 11 digits, not 10 like here in the US. I've heard of > intra-country toll free numbers, but not this. Anyone know how this > works, or what a country-specific-toll-free-code consists of?" Michael, it's *not* via a local toll-free access code or local paid-for call, but via the normal international access code for the country you're calling from. About 5-10 years ago the International Telecommunication (no S) Union designated +800 as a "country code", but for international toll-free access -- in just the way that 800 in North America is like an "area code" but for toll-free access. The + sign in front of the ITU's code means you dial**, instead of the +, whichever is the international access code used in that country. So in most of the world, from Norway to New Zealand, you'd dial 00 instead of the +, but 011 from North America, and 0011 from Australia. In just the same way you'd dial a call to me in London, England, (country code +44) starting 011 44 from North America, 0011 44 from Australia and 011 44 from the US and Canada. The idea is that a +800 xxxx xxxx number can be dialled free of charge from anywhere in the world, and the recipient pays the tab: no local access charges, in the same way as you wouldn't expect to feed coins into a US payphone to dial an 800 number. In practice availability varies from country to country and telco to telco -- though I guess most of the world's main operators now implement it. The system is already in use by many of the main hotel chains. For example the Hilton group gives +800 4445 8667 on its website (the numbers translate to +800 HHILTONS, and it's very similar to its US toll-free number +1-800 445 8667). The Lego toy company can be dialled from most of Europe -- except for Italy and Austria -- on +800 5346 1111 (which translates to +800 LEGO 1111). And so on. Alan Burkitt-Gray Editor, Global Telecoms Business aburkitt@euromoneyplc.com ** Most GSM mobile phones allow you to dial + directly from the keypad, and to program it into your member, and all GSM operators have to recognize it as a valid alternative to the usual local access code. It means you can program your phone with numbers that will work anywhere.** ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 14:14:42 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Colorizing the Digest Regular readers of this Digest know there are various ways to read the news I present each day. The traditional way is by subscription to the mailing list (since 1981) or reading Usenet and the comp.dcom.telecom newsgroup (since about the same time). But then in 1995 in order to 'keep up with the times' a web based version was started. There are two ways to read the Digest via the web: The messages printed each day are piped into and through 'hypermail', a software program which takes all the messages, one by one, and displays them 'Usenet style' in our own 'newsgroup' called TELECOM_Digest_Online. An improvement (I think) on traditional Usenet, hypermail creates html indexes which sorts the contents (usually about the last two thousand or so messages) to be read by date, author, subject or thread. This enables you, the reader, to scan the preferred index and select only those things which you have an interest in reading or following. The other way to read via the web ( http://telecom-digest.org ) is a sort of hybrid thing I put together several years ago called 'latest- issue.html' which takes whatever the latest issue of the Digest happens to be and with a bit of html and perl 'magic' takes the Digest as the mailing list readers see it and displays the entire latest issue out in html style (using the 'pre' and '/pre' tags among other things) to maintain the margins, line breaks, etc in that version, which can be viewed by anyone at our web site by clicking on the top page to any of the links entitled 'read latest issue now'. It is this last method for reading the Digest which has been improved as of today. One of our very intelligent (more so than myself, at least, given the severity of my brain desease) users, Jeff Mattox, wrote to me recently to say he preferred that format since he liked scanning through the Digest rather than Usenet message-by-message or traditional mailing list. But his question was, 'is there any way to make the subject lines stand out easily when reading through the (otherwise ASCII script) on that edition?' After reviewing the script I use to create that page, Jeff said, "well, if you replace that three letter word 'cat' in the code you use with 'perl (and a string of etcetera following it)', you will get the results you want. He was right! I tried it, and it worked, and now 'latest.issue.html' is colorized with subject lines and my usual postamble to the mailing list edition standing out colorfully! Try it and see if you like the arrangment. So, **thank you very much** Jeff Mattox, for this very valuable improvement in my scripts used here to produce TELECOM Digest each day. Patrick Townson Editor/Publisher TELECOM Digest ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #37 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jan 25 00:09:10 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0P59An08943; Sun, 25 Jan 2004 00:09:10 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 00:09:10 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401250509.i0P59An08943@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 #38 TELECOM Digest Sun, 25 Jan 2004 00:09:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 38 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Suspected Movie Pirate Arrested / Charge Filed (Monty Solomon) CDs Will Die But Not Music May be a Business Bubble (Monty Solomon) Netopia Pushes Wi-Fi Cordless Phones (Monty Solomon) AOL Tests Caller ID For E-Mail (Monty Solomon) Week in Review: Copyright Fights (Monty Solomon) Need Telephone Selection Advice for Small Business (VITO) Re: NANP Numbering (Paul Robinson) Re: Time Is Right For Home Network Appliances, Gadgets (SELLCOM Tech) Last Laugh! was Re: Enforcing the Do Not Call List (Fred Atkinson) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 14:59:42 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Suspected Movie Pirate Arrested / Charge Filed An actor's friend is linked to unauthorized copies of 'screeners' found on the Internet. By Lorenza Munoz and Patrick Day, Times Staff Writers The FBI arrested an Illinois man Thursday on criminal charges in connection with bootlegged copies of "The Last Samurai" and other Oscar candidates that have turned up on the Internet in recent weeks. http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-arrest23jan23,1,4614018.story Charge Filed in Posting of Oscar Candidates on Web By Lorenza Munoz, Times Staff Writer A man arrested on suspicion of helping to illegally post on the Internet films that are being considered for Oscars was formally charged Friday with violating Hollywood studios' copyrights. http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-screeners24jan24,0,6309974.story FBI agents arrest Homewood man Suburban movie buff tied to Oscar `screeners' By Todd Lighty and Rudolph Bush Tribune staff reporters A federal investigation into pirated movies abruptly shifted Thursday from Hollywood to south suburban Homewood, where FBI agents raided a house and accused its owner with posting popular films on the Internet. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0401230025jan23,1,4481448.story ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:07:44 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: CDs Will Die but Net Music Subject: Netopia Pushes Wi-Fi Cordless Phones By Marguerite Reardon Staff Writer, CNET News.com Broadband equipment maker Netopia on Friday announced a program designed to spur manufacturers to develop more Wi-Fi cordless phones. The company's certification program is meant to aid any Wi-Fi cordless phone manufacturer or developer that uses the 802.11b or 802.11g Wi-Fi standards. The program ensures Wi-Fi cordless phone interoperability through Netopia's 3-D Reach wireless digital subscriber line and broadband gateways. http://news.com.com/2100-7351-5146332.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:28:53 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AOL Tests caller ID For E-Mail By Stefanie Olsen Staff Writer, CNET News.com America Online is testing an antispam filter intended to accurately trace the origin of e-mail messages, a move that could bring new accountability to the Net if it proves reliable. The online unit of media giant Time Warner last week implemented SPF, or Sender Permitted From, an emerging authentication protocol for preventing e-mail forgeries, or spoofing. The trial involves the company's 33 million subscribers worldwide and is the first large-scale test for the protocol, which standards groups are considering along with various other e-mail verification proposals. http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5145065.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 14:32:09 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Week in Review: Copyright Fights By Steven Musil Staff Writer, CNET News.com The technology world kept court dockets full this week as the recording industry sued hundreds of people it can't yet name, the SCO Group got tough with rival Novell, and Microsoft got a little too rough with a Canadian teenager. http://news.com.com/2100-1083-5146049.html ------------------------------ From: CROPSEYIRONWORKS@AOL.COM (VITO) Subject: Need Telephone Selection Advice for Small Business Date: 24 Jan 2004 18:56:46 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com We are changing our current telephone service from three incoming lines down to one line with call forwarding call, waiting, and conferance calling. We're also adding dsl service to replace an existing telephone line dedicated to our computors dial up. We now use an 'AT&T Merlin System' that previously "rolled over" incoming calls, forwarded calls, provided conferencing, and also provided our 'PA' system.. Now with the advent of call waiting, call forwarding, conferance calling, we really want to 'strip out' the existing system and hope to simplify and cut service costs i.e. additional lines, without losing any of our existing features. We operate a small ironworks shop and due to the frequent high noise levels we installed "phone flashers" & buzzers to the shop. Three questions. 1)What's a good business phone with a max of two incoming lines? 2) Do 'hold' buttons work between three extensions? Can we have intercom without having a proprietary system included i.e. Avaya? ------------------------------ From: Paul Robinson Organization: elusive-butterfly.net Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 21:10:04 GMT Rob wrote: > OK, I know that this may very well seem a dumb question, but why is > the NANP numbering system different to other phone systems throughout > the world? Probably because it's older than anyone else's, as the telephone system started in the U.S. (as it was invented there simultaneously by two different people, Bell and Gray) and was implemented here first. If you don't think how a system is first set up can affect things for decades or even a century or more, look at your keyboard and realize the QWERTY pattern was developed back in the 1880s to *slow people down* on manual typewriters that would jam. We're still using a system designed to slow down people more than 120 years later, when typewriters themselves are almost extinct. > The vast majority of countries in the world have area codes beginning > with '0', whereas in NANP countries the area code commences with '1', > and then numbers on the same area code, or even numbers in > neighbouring codes (i.e. 919, 252 and 304), aren't always regarded as > local, as they are here in the UK. For example, my local calling area > not only covers my own exchange (01685) but also all numbers on the > neighbouring exchanges of 01443, 01639, 01874 and 01495. It depends on where you live and where you are calling. Some nearby places are non-toll calls, some others are not. Again, it's historical and has nothing to do with how much it costs to provide a connection or how much it is worth, but was generally based on some bargaining between the original landline telephone monopoly and the state Public Utility Commission decades ago on how much certain calls would cost and what would or would not be long distance. > Also, how are calls charged between countries within NANP -- that > is, is a call from Canada or the US to Bermuda or Barbados regarded as > international, even though they're technically (I think!) on the same > phone system? The first three digits of a NANP (North America except Mexico and Cuba) phone number determine what country it is in, and if it's the U.S. or Canada, the state or province as well. The next three digits determine the 'rate center' where the called subscriber is presumed to be located. Note this is a total fiction if the phone number is a service code such as toll-free 800, 888, 877, 866 etc., premium 900, carrier 700, or personal 500. And it's merely the location for terminating billing purposes if the number is a mobile phone, which is why when a friend of mine called my Sprint PCS number when I was on vacation with my family in Niagara Falls a couple of years ago, the phone rang when I had it with me in Canada even though the phone number is a Virginia 703 area code. The call terminated in Canada, the caller was charged for a call to Virginia even though the network may have routed it directly to me without it ever even going to Virginia. For calls from wired telephones, the rate structure is generally as follows: All dialed calls are based on two factors, the first 6 digits of the caller and the first 6 digits of the called party. Given that, you have any of the following possible rate structures: (1) intrastate local call, which may or may not be free, or may be a message unit; (2) interstate local call; (3) intrastate intra-LATA toll call which may or may not be free depending on whether the user has paid for extended area service; and may be more expensive than one outside the state; (4) intra-LATA interstate toll call; (5) inter-LATA interstate toll call, which might be cheaper than an intrastate toll call or even an intra-LATA interstate toll call, again because of the original negotiated rates between the original monopoly provider (now referred to as an ILEC) and the state regulatory authorities (or the FCC if the local or intra-LATA calling area crossed a state line when it was first established) and (6) international calls, which are subject to whatever rate the telephone company that provides the call has negotiated with the terminating long distance company in that country (or the government there in some cases.) This means, for example, that back in 1994 I was calling a BBS in Rockville, Maryland from Arlington, Virginia, which is a 60-kilometer long, interstate, intra-LATA toll call. Had I been 4 miles north in Washington, DC it would have been an interstate local call. I was charged 13c a minute for that call. Had a called a number in Los Angeles, it would have been a 6,000 kilometer long, interstate, inter-LATA toll call and charged out at 7c a minute. The cost for any call is simply whatever it was set in the past, has nothing to do with what it costs to provide or where it is going or how far, and it only changes because someone figures out they either can make more money by charging less and encouraging more usage, or they have to charge less because a competitor comes in, realizes the incumbent is ripping people off and they can do the same but make a lot of money by being less greedy and undercuts their exorbitant rates. Paul Robinson "Above all else... We shall go on..." "...And continue!" "If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us." ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Time Is Right For Home Network Appliances, Gadgets Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 20:00:25 -0500 Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Monty Solomon posted on that vast internet thingie: > Salton calls its stainless steel clock a "home hub." It was one of > many master control systems on display here designed to give people a > unified way to manage the explosion of new digital devices being > hooked up to home networks. What frequency does it use? Steve at SELLCOM http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Talkswitch, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Minuteman UPS systems If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ Reply-To: Fred Atkinson From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Last Laugh! was Re: Enforcing the Do Not Call List Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 20:37:18 -0500 Pat, That's normal gall, not out of the ordinary gall. I once demanded to speak to a telemarketer's supervisor (we had been on the national do not call list for more than the required amount of time). When I spoke to the supervisor, I explained to him that the call was in total violation of the new anti-telemarketing laws. I threatened to make a complaint with the FTC if he didn't make sure I wouldn't be called again. He was all upset after the way I chewed him out, but before hanging up, he started to give me a pitch (still in his shaken up tone of voice, by the way). I told him that if I was interested in his service I certainly wouldn't be demanding they not call me again. After reminding him that I better not hear from his company again and taking his name, I hung up. We've never heard from that company again. But, they just have no shame. Actually, since the new DNC law went into effect, we've not received more than three or four calls, and we just tell them to put us on the DNC list and not call back (warning them that they've violated the DNC list). About eight or ten years ago, someone was circulating an obviously fictitious story over the Internet about the man who purchased a bronze statue of a rat. The seller sold him the rat for ten dollars and said the story that goes with it would be another thousand. The man declined the story and took the rat out of the store. As he walked along, all of the rats started coming out of the sewer and chased him down the avenue. He began to run and continued to run all the way to the waterfront. The farther he ran, the more rats were following him. When he got to the waterfront, he climbed up on a lampost and heaved the bronze rat into the bay. All of the rats dived into the water after it and drowned. After a while, the man climbed down from the lamp post and returned to the store. The manager asked him if he had returned to get the story that went with the rat. He said no. He wanted a bronze statue of a telemarketer. Fred ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ****************************** End of TELECOM Digest V23 #38 From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jan 25 16:37:54 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0PLbrq13969; Sun, 25 Jan 2004 16:37:54 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 16:37:54 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401252137.i0PLbrq13969@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 #39 TELECOM Digest Sun, 25 Jan 2004 16:38:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 39 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Cellular Disconnect (Monty Solomon) Politics of the Web: Meet, Greet, Segregate, Meet Again (Monty Solomon) Airlines Weigh How to Alert Passengers to Disclosure Rules (M Solomon) That Gibberish in Your In-Box May Be Good News (Monty Solomon) DISH Network $999 HDTV Promo (Monty Solomon) Amazon.com's Latest Product Category: Politicians (Monty Solomon) Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers (Joseph) Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers (Paul Robinson) Cingular and LNP (Mark@fonehometomars.com) Re: Need Telephone Selection Advice for Small Business (Carl Navarro) Re: Need Telephone Selection Advice for Small Business (SELLCOM Tech) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 15:39:44 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cellular Disconnect Congress tried to help. But major wireless carriers still find themselves snared in legal fights with towns over erecting towers to plug 'dead spots' in service. By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff, 1/25/2004 CONCORD -- For years, it was known as one of the most excruciating wireless valleys of death. Rounding the downhill curve on Route 2 headed from Lincoln toward Walden Pond, mobile phone customers of most wireless carriers -- but particularly AT&T Wireless Services Inc. -- could count on losing whatever connection they had, with virtually no hope of reconnecting for at least another mile. Starting in early 1998, AT&T began seeking a location for a cellular tower to fill in this notorious "dead spot." It soon turned into a protracted battle between the carrier, Concord officials, and Walden Woods preservation activists committed to salvaging a town dump where town officials first recommended building a cell tower. Only after AT&T won a federal lawsuit did the town let the carrier erect a tower disguised as a chunky flagpole next to a Mobil gas station. It took four years. The (wireless) battle of Concord exemplifies the kind of contentious, litigation-riddled process Congress hoped to eliminate when it rewrote federal telecommunications laws in 1996. The idea was to let local officials partially regulate -- but not forbid outright -- siting of new towers that are crucial to ensuring the nation's 154 million cellphone owners can get more reliable service. But over the past four years, five big national wireless carriers have brought more than 100 lawsuits in US District Court in Boston -- several of which dragged on through appeals -- to get cell-tower installations approved, a Boston Globe review has found. While the pace of lawsuits filed has dropped to about half the number brought in 2000, carriers still head to court on average every 18 days to try to overturn rejections by local officials. More than 20 suits are currently pending. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/01/25/cellular_disconnect/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 15:46:43 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Politics of the Web: Meet, Greet, Segregate, Meet Again Politics of the Web: Meet, Greet, Segregate, Meet Again By AMY HARMON January 25, 2004 THAT the Internet is newly teeming with grass-roots political activists of all stripes is one of the truisms of this campaign season. But to Melissa Kramer, a Wesley Clark supporter who spends hours online every day, it doesn't feel that way. On Ms. Kramer's Internet, the politics are all General Clark, all the time. As soon as she drops her children off at school, Ms. Kramer logs on to Clark04.com, the official campaign Web log, to check the campaign press releases. Then it's on to the Clark "community" blogs, to post information about local Clark news in Dayton, Ohio, and read the views of other Clark supporters around the country. Later, she might visit the Web log of the film director Michael Moore, who recently endorsed General Clark. The only time Ms. Kramer comes across, say, a Dean supporter is when one ventures onto the Clark Web site's discussion area. These partisan visitors, known among political bloggers as "trolls," are typically seen as trying to disrupt productive discussion, and regulars know to shun them. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/weekinreview/25harm.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 13:13:11 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Airlines Weigh How to Alert Passengers to Disclosure Rules By Sara Kehaulani Goo, Washington Post, 1/25/2004 WASHINGTON -- Major US carriers are scrambling to create disclosure policies that inform customers they might share personal data with the federal government, in response to two highly publicized cases in which airlines secretly handed over private passenger information. The airlines are working swiftly to alert passengers and protect themselves from liability as the US government is poised to force the carriers as early as next month to turn over data as part of a computerized passenger screening program called CAPPS II. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/25/airlines_weigh_how_to_alert_passengers_to_disclosure_rules/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 13:48:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: That Gibberish in Your In-Box May Be Good News SP@M SHEN@NIG@NS!! By GEORGE JOHNSON January 25, 2004 IF you could sit back with Zen-like detachment and observe the dross piling up in your electronic mailbox, the spam wars might come to seem like a fascinating electronic game. Like creatures running through a maze with constantly shifting walls, spammers dart and weave to sneak their solicitations past ever wilier junk mail filters. They are organisms, or maybe genomes, grinding out one random mutation after another, desperately trying to elude the Grim Reaper. Viagra becomes "vi@gra" or "v-i-@-g-r-a." Then, as the filters adapt, "v1@gr@" and even "\/l@gr@." Currently, the Internet is swarming with mutants like this: "Cheap Val?(u)m, Viagr@, X(a)n@x, Som@ Di3t Pills Many M3ds RIZfURqgHr77B," the final string of gibberish hanging like an appendage of junk DNA. Taking a different approach, a come-on for barnyard pornography devolves into "faurm galz bing e rottic." Another pitch promises to reveal "Seakrets of ((eks-eks-eks)) stars." Dispiriting as it is to start the morning with a hundred of these orthographic monsters crouching in your in-box, there is reason to take heart. Measured in bits and bytes, the sheer volume of spam may not have diminished. But advanced filtering software, which learns to recognize the mercurial traits of junk e-mail, is having an effect. The spammers' messages are becoming harder and harder to decipher. Sense is inevitably degenerating into nonsense, like a pileup of random mutations in an endangered species gasping its last breaths. Earlier this month, when Internet experts met in Cambridge, Mass., for the 2004 Spam Conference (available as a Web broadcast at spamconference.org), they showed just how far the science of spam fighting has come. For all the recent talk of suing spammers and compiling a national do-not-spam list, most speakers were putting their hopes in technological, not legal solutions. The federal government's new junk e-mail law, the Can Spam Act, barely rated a mention. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/weekinreview/25john.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 12:10:52 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: DISH Network $999 HDTV Promo http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/products/system/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 15:34:49 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Amazon.com's Latest Product Category: Politicians By Reed Stevenson SEATTLE, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Shoppers at online retailer Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) can now spend money on something new -- U.S. presidential candidates. A new feature that debuted on Friday collects campaign contributions of up to $200 for U.S. presidential candidates. The Seattle, Washington-based retailer, which claims 37 million active accounts, said on its Web site that it is "trying to take the friction out of grassroots contributions to presidential candidates." For that reason, Amazon said it is not endorsing any candidates and is charging each campaign its usual processing fees for the payments, which it will donate to a non-profit, non-partisan civil group. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40302224 ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 22:09:25 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NOcom On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:57:13 -0500, Michael Quinn wrote: > One of the items that caught my eye in the advisory was access from > overseas via an "OCONUS (Outside the CONtintal US) universal free > phone at 800-5404-xxxx (with appropriate country specific toll free > access codes)". Note the number is 11 digits, not 10 like here in > the US. I've heard of intra-country toll free numbers, but not > this. Anyone know how this works, or what a country-specific-toll- > free-code consists of? International "free phone" is sort of "country code 800." You access it the same way you access any other international call. If you were in North America you'd dial 011-800-NXXX XXXX. If you were in Europe you'd dial 00-800-NXXX XXXX if you were in Australia you'd dial 0011-800-NXXX XXXX. It's like other national free phone/toll-free that the end party pays for the cost of the call. I don't think it's possible to make international freephone calls from mobile phones. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - remove NO from .NOcom to reply ------------------------------ From: Paul Robinson Organization: elusive-butterfly.net Subject: Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 19:38:15 GMT Alan Burkitt-Gray wrote: > The idea is that a +800 xxxx xxxx number can be dialed free of > charge from anywhere in the world. The system is already in use by > many of the main hotel chains. For example the Hilton group gives > +800 4445 8667 on its website (the numbers translate to +800 > HHILTONS, and it's very similar to its US toll-free number +1-800 > 445 8667). The number 011-800-4445-8667# when dialed from an Arlington, Virginia home telephone produced a US style ring, and after about 10 or 12 rings went to a recording identifying itself as Hilton Honors, in essence I was being put into a queue. I hung up, having confirmed that the numbers do work here. When I tried dialing it from my Sprint PCS phone (without the # since you send all the digits before you push 'send'), I got the recording "Your account is not authorized to make calls to this number" so it implies that Sprint isn't aware of it yet or doesn't know how to authorize that 'country code' to be considered a local call. This at least confirms that international 800 numbers can be dialed from U.S. wireline locations (presuming they include US access for the particular number.) -- Paul Robinson "Above all else... We shall go on..." "...And continue!" "If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us." ------------------------------ From: Mark@fonehometomars.com Subject: Cingular and LNP Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 03:03:48 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications I signed on to Cingular last December 12, switching from Verizon Wireless. I ported my wife's Verizon number fairly easily. But, it is 6 weeks later and I have hit a stone wall in trying to get my qualified land-line number ported to my Cingular number. The customer service is nonexistent. There is no effective escalation process. I finely located the name and address of the Senior VP of Customer Service in Alanta and wrote her about it at the end of December. Nada. I filed an FCC informal complaint at the end of December but those move like glaciers. I see were the California PUC fined Cingular over $12 million recently for lousy customer service. Apparently, stonewalled arrogance is the model for Cingular. ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Need Telephone Selection Advice for Small Business Reply-To: cnavarro@wcnet.org Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 16:03:27 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On 24 Jan 2004 18:56:46 -0800, CROPSEYIRONWORKS@AOL.COM (VITO) wrote: > We are changing our current telephone service from three incoming > lines down to one line with call forwarding call, waiting, and > conferance calling. We're also adding dsl service to replace an > existing telephone line dedicated to our computors dial up. We now use > an 'AT&T Merlin System' that previously "rolled over" incoming calls, > forwarded calls, provided conferencing, and also provided our 'PA' > system.. Now with the advent of call waiting, call forwarding, > conferance calling, we really want to 'strip out' the existing system > and hope to simplify and cut service costs i.e. additional lines, > without losing any of our existing features. We operate a small > ironworks shop and due to the frequent high noise levels we installed > "phone flashers" & buzzers to the shop. Three questions. 1)What's a > good business phone with a max of two incoming lines? 2) Do 'hold' > buttons work between three extensions? Can we have intercom without > having a proprietary system included i.e. Avaya? 1. Just round up the usual suspects. Panasonic makes a 2-line phone with intercom (kxt-3282) for about $110 retail. You can also get into the corded/cordless models. 2. Yes. 3. Yes I don't know how much traffic you have on your phone lines, but you're making a huge mistake to go to a single line with CF/CW/and Conferencing. Call Waiting and Conferencing are mutually exclusive. In fact, Call Waiting and Hold are exclusive. Save call waiting for your residence line and put either voice mail or a second line in, or just go with a single line. I have one of those 2 line offices. If I'm on the phone, I can put the caller on hold and answer the second line or ignore it and let it fall to voice mail. I have CID enabled so that I can see who is calling on the other line which also helps me determing if I want to break my current call. When you install Call Waiting, you give up all the options. Since the outside party is hearing a ring, you HAVE to answer the CW or the person calling will think you're out of business. That's pretty rude to the caller you're talking to. Lastly, why would you want to take out a working phone system? If you're under a lease or maintenance agreement, it's time to look for something newer. If you own the system, eBay is full of Partner/ Merlin/Legend equipment that doesn't take a rocket scientist to tall. You can usually pick up a system with 3 or 4 phones for less than $300. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Need Telephone Selection Advice for Small Business Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 18:12:44 GMT CROPSEYIRONWORKS@AOL.COM (VITO) posted on that vast internet thingie: > We are changing our current telephone service from three incoming > lines down to one line with call forwarding call, waiting, and > conferance calling. We're also adding dsl service to replace an > existing telephone line dedicated to our computors dial up. We now use > an 'AT&T Merlin System' that previously "rolled over" incoming calls, > forwarded calls, provided conferencing, and also provided our 'PA' > system. Now with the advent of call waiting, call forwarding, > conferance calling, we really want to 'strip out' the existing system > and hope to simplify and cut service costs i.e. additional lines, > without losing any of our existing features. We operate a small > ironworks shop and due to the frequent high noise levels we installed > "phone flashers" & buzzers to the shop. Three questions. 1)What's a > good business phone with a max of two incoming lines? 2) Do 'hold' > buttons work between three extensions? Can we have intercom without > having a proprietary system included i.e. Avaya? You may need a 4 line system to get the features that you need and want, but that should not be a problem. I invite you to have a look at our TMC ET4000 system http://www.sellcom.com/tmc.html We like it so well we use it here at SELLCOM. We also can have cordless phones integrated to the TMC. We are using the new 5.8GHz Motorola cordless phones. Another nice system but possibly more than you need is the Talkswitch system. Steve at SELLCOM http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Talkswitch, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Minuteman UPS systems If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #39 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jan 26 14:30:03 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0QJU3m22169; Mon, 26 Jan 2004 14:30:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 14:30:03 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401261930.i0QJU3m22169@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 #40 TELECOM Digest Mon, 26 Jan 2004 14:30:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 40 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #417, January 26, 2004 (Angus TeleManagement) Group to Battle Sprint (Monty Solomon) The Most Hated Company In Tech (Monty Solomon) Why SCO's McBride Declared War (Monty Solomon) Linus Torvalds: SCO Is "Just Too Wrong" (Monty Solomon) Re: 800-555-1140 was Re: Analog Phone Line Question (Paul Robinson) Re: Analog Phone Line Question (Paul Robinson) Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (DaveC) Re: (Christopher Wolf) Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers (Joey Lindstrom) Re: America's Opinion of AOL (Kim Brennan) Question From PAT re: Pictures From Mars (Eric Friedebach) Virtual Meetings Get More Real (Eric Friedebach) IP400 SO8 Expansion Module (JaBrIoL) Re: NANP Numbering (Lawrence Jones) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 12:01:50 -0500 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #417, January 26, 2004 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 417: January 26, 2004 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca ** CYGCOM INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES: www.cygcom.com ** GROUP TELECOM: www.360.net ** JUNIPER NETWORKS: www.juniper.net ** PRIMUS CANADA: www.primustel.ca ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** TELUS: www.telus.com ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Nortel to Quit Manufacturing ** Kedar Buys Broadband Wireless Licences ** Microcell and Telus in Court Battles ** Call-Net Wants Primus VoIP Reviewed ** Rogers to Offer Five-Mbps Service ** Shaw Optimistic About VoIP ** Telcos, ISPs Form Anti-Spam Group ** AOL May Offer IP Phone Service ** AT&T Wireless for Sale ** BT Launches Canadian Unit ** Cities File Appeal Application ** SaskTel Proposes Rural Business Rate Increases ** Wireless Boom Continues ** Bell Microlink Rates Go Up ** Coalition to Oppose Foreign Ownership ** Microcell Seeks Debt Refinancing ** Lucent Revenue, Profits Rise ** AT&T Profits Drop 34% ** Read Telemanagement Online Now ============================================================ NORTEL TO QUIT MANUFACTURING: Nortel Networks says it plans to sell its remaining plants and inventory to Singapore-based Flextronics International for about US$500 million. The move will affect 1,500 employees in Calgary and Montreal. KEDAR BUYS BROADBAND WIRELESS LICENCES: Mobilexchange Spectrum, a company controlled by Mike Kedar, has acquired the assets of WNI Networks, including 400 MHz of 24 GHz broadband wireless spectrum in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Edmonton, and Calgary. WNI, formerly Wispra, purchased the spectrum for $74 million in the 1999 auction, but has not deployed services. Industry Canada has approved the licence transfer. ** WNI's shareholders, TD Capital and XO International, are now minority shareholders in Kedar's company. MICROCELL AND TELUS IN COURT BATTLES: In a claim filed January 15, Microcell has asked the B.C. Supreme Court for an injunction to ensure that its roaming connection to Telus Mobility's analog network is not cut. According to the filing, Telus Mobility has accused Microcell of violating its connection agreement by promoting City Fido as a home-phone replacement service. ** Meanwhile, Microcell has asked the Quebec Superior Court to find Telus Mobility in contempt for violating injunctions, issued in November and December, that order it to stop a telemarketing campaign targeting Microcell customers. CALL-NET WANTS PRIMUS VoIP REVIEWED: Call-Net Telecommunications has asked the CRTC to investigate Primus's TalkBroadband local phone service. It says that Primus appears to be operating as a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier, but has not registered and is not providing 9-1-1 service, which CLECs must do. ROGERS TO OFFER FIVE-MBPS SERVICE: Rogers Cable will soon launch a premium Internet access service in Ontario and New Brunswick, providing speeds of up to 5 Mbps. Rogers' current 3 Mbps service will remain unchanged. ** Rogers also plans to offer Internet access bundled with an array of Yahoo products and services, including enhanced e-mail and spam control. SHAW OPTIMISTIC ABOUT VoIP: Shaw Communications says its preliminary analysis of the feasibility of IP telephony is encouraging, with capital cost estimates being lower than anticipated. The company says it expects to "be in a position to decide whether to proceed" by August 2004. ** Shaw reports revenue of $521 million for the quarter ended November 30. Net income was $20 million, compared to a net loss of $19 million a year earlier. TELCOS, ISPs FORM ANTI-SPAM GROUP: Twenty telcos and ISPs from Canada, the U.S., and Japan have formed a "Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group" to collaborate on developing carrier-class spam protection. Bell Canada and Telus are founding members of the group, which was initiated by Openwave Systems. www.openwave.com/messaging-anti-abuse-working-group AOL MAY OFFER IP PHONE SERVICE: According to the Financial Post, AOL Canada is now testing an Internet telephony service which it hopes to roll out commercially by mid-year. AT&T WIRELESS FOR SALE: AT&T Wireless, the third-largest U.S. cellular carrier, has decided "to explore the company's strategic alternatives." It has retained advisors to help it seek and evaluate takeover offers. ** The company lost $84 million in the fourth quarter, and its monthly churn level rose to 3.3%. ** Published reports speculate that AT&T Wireless may sell its 33% stake in Rogers Wireless. BT LAUNCHES CANADIAN UNIT: BT Canada, launched at a Toronto meeting for potential customers last week, says it is now actively selling international network services to multi- nationals based in Canada. www.btcanada.net CITIES FILE APPEAL APPLICATION: Last week, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and several major cities applied to the Federal Court for leave to appeal CRTC Telecom Decision 2003-82 (see Telecom Update #411). They wish to contest the CRTC's right to amend existing agreements between municipalities and carriers. SASKTEL PROPOSES RURAL BUSINESS RATE INCREASES: SaskTel wants to raise rates for business lines and Centrex II service in all but the nine largest exchanges in the province, to take effect March 1. www.crtc.gc.ca/8740/eng/2004/S22.htm#200400325 WIRELESS BOOM CONTINUES: Statistics Canada reports that wireless revenues grew 13.4% in Q3 2003, and wireless profits ($543 million) now account for a third of all telecom service profits in Canada. Wireline revenues dropped 4% in the quarter, though profits increased slightly to $1.1 Billion. www.statcan.ca/english/IPS/Data/56-002-XIE.htm BELL MICROLINK RATES GO UP: The CRTC has approved rate increases of 6%-10% for Bell Canada's Centrex Microlink access, effective March 1. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2004/o2004-28.htm COALITION TO OPPOSE FOREIGN OWNERSHIP: Trade unions and cultural groups have joined to "combat the threat of foreign ownership of our country's telephone and broadcast industries." Participants at the founding meeting included the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, the Telecommunications Workers Union, ACTRA, the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, and the Council of Canadians. ** A survey commissioned by the CEP found that 68% of those polled were opposed to increased foreign ownership of Canada's telcos. MICROCELL SEEKS DEBT REFINANCING: Microcell Telecom has begun negotiations to persuade lenders to refinance $450 million of debt on more favorable terms. LUCENT REVENUE, PROFITS RISE: Lucent Technologies had Worldwide September-December revenues of US$2.26 billion, 9% higher than a year earlier. Wireless sales rose 32%; wireline sales fell 7%. Net income: $338 million. ** Lucent foresees no significant revenue increase in 2004. AT&T PROFITS DROP 34%: AT&T Corp.'s profit fell 34% in the last three months of 2003. Total revenue for the year was US$34.5 billion, an 8.7% drop from 2002. The company is predicting a further revenue decline of 7% to 10% this year. READ TELEMANAGEMENT ONLINE NOW: The February issue of Telemanagement, now available online, includes feature reports on practical issues in deploying wireless LANs, on new IP Telephony systems for branch offices, and on Primus's new TalkBroadband local phone service. ** Telemanagement Online subscribers can access this issue, and an extensive library of past issues, columns, editorials and feature reports, at http://online.angustel.ca/ ** To subscribe, or to add online access to your existing subscription, go to www.angustel.ca/teleman/tm-sub-online.html. Charter Subscriber Discounts are available now. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2003 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: Group to Battle Sprint Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 16:14:37 -0500 WATERTOWN Neighbors against plan for antennas By Christina Pazzanese, Globe Correspondent, 1/25/2004 Still reeling from the Town Council's decision to settle its four-year legal battle with Sprint, irate residents vow they'll now take up the fight to stop the cellular giant from installing six antennas in the middle of a densely populated neighborhood. Sprint sought a special permit from the town's zoning board in 1999 to install the cellular antennas on the roof of St. Joseph's Hall on Rosary Drive, but was rejected. The company then filed suit against the town and the board seeking a reversal in US District Court in Boston. Town Manager Michael Driscoll announced Jan. 14 that, upon advice of attorneys, the town had decided to give up the fight. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/01/25/group_to_battle_sprint/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 08:48:37 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Most Hated Company In Tech The Most Hated Company In Tech SCO's huge Linux suit against IBM is a long shot that may yield nothing but bile. He can't say he wasn't warned. In June, 2002, when Darl McBride was getting ready to take over as chief executive at struggling Caldera International Inc. in Lindon, Utah -- later renamed SCO Group Inc. -- he mused that claiming ownership of some of the underlying code in the popular Linux computer operating system could keep the company afloat. Even though Caldera's revenues were declining, it was losing $5 million per quarter, and its stock had slid below the $1 NASDAQ delisting price, the reaction of outgoing CEO Ransom Love was instantaneous. "Don't do it," Love says he told McBride. "You don't want to take on the entire Linux community." McBride did it anyway. Last March, he shook up the computer world by filing a $3 billion suit against tech giant IBM ( IBM ), claiming Big Blue had illegally inserted more than 800,000 lines of SCO-owned software code into Linux. Since then, McBride has turned up the heat. In December, SCO sent letters to more than 1,000 Linux customers accusing them of illegally using SCO's property. Now, the company warns that it will sue a Linux user within days. One potential target, SCO says, is Internet search phenom Google Inc. The company, which says it has not talked to SCO about its claims, uses Linux computers and is on the verge of its initial public offering. As a result of all this, SCO has become the most hated company in the tech world, surpassing, at least temporarily, Microsoft Corp. SCO has infuriated dozens of businesses and thousands of volunteer programmers who helped Linux become the world's second-most-popular operating system for server computers, with tens of millions of copies in use, trailing only Microsoft's ( MSFT ) Windows. Linux is open-source software: free in its most basic form and owned by no one. Many of the tech world's top companies -- including IBM, Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ ), and Dell ( DELL ) -- have hitched on to this rocket. For its most ardent fans, no words are too harsh for SCO. "They're a cornered rat, and I think they have rabies to boot," jabs the normally mild-mannered Linus Torvalds, who started Linux as a college student in 1991. The retribution against SCO has been fast and furious -- a volley of arrows from all sides. Since it sued IBM, SCO has been slapped with two countersuits, one by IBM and the other by Red Hat Inc. ( RHAT ), the largest seller of Linux software. SCO's Web site has been shut down three times by hackers. And McBride has even received death threats. One was so unnerving that SCO's security had a sharpshooter in the room when McBride spoke at a tech conference in Las Vegas in December. "The theater of this -- it's sort of beyond belief for all of us," he says. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_05/b3868104_mz063.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 08:50:02 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Why SCO's McBride Declared War Online Extra: Why SCO's McBride Declared War Says the CEO about Linux: "It wasn't like we said, 'Oh, let's go find people and sue them.' It was a gradual enforcement of our rights" You have to give SCO Group ( SCOX ) CEO Darl McBride credit for one thing: He's got moxie. Since moving into the corner office at the tiny Utah software company in June, 2002, McBride has taken on the software world. In March, 2003, he sued IBM ( IBM ) for $3 billion, claiming Big Blue handed over SCO-owned intellectual property to software programmers who developed the increasingly popular Linux software. Now he's threatening to sue a major company that uses Linux to run its computers, and may be just days away from doing so. BusinessWeek Correspondent Jim Kerstetter recently spoke with McBride in SCO's offices beneath the snow-capped Wasatch Mountains. Here are edited excerpts of that interview: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_05/b3868109_mz063.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 08:54:21 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Linus Torvalds: SCO Is "Just Too Wrong" The originator of the Linux OS has sharp words for SCO's "cornered rat" claims of intellectual-property infringement. If anyone knows what's in Linux, it's Linus Torvalds. He did the first work on the open-source operating system while a student at the University of Helsinki, and he managed the often chaotic process of building it with other programmers. Now, SCO Group ( SCOX ), a small Utah software company, claims Linux is trampling on intellectual property rights it inherited from Novell ( NOVL ), which got them from AT&T ( T). In an e-mail interview with BusinessWeek Correspondent Jim Kerstetter , Torvalds explains why he thinks SCO is wrong. The following are edited excerpts from that interview: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_05/b3868110_mz063.htm ------------------------------ From: Paul Robinson Organization: elusive-butterfly.net Subject: Re: 800-555-1140 was Re: Analog Phone Line Question Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 21:46:51 GMT Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote: > > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That toll free number, 800-555-1140 > > also works fine here in my town. I bet it will for everyone. PAT] > Hmm. Just tried it from a cell phone, and the ANI was *not* my cell > number. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I tried *my* cellular phone also from > here, and it did not return correct results either. However my > Vonage phone did have the correct results, and my wireline phone as > well. > From my home phone, the ANI was 00 plus the correct number. > From my Sprint PCS cell phone, the ANI was 61 plus the correct number. I think Sprint has fixed something, because a few months ago, calling MCI's customer service at 800-444-4444 from my cell phone, which has a Falls Church, Virginia 703 area code exchange, was being read back as a Maryland 301 area code number. MCI's 444 number now correctly reports back my true area code 703 Sprint PCS number. Paul Robinson "Above all else... We shall go on..." "...And continue!" "If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us." ------------------------------ From: Paul Robinson Organization: elusive-butterfly.net Subject: Re: Analog Phone Line Question Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 21:58:19 GMT Dmitry wrote: > I have a live analog telephone line and can dial out just fine, but I > don't know what the phone number is to dial in. Is there a number I > can dial in Washington D.C area that would tell me the number I am > calling from? Verizon uses 811 in Virginia and I believe it was using it in Maryland and it might work in DC. When they bought up GTE of Virginia (formerly Contel) a few years ago, which used 211, for a time they had both numbers work on the Verizon network, now only 811 works. It reads back only the last 7 digits. Of course, there is still the old standbys of 1010732-1-770-988-9664 and 1-800-555-1140, and MCI Customer Service at 1-800-444-4444. Paul Robinson "Above all else... We shall go on..." "...And continue!" "If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us." ------------------------------ From: DaveC Subject: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 14:07:46 -0800 Reply-To: me@privacy.net How difficult would it be to spoof a message that seemed like it came from an ISP's mail server? I'd like this technique to discourage some people from sending mail to me. The message doesn't have to be perfect, just such that to the untrained eye it looks like the recipient's address (mine) doesn't exist and the host mail server is informing the sender of such. Suggestions? Thanks, DaveC me@privacy.net This is an invalid return address Please reply in the news group [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Really not a problem at all. I use a software package called 'Mail Washer' which does that. When you want to receive your email, instead of using your email client, you use Mail Washer. It POPS into your various accounts, grabs all the mail and displays only a line of each item; who from, date and subject. Then you train it what you consider spam and what is legitmate, and you click little boxes next to each piece of mail for accept, spam, blacklist, and bounce. Then you click 'process mail'. The mail accepted is brought to your mail client and displayed in the usual way. Mail which is considered spam just disappears from the servers when you confirm your click by processing mail. Anything you tell Mail Washer to bounce and blacklist gets returned to the sender with a very realistic looking notice from postmaster@your.site saying no such user. You do have to work to set it up properly at first, since sometimes on outgoing mail you need to 'authenticate user' with a password, etc to be able to send mail through a particular server. And of course some email arrives with a bogus return address to start with, so you have to take care on mail you simply want to destroy undread versus that you want to blacklist and bounce. Not a bad program however; its easier to get rid of several dozen pieces of junk with a check mark on a single line instead of having to accept all the mail, scan through it and zap what is junk. And it saves your own wastebasket file from having to fill up and then get emptied out. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 17:12:38 -0600 From: Christopher Wolf Subject: Telecom News in TELECOM Digest No offense, but I read other sources of news, and I see the stuff below in several places where it's accurately sorted by topic. I read Telecom Digest to get *telecom* related information, not the latest Dish TV "special" or what Amazon is doing this week. Just a simple comment. -W > Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 12:10:52 -0500 > From: Monty Solomon > Subject: DISH Network $999 HDTV Promo > http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/products/system/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And no offense taken. Monty Solomon is a sort of exceptional case among my various correspondents. He works for free, mind you, with his e-press clipping service, sending me just tons of good items for the Digest, stuff I would never be able to sit around investigating and looking at own my own given my own limited resources. Not all strictly, absolutely telecom related, except often times in a very peripheral way. At one point in time -- maybe until a year ago more or less -- I was simply taking all his material and running it as one large 'column' of news in each issue. But then several readers suggested breaking his stuff into individusl items, as he sent it, and run each piece separately, so that people could quickly sort through it and take only want they wanted to read, and after some discussion here in the Digest, that is how it wound up coming down. Use your key to move forward and skip what of his was not wanted. To improve on this plan slightly, last week with the help of a reader jmat (a guy named Mattox out of Madison, WI I think) we 'colorized' the web-based newsletter published here in the http://telecom-digest.org 'latest issue' file, making the subject lines come out in red and emphasized slightly, so that people who choose to read that version and can slide their mouse rapidly down the screen picking through things to read (a lot like when you can through a printed newspaper and scan for headlines of interest), they can speed right along looking for the occassional red emphasized line of print. Likewise, the notes I insert from time to time (too often and too long in the opinion of some readers) are also offset with a different color for the few of you who like to read my words of wisdom (or tons of balogna if you prefer, so you can skip over those as well.) The coloring is only for that file, which is usually set in place with a 'pre' command and dismissed with a '/pre' command at the end of each issue. The coloring is not in the archives, and not on this ascii-text based edition many of you are reading now. I hope that helps many of you sort through what you want and don't want to see in the Digest each issue. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 18:52:45 -0700 From: Joey Lindstrom Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Organization: Telus Sucks! Subject: Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers Sunday, January 25, 2004, 4:45:03 PM, Paul Robinson wrote: > The number 011-800-4445-8667# when dialed from an Arlington, > Virginia home telephone produced a US style ring, and after about 10 > or 12 rings went to a recording identifying itself as Hilton Honors, > in essence I was being put into a queue. I hung up, having > confirmed that the numbers do work here. > When I tried dialing it from my Sprint PCS phone (without the # > since you send all the digits before you push 'send'), I got the > recording "Your account is not authorized to make calls to this > number" so it implies that Sprint isn't aware of it yet or doesn't > know how to authorize that 'country code' to be considered a local > call. > This at least confirms that international 800 numbers can be dialed > from U.S. wireline locations (presuming they include US access for > the particular number.) I just made some attempts to dial that number from Calgary, Alberta, Canada and got sorta the opposite results. First, tried it from my Telus Mobility PCS phone. I have *NOT* activated international calling. If I tried dialing somebody in the UK at 011-44-number, I'd get that same "not authorized" recording you got. But dialing the 011-800 number quoted above goes through without any problems. So I tried it from my home phone, which is Telus dialtone and Primus Canada selected as my default long distance carrier. Dialing this number results in about a 5 second delay, then a fast-busy signal. However, if I precede this call with "1010323" (which is Telus Long Distance's dial-around code), the call goes through. I also have an account with Wintel. This is a low-tech long-distance service: you dial a local 7-digit number, you get a second dialtone, and you dial your long distance number from there. If the number is overseas, you precede the call with "999" - so in this case it would be 999-800-4445-8667. I get as far as the "5" before the Wintel platform starts beeping its call rejection tone at me. Joey Lindstrom see TD-EXTRA at http://td-extra.interocitor.net ------------------------------ From: kimbrennan@aol.comfrtz.com (KimBrennan) Date: 26 Jan 2004 03:44:30 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: America's Opinion of AOL > BTW, how much would you pay for AOL ADSL in the US? Or any other > ISP on ADSL for that matter. I'd pay $60 a month. If I could get DSL (any flavor). But in WV, the poorest in the nation, forget about high speed internet in most of the state. "I'm sorry, all my money is tied up in currency." W.C.Fields ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: Question From PAT Re: Pictures From Mars Date: 26 Jan 2004 08:32:21 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com In V23 #32 our Moderator wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Question for Eric: Lately you have > been using as your .sig file the commentary about Mars and northern > Nevada. I was wondering if you (or anyone else reading this) have > been looking at the visuals of Mars from the NASA web site? They > might make for an interesting discussion here in the Digest. PAT] PAT, please excuse my delay in responding! Somehow this issue of the Digest ended up in the wrong folder here. I've seen a few pictures, but to be honest, I've not really followed the probe story. Sending *people* would be much more interesting to me. And it looks like that's just what we're going to do, starting with the moon. Eric Friedebach The ol ringy dinghy [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It would certainly appear those are Mr. Bush's plans, assuming Mars and the moon can in real practice support human life. It appears *maybe* they can (in real practice and not just a theoretical exercise) but I am talking now about *quality of life* -- not just 'living'. Maybe Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) had a future glimpse of things when he would poinnt skyward and threaten his wife Alice 'the Moon, Alice!' It would be *so wild* if it happened in my lifetime. PAT] ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: Virtual Meetings Get More Real Date: 26 Jan 2004 08:45:18 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Aude Lagorce, 01.26.04, Forbes.com NEW YORK - If you've ever sat through a video conference, hopelessly scanning your interlocutors' tiny faces on a TV screen for a clue about who is uttering the disembodied words reaching you with a one-second delay, you're likely to hope that the corporate travel budget will soon be reinstated. As funds for business travel have been slashed over the last few years, the video conferencing business has been widely seen as an alternative to in-person meetings. But video meetings can be a frustrating and awkward affair. Speech can get out of sync, and words can be dropped. The video screen can act like more of a communications barrier than an aid. An Ohio-based startup called Telesuite aims to change that. Forget everything you thought you knew about trying to talk to a TV. The barely recognizable faces? Gone. The poor lighting? Departed. The nerve-jarring sound delays? Distant memories. http://www.forbes.com/2004/01/26/cx_al_0126tentech.html Eric Friedebach ------------------------------ From: Jabriol@excite.com (JaBrIoL) Subject: IP400 SO8 Expansion Module Date: 26 Jan 2004 08:59:11 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, I have an Avaya IP Office IP400 SO8 expansion module and I'm trying to configure it in my IP400 Office system. Using the Installation manual as a reference, I tried to configure the system in the Manager with no results. I do get the 8 SO lines showing, but cannot make call throughs to verify operation. Does anyone have an idea on the proper configuration. Thanks! ------------------------------ From: lawrence.jones@ugsplm.com Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:13:01 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com Paul Robinson wrote: > look at your keyboard and realize the QWERTY pattern was developed > back in the 1880s to *slow people down* on manual typewriters that > would jam. A common misconception, or at least a gross mischaracterization of Mr. Sholes' intent. If common letter pairs were near each other in the mechanism, it would jam when they were typed quickly. By separating the common letter pairs, the QWERTY arrangement prevented the jamming and thus allowed the typist to go *faster* than the original (alphabetical) arrangement. It was actually developed a bit earlier than the 1880s, the patent was granted in 1878. -Larry Jones I stand FIRM in my belief of what's right! I REFUSE to compromise my principles! -- Calvin ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #40 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jan 27 01:20:00 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0R6Jxg25275; Tue, 27 Jan 2004 01:20:00 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 01:20:00 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401270620.i0R6Jxg25275@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 #41 TELECOM Digest Tue, 27 Jan 2004 01:20:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 41 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Google Targeted by Pranksters; Web Site, Bloggers Skew Results (Solomon) New Virus Infects PCs, Whacks SCO (Monty Solomon) Cablevision a Top Bidder For Wireless Licenses (Monty Solomon) Online Reference to Reach Milestone (Monty Solomon) Cablevision's VOOM Bids For Wireless Licenses (Monty Solomon) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (Jeffrey Mattox) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (Paul Vader) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (Nick Landsberg) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (Barry Margolin) Re: Protect Yourself From Deceptive, Malicious Web Sites (H.E. Schaffer) Re: Wireless Home Networks (yeltrabnhoj@email.com) VoIP and Cell Service - Room for Synergy? (A Mathgrad) Err, Umm, Rumor was Re: The Most Hated Company In Tech (Danny Burstein) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Reply-To: Monty Solomon From: Monty Solomon Subject: Google Targeted by Pranksters - Web Sites, Bloggers Skew Results Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:38:49 -0500 Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer Monday, January 26, 2004 Who among the many candidates running for president is unelectable? George W. Bush -- if the search results on Google can be believed. His biography is the first result to appear on Google for the Web query "unelectable." It's just one in a long list of similarly bizarre results on the search engine over the years that are the result of manipulation, not their relevance. Called Google bombs, these are pranks engineered by Web site operators and creators of Web logs. They take advantage of the way Google ranks search results to get certain Web sites listed higher for specific queries than they otherwise would be. That's why President Bush's biography also appears as the top result for the search query "miserable failure." http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/01/26/BUG3M4GVDS1.DTL ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 22:21:56 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: New Virus Infects PCs, Whacks SCO By Robert Lemos Staff Writer, CNET News.com A mass-mailing virus quickly spread through the Internet on Monday, compromising computers so that they attack the SCO Group's Web server with a flood of data on Feb. 1, according to antivirus companies. The virus -- known as MyDoom, Novarg and as a variant of the Mimail virus by different antivirus companies -- arrives in an in-box with one of several different random subject lines, such as "Mail Delivery System," "Test" or "Mail Transaction Failed." The body of the e-mail contains an executable file and a statement such as: "The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment." http://news.com.com/2100-7349-5147605.html See also ... http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.novarg.a@mm.html http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=100983 http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/virus/story/0,10801,89449,00.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/01/26/HNmydoom_1.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50582-2004Jan26.html http://slashdot.org/articles/04/01/27/0038234.shtml http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114460,00.asp [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I got three of those 'test' messages with 'unicode characters' in my mail here at massis Monday evening, but just tossed them out. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 18:01:50 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cablevision a Top Bidder For Wireless Licenses NEW YORK, Jan 26 (Reuters) - VOOM, the satellite TV service set to be spun off from New York-area cable company Cablevision Systems (NYSE:CVC), is the top bidder for licenses to build a U.S. wireless video and data network, according to Federal Communications Commission figures. The network would use an emerging technology called MVDDS, nor Multichannel Video Distribution and Data Service, which operates within the same spectrum of broadcast frequencies as satellite television services like DirecTV and DISH Network. But it is transmitted from local microwave towers, allowing the broadcast of local channels and two-way high-speed data. Satellite broadcasters, who oppose the technology, say their spectrum is too crowded, diminishing the quality of their product. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40310951 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 23:26:07 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Online Reference to Reach Milestone By Dan Gillmor Mercury News Technology Columnist Sometime in the next few days or weeks, one of the world's most comprehensive online reference sites will publish its 200,000th article. More accurately, one of the site's contributors will publish the article. Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), an encyclopedia created and operated by volunteers, is one of the most fascinating developments of the Digital Age. In just over three years of existence, it has become a valuable resource and an example of how the grass roots in today's interconnected world can do extraordinary things. Almost anyone can be a contributor to the Wikipedia. Almost anyone can edit almost any page. (Only serious misbehavior gets people banned.) Thousands of people around the world have added their expertise, and new volunteers show up every day. It defies first-glance assumptions. After all, one might imagine, if anyone can edit anything, surely cyber-vandals will wreck it. Surely flame wars over article content will stymie good intentions. And, of course, the articles will all be amateurish nonsense. Right? Well, no. http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/7793099.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 18:42:44 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cablevision's VOOM Bids for Wireless Licenses By Michael Learmonth NEW YORK, Jan 26 (Reuters) - VOOM, the satellite TV service set to be spun off from New York-area cable company Cablevision Systems (NYSE:CVC), is the top bidder for licenses to build a U.S. wireless video and data network, according to Federal Communications Commission figures. The network would use an emerging technology called MVDDS, nor Multichannel Video Distribution and Data Service, which operates within the same spectrum of broadcast frequencies as satellite television services like DirecTV and DISH Network. But the MVDDS signal is transmitted from local microwave towers, allowing enough bandwidth for hundreds of channels and high-speed Internet service. Satellite broadcasters had initially opposed the technology and some are suing in federal court to stop it, claiming the spectrum is already too crowded and that local microwave antennas would interfere with their signals from space. But the participation of VOOM in the auction gives additional clues to the nascent satellite broadcaster's strategy. Cablevision and its visionary founder, Charles Dolan, have been roundly criticized by analysts for the venture, a high-definition satellite service that requires viewers to buy a receiver for $749.99. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40313078 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 14:29:04 -0600 From: Jeffrey Mattox Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Pat: [Please do not publish my email address -- too much spam already.] You wrote: > TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Really not a problem at all. > I use a software package called 'Mail Washer' which does that. > ... Anything you tell Mail Washer to bounce and blacklist gets > returned to the sender with a very realistic looking notice from > postmaster@your.site saying no such user. ... PAT] This particular feature of Mail Washer will do more harm than good. An truly invalid email address is reported to the SMTP server during the actual connection when the email is sent. The SMTP protocol tells the sending machine that the address is invalid and the message body never even gets sent. When you send a "bounce" message yourself in reply to a spam, it's just another email going over the Internet and it will be totally ignored by the spammer. Spammers don't include a valid reply address anyway, so your bounce message will likely just generate another bounce message (a reply to your bounce) causing even more traffic. Even if spammers get your bounce message, they'd know it was faked because it didn't come during the SMTP connection when the spam was sent. In fact, your faked bounce message is a *positive indication* that your address is valid because you got the spam!! The Mail Washer web site says : "... the bounced messages look exactly like a returned mail message you would receive if you sent an email off to a wrong address. There is no way the spammers can tell it is not genuine." But that is wrong! Spammers can tell because the bounce message comes as a delayed email (which they will ignore) rather than a refused connected by the SMTP protocol. With spammers using every trick they can to get emails through spam filters, why would anybody believe they would be fooled by a faked bounce message? Besides, spammers aren't interested in cleaning their lists. It's a waste of their time because it costs them nothing to keep the bad addresses. Damn them! The companies that are advertising this "feature" of their product are either idiots or (more likely) are hoping to impress people with a feature that sounds good, but, in fact, is detrimental. Jeff ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 21:51:31 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations me@privacy.net writes: > How difficult would it be to spoof a message that seemed like it came > from an ISP's mail server? I'd like this technique to discourage some > people from sending mail to me. It's actually pretty trivial -- send a message to a whacko address on your ISP's mailserver, and mimic the resulting bounce message that gets sent to you. If you're doing this for specific people that you actually know and don't like, it's harmless enough. However, DO NOT be tempted to use this against spammers. All you'll be doing then is sending random messages to addresses that either don't exist, or don't belong to the spammer. The only way to bounce a spam is during the SMTP conversation while the message is coming in, and even then in most cases the spammer isn't paying attention to the responses anyway. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 22:23:14 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Pat, Two questions regarding "Mail Washer": 1. Does it (or something similar) run under OS-X? 2. What does it cost? Inquiring minds want to know. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mail Washer runs under various flavors of Windows with (at least) Outlook Express. It is a free download you can get by Googling for it. I did not read all the specs, so it may well work with other OS' and mail clients as well. But note what two other correspondents tonight just said about it: Jeff and Paul both think no one is fooled by the bogus daemon, certainly not professional spammers and innocent third parties could get harmed by a flood of mail returned to them they did not send. All that being considered, I still like the idea of being able to have all my incoming mail lined up in single lines where I can make a single click to have it go away if the sender is not recogized or the subject sounds 'fishy' to me. That is, in cases like SBC where they make absolutely no attempt to help with the problem at all. In the case of Cable One however, they at least round up all *they* perceive to be spam and viruses, and isolate it for me in a separate file, where, after cursory examination one click gets rid of the entire batch. Even Yahoo does a better job of attempting to isolate spam than SBC does! Another good program to look at for isolating spam into its own folder right out of the mail sever is 'Cloudmark' which is a plug in tool to integrate with Outlook Express. If Mail Washer or Spam Assassin does not catch it for some reason, then Cloudmark usually will. Like the other two, Cloudmark is trainable; it adds two new buttons to the Outlook Express desktop where you can pass a piece of mail in to your regular delivery or not as desired. PAT] DaveC wrote: > How difficult would it be to spoof a message that seemed like it came > from an ISP's mail server? I'd like this technique to discourage some > people from sending mail to me. > The message doesn't have to be perfect, just such that to the > untrained eye it looks like the recipient's address (mine) doesn't > exist and the host mail server is informing the sender of such. > Suggestions? > Thanks, > DaveC > me@privacy.net > This is an invalid return address > Please reply in the news group > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Really not a problem at all. I use a > software package called 'Mail Washer' which does that. When you want > to receive your email, instead of using your email client, you use > Mail Washer. It POPS into your various accounts, grabs all the mail > and displays only a line of each item; who from, date and subject. > Then you train it what you consider spam and what is legitmate, and > you click little boxes next to each piece of mail for accept, spam, > blacklist, and bounce. Then you click 'process mail'. The mail > accepted is brought to your mail client and displayed in the usual > way. Mail which is considered spam just disappears from the servers > when you confirm your click by processing mail. Anything you tell Mail > Washer to bounce and blacklist gets returned to the sender with a very > realistic looking notice from postmaster@your.site saying no such > user. You do have to work to set it up properly at first, since > sometimes on outgoing mail you need to 'authenticate user' with a > password, etc to be able to send mail through a particular server. > And of course some email arrives with a bogus return address to start > with, so you have to take care on mail you simply want to destroy > undread versus that you want to blacklist and bounce. Not a bad > program however; its easier to get rid of several dozen pieces of > junk with a check mark on a single line instead of having to accept > all the mail, scan through it and zap what is junk. And it saves > your own wastebasket file from having to fill up and then get > emptied out. PAT] -- "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Organization: Looking for work Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 23:05:07 GMT In article , DaveC wrote: > How difficult would it be to spoof a message that seemed like it came > from an ISP's mail server? I'd like this technique to discourage some > people from sending mail to me. The Macintosh OS X Mail program has a built-in "Bounce" command, that sends a fake bounce message for the selected messages. -- Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA ------------------------------ From: hes@unity.ncsu.edu (Henry E Schaffer) Subject: Re: Protect Yourself From Deceptive (Spoofed), Malicious Web Sites Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 23:16:10 +0000 (UTC) Organization: North Carolina State University In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 833786 > Steps that you can take to help identify and to help protect yourself > from deceptive (spoofed) Web sites and malicious hyperlinks > SUMMARY > When you point to a hyperlink in Microsoft Internet Explorer, > Microsoft Outlook Express, or Microsoft Outlook, the address of the > Web site typically appears in the Status bar at the bottom of the > window. After you click a link that opens in Internet Explorer, the > address of the Web site typically appears in the Internet Explorer > Address bar, and the title of the Web page typically appears in the > Title bar of the window. > However, a malicious user could create a link to a deceptive > (spoofed) Web site that displays the address, or URL, to a legitimate > Web site in the Status bar, Address bar, and Title bar. I have received *many* pieces of UCE (aka spam) which use this type of link -- and make it look as if you are going to Microsoft's web site -- but take you some place else. I set up a demo -- if you want to see how this can happen go to: http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/gn/ex/spoof.html I've checked it with IE, and sure enough it claims that you are at www.microsoft.com. A couple of other browsers show that there is more to the URL. > This article describes steps that you can take to help mitigate this > issue and to help you to identify a deceptive (spoofed) Web site or > URL. > http://support.microsoft.com/?id=833786 Phoo! While that article gives some decent advice (such as look for the locked symbol) most of the advice is so burdensome that I suspect that *very few* users would (or could) follow it. For example, since scammers can use SSL, the suggest that even if the locked symbol appears that you chould check the name on the digital certificate for SSL. Another example -- they say that you shouldn't click on a URL, but instead "type the URL of your intended destination in the address bar yourself" Sure -- especially when there is a "link" and one would have to bring up the HTML source, find the link, then read it off and type it in! Do they really think that this type of advice is sufficient? --henry schaffer hes _AT_ ncsu _DOT_ edu [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess for many people, it is quite sufficient. Truely, some links to URLs are outrageously long and cumbersome to type in. As you know, some URLs go on for eighty to one hundred characters in length, or more. People need to learn that Microsoft, various banks, etc do NOT send you email telling you to 'please click here and verify your account information.' People need to learn that the only way you EVER go to one of those sites is if you, yourself originate the inquiry. What scares me a little however is that Microsoft has some perfectly legimate way to 'tickle' the bit in your computer to notify you that Windows Update has something for you. Then the next time you attempt to use your browser, you get diverted (legitimatly) to Windows Update to receive the file. What happens when some bad person (a) gets his hands on the mailing list of people who want to be notified legitimatly by Microsoft of new security issues, then (b) proceeds to send a 'tickle' to all those users and (c) figures out some way to divert them to a malicious but very well counterfieted web site purporting to be Windows Update. The amateurs out there now who send those 'here is your latest update' file only fool the really new, novice users. Imagine the fun when (a), (b) and (c) above get accomp- lished and only a *very trained, very experienced* user notices there is something 'not quite right' about that 'Windows Update' page, but by that time the bad man has already started dumping all over your hard drive. We are all at the mercy of users who are smarter than ourselves unfortunatly. PAT] ------------------------------ From: yeltrabnhoj@email.com Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 00:46:26 GMT Organization: (reverse to reply) (John Bartley, K7AAY, Portland OR) On Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:37:34 -0500, Michael Quinn wrote: > The recent articles on DSL availabilty prompted me to check with > Verizon yet again to see if Verizon had at last made DSL available in > my neighborhood in Northern VA. I was pleasantly surprised to see > that they had, and with a little bit of searching discovered a > wireless hub and small wireless USB adaptors at buy.com on sale for > about $35 each. The wired versions -- either conventional NIC cards > using CAT 5 cable or the HPNA stle which use phone lines are both more > expensive and the former of course entails running and terminating > cables. BYTE.COM noted in their CES report of Tuesday afternoon: Powerline networking, aka HomePlug, has been "going to happen" for over a decade, but appeared to be headed nowhere -- the same nowhere that phone-line networking fell into. But, while we weren't looking, the HomePlug Powerline Alliance (HPPA) quietly built momentum for their "no new wires" products, which run over your house's existing power lines. CES saw a good number of HomePlug interoperability demonstrations in the HPPA's booth, far more than we would have predicted. Intellon was touting the cost to build HomePlug into existing products at as little as $10 in parts, far lower than today. Panasonic has put its name behind HomePlug as well, particularly for in-home hi-def streaming. But not with the current standard. Current HomePlug (1.0) runs at 14 Megabits/second (Mbps), a respectable speed for Internet surfing but hopelessly inadequate for streaming. The upcoming HomePlug AV standard promises greater than 100 Mbps throughput, "faster than any flavor of Wi-Fi," aimed especially at moving Hi-definition television (HD) between your set-top box and a TV in a different room. One of the main silicon players in this business is Intellon, whose "PowerAV" chips will probably play a major part in the eventual standard. Expect HomePlug AV products late in 2004, with the same plug-it-in-and-it-networks practicality as HomePlug 1.0. Just after CES, the HPPA announced some new heavy hitters for its board of directors, including ComCast and Earthlink. Looks like a bandwagon, only time will tell how big. -- Nobody but a fool goes into a federal counterrorism operation without duct tape - Richard Preston, THE COBRA EVENT. ------------------------------ From: me3141592654@netscape.net (A Mathgrad) Subject: VoIP and Cell Service - Room for Synergy ? Date: 26 Jan 2004 09:55:08 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I was wondering whether there is a natural 'fit' between VoIP services and Cell Phone services. My friend operates a business from her home and spends a hefty amount each month for telecom and related services: 1) Business line with message manager, caller id ($80) 2) Fax-to e-mail for incoming faxen $10 (formerly used second business line at $60/month) 3) Cell phone ($35) 4) Home Phone ($45) 5) Cable company broadband ($60) She pays more than $230 Canadian for services that should be profitable at half of that. (These are rough $ estimates) It would make sense for her cell provider to offer her an add-on VoIP connection that works with her cell service. Calls could be received at the office, mobile phone or answering machine according to her schedule. IP-calls would not require extra wireless infrastructure and would leverage the providers investment in connections with the PSTN. At the cost of an add-on DID number and an extra RJ-11 port on the computer her residential service could share the broadband connection and shift the revenue stream from the phone company to the cell company. The cell companies could leverage their installed base and existing network into the much larger market of 'wired' telephony with the addition of some VoIP software, IP connections and some aggressive marketing. We know 'The Phone Company' will never do this because it destroys their current revenue models. ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Err, Umm, rumor was Re: The Most Hated Company In Tech Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 22:30:16 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Monty Solomon writes: (excerpted) > The Most Hated Company In Tech > SCO's huge Linux suit against IBM is a long shot that may yield > nothing but bile. > And McBride has even received death threats. One was so unnerving that > SCO's security had a sharpshooter in the room when McBride spoke at a > tech conference in Las Vegas in December. > http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_05/b3868104_mz063.htm Even though it's a Business Week article, I'd find that part of the story quite a bit unlikely. Sharpshooters are not hired nor placed in pulic environments that casually. Confirmation anyone? _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #41 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jan 27 14:48:18 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0RJmIC00659; Tue, 27 Jan 2004 14:48:18 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 14:48:18 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401271948.i0RJmIC00659@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 #42 TELECOM Digest Tue, 27 Jan 2004 14:48:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 42 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson You've Got Problems! (Monty Solomon) Creating Software on Demand/CompUSA Rolls Out Automated System (Solomon) T-Mobile USA Adds More Than 1 Million Net New Customers in Q4 (Solomon) New Wireless Standard to Carry Cable TV Signal (Monty Solomon) SBC Reports Strong 4th-Quarter Long Distance Launch in Midwest (Solomon) EarthLink Reports Net Income of $10.7 Million in 4th Quarter (Solomon) Microsoft Hops on the RFID Bandwagon (Monty Solomon) Plans for Wireless Directory Raise Concerns About Privacy (M Solomon) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (Fred Atkinson) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (Barry Margolin) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (Justin Time) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (noname) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (Andrew Bell) Re: Why SCO's McBride Declared War (Chris Jones) Re: New Virus Infects PCs, Whacks SCO (Joey Lindstrom) Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers (Michael D. Sullivan) Getting True, Important Security Updates From Microsoft (Andrew Bell) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 01:39:34 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: 'You've Got Problems!' As more users turn to the vast array of content beyond AOL's walls, the Net provider is fighting back in an urgent bid to remain relevant. By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, 1/26/2004 After five years, Rich Krause finally gave up AOL. The 46-year-old attorney in Stillman Valley, Ill., got his Internet access from a small local dial-up provider, but also maintained a subscription to America Online, the nation's largest Internet service provider, with its vast array of news and entertainment resources. But Krause rarely used the AOL services. "The features that they had on AOL I didn't find particularly useful or necessary," he said. He had no use for chat rooms or instant messaging. And as for finding information online, he could run a search on Yahoo or Google to locate resources that were as good as AOL's. So six months ago, Krause quit AOL. He wasn't alone. According to documents filed by AOL's parent company, Time Warner Inc., with the Securities and Exchange Commission, AOL lost 2 million US subscribers between September 2002 and September 2003. This Sunday AOL will launch a massive marketing blitz during the Super Bowl in an expensive attempt to reverse that trend, or at least hang on to the 24.7 million customers who remain. The company is spending $7.5 million to sponsor the halftime show, an extravaganza featuring Janet Jackson, P. Diddy, and Kid Rock. And during the game, we'll see the father-and-son cast of the cable TV show "American Chopper" promoting a new AOL feature that will speed up Web surfing, even for customers who use slow telephone modem connections. It's a colorful and costly effort to convince Internet users that one of the old titans of the Internet hasn't sunk into irrelevance. AOL made its bones by protecting ordinary consumers from the intimidating complexity of the Internet. In the process, the service introduced millions of new computer users to the online world. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2004/01/26/youve_got_problems/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 01:37:05 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Creating Software on Demand / CompUSA Rolls Out Automated System By Chris Gaither, Globe Staff, 1/26/2004 EMERYVILLE, Calif. -- Customers are still trying to figure out what it is. But the whirring machine inside the front door of the CompUSA store here may transform the way software is sold. The SoftwareToGo system is the first in a major US retail chain to create software titles on demand, said its manufacturer and CompUSA. The electronics seller has installed the machines in stores in Seattle, Dallas, and in the San Francisco Bay area, with plans to roll it out nationwide, including in Massachusetts, starting next quarter. For now, CompUSA and software publishers see the machine as a way to increase the number of titles they sell, without taking up valuable space on shelves. But in the future, its advocates say, systems like SoftwareToGo might reduce inventory problems, keep popular items available for purchase even when they're gone from shelves, and cut down on software theft -- major problems for stores. As he gave a recent demonstration of the system, Mitchell Rawlings, general manager of the Emeryville CompUSA, was interrupted by an employee bearing an empty box of Microsoft Office Professional software. Someone had sliced the top with a razor, removed the discs, and walked out. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/01/26/creating_software_on_demand/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 00:36:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: T-Mobile USA Adds More Than 1 Million Net New Customers in Q4, Topping off Strong Annual Growth with More Than 3.2 Million Net Additions in 2003 - Jan 27, 2004 12:30 AM (BusinessWire) BONN, Germany & BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 27, 2004-- -- T-Mobile annual customer growth of 32% -- More net additions than in 2002 T-Mobile International, the mobile communications subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE:DT), today announced fourth quarter 2003 customer results of its U.S. operations, T-Mobile USA, Inc. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40316661 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 08:41:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: New Wireless Standard to Carry Cable TV Signal By Yukari Iwatani Kane TOKYO, Jan 27 (Reuters) - A new wireless technology with enough bandwidth to carry cable television signals from a wall-mounted outlet to a TV anywhere in the home could be on the market as early as next year, an industry group said on Tuesday. The Multiband OFDM Alliance, led by Texas Instruments Inc (NYSE:TXN), the world's top maker of microchips for cell phones, said it would publish standards for the technology in May. The group said it expected products with the technology, known as Ultra Wideband, to ship in 2005. Ultra Wideband operates at a lower power than the wireless local area network standard known as WiFi, but is capable of handling much larger amounts of data, including streaming video. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40317337 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 08:44:49 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: SBC Reports Strong 4th-Quarter Long Distance Launch in Midwest Improved Retail Access Line Trends, Record Gains in Long Distance, DSL SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 27, 2004-- Note: SBC Communications Inc.'s fourth-quarter earnings conference call will be broadcast live via the Internet at 10 a.m. EST on Jan. 27, 2004, at www.sbc.com/investor_relations . -- 2.9 million long distance lines added companywide, including 1.7 million from Midwest launch - best ever quarter -- 377,000 DSL lines added / 8th consecutive quarter of accelerated growth -- 32 percent reduction in consumer retail access-line losses companywide compared with 3rd quarter, including 54 percent reduction in the Midwest SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC) today reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2003 financial and operating results that reflect strong growth in long distance and DSL lines and continuing improvement in access line trends. SBC's full-year net income for 2003 was $8.5 billion, or $2.56 per diluted share, compared with $5.7 billion, or $1.69 per diluted share, in 2002. Excluding the cumulative effect of previously announced accounting changes in both years, 2003 earnings were $6.0 billion, or $1.80 per diluted share, versus $7.5 billion, or $2.23 per diluted share. Net income for the fourth quarter of 2003 was $905 million, or $0.27 per diluted share, compared with $2.4 billion, or $0.71 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2002. Excluding the effect of an extraordinary item and items announced during the quarter, fourth-quarter 2003 earnings were $0.34 per diluted share. The prior-year period also was affected by a number of previously reported items that increased fourth-quarter 2002 earnings by $0.22 a share, including a $0.12 impact from a change in directory accounting. Excluding these items, earnings were $0.49 cents per diluted share. Year-over-year quarterly earnings comparisons also were impacted by access line losses, increases in pension and retiree benefit costs, and higher costs associated with strong growth in long distance and DSL subscribers. Revenues for the fourth quarter of 2003 totaled $10.1 billion, compared with $11.2 billion in the year-earlier period. Operating expenses totaled $8.9 billion for the latest quarter, compared with $9.0 billion in the prior-year period. A change in accounting method for the directory business reduced both fourth-quarter 2003 revenues and expenses versus the fourth quarter of 2002. For the full year 2003, revenues were $40.8 billion, compared with $43.1 billion in 2002. SBC's consolidated revenue and operating expense totals do not include proportionate results from Cingular Wireless, which is 60 percent owned by SBC. Cingular's revenues for the latest quarter were $3.9 billion, compared with $3.7 billion in the prior-year period. Fourth-quarter revenues benefited from strong subscriber growth in long distance and DSL and increases in business data sales, offset by ongoing access-line losses. Fourth-quarter expenses were increased by investments in initiatives to drive growth in long distance and DSL and to prepare for the company's planned first-quarter 2004 launch of SBC DISH Network video service and to expand its capabilities in the large-business market. Compared with expense levels in the year-earlier period, fourth-quarter operating expenses were positively impacted by the directory accounting change but adversely impacted by increased pension and retiree benefit costs. Increased pension and benefit costs had a $0.09 per share negative impact on fourth-quarter 2003 earnings, compared with the prior-year period. Full-year 2003 operating expenses totaled $34.4 billion in 2003, versus $34.5 billion in 2002. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40318482 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 08:50:02 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EarthLink Reports Net Income of $10.7 Million in Fourth Quarter ATLANTA, Jan. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- EarthLink, Inc. (Nasdaq: ELNK) today announced financial results for its fourth quarter ending December 31, 2003. Financial highlights for the quarter: * Net subscriber growth of 248,000 in the fourth quarter and 219,000 for the full year. * Revenues of $348.6 million, an increase of 0.2 percent from the fourth quarter 2002. * Earnings before interest income and expense, income taxes, depreciation and amortization, and facility exit costs (adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure) of $36.5 million compared to $20.2 million from the fourth quarter 2002. * Earnings before facility exit costs, acquisition-related amortization and accretion dividends (a non-GAAP measure) of $19.4 million, or $0.12 per share, compared to a loss of ($3.2) million, or ($0.02) per share, from the fourth quarter 2002. * Net income of $10.7 million, or $0.07 per share, compared to a loss of ($36.9) million, or ($0.24) per share, from the fourth quarter 2002. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401271202_PRN__CLTU001 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:06:54 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Microsoft Hops on the RFID Bandwagon By Marguerite Reardon Staff Writer, CNET News.com Microsoft on Monday announced new software designed to help small and midsize companies better manage their supply chains wirelessly. The company has added radio frequency identification technology, which combines silicon chips and radio frequency technology to track inventory, to its Microsoft Axapta Warehouse Management software. Microsoft has been testing the new RFID software with KiMs, a Danish snack food company, since December 2003. KiMs, which was already using Axapta, is using the new software to monitor pallets or cartons of finished goods as they move out of production and into a third-party warehouse. The company said that the new software provides much greater knowledge of the exact location of products at various points in its supply chain. ... http://news.com.com/2100-7343-5147145.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:09:33 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Plans for Wireless Directory Raise Concerns About Privacy By LISA NAPOLI January 26, 2004 After last year's campaigns against spammers and telemarketers, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are poised to tackle the next privacy frontier: the nation's 150 million wireless phones. As a group of carriers quietly works to create the first wireless white pages, legislation is in the works to protect consumers concerned about the privacy issues of those numbers going public. Privacy advocates say the proposed protections are not strong enough. The Wireless 411 Consumer Privacy Act was introduced in both the House and the Senate before the holiday recess. The bill would require existing customers who want to be listed in a national database of numbers to "opt in," or specifically say they want to be listed, while new wireless subscribers would have to "opt out," that is, choose not to be listed. The proposed legislation also insists that consumers not be charged a fee for keeping their numbers private, a practice that generates $50 million in revenue for land-line companies each year. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/26/technology/26directory.html ------------------------------ Reply-To: Fred Atkinson From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 01:34:46 -0500 The question was asked where to get Mailwasher. The URL is http://www.mailwasher.net. It is written by a fellow who lives in New Zealand. There is a free version which is limited to one account and there is a paid version which isn't so limited. When I was in graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, one of my professors (who taught management courses, his speciality was TQM) was direct associate of Dr. Deming. Someone said something about how everyone was trying to invent the better mousetrap. He said something that made me chuckle, but after you think about it you realize he is right. He suggested that the best solution is to just get rid of the mouse. So, perhaps they will start enforcing that new anti-spam law and start busting those mice who send that stuff. Fred ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Organization: Looking for work Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 06:56:48 GMT In article , Jeffrey Mattox wrote: > The Mail Washer web site says : "... the bounced messages look > exactly like a returned mail message you would receive if you sent an > email off to a wrong address. There is no way the spammers can tell > it is not genuine." > But that is wrong! Spammers can tell because the bounce message > comes as a delayed email (which they will ignore) rather than a > refused connected by the SMTP protocol. With spammers using every > trick they can to get emails through spam filters, why would anybody > believe they would be fooled by a faked bounce message? Besides, > spammers aren't interested in cleaning their lists. It's a waste of > their time because it costs them nothing to keep the bad addresses. > Damn them! I disagree. Mail often has to go through several hops before it gets to the server that recognizes the mail account names. Also, many spammers make use of open mail relays, they don't send directly to the destination mail servers. For these reasons, they have no reason to expect that the "No such user" error will occur during their SMTP dialog; many of the legitimate failures are delayed. You *are* correct that many spammers don't include a valid return address, so the bounces will not go back to them in the first place. And you're also probably correct that they don't care about cleaning up their lists. Spam lists are valued by their size, not quality, even though spammers often advertise (in spam!) how clean their lists are. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Barry is quite correct about how lists are valued by their size. I personally would rather have a small list of active, useful participants rather than a list of a million names 99 percent of whom toss my stuff in the garbage each day. I think they define 'clean' to mean how much email sticks versus what bounces but part of that problem is the number of netters who pitch it without taking the trouble to bounce it back. Spammers work by numbers and if there was a way to enforce valid return addresses on email and spam, and everyone who found it unwelcome did bounce it back, I suspect the spammers would be shocked by the volume of returned stuff they get, that they then had to dispose of, etc. Thats one reason I use the 'bounce' feature in Mail Washer; hoping to God at least some of it gets back to the (true) originator to discourage them. PAT] ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Date: 27 Jan 2004 05:50:29 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jeffrey Mattox wrote in message news:... > Pat: > [Please do not publish my email address -- too much spam already.] > You wrote: >> TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Really not a problem at all. >> I use a software package called 'Mail Washer' which does that. >> ... Anything you tell Mail Washer to bounce and blacklist gets >> returned to the sender with a very realistic looking notice from >> postmaster@your.site saying no such user. ... PAT] > This particular feature of Mail Washer will do more harm than good. > An truly invalid email address is reported to the SMTP server during > the actual connection when the email is sent. The SMTP protocol > tells the sending machine that the address is invalid and the message > body never even gets sent. > When you send a "bounce" message yourself in reply to a spam, it's > just another email going over the Internet and it will be totally > ignored by the spammer. Spammers don't include a valid reply address > anyway, so your bounce message will likely just generate another > bounce message (a reply to your bounce) causing even more traffic. > Even if spammers get your bounce message, they'd know it was faked > because it didn't come during the SMTP connection when the spam was > sent. In fact, your faked bounce message is a *positive indication* > that your address is valid because you got the spam!! > <> > But that is wrong! Spammers can tell because the bounce message > comes as a delayed email (which they will ignore) rather than a > refused connected by the SMTP protocol. With spammers using every > trick they can to get emails through spam filters, why would anybody > believe they would be fooled by a faked bounce message? Besides, > spammers aren't interested in cleaning their lists. It's a waste of > their time because it costs them nothing to keep the bad addresses. > Damn them! > The companies that are advertising this "feature" of their product > are either idiots or (more likely) are hoping to impress people with > a feature that sounds good, but, in fact, is detrimental. > Jeff I use Mailwasher PRO, which you can upgrade to with a small donation to the author of the freeware, to handle my e-mail. I have set the option to only mark for deletion rather than mark for deletion and bounce for the reasons Jeff stated. Mailwasher also has the ability to mark domains as being on your "blacklist" so any mail coming from that domain is automatically classified as being "spam" and marked for, but not deleted or bounced. The only thing about Mailwasher I would like to see is to add the ability to check messages on Yahoo! and some of the other web-based mail services. It does Hotmail which is POP3 compatible, but not others. Rodgers Platt [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have that same Mail Washer Pro, and it sits right in front of my email client and calls for the client when it has finished its review each time. I should have mentioned that to the original correspondent. Yes, Mail Washer is free, but if you send the NZ guy a small donation you can use the 'Pro' version which has a few more features. I strongly believe in sending money to people who promote using the net properly; the guys who put their shareware out for others. PAT] ------------------------------ From: noname Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:00:43 GMT In article , Jeffrey Mattox says: > The Mail Washer web site says : "... the bounced messages look > exactly like a returned mail message you would receive if you sent an > email off to a wrong address. There is no way the spammers can tell > it is not genuine." > But that is wrong! Spammers can tell because the bounce message > comes as a delayed email (which they will ignore) rather than a > refused connected by the SMTP protocol. With spammers using every > trick they can to get emails through spam filters, why would anybody > believe they would be fooled by a faked bounce message? Besides, > spammers aren't interested in cleaning their lists. It's a waste of > their time because it costs them nothing to keep the bad addresses. > Damn them! > The companies that are advertising this "feature" of their product > are either idiots or (more likely) are hoping to impress people with > a feature that sounds good, but, in fact, is detrimental. I once used MailWasher until I actually looked at the way SMTP works and realized it was easy to tell that the bounce was counterfeit. I've since switched to PopFile -- it is an email proxy that uses Bayesian rules to filter out the SPAM. You have to teach it for the first week as it doesn't really know how to classify things. But once that's done you should see classification accuracy of 99% or higher. And here's the thing -- it errs on the side of legitimate email. So every once in a while for the first month or so you might see SPAM tagged as legitimate. Just go into the web console and tag it as SPAM and that will increase the accuracy. Right now I'm at 99.65% accuracy. Granted, I munge my address enough that it'll be some time before I start getting spam. http://popfile.sourceforge.net/ In article , pv+usenet@pobox.com says: > me@privacy.net writes: >> How difficult would it be to spoof a message that seemed like it came >> from an ISP's mail server? I'd like this technique to discourage some >> people from sending mail to me. > It's actually pretty trivial -- send a message to a whacko address on > your ISP's mailserver, and mimic the resulting bounce message that > gets sent to you. If you're doing this for specific people that you > actually know and don't like, it's harmless enough. However, DO NOT be > tempted to use this against spammers. All you'll be doing then is > sending random messages to addresses that either don't exist, or don't > belong to the spammer. The only way to bounce a spam is during the > SMTP conversation while the message is coming in, and even then in > most cases the spammer isn't paying attention to the responses > anyway. * If you have the time, see who registered the domain name of the site selling the product. I've had particular success when a certain type of spam gets on my nerves when looking up the domain owner, attempting to send email from a safe account (aka a disposable account) and calling if the number is within the continental U.S. If none of those contact methods works I drop an empty envelope to the address listed. If it comes back undeliverable I scan the returned envelope and send it to the registrar along with the log of calls, emails, etc. I've gotten a few domains hosed that way. ------------------------------ From: Andrew Bell Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 10:00:49 -0500 >> TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Really not a problem at all. >> I use a software package called 'Mail Washer' which does that. >> ... Anything you tell Mail Washer to bounce and blacklist gets >> returned to the sender with a very realistic looking notice from >> postmaster@your.site saying no such user. ... PAT] > This particular feature of Mail Washer will do more harm than good. > An truly invalid email address is reported to the SMTP server during > the actual connection when the email is sent. The SMTP protocol > tells the sending machine that the address is invalid and the message > body never even gets sent. While I agree with you that bounce messages are largely ineffective, this statement is only true sometimes. My work email comes to me through no less than 3 SMTP relays. The first one (which I don't control) will never bounce a message unless the from: domain doesn't exist. Don't get me started on the politics of this. :-( The second one (my first point of control) may reject a message for any number of additional reasons, including an invalid to: address. This means that I reject the mail while connected to the relay server, not the originator. The relay server then has to initiate a brand new connection to the originating server to deliver this bounce message. Dealing with these bounces on the relay server makes for an interesting problem. Since about about 80% of these are going to invalid addresses, we have to send legitimate outgoing mail through a different set of relays. Otherwise, the backlog of bounce messages can delay real mail for hours or days. Andrew ------------------------------ From: Chris Jones Subject: Re: Why SCO's McBride Declared War Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 10:49:32 -0500 Monty Solomon writes: > Online Extra: Why SCO's McBride Declared War > Says the CEO about Linux: "It wasn't like we said, 'Oh, let's go find > people and sue them.' It was a gradual enforcement of our rights" > You have to give SCO Group ( SCOX ) CEO Darl McBride credit for one > thing: He's got moxie. First, in what way was it NOT like they said "Oh, let's sue"? Saying that that isn't what they did doesn't change the fact that what they did looks EXACTLY like that. And no, I don't have to give Darl McBride credit for ANYTHING if I don't want to. He can't make me, and siccing lawyers indiscriminately won't change that fact. How did he end up in this universe without a clue, anyway? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 08:58:59 -0700 From: Joey Lindstrom Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Organization: Telus Sucks! Subject: Re: New Virus Infects PCs, Whacks SCO Monday, January 26, 2004, 11:20:00 PM, Monty wrote: > A mass-mailing virus quickly spread through the Internet on Monday, > compromising computers so that they attack the SCO Group's Web > server with a flood of data on Feb. 1, according to antivirus > companies. Wow. The world's first genuinely-useful virus. Go figure. Joey Lindstrom http://td-extra.interocitor.net ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 07:56:45 GMT In article , postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us says: > Alan Burkitt-Gray wrote: >> The idea is that a +800 xxxx xxxx number can be dialed free of >> charge from anywhere in the world. The system is already in use by >> many of the main hotel chains. For example the Hilton group gives >> +800 4445 8667 on its website (the numbers translate to +800 >> HHILTONS, and it's very similar to its US toll-free number +1-800 >> 445 8667). > The number 011-800-4445-8667# when dialed from an Arlington, Virginia > home telephone produced a US style ring, and after about 10 or 12 > rings went to a recording identifying itself as Hilton Honors, in > essence I was being put into a queue. I hung up, having confirmed > that the numbers do work here. For what it's worth, when I dialed that number from my Verizon landline here in Maryland, I got an interrupt and was cut off. > When I tried dialing it from my Sprint PCS phone (without the # since > you send all the digits before you push 'send'), I got the recording > "Your account is not authorized to make calls to this number" so it > implies that Sprint isn't aware of it yet or doesn't know how to > authorize that 'country code' to be considered a local call. When I tried it from my Verizon Wireless cellphone, James Earl Jones told me it couldn't be completed without a calling card. > This at least confirms that international 800 numbers can be dialed > from U.S. wireline locations (presuming they include US access for > the particular number.) Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD, USA Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. ------------------------------ From: Andrew Bell Subject: Getting True, Important Security Updates from Microsoft Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:41:10 -0500 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess for many people, it is quite > sufficient. Truely, some links to URLs are outrageously long and > cumbersome to type in. As you know, some URLs go on for eighty to one > hundred characters in length, or more. People need to learn that > Microsoft, various banks, etc do NOT send you email telling you to > 'please click here and verify your account information.' People need > to learn that the only way you EVER go to one of those sites is if > you, yourself originate the inquiry. > What scares me a little however is that Microsoft has some perfectly > legimate way to 'tickle' the bit in your computer to notify you that > Windows Update has something for you. Then the next time you attempt > to use your browser, you get diverted (legitimatly) to Windows Update > to receive the file. What happens when some bad person (a) gets his > hands on the mailing list of people who want to be notified > legitimatly by Microsoft of new security issues, then (b) proceeds to > send a 'tickle' to all those users and (c) figures out some way to > divert them to a malicious but very well counterfieted web site > purporting to be Windows Update. The amateurs out there now who send > those 'here is your latest update' file only fool the really new, > novice users. Imagine the fun when (a), (b) and (c) above get accomp- > lished and only a *very trained, very experienced* user notices there > is something 'not quite right' about that 'Windows Update' page, but > by that time the bad man has already started dumping all over your > hard drive. We are all at the mercy of users who are smarter than > ourselves unfortunatly. PAT] The Microsoft update is a "pull" system. If you enable automatic updates, your PC runs a daemon that checks in with the MS site to see if anything's available, then optionally downloads and installs it. Microsoft never "reaches out" to your system. The browser diversion you mentioned works similarly. IE can (will, by default) check for updates automatically every time you start it. If a newer version exists, it will then redirect you to the IE download page instead of your normal home page. This is a lot riskier than automatic updates. (Picture an attack which changes your home page to a malicious clone of the IE update site - easy to do through either an unpatched browser or social engineering.) This check can be disabled under the Advanced setting tab in Internet Explorer options. Then if you ever see an IE update page at startup, you'll *know* it's evil. (insert Microsoft is evil anyway reference here) Andrew ----------------------------- 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #42 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jan 27 22:31:43 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0S3VgQ02973; Tue, 27 Jan 2004 22:31:43 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 22:31:43 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401280331.i0S3VgQ02973@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 #43 TELECOM Digest Tue, 27 Jan 2004 22:31:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 43 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks (Monty Solomon) Verizon Supercharged DSL for Additional Massachusetts Cust (M Solomon) Tivo Sells Shares, Stock Hits Six-Month High (Monty Solomon) CNET Digital Living Puts the Hottest Consumer Electronics (M Solomon) Re: Getting True, Important Security Updates from Microsoft (J Mattox) Re: New Virus Infects PCs, Whacks SCO (Steven J Sobol) Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers (Stanley Cline) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (Jeffrey Mattox) Re: Linus Torvalds: SCO Is "Just Too Wrong" (Thomas A. Horsley) CLEC Question (procon) Re: Why SCO's McBride Declared War (noname) Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers (John R. Levine) Norvergence is Hiring! (Joe Wineburgh) Re: Cablevision a Top Bidder For Wireless Licenses (Matt) Richard L. Kimsey Joins firstRain Advisory Board (PressReleaseNetwork) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:04:18 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks By Scott Fullam January 2004 (est.) Series: Hacks ISBN: 0-596-00314-5 352 pages, $29.95 US, $43.95 CA, £20.95 UK http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hardwarehks/ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hardwarehks/desc.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:17:27 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Supercharged DSL for Additional Massachusetts Customers Supercharged DSL Service Is Now More Available, Affordable and Accessible BOSTON, Jan. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon customers in more than 30 towns across Massachusetts now have improved communications as the result of a $10 million investment the company has made in its local telecommunications network. In order to extend the reach of the company's super-fast digital subscriber line (DSL) Internet access service to Massachusetts consumers and businesses, Verizon installed digital equipment in telecommunications terminals located in neighborhoods where DSL service was previously not available. This resulted in an increase of 180,000 DSL-qualified telephone lines in areas of Greater Boston, Cape Cod and Western Massachusetts, as well as in towns north, south and west of Boston. The company completed the project last month. During the past three years, Verizon has invested more than $2 billion in its network that serves Massachusetts. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40321806 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:21:55 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Tivo Sells Shares, Stock Hits Six-Month High NEW YORK, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Shares of TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ:TIVO), a maker of digital video recorders, rose to their highest level in six months on Tuesday as the company raised $74 million in a secondary share offering. While offerings usually pressure share prices, analysts said they were encouraged by evidence that TiVo was raising money to finance its future growth. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40321610 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:28:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: CNET Digital Living Puts the Hottest Consumer Electronics CNET Digital Living Puts the Hottest Consumer Electronics on Display in Eight-Room, Interactive Digital Home - Jan 27, 2004 01:33 PM (BusinessWire) SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 27, 2004-- CNET Digital Living Guides Consumers to the Ultimate Digital Lifestyle Based on Preferences and Budget Needs CNET, the trusted source of information for millions of personal technology buyers around the world, and a property of CNET Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:CNET), today announced the latest version of CNET Digital Living ( http://living.cnet.com ). Featuring an eight-room, interactive digital home, CNET Digital Living is the first editorial feature that lets users browse through product recommendations by expert, unbiased editors, in the context of an actual home setting, so they can learn how to build a digital home that fits their budget and lifestyle. Launched in October, CNET Digital Living addresses the challenge people face in figuring out how the overwhelming range of cutting-edge consumer electronics products can fit into their lives. The site combines its editorial expertise, the collective knowledge of its audience, and cutting-edge interactive content to produce creative features such as "Gear Envy," "What's Your Style," and "Three I can't Live Without" -- all of which showcase the latest consumer electronics and how they enhance people's everyday lives. The new eight-room home lets users "walk through" three types of living rooms (high-end, cutting-edge, and budget), two home offices (telecommuter's office and family home office), a kitchen, a recreation room, and a master bedroom. Removing the mystery of product compatibility, each room features products that work with each other. As users mouse over the products on display, they can easily retrieve information on editors' top picks for each category, as well as guidance and advice on how to build and set up each room. In addition to the digital home, a new feature called "Wireless Way" provides a step-by-step guide to setting up the wireless digital home from start to finish. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40322380 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:06:02 -0600 From: Jeffrey Mattox
Subject: Re: Getting True, Important Security Updates from Microsoft Please withhold my email address -- too much spam. Pat wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: ... Truely, some links to URLs are > outrageously long and cumbersome to type in. As you know, some URLs > go on for eighty to one hundred characters in length, or more. Here's a site that allows you to enter a URL, any URL, even a massively long URL, and it gives you a relatively short "alias" to that URL that you can use in postings. http://tinyurl.com/ For example, here's one I just made. It will take you to the latest issue of the TELECOM Digest online: http://tinyurl.com/22juf For now and evermore! (Or as long as tinyurl.com site remains in operation.) Jeff [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for doing that, Jeff. I have an account with UNOIC which issues domain names on the fly; you come up with the desired name in the 'us.tf' area (or several other areas are available and they are instantly assigned, just as tiny URL. For instance, try http://patricktownson.us.tf or http://weatherforecast.us.tf which are two of mine recently created. They in fact are just redirects to elsewhere. Anyway folks, remember http://tinyurl.com/22juf as one way to read this Digest. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: New Virus Infects PCs, Whacks SCO Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:11:59 -0600 Joey Lindstrom wrote: > Monday, January 26, 2004, 11:20:00 PM, Monty wrote: >> A mass-mailing virus quickly spread through the Internet on Monday, >> compromising computers so that they attack the SCO Group's Web >> server with a flood of data on Feb. 1, according to antivirus >> companies. > Wow. The world's first genuinely-useful virus. Go figure. Yeah, except you know that Sue-Happy Darth McVader is going to go ballistic over this. Sometimes the assholes on our side irritate me more than the assholes on the other side. Whoever did this made a whole lot of innocent bystanders look very bad. JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, Apple Valley, CA Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net PGP: C57E 8B25 F994 D6D0 5F6B B961 EA08 9410 E3AE 35ED ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:05:28 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Roamer1 Communications - Dunwoody, GA, USA Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org In article , Michael D Sullivan wrote: > For what it's worth, when I dialed that number from my Verizon > landline here in Maryland, I got an interrupt and was cut off. Whether +800 works depends on your PICed LD carrier. The Big Three (AT&T, MCI, Sprint) work, but Qwest and Global Crossing do *not* work; the latter probably holds true for most smaller carriers as well. :( Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ ... "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:34:45 -0600 From: Jeffrey Mattox
Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Please withhold my email address -- too much spam. Barry Margolin wrote: > And you're also probably correct that they don't care about cleaning > up their lists. Spam lists are valued by their size, not quality, even > though spammers often advertise (in spam!) how clean their lists are. Here's an interesting and detailed analysis of two CDs offered for sale (by spammers) that supposedly contain "clean" and "fresh" addresses. What You Get When You Buy a Spam CD http://rejo.zenger.nl/abuse/emailcd.php Summary: One would expect to receive a CD with lists of addresses that are cleansed of role-accounts, doubles, spamtraps, spamblocks and whatsoever in order to make a good impression. None of this cleaning was performed and it proves how polluted a collection of email addresses one would receive when taking up a spammer on such an offer. These CD's with addresses are of an extremely low quality. When all doubles (and triples, and ...) are removed from the lists, only 6,220,454 unique addresses remain. Which is 57% of the number of addresses the spammers claims. Two addresses even appear 14 times on the CD. Another notable thing is that there are more addresses that on the CD's twice than addresses with a single appearance. Over 60% of all addresses appear twice, while only 28% appears only once. Jeff ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Linus Torvalds: SCO Is "Just Too Wrong" From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:47:44 GMT > If anyone knows what's in Linux, it's Linus Torvalds. > ... > Torvalds explains why he thinks SCO is wrong. I don't know. At least for NFS I think SCO probably has a compelling argument they could make if they have the guts to make it with a straight face: NFS on standard unixes is without a doubt the most bug riddled, unreliable, data dropping, file corrupting, cpu hanging, resource sucking, subsystem ever coded by programmerkind. SCO could easily demonstrate that Linux NFS is just as sucky and prone to errors. How, therefore, could it possibly be equally bad if the Linux programmers didn't steal it? :-). >>==>> The *Best* political site >>==+ email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics <<==+ ------------------------------ From: paravant@excite.com (procon) Subject: CLEC Question Date: 27 Jan 2004 17:37:34 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Wanted to confirm this - CLEC (Competitive Local exchange carrier) is a company that competes with already established local telephone companies by providing its own network and switching capabilities. IT came about due to the telecom act of 1996 which encouraged competition among both long distance and local carriers. The act was passed in an effort to open the local market to competition. In November of 1999, the FCC established the Unbundled Network Element Platform (UNEP), which requires that incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), among other things, to begin offering competitive companies access to their network elements on an unbundled basis at reasonable, nondiscriminatory rates, or Total Element Long Run Incremental Cost (TELRIC). My questions are - 1] Typically would it make sense for a CLEC to buy v/s lease from the ILEC? 2] What are examples of major CLEC - eg is SBC Telecom a major CLEC? 3] What is meant by collocation? and associated terms - Physical collocation, Virtual collocation, cageless collocation? 4] What are some of the transport alternatives of a CLEC? Eg what is meant by "Unbundled" dedicated transport and "Unbundled" shared transport. Thanks. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here are a few answers; I am sure other readers will fill in the blanks. (1) Most CLECs lease from the telco of record in the community of service. (2) I do not know how to evaluate the word 'major'. (3)'Co-location' refers to the CLEC having their switching equipment at the same location as the telco of record in the community. For example, here in Independence, the SW Bell central office is at the corner of 6th and Maple Streets. The CLECs who have equipment in town have theirs in the same physical building. They are located in the same building, or co-located. Terms like 'cageless' and 'virtual' are sort of interchangeable. The CLECs have to put their switching equipment and/or computers, etc inside a locked (i.e. caged) area separate from that of Bell. Maybe other readers can tell you more. PAT] ------------------------------ From: noname Subject: Re: Why SCO's McBride Declared War Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 21:22:32 GMT In article , clj@panix.com says: > Monty Solomon writes: >> Online Extra: Why SCO's McBride Declared War >> Says the CEO about Linux: "It wasn't like we said, 'Oh, let's go find >> people and sue them.' It was a gradual enforcement of our rights" >> You have to give SCO Group ( SCOX ) CEO Darl McBride credit for one >> thing: He's got moxie. > First, in what way was it NOT like they said "Oh, let's sue"? Saying > that that isn't what they did doesn't change the fact that what they > did looks EXACTLY like that. > And no, I don't have to give Darl McBride credit for ANYTHING if I > don't want to. He can't make me, and siccing lawyers indiscriminately > won't change that fact. How did he end up in this universe without a > clue, anyway? I have a very low opinion of those who use the courts and our legislators to fatten their own pockets. McBride falls beneath my contempt because of this. SCO doesn't have a leg to stand on -- this is a calculated risk to try and inflate the value of the company. I highly doubt it will work because SCO's credibility has been severely inhibited by it's unwillingness to state exactly which lines of code are in violation, if at all. And in the 01/26/04 issue of eWeek I see that they've even testified before our congress critters that open source software is a national security issue. Their argument is that a scientist in North Korea could download Linux, install it on a bunch of machines and cluster them into a supercomputer for nuclear research. The congress critters to their credit, explained that if proper export controls were exercised this wouldn't be an issue. But let's face it, North Korea will get what it wants from Japan, not the U.S. I hope SCO goes down in flames for this one. ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers Date: 27 Jan 2004 17:27:20 -0500 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> The number 011-800-4445-8667# when dialed from an Arlington, Virginia >> home telephone produced a US style ring, and after about 10 or 12 >> rings went to a recording identifying itself as Hilton Honors, ... Vonage gives me a fast busy, my ILEC gives a local intercept. In both cases, I suspect that it's because nobody's noticed that ++800 is a valid country code. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 12:19:28 PST From: Joe Wineburgh Reply-To: jwineburgh@yahoo.com Subject: Norvergence is Hiring http://jobsearch.monster.com/getjob.asp?JobID=19344094 Sr Network Services Sales Representative Company: Norvergence Location: US-NJ-Northern Status: Full Time, Employee Job Category: Sales Use the employer's preferred method to send your resume - click Apply Now! Job Description Sales Executive 2 Shifts Available (M-F 8am - 3pm) or (M-TH 3:30 - 9:30 F 3:30 - 8:00) EARN UP TO 150K 1st year! BASE SALARY + HUGE COMMISION + BENEFITS! Company Information At Norvergence, our mission is to be the world leader in providing the "KILLER TELECOM SOLUTION". Within Sales, the mission is to meet or exceed goals by providing the right product, to the right person, at the right price & achieve our goals by treating customers & prospects with respect & sensitivity to their special needs. NorVergence is backed by two (2) Fortune 500 Corporations, Nortel Networks and Qwest Communications. Career Advancement is also a major priority with the company's structure. Job Description You will be responsible for building relationships with prospective customers through cold calling and unique selling techniques. You will be responsible for focusing on outbound calls from a lead list that you are given on a weekly base. Leads are provided to ALL Inside Sales Reps. Primary Responsibilities . Exceed company standards for phone performance. . Achieve weekly goals set forth by management. . Build relationships with prospective customers by using selling techniques and building profiles. Job Qualifications . Must have at least a two year successful track record of selling to C-Level corporate executives. . Must be accustomed to earning a six figure income. . The successful candidate must build strong rapport with clients, have a high degree of interpersonal skills, and deliver clear and concise oral presentations. . The successful candidate must be a self-starter, goal-orientated, able to work independently with little direction, have strong organizational skills, and be a creative thinker with excellent problem solving abilities. . You must be goal oriented, have the ability to excel in a fast-paced environment, and possess a strong drive for achievement. . To Apply you must email a copy of your resume to resumes@norvergence.com and fill out our online application @ www.norvergencehiring.com . ------------------------------ From: Matt Subject: Re: Cablevision a Top Bidder For Wireless Licenses Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 14:05:13 -0500 We see how did Cablevision did with Northcoast ....(/tounge in cheek) Monty Solomon wrote in message news:telecom23.41.3@telecom-digest.org: > NEW YORK, Jan 26 (Reuters) - VOOM, the satellite TV service set to be > spun off from New York-area cable company Cablevision Systems > (NYSE:CVC), is the top bidder for licenses to build a U.S. wireless > video and data network, according to Federal Communications Commission > figures. > The network would use an emerging technology called MVDDS, nor > Multichannel Video Distribution and Data Service, which operates > within the same spectrum of broadcast frequencies as satellite > television services like DirecTV and DISH Network. But it is > transmitted from local microwave towers, allowing the broadcast of > local channels and two-way high-speed data. > Satellite broadcasters, who oppose the technology, say their spectrum > is too crowded, diminishing the quality of their product. > - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40310951 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 22:20:56 +0400 From: Editor (PressReleaseNetwork.com) Subject: Richard L. Kimsey Joins firstRain Advisory Board PRESS RELEASE NETWORK http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com Richard L. Kimsey Joins firstRain Advisory Board Telecommunications and Software Industry Veteran Brings Global Experience Developing Strategic Partnerships and Relationships to firstRain New York, NY - January 27, 2004 (PRN): firstRain, Inc., the leading provider portal enhancement technology, today announced the addition of Richard (Rick) L. Kimsey to its Advisory Board. Mr. Kimsey is currently the vice chairman of Trustfile, a business-tax filing company that simplifies electronic preparation, filing and payment of business taxes. Mr. Kimsey is an accomplished executive who has been a pioneer in the telecommunication field. Prior to joining Trustfile, he was President and CEO of TelePacific Communications, where he led this pre-IPO integrated communications provider through a high growth phase to one of operational excellence. He also served on the company's Board of Directors and Executive Committee. He joined the company from his position as President, Southeast Region for Sprint PCS, the largest all-digital and all-PCS nationwide wireless network in the United States. As leader of Sprint PCS' most successful region, Rick was responsible for a significant portion of the company's $6 billion in annual revenue, and directed the activities of over 3,000 associates. He was part of the original Sprint PCS start-up team that acquired the broadband licenses on which its operations are based. He joined Sprint PCS representing Cox Communications, a founding partner, where he had previously spearheaded Cox's entrance into the PCS industry. Prior to Cox, Rich spent six years with BellSouth where he was a key contributor and leader in the start-up of their cellular operations in the United States and Australia. "firstRain has developed solutions that enable enterprises to capitalize on their significant investments in Internet information," said Kimsey. "Leading corporations are already gaining tremendous value from firstRain's ability to leverage those assets more effectively, and I am excited about this opportunity to contribute to the company's strategy as it continues to grow." "We are honored to have a highly esteemed professional like Rick join firstRain's Advisory Board," said firstRain CEO Gaurav Rewari. "The experience he brings in developing strategies for growth-oriented, high-technology companies will be instrumental in helping us to deliver our powerful solutions to leading companies in key industries." About firstRain firstRain is the leading provider of portal enhancement technology. These solutions improve enterprise decision support by flexibly integrating and monitoring a wide variety of information, applications, and business events from the Internet and corporate Intranets which are delivered to individual users through dashboards, portals, hand held devices or to other programs via Web Services/XML interfaces. Its solutions deliver value to customers by improving their ability to react to new opportunities and enabling faster, better-informed decisions. firstRain is a private, venture-based company with headquarters in New York City. For more information, contact: Lauren Selikoff Tel: 212-616-8737 Email: lselikoff@firstRain.com http://www.firstRain.com #### Editor & CEO Press Release Network editor@pressreleasenetwork.com http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #43 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jan 28 02:08:05 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0S785o04370; Wed, 28 Jan 2004 02:08:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 02:08:05 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401280708.i0S785o04370@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 #44 TELECOM Digest Wed, 28 Jan 2004 02:07:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 44 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson TiVo Acquires Strangeberry, Palo Alto-Based Co. Innovator (M. Solomon) Comcast Redesigns Privacy Notice (Monty Solomon) Homeland Security to Offer Cyber Warnings (Monty Solomon) Policy Post 10.02: Supreme Court to Consider Net Content (Monty Solomon) EFF Action Alert: Airlines and Government Violate Privacy (M. Solomon) T-Mobile USA Show Biggest Gains From New Rules (Monty Solomon) Re: CLEC Question (Fred R. Goldstein) Re: Verizon Supercharged DSL for Addl Massachusetts Customers (S. Sobol) Re: Cablevision a Top Bidder For Wireless Licenses (Steven J Sobol) Re: Getting True, Important Security Updates from Microsoft (B Margolin) Share Day for January (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:11:06 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo Acquires Strangeberry, Palo Alto-Based Company and Innovator Broadband Television Technologies - Jan 27, 2004 04:06 PM (PR Newswire) Move Accelerates TiVo's Drive to Extend TiVo Service Beyond DVR SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO) today announced that it has acquired Strangeberry Inc., a small Palo Alto-based technology company specializing in using home network and broadband technologies to create new entertainment experiences on television. The acquisition will enable TiVo to accelerate its strategy, unveiled earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), to extend the TiVo(R) service beyond digital video recording to include a much broader, richer entertainment experience for subscribers. Strangeberry has created technology based on industry standards, including a collection of powerful protocols and tools that will enable the development of a host of new broadband-based content delivery services for the TiVo platform. TiVo has acquired Strangeberry's intellectual property assets and engineering staff in exchange for equity. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40324266 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:17:44 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Comcast Redesigns Privacy Notice By JENNIFER C. YATES Associated Press Writer PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Comcast Corp. will mail television customers its privacy statement this week with revised language and a slicker presentation it hopes will quell complaints over how the company could use personal information. The changes make clear when the cable giant will use personal information such as Social Security and bank account numbers, names and credit information. The old policy said the information could be used "as otherwise necessary to provide the service," causing complaints from regulators and consumer advocates who feared threats to privacy. Gerard Lewis, Philadelphia-based Comcast's senior counsel and chief privacy officer, said there were no changes to the actual policy, which is sent out annually in compliance with federal laws. He said the changes in presentation _ including a question-and-answer section _ and tightening of language were made as part of its annual revision process. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40326505 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:19:39 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Homeland Security to Offer Cyber Warnings By TED BRIDIS AP Technology Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans can sign up beginning Wednesday to receive free cyber alerts and computer advice from the Homeland Security Department to help protect themselves on the Internet. The new National Cyber Alert System, expected to be announced Wednesday, is an ambitious program to develop a trusted warning system by the government to help home users and technology experts. It will send e-mails about major virus outbreaks and other Internet attacks as they occur, along with detailed instructions to help computer users protect themselves. The effort is aimed at improving the overall security of the Internet, a goal frustrated by increasingly complex software that can be difficult to secure and by hackers learning to launch sophisticated new attacks. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40328469 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 00:58:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Policy Post 10.02: Supreme Court to Consider Net Content CDT POLICY POST Volume 10, Number 2, January 26, 2004 A Briefing On Public Policy Issues Affecting Civil Liberties Online from The Center For Democracy and Technology (1) Supreme Court to Consider Net Content Controls; CDT Files Brief (2) COPA, However Well Intentioned, Restricts Legal Speech Online (3) Education and User Control, Not Legislation, Key to Protecting Children ... http://www.cdt.org/publications/pp_10.02.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 01:05:58 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFF Action Alert: Airlines and Government Violate Your Privacy EFFector Vol. 17, No. 1 January 20, 2004 A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 276th Issue of EFFector: * EFF Action Alert: Airlines and Government Violate Your Privacy Again: Call for Hearings Now! * Update on CAPPS II: What's Next? * Guest Op-ed: "Your Finances, Your Liberties" * Nominate a Pioneer for EFF's 2004 Pioneer Awards! * Deep Links (11): SCO Sues Novell for Slander * EFF Court Docket: 02.03.04 - MGM v. Grokster; 02.09.04 - OPG v. Diebold * Staff Calendar: 01.22.04 - Fred von Lohmann speaks at "Washington in the West" Conference, Long Beach, CA.; 01.25.04 - Gwen Hinze speaks on file-sharing, Berkeley, CA.; 01.26.04 - Lee Tien speaks on privacy, Battle Creek, MI * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/17/1.php ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:10:26 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: T-Mobile USA show biggest gains from new rules By Sinead Carew NEW YORK, Jan 27 (Reuters) - T-Mobile USA showed the strongest gains so far from U.S. number switching rules on Tuesday in the fourth quarter, growing faster than bigger rivals AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and Cingular Wireless combined. Deutsche Telekom's (DE:DTEGn) T-Mobile, the sixth largest U.S. wireless service, said it added 1.015 million customers and beat analysts' targets as it was helped by a rule that let customers change service and keep their number. Wall Street estimates ranged from 829,000 to 838,000 new customers. AT&T Wireless, which put itself up for sale last week, posted disappointing subscriber growth and an unexpected loss due to the new rule and technical problems. Cingular added far fewer subscribers than T-Mobile and posted a smaller profit. Roe Equity Research analyst Kevin Roe said he was pleased with T-Mobile's subscriber additions, but questioned how profitable those subscribers were, given the industry wide hike in customer acquisition costs amid fierce competition. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40323827 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:06:52 -0500 From: Fred R. Goldstein Subject: Re: CLEC Question At 27 Jan 2004 17:37:34 -0800 paravant@excite.com (procon) asked, > Wanted to confirm this - > CLEC (Competitive Local exchange carrier) is a company that competes > with already established local telephone companies by providing its > own network and switching capabilities. Not necessarily. A CLEC can engage in "total service resale", though it's not usually a good business. It can also provide its own switching while using the ILEC's transmission. > 1] Typically would it make sense for a CLEC to buy v/s lease from the > ILEC? Buy from whom? The ILEC only provides "services" or "elements", not equipment. The CLEC can buy its own equipment build its own facilities, but that tends to make sense only when there's enough concentrated volume in a given geography to make it worthwhile. > 2] What are examples of major CLEC - eg is SBC Telecom a major CLEC? No, SBC is not a major CLEC, just a token activity created to meet a merger condition, and I think they paid the fine for not making it a real business. Major CLECs include -- this is just a sample -- AT&T (the local side, f/k/a Teleport), MCI (its CLECs include MFS, MCI Metro ATS, and Brooks Fiber), Allegiance (recent Ch. 11), Focal (went through Ch. 11), PacWest, Paetec, Level3, and a few others. Note however that many "major" CLECs -- the ones who got too much money up front -- have had problems, while little privately-held local guys are doing fine, or at least getting by. A lot of little rural ILECs also operate as CLECs in nearby areas where the ILECs are larger. > 3] What is meant by collocation? and associated terms - Physical > collocation, Virtual collocation, cageless collocation? Physical collocation -- CLEC gets a cage in the ILEC's wire center. Cageless collocation -- CLEC puts a rack (no cage) in the ILEC's wire center. Virtual collocation -- CLEC has ILEC install its equipment in ILEC's part of the wire center, where the ILEC techs have to maintain it. Usually done in small COs that have no room for anything else, or when there's only a little bit of equipment (like a mux) that doesn't need much work. > 4] What are some of the transport alternatives of a CLEC? Eg what is > meant by "Unbundled" dedicated transport and "Unbundled" shared > transport. Dedicated transport -- CLEC gets fixed bandwidth (DS-1, DS-3) between ILEC locations, which it can use for almost anything. Shared transport -- CLEC leases local switching from ILEC (UNE Platform) and its calls go on the same trunks as calls made by ILEC subscribers; this is where that trunk usage is paid for. Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Verizon Supercharged DSL for Additional Massachusetts Customers Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 22:56:44 -0600 Monty Solomon wrote: > In order to extend the reach of the company's super-fast digital > subscriber line (DSL) Internet access service to Massachusetts > consumers and businesses, Verizon installed digital equipment in > telecommunications terminals located in neighborhoods where DSL > service was previously not available. This resulted in an increase of > 180,000 DSL-qualified telephone lines in areas of Greater Boston, Cape > Cod and Western Massachusetts, as well as in towns north, south and > west of Boston. The company completed the project last month. > During the past three years, Verizon has invested more than $2 billion > in its network that serves Massachusetts. > - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40321806 Of note is that roughly five miles from the Verizon Apple Valley CO at Navajo Road and State Highway 18 in Apple Valley, California, Verizon tells me I can now get DSL at my house. Apparently they have done some work out here to extend the reach of their DSL services too. JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, Apple Valley, CA Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net PGP: C57E 8B25 F994 D6D0 5F6B B961 EA08 9410 E3AE 35ED ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Cablevision a Top Bidder For Wireless Licenses Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:01:51 -0600 Matt wrote: > We see how did Cablevision did with Northcoast ....(/tounge in cheek) Speaking from direct experience in the first city in which they launched: A couple years ago I turned on my Northcoast PCS service. A month after launch they still had tons of phone numbers and I was able to get (440) 342-GEEK, which was really cool. :) Service worked fine for about 10 months, and then they started dropping calls on Interstate 90 between Lakewood, Ohio and down- town Cleveland. Lots of calls, that is. I had a Verizon phone I used for travel anyhow, so I switched to Verizon full-time. Unfortunately I was not able to keep my number as WLNP wasn't in force back then. Cablevision sucks as a cable TV provider. I don't see why they should be expected to do any better with other ventures. They're exceptionally clueless. (Cablevision was the franchise holder for Cleveland and most of its suburbs until they pulled out in 2000 and sold their network to Adelphia.) I expect VOOM to be the Cleveland Indians of the broadband world. (implicit reference to the fact that since the brother of the CEO of Cablevision bought the Indians, they've gone to hell in a handbasket. :) JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, Apple Valley, CA Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net PGP: C57E 8B25 F994 D6D0 5F6B B961 EA08 9410 E3AE 35ED ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Getting True, Important Security Updates from Microsoft Organization: Looking for work Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 05:29:10 GMT In article , Jeffrey Mattox
wrote: > Here's a site that allows you to enter a URL, any URL, even a > massively long URL, and it gives you a relatively short "alias" to > that URL that you can use in postings. > http://tinyurl.com/ But doesn't this miss the point of the recommendation to type the URL manually? That idea of that was that you would realize when you're typing a bogus URL (e.g. you wouldn't be fooled by "micr0s0ft.com"). If you type a tinyurl.com or makeashortlink.com URL, you have no idea where it's really going to, so you're effectively following a random link. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Share Day For January Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 2:00:00 EST Instead of changing the Digest over to an advrtising supported forum, I have always elected to keep it as a user supported forum, and for the most part keep it spam and virus free. I am *only* able to do this because of financial support from readers here, and if you would rather not see these messages every month, then please pitch in and help now and then! Consider it sort of like public radio, which goes on for days at a time trying to raise money ... and maybe I should adopt the same system. Turn over the entire Digest once or twice a year to fund raising (entire issues, etc) and stop doing it when the budget for the year has been raised. But for now, I will stick with the present system of devoting a few messages at the end of each month to raising money for the Digest publication expenses. Out of 400-500 messages per month, in a spam, virus free environment, two or three (only) devoted to fund raising. You know who you are; please provide some help here financially. You can use Pay Pal to donate with a credit/debit card by going to our web site http://telecom-digest.org and at the bottom of the home page look for the PayPal 'donate' button. Or if you prefer, send a check or money order to Patrick Townson/TELECOM, Post Office Box 50, Independence, Kansas 67301-0050. The amount you send is entirely up to you. You know best how much you can afford and whether or not this Digest has any value for you. *Please get some money in here to me by the end of this cold month!* Thank you very much. Patrick Townson, Editor/Publisher TELECOM Digest ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #44 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jan 28 22:09:55 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0T39tP11212; Wed, 28 Jan 2004 22:09:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 22:09:55 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401290309.i0T39tP11212@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 #45 TELECOM Digest Wed, 28 Jan 2004 22:10:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 45 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson A Visit From the FBI (Monty Solomon) Verizon Wireless Launches Complete Connectivity Solution (Monty Solomon) LG Mobile Phones and Verizon Wireless Blend Must-Have Style (Solomon) Satellite Radio Competition Heats Up (Monty Solomon) RealNetworks' Helix Player Project Wins Award for Best Open (M Solomon) U.S. Cable Rates Rose 5.1 Pct in Latest Year-FCC (Monty Solomon) Court Hears About FCC Competition Rules (Monty Solomon) US Court Casts Doubt on Telecom Network Rules (Eric Friedebach) Book Review: Kerberos: The Definitive Guide, Jason Garman (Rob Slade) Metrobility/Transition DS3 to Fiber Extenders (Michael Ryan) Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers (John R. Covert) Re: Why SCO's McBride Declared War (Geoffrey Welsh) Re: Linus Torvalds: SCO Is "Just Too Wrong" (Geoffrey Welsh) Re: New Virus Infects PCs, Whacks SCO (Jim Haynes) Re: CLEC Question (noname) Re: Homeland Security to Offer Cyber Warnings (Walt Howard) Words and Numbers (was T-Mobile USA Show Biggest Gains) (Joel Hoffman) Share Day for January (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 15:12:19 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: A Visit From the FBI By Scott Granneman Well, it finally happened. Right before Christmas, I had a little visit from the FBI. That's right: an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation came to see me. He had some things he wanted to talk about. He stayed a couple of hours, and then went on his way. Hopefully he got what he wanted. I know I did. Let me explain. I teach technology classes at Washington University in St. Louis, a fact that I mentioned in a column from 22 October 2003 titled, "Joe Average User Is In Trouble". In that column, I talked about the fact that most ordinary computer users have no idea about what security means. They don't practice secure computing because they don't understand what that means. After that column came out, I received a lot of email. One of those emails was from Dave Thomas, former chief of computer intrusion investigations at FBI headquarters, and current Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the St. Louis Division of the FBI. Dave had this to say: "I have spent a considerable amount in the computer underground and have seen many ways in which clever individuals trick unsuspecting users. I don't think most people have a clue just how bad things are." He then offered to come speak to my students about his experiences. I did what I think most people would do: I emailed Dave back immediately and we set up a date for his visit to my class. http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/215 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Indeed, they do not have any idea about how bad things are on the net with identity theft, fraud, spam and viruses. I listen very patietly to my mother, for example, and the other day she asked me quite innocently, "Has your computer ever gotten one of those virus things?" When I responded "only about a hundred or so each day, if I do not keep my firewall and virus checkers in place all the time," she was absolutely astounded. She, like most casual computer users -- most people -- do not have even an iota of the amount of trouble going on with the net. While I do NOT approve of it, I am frankly very surprised that the government (the feds) have not long ago clamed down very sternly, very heavily on the trouble makers. Like many folks around here, long ago I was an anarchist also, but any longer, I am not so sure at all. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 09:50:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Wireless Launches Complete Connectivity Solution Verizon Wireless Launches Complete Connectivity Solution for Mobile Subscribers - Remo(TM) by Xpherix Corporation Available Through Verizon Wireless' Get It Now(R) Service, the Affordably Priced Remo Incorporates E-mail, Contacts, and Calendar BEDMINSTER, N.J. and SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest wireless service provider, and Xpherix Corporation, the leading provider of personalized mobile connectivity solutions, today announced the launch of Remo on Verizon Wireless' Get It Now service. For less than $8 monthly access, Remo is a powerful communications tool that provides remote access to e-mail, contacts, and calendars through an everyday data-enabled wireless phone. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40331025 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 09:51:31 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: LG Mobile Phones and Verizon Wireless Blend Must-Have Style The New VX4500 Handset Offers Perfect Marriage of High Fashion and Sophistication SAN DIEGO and BEDMINSTER, N.J., Jan. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- LG Mobile Phones and Verizon Wireless announce their newest handset, the VX4500 will be available to customers on Jan. 29. Equipped with some of the most advanced functions available today, the VX4500 offers the latest in voice recognition commands and two-way speakerphone technology. The VX4500's two-way speakerphone allows customers to speak hands-free with one push of a button. With its powerful voice recognition command system, users can access their contacts, voicemail, schedules and time information quickly, accurately and safely, without touching the keypad. The VX4500 also features a color screen and external LCD screen so users can see caller ID without flipping open the phone. The external screen can also be set to flash a different color for events such as incoming calls, a new voice mail message, text message or missed call. The VX4500 gives consumers a sleek new twist on LG's trademark clamshell design and an extensive selection of must-have features they have come to expect from LG. The VX4500 functions as a personal organizer with a phone book that stores up to 499 names with five numbers and three email address per contact, a calendar with scheduler, built-in alarm clock, CMX MIDI sound, 36 standard ring tones and speed dialing. The VX4500 also features English and Spanish language options, T9 text input, five-way navigation key, TTY/TDD, SMS capabilities and is E911 capable. Connecting the phone to a local PC network is easy with the VX4500's external USB capability and Openwave UP 4.1 browser. The VX4500 is also Get It Now(R)-enabled. Verizon Wireless' Get It Now service is a one-stop virtual mall that gives customers a myriad of choices in downloadable pay-as-you-go options that include games, ring tones and productivity tools. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40331014 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:48:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Satellite Radio Competition Heats Up NEW YORK (AP) -- The satellite radio business is getting feistier. Leading provider XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. is making its music channels commercial-free, taking away an advantage touted by its more expensive rival, Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. Sirius executives have said their higher price was justified largely because Sirius delivers commercial-free music, though there are a few ads on its talk, news and sports stations. Meanwhile, XM had a few minutes of commercials each hour on all of its channels. But XM is going ad-free on its music channels as of Sunday, without raising the subscription price. XM also plans to introduce local traffic and weather channels in many markets this year. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40335533 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:50:08 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: RealNetworks' Helix Player Project Wins Award Helix Player Fast Becoming the Standard for Linux Audio and Video SEATTLE, Jan. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- RealNetworks(R), Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK), the leading creator of digital media services and software, today announced that the Helix(TM) Player, the first commercial grade, open source and multi-format digital media player, has been awarded top honors by the LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards, as unveiled at LinuxWorld Conference & Expo(R) 2004 held last week in New York. The Helix Player was recognized for being the 'Best Open Source Project'. Innovative products across 10 categories were nominated for awards. The Helix Player project, https://player.helixcommunity.org , was singled out to receive the award for best open source project over; KDE 3.2, Gentoo Linux, and Sun's JXTA. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40335064 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:53:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: U.S. Cable Rates Rose 5.1 Pct in Latest Year - FCC WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Prices for cable television in the United States rose 5.1 percent in the year ended June 30, 2003, more than twice the rate of inflation, the Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday. The annual report, required by Congress, also showed satellite television services adding customers faster than cable operators. The jump in cable prices was more than two-and-a-half times the general inflation rate, which rose 2.1 percent over the same period. In the prior 12 months, cable rates had skyrocketed 6.3 percent while inflation rose 1.1 percent. Satellite television providers like EchoStar Communications Corp. and DirecTV saw a 12.1 percent incre in subscribers, to 20.4 million up from 18.2 million, while cable companies added about 1.7 million customers, according to the FCC. The report does not examine satellite television prices. The four biggest cable operators, Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ:CMCSA), Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), Charter Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR) and Cox Communications (NYSE:COX), served about 50.5 percent of cable subscribers in June 2003, down slightly from 51.7 percent the previous year. While some blame deregulation of cable rates for the increases, the cable industry blames increased costs for programming and labor, the FCC said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40336481 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:54:21 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Court Hears About FCC Competition Rules By HOPE YEN Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Communications Commission was back in court Wednesday with challengers who say its rules for telephone and Internet services unfairly restrict competition and give states too much regulatory power. The government requires regional phone companies to lease portions of their local networks to competitors at wholesale rates. The companies _ BellSouth Corp., SBC Communications, Verizon Communications and Qwest Communications _ say that allows others to use their networks at artificially low prices. Meanwhile, competitors are challenging rules that allow the regional companies to keep their high-speed fiber optic lines off limits to Internet rivals. The companies are challenging the FCC rules for a third time. The agency approved changes giving the states more authority in February 2003 on a contentious 3-2 vote, leading to litigation after the rules were released in August. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, expected sometime this spring, could determine the corporate winners in the rapidly expanding broadband market and the declining landline phone business. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40338711 ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: US court Casts Doubt on Telecom Network Rules Date: 28 Jan 2004 14:25:12 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com By Peter Kaplan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two appeals court judges Wednesday sharply criticized rules that force U.S. local telephone carriers to continue leasing their networks to rivals at government-mandated prices, signaling that the court could overturn the rules. The two judges, on the three-judge appeals panel, said the U.S. Federal Communications Commission erred by giving state regulators instructions to enforce the new network-sharing rules. http://www.forbes.com/newswire/2004/01/28/rtr1232084.html Eric Friedebach ------------------------------ From: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 08:34:07 -0800 Subject: Book Review: Kerberos: The Definitive Guide, Jason Garman BKKRBSDG.RVW 20031018 "Kerberos: The Definitive Guide", Jason Garman, 2003, 0-596-00403-6, U$34.95/C$54.95 %A Jason Garman %C 103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA 95472 %D 2003 %G 0-596-00403-6 %I O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. %O U$34.95/C$54.95 800-998-9938 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596004036/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596004036/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596004036/robsladesin03-20 %P 253 p. %T "Kerberos: The Definitive Guide" Kerberos is not flashy, but it is a venerable and mature technology. Yes, it has limited scalability, but most of the "successful" PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) projects are small enough that they could easily have been accomplished with Kerberos technology: an eminently elegant solution to the problem of communicating and authenticating over any channel that is, or must be, assumed to be insecure. Chapter one provides a history, base concepts, and variants of Kerberos. Terms and components are given in chapter two. The Needham-Schroeder work, and the idea of ticket-granting, is in chapter three. Implementation, in chapter four, reviews design, UNIX and Windows servers, and special considerations for a mixed environment. The troubleshooting chapter, five, for once comes early enough in a book to be of use. Security aspects external to Kerberos, and specific settings for different implementations, are covered in chapter six. Chapter seven looks at some generic support for applications, as well as some specific programs that already have Kerberos support built in. Cross realm trust is one of the advanced topics, but most of chapter eight concentrates on special requirements for Windows. Chapter nine is a kind of review of the book, involving the various topics that have been discussed in a sample Kerberos installation. Chapter ten looks at the future of Kerberos, with possible public key additions, Web applications, and smartcards. An appendix contains an administrative command list. While Kerberos may not be as highly regarded as the more mathematically complex asymmetric cryptographic systems, it still have many uses, and this book provides the outline, background, and details to help you take full advantage of them. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2003 BKKRBSDG.RVW 20031018 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth. - Dave Barry http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ From: Michael Ryan Subject: Metrobility/Transition DS3 to Fiber Extenders Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 07:51:00 -0600 Hi, Has anyone had any experience with either Metrobility or Transition fiber extenders? I'm looking for a recommendation to extend two DS3's about 1000ft. Both products look like they'll work, but the Transition product is about 2-3 times the price. I've used their products in the past, but have never heard of Metrobility. Thanks in advance, Michael (Remove the NoSpamPlease to send me an email) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 10:03:53 -0500 (EST) From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers John Levine wrote: > Vonage gives me a fast busy ... I suspect that it's because nobody's > noticed that +800 is a valid country code. On April 30th, 2003, I wrote to the VP of customer service at Vonage: Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 8:32 PM Subject: International Toll Free Service Vonage appears to not process 011-800-nnnn-nnnn. These are toll-free numbers, and should work even if "international calling" is turned off, since there is never any charge. Two test numbers are Hong Kong Cable and Wireless: 011-800-2000-2000 and Sweden Direct: 011-800-4600-4600. Please let me know when they are working. Thanks/john I received the following reply: John, We do not support toll-free international calling, only domestic. Sincerely, Vonage DigitalVoice Customer Care 1-VONAGE-HELP (1-866-243-4357) I persisted: Are you not able to just hand it off to a carrier which does support it, just like you hand 800 service off? It is just an extension of 800 service, isn't it? And got this reply: I am not sure but I will check and get back to you. Sincerely, Vonage DigitalVoice Customer Care 1-VONAGE-HELP (1-866-243-4357) But she never replied. /john ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Why SCO's McBride Declared War Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 10:52:05 -0500 Organization: Bell Sympatico noname wrote: > In article , clj@panix.com says: > I have a very low opinion of those who use the courts and our > legislators to fatten their own pockets. McBride falls beneath my > contempt because of this. Well, I don't want to paint them all with the same brush because I do understand that there are people out there who steal others ideas and make money on them, often ruining the original inventor's reputation in the process by misleading the customer into confusing the two. I therefore understand SCO's lawsuit against IBM. However, SCO's letters to Linux end users asking for licensing fees now and threatening higher damages at a later date based on unproven claims to rights ... well, that's extortion that should make the mob jealous. (I hereby claim that analogy, as I'm in the process of writing -- in my scant spare time -- an article making this comparison in more dramatic style. However, should the FTC or the DOJ decide to pursue action against SCO, I hereby grant them an unlimited non-transferrable royalty-free license to use it.) > SCO doesn't have a leg to stand on I don't know that for sure and I don't think that any one person can know that for sure, but SCO's own actions suggest that the whole suit is far from kosher. If I was SCO and I honestly believed what SCO is saying, I'd be calling a press conference and showing the media as many examples of stolen code as I could cram into a session -- or, if I didn't want to be accused of holding the trial in the court of public opinion, I'd have Gartner, IDC, and every analyst I could get over to look at it and express their own opinions. Since the whole source code to Linux is publicly available, what does SCO stand to lose by revealing which portions they claim are theirs? If everyone rushes to exorcise SCO's code from Linux, that doesn't destroy evidence of past wrongdoing. Are they hoping that, by not revealing which code is infringing, others will unwittingly make use of it and become targets for future extortion^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h lawsuits? Geoffrey Welsh Always looking for a good condition original 'chicklet keyboard' Commodore PET ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Linus Torvalds: SCO Is "Just Too Wrong" Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 11:03:35 -0500 Organization: Bell Sympatico Thomas A. Horsley wrote: > SCO could easily demonstrate that Linux NFS is just as sucky and prone > to errors. How, therefore, could it possibly be equally bad if the > Linux programmers didn't steal it? :-). I was going to comment that the history of software development has proven that there is no limit to how badly software can be written, but your comment raises a very interesting question: If I recall correctly, NFS was developed by Sun. Or maybe Bill Joy's team at Berkeley. In any case, it's been passed around pretty freely and I believe that the specifications are available in public documents which may or may not mention licensing conditions. Under the terms of Sun't UNIX license, is NFS Sun's to give away or SCO's to license? SCO's claims about IBM would suggest the latter, unless IBM's license is very different from Sun's. Or is the question irrelevant because Sun paid off SCO? And did Sun pay off SCO for this reason, or just to cover their behinds for distributing Linux? Also, if all NFS implementations are based on the same publicly available specification, would similar or even identical bugs necessarily be the result of copied code, or the natural result when similarly educated/trained/experienced people working with similar tools in a similar environment sit down to implement the same specification? Geoffrey Welsh Always looking for a good condition original 'chicklet keyboard' Commodore PET ------------------------------ Subject: Re: New Virus Infects PCs, Whacks SCO Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:31:09 GMT And now SCO has offered a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the virus author. jhaynes at alumni dot uark dot edu ------------------------------ From: noname Subject: Re: CLEC Question Organization: ATCC Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 19:15:35 GMT In article , paravant@excite.com says: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here are a few answers; I am sure other > readers will fill in the blanks. (1) Most CLECs lease from the telco > of record in the community of service. (2) I do not know how to > evaluate the word 'major'. (3)'Co-location' refers to the CLEC having > their switching equipment at the same location as the telco of record > in the community. For example, here in Independence, the SW Bell > central office is at the corner of 6th and Maple Streets. The CLECs > who have equipment in town have theirs in the same physical building. > They are located in the same building, or co-located. Terms like > 'cageless' and 'virtual' are sort of interchangeable. The CLECs have > to put their switching equipment and/or computers, etc inside a locked > (i.e. caged) area separate from that of Bell. Maybe other readers can > tell you more. PAT] The CO in Providence doesn't cage -- they do it by floor access. Whereas years ago every floor of the building contained switching gear (It's an 8 or 10 story building -- I never really counted.) now there are offices on the 1st floor where the cable terminations used to be, 2nd is the cable term now, 4th is where PRVDRIWADS0 sits, and that leaves 3 and 5 through 10 for the other switches. There's even a blockhouse on the roof for AT&T. ------------------------------ From: howard@rumba.ee.ualberta.ca (Walt Howard) Subject: Re: Homeland Security to Offer Cyber Warnings Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 20:12:23 UTC Organization: A poorly-installed InterNetNews site In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > By TED BRIDIS AP Technology Writer > WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans can sign up beginning Wednesday to > receive free cyber alerts and computer advice from the Homeland > Security Department to help protect themselves on the Internet. Is this the same Homeland Security Department that runs their own computers with the least-secure operating system available? > The new National Cyber Alert System, expected to be announced > Wednesday, is an ambitious program to develop a trusted warning system > by the government to help home users and technology experts. It will > send e-mails about major virus outbreaks and other Internet attacks as > they occur, along with detailed instructions to help computer users > protect themselves. Oh, goody. Now I can not only get forged emails from Microsoft with the "latest security update", I can get them "from" the government as well. I can hardly contain my joy. > The effort is aimed at improving the overall security of the Internet, Coming from an outfit that can't even secure its own network, it's unlikely to help much. > a goal frustrated by increasingly complex software that can be > difficult to secure and by hackers learning to launch sophisticated > new attacks. Right. The recent MyDoom virus was so crude it was laughable, but it still spread pretty fast. Walt Howard /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign InterNet: whoward@ieee.org \ / No HTML in mail or news! BellNet: +1 780 492 6306 X / \ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 23:47:00 GMT From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: Words and Numbers (was: T-Mobile USA Show Biggest Gains) Organization: Excelsior Computer Services > Deutsche Telekom's (DE:DTEGn) T-Mobile, the sixth largest > U.S. wireless service, said it added 1.015 million customers Purely as a curiosity, why would anyone write "1.015 million" instead of "1,015,000" (or, even better, "just over a million customers")? -Joel ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Share Day For January Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 21:00 EST Instead of changing the Digest over to an advrtising supported forum, I have always elected to keep it as a user supported forum, and for the most part keep it spam and virus free. I am *only* able to do this because of financial support from readers here, and if you would rather not see these messages every month, then please pitch in and help now and then! Consider it sort of like public radio, which goes on for days at a time trying to raise money ... and maybe I should adopt the same system. Turn over the entire Digest once or twice a year to fund raising (entire issues, etc) and stop doing it when the budget for the year has been raised. But for now, I will stick with the present system of devoting a few messages at the end of each month to raising money for the Digest publication expenses. Out of 400-500 messages per month, in a spam, virus free environment, two or three (only) devoted to fund raising. You know who you are; please provide some help here financially. You can use Pay Pal to donate with a credit/debit card by going to our web site http://telecom-digest.org and at the bottom of the home page look for the PayPal 'donate' button. Or if you prefer, send a check or money order to Patrick Townson/TELECOM, Post Office Box 50, Independence, Kansas 67301-0050. The amount you send is entirely up to you. You know best how much you can afford and whether or not this Digest has any value for you. And *please* try to send some money by the end of this month, in a long, cold winter. Thank you very much. Patrick Townson, Editor/Publisher TELECOM Digest ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #45 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jan 29 12:54:59 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0THsxX16297; Thu, 29 Jan 2004 12:54:59 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 12:54:59 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401291754.i0THsxX16297@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 #46 TELECOM Digest Thu, 29 Jan 2004 12:55:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 46 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson ATI Delivers Personal Video Recording To PC For Every Budget (M Solomon) Super Bowl Retains Status as Must-Buy Television (Monty Solomon) Verizon Reports Solid Overall Fourth-Quarter and Year-End (M Solomon) Verizon Adds DIRECTV Programming, Creating the Most (Monty Solomon) VOIP Over Private IP (Nyuk Fah) Re: CLEC Question (Dana) Tip-Toeing Quietly With Nikeno.com (freshjada) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (DaveC) Re: 'You've Got Problems!' (Phil Earnhardt) Here is the Norvergence Matrix Gear Solution (David Lepak) Re: FCC vs. fax.com, Again (RumsfeldRules@hotmail.com) Share Day for January (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 08:07:51 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: ATI Delivers Personal Video Recording To The PC For Every Budget MARKHAM, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 26, 2004-- Three new ALL-IN-WONDER(R) solutions also offer easy video editing and amazing video graphics for great game play Watching TV on your PC has never been more affordable thanks to new additions to the ALL-IN-WONDER(R) family of video graphics cards. ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:ATY) (NASDAQ:ATYT) today announced ALL-IN-WONDER(R) 9600XT, ALL-IN-WONDER(R) 9600, and ALL-IN-WONDER(R) 9200. These new graphics cards offer exciting personal video recording of favorite television programs, easy-to-use video editing, and amazing graphics for great gaming experiences at prices for any consumer's budget. The family of best-in-class multimedia video cards, featuring ALL-IN-WONDER(R) 9800 PRO, now includes several new additions. ALL-IN-WONDER 9600XT delivers more multimedia features for customers by offering the fastest RADEON(TM) 9600 series performance with a graphics engine clocked at 525 MHz and 128 MB of memory running at 650 MHz. At USD$299, this new multimedia solution includes FM-ON-DEMAND(TM) to receive and record favorite FM radio stations, dual VGA monitor support, the second generation and completely redesigned REMOTE WONDER(TM) II, integrated DVD authoring and burning, and MULTIMEDIA CENTER(TM) 8.8. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401261101_BWR__BW5411 http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401261001_CCN_0126004n http://www.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2004/4728.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 08:58:19 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Super Bowl Retains Status as Must-Buy Television By STUART ELLIOTT Twenty years after the Super Bowl first became as big a day for advertising as it is for professional football, Madison Avenue is gearing up for what looks to be a cheerier, somewhat sillier and certainly more expensive version of the annual midwinter festival of commercialism. The Ad Bowl within Super Bowl XXXVIII, to be broadcast on Sunday by CBS, will be infused with oversize servings of ingredients like humor, schmaltz, special effects and anthropomorphic animals. Instead of the Budweiser horses bowing in the direction of ground zero as in 2002, a donkey will be shown dreaming of becoming a Clydesdale. And rather than Pepsi-Cola's sweet nostalgia of two years ago when Britney Spears danced and sang her way through the decades, the brand's newest commercial will serenade 16 teenagers sued by the recording industry for illegal file sharing with "I Fought the Law (and the Law Won).'' http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/29/business/29adcol.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 09:05:05 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Reports Solid Overall Fourth-Quarter and Year-End Market-Share Gains in Wireless, Long-Distance and Broadband Bolster Revenues and Cash Flow 2003 HIGHLIGHTS Earnings Per Share: -- Fourth quarter: 53 cent fully diluted per share loss, or 58 cent fully diluted earnings per share (EPS) before special items (non-GA AP measure) -- Year-end: $1.11 in EPS, or $2.62 EPS before special items (non-GAAP) Revenues: -- Fourth quarter: up 0.7 percent, or 2.6 percent with consistent directory accounting treatment (non-GAAP) -- Year-end: up 0.7 percent, or 1.7 percent in comparable growth as well as consistent directory accounting treatment (non-GAAP) Wireless: -- Fourth quarter: a record 1.5 million total net customer additions (1.4 million retail net additions), up 54.2 percent from last year's quarter; revenue growth of 14.6 percent; record-low retail and total churn; strong operating income margins -- Year-end: a record 5.0 million total net customer additions, (4.6 million retail net additions); 37.5 million total customers; total revenues of $22.5 billion, up 15.5 percent over 2002 Domestic Telecom: -- More than $2 billion in annual long-distance revenues, with in-region retail market penetration of 41 percent; 16.6 million total long-distance lines -- 2.3 million total DSL (digital subscriber lines); 203,000 fourth- quarter net additions -- Nearly 1,200 contracts with large businesses for Enterprise Advance services Cash Management: -- Capital expenditures of $11.9 billion, compared with $13.1 billion in 2002 -- Free cash flow (non-GAAP, cash from operating activities less capital expenditures and dividends) of $6.4 billion, up 31.4 percent compared with $4.8 billion in 2002 -- Total debt of $45.4 billion, compared with $53.3 billion at year-end 2002; Net debt (non-GAAP, gross debt less cash and cash equivalents) of $44.7 billion, compared with $51.8 billion at year-end 2002. Note: See the schedules accompanying this news release and www.verizon.com/investor for reconciliations to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for the non-GAAP financial measures mentioned in this announcement. NEW YORK, Jan. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) today announced fourth-quarter and year-end 2003 results highlighted by customer gains in wireless, long-distance and broadband, continued solid cash flow, and overall revenue growth. For the fourth quarter 2003, Verizon reported a loss of $1.5 billion (53 cents in fully diluted EPS) that includes $3.1 billion in special items, primarily $2.9 billion in previously announced costs associated with a voluntary separation plan under which more than 21,000 employees left the payroll in the quarter. Excluding special items, Verizon earned $1.6 billion in the quarter, or 58 cents per share. For the year, Verizon reported earnings of $3.1 billion ($1.11 per share), or $7.3 billion ($2.62 per share) before special items. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40343367 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 09:38:27 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Adds DIRECTV Programming, Creating the Most Verizon Adds DIRECTV Programming, Creating the Most Comprehensive, Top-Quality Service Bundle in the Market - Jan 29, 2004 09:19 AM (PR Newswire) First Verizon/DIRECTV Packages Will Roll Out Tuesday in Rhode Island; Headed for Additional Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Markets Soon NEW YORK and EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Jan. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Already the market leader in sales of innovative, discounted bundles of calling, Internet access and wireless services, Verizon is introducing new offers that include DIRECTV, the nation's leading digital television entertainment service. The new packages will be rolled out in Rhode Island on Tuesday and then in New England and the mid-Atlantic states in the coming months, with additional markets to follow. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40345564 ------------------------------ From: nyukfah@pd.jaring.my (nyuk fah) Subject: VOIP Over Private IP Date: 28 Jan 2004 19:01:51 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi all, My current internet connection is private ip and behind a firewall. Thus I wonder any solution VOIP over HTTP? Which I can solve the private IP and firewall limitation? ------------------------------ From: Dana <***@&^&.com> Subject: Re: CLEC Question Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:12:39 -0900 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Fred R. Goldstein wrote in message news:telecom23.44.7@telecom-digest.org: > Dedicated transport -- CLEC gets fixed bandwidth (DS-1, DS-3) between > ILEC locations, which it can use for almost anything. Shared > transport -- CLEC leases local switching from ILEC (UNE Platform) and > its calls go on the same trunks as calls made by ILEC subscribers; > this is where that trunk usage is paid for. Good reply. My question is do we really need to have legislation mandating that the local sell to it's competitor, just so the competitor can resell the same service. The local company before wireless was actually a natural monopoly, who today would put up with all the wires/fiber needed if there was more than one company serving any giving area. But now with the advent of wireless, and the huge expansion of the cellular companies, you now have technologies that can compete with the wired local company, and these wireless carriers, being that they have switches of their own, they can even offer long distance on there excess capacity. ------------------------------ From: freshjada@hotmail.com (freshjada) Subject: Tip-Toeing Quietly With Nikeno.com Date: 29 Jan 2004 06:12:43 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com By Mike Townsend Staff Writer, CNET News.com Serial Netrepreneur Micheal Beevor Today announced at a lavish press conference the launching of Nikeno.com. By moving slowing a new market which will combine a new concept of Online Communities with Free Online betting, Beevor's notion of creating a new field looks like a good bet. With some 2 million pounds in funding and low costs overheads it looks as though one company at least has learned the lessons of the Internet bubble. ------------------------------ From: DaveC Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 06:53:46 -0800 Reply-To: me@privacy.net On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 13:51:31 -0800, Paul Vader wrote (in article ): > It's actually pretty trivial -- send a message to a whacko address > on your ISP's mailserver, and mimic the resulting bounce message > that gets sent to you. If you're doing this for specific people that > you actually know and don't like, it's harmless enough. The content of the "bounce" message is easy to generate, as you point out. But how do I change the "from" address to reflect something other than my real address? Doesn't the mail server tag it as coming from me? Using Eudora 5. Thanks, DaveC me@privacy.net This is an invalid return address. Please reply in the news group [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Most computers have a user account known as 'Mail Daemon' (often times running with root privileges) which send out those notices. Set up a user called Mail Daemon to get that 'from' address. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Phil Earnhardt Subject: Re: 'You've Got Problems!' Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 08:34:52 -0700 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 01:39:34 -0500, Monty Solomon wrote: > And during the game, we'll see the father-and-son cast of the cable TV > show "American Chopper" promoting a new AOL feature that will speed up > Web surfing, even for customers who use slow telephone modem > connections. It's a colorful and costly effort to convince Internet > users that one of the old titans of the Internet hasn't sunk into > irrelevance. NetZero has been offering such caching/data-compression features in their NetZero HiSpeed service for quite a while. Earthlink also offers a service, EarthLink Plus. An article comparing the services and prices is at: http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Aug/gee20030820021395.htm The article, published 8/20/03, prices NetZero's service is $14.95/month; AOL's service is $23.95/month, and Earthlink's service at $28.95/month. The article describes a benchmark AOL comissioned with VeriTest. The benchmark shows AOL with the fastest service. A copy of the report is available at: http://www.veritest.com/clients/reports/aol/aol9.pdf Interestingly, AOL does not publish the benchmark results on their own website. I googled for "netzero hispeed" on the aol.com website, but got no hits. --phil ------------------------------ Subject: Here is the Norvergence Matrix Gear Solution Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 11:29:58 -0500 From: David Lepak Here it is ... see bottom for total cost: MATRIX BOX http://www.adtran.com/adtranpx/Rooms/DisplayPages/LayoutInitial?Product=3Dcom.webridge.entity http://www.adtran.com/adtranpx/Rooms/DisplayPages/LayoutInitial?product=3DADTRAN CORPORATION MODULES All modules: http://www.adtran.com/static/ENTERPRISEPRODUCTS/INTEGRATEDACCESS/TOTALACCESS850MODULES/ Echo cancellation: http://www.adtran.com/static/ENTERPRISEPRODUCTS/INTEGRATEDACCESS/TOTALACCESS850MODULES/1203384L2.htm MATRIX BOX http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=3D330749 ADTRAN POWER ADAPTER AND CHARGER http://www.cdw.com/shop/search/RESULTS.ASPX?key=3Dadtran+1175043L3&platform=3Dall TOTAL COST 1884.97 ------------------------------ From: Donny Rumsfeld Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 23:09:45 -0500 Subject: Re: FCC vrs. fax.com I found out they have renamed themselves and split up. Here's some email addresses: danello@chooseimpact.com lburnett@chooseimpact.com rmattern@chooseimpact.com wsharkey@chooseimpact.com bstrauch@chooseimpact.com Here are phone numbers to do business with them: 949-265-5782 949-265-5748 949 265-5723 949-265-5738 949-265-5715 800-516-8762 800-544-8094 They appear to own probably the whole 5700 block. Here are two fax numbers: 949-265-5782 949-265-5781 ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Share Day For January, 2004 Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 11:45:00 EST Instead of changing the Digest over to an advrtising supported forum, I have always elected to keep it as a user supported forum, and for the most part keep it spam and virus free. I am *only* able to do this because of financial support from readers here, and if you would rather not see these messages every month, then please pitch in and help now and then! Consider it sort of like public radio, which goes on for days at a time trying to raise money ... and maybe I should adopt the same system. Turn over the entire Digest once or twice a year to fund raising (entire issues, etc) and stop doing it when the budget for the year has been raised. But for now, I will stick with the present system of devoting a few messages at the end of each month to raising money for the Digest publication expenses. Out of 400-500 messages per month, in a spam, virus free environment, two or three (only) devoted to fund raising. You know who you are; please provide some help here financially. You can use Pay Pal to donate with a credit/debit card by going to our web site http://telecom-digest.org and at the bottom of the home page look for the PayPal 'donate' button. Or if you prefer, send a check or money order to Patrick Townson/TELECOM, Post Office Box 50, Independence, Kansas 67301-0050. The amount you send is entirely up to you. You know best how much you can afford and whether or not this Digest has any value for you. Thank you very much. Patrick Townson, Editor/Publisher TELECOM Digest ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #46 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jan 29 23:37:06 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0U4b6I20572; Thu, 29 Jan 2004 23:37:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 23:37:06 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401300437.i0U4b6I20572@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 #47 TELECOM Digest Thu, 29 Jan 2004 23:36:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 47 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Microsoft Cancels Further Windows & Explorer Updates (Monty Solomon) Warner Sues Hollywood Actor Over Pirated Movies (Monty Solomon) EPIC Alert 11.02 (Monty Solomon) EFFector 17.2: Action Alert: Keep Facts Free! (Monty Solomon) US Lawmaker Pushes FCC to Resolve Call Fee Dispute (Monty Solomon) Michigan PSC Accepting Comments on Norvergence (anonfwd77@workbench.net) Vonage (Steven Angelil) FOCAL Offers 32 Voice Channels per T1 (BMN) Re: Here is the Norvergence Matrix Gear Solution (Tom Betz) Re: Here is the Norvergence Matrix Gear Solution (BMN) Followup Message Regards Norvergence (Ken Lyle) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (Barry Margolin) Re: ATI Delivers Personal Video Recording The PC (Thomas A. Horsley) Re: David Nelson (Carl Moore) Need to Host Child Porn, Illegal Content, or Spam? (Lisa Minter) Share Day for January, 2004 (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 21:22:14 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Microsoft Cancels Further Upgrades to Windows or Explorer Microsoft cancels Eolas-related software changes SEATTLE, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp., (NASDAQ:MSFT) reversing its plans, said on Thursday that it will not make any changes to its Windows operating system or Internet Explorer Web browser in response to a verdict that said some components of those programs infringe on another company's technology. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40352011 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:36:14 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Warner Sues Hollywood Actor Over Pirated Movies LOS ANGELES, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Warner Bros. film studio has sued several people, including a Hollywood actor, who it claims made illegal digital copies of movies and distributed them on the Internet, court papers show. A lawsuit filed by Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX) unit Warner Bros. on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, claims actor Carmine Caridi received "screener" copies of films "The Last Samurai" and "Mystic River" and gave them to Illinois electrician Russell Sprague, who then made digital versions and placed them on the Internet. The lawsuit also lists 10 unnamed defendants as part of the alleged plot to distribute digital copies of the movies on the Internet. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40351270 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 21:12:46 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EPIC Alert 11.02 ======================================================================= E P I C A l e r t ======================================================================= Volume 11.02 January 29, 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington, D.C. http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_11.02.html ====================================================================== Table of Contents ====================================================================== [1] EPIC FOIA Docs: Northwest Gave NASA Info on Millions of Passengers [2] Docs Show Treasury Dept. Sided with Industry on Privacy Law [3] Bush Urges USA PATRIOT Act Renewal in State of the Union Address [4] Report Finds "Fundamental" Flaws in Pentagon E-Voting System [5] Bruce Schneier: "Moving Towards Universal Surveillance" [6] News in Brief [7] EPIC Bookstore: The Privacy Law Sourcebook 2003 [8] Upcoming Conferences and Events http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_11.02.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 21:13:40 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 17.2: Action Alert: Keep Facts Free! EFFector Vol. 17, No. 2 January 27, 2004 donna@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 277th Issue of EFFector: * EFF Action Alert: Keep Facts Free! * EFF to Defend Freedom to Innovate in Grokster Appeal * Recording Industry Must Respect Privacy of Accused Music Sharers * DVD Descrambling Code Not a Trade Secret * Op-ed: "Betamax Was a Steppingstone: 1984 Court Ruling Launched a Technological Revolution" * Sun Microsystems Donates Linux Servers to EFF * Deep Links (17): USA PATRIOT Act v. the Constitution * EFF Court Docket: 02.03.04 - MGM v. Grokster; 02.09.04 - OPG v. Diebold * Staff Calendar: 01.28.04 - Jason Schultz speaks in Nashville, TN; 01.31.04 - Wendy Seltzer speaks at Digital Independence, San Francisco, CA * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/17/2.php ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 21:19:59 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: US Lawmaker Pushes FCC to Resolve Call Fee Dispute By Jeremy Pelofsky WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin pressured communications regulators to resolve a dispute between telephone companies AT&T Corp. (NYSE:T) and SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC) that involves hundreds of millions of dollars. The Louisiana Republican demanded that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell say by Feb. 5 whether AT&T, the biggest U.S. long-distance service provider, had to pay access charges to local carriers like SBC that complete calls routed partially over the Internet. AT&T asked the agency about 16 months ago to address the issue. SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC), the No. 2 local telephone company, said at that time it started receiving less compensation for connecting AT&T calls that traveled that route. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40354121 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 12:48:41 -0500 From: anonfwd77@withheld at writer's request> Subject: Michigan PSC Accepting Comments on Norvergence [*** PLEASE WITHHOLD MY EMAIL ADDRESS. Even though it may seem like a "throwaway" address, I still would prefer it not be used since I no longer have the ability to change e-mail addresses at will, and I would not care for even this "anonymous" address to start getting spam.] In the last few weeks there have been a few posts on Norvergence in this forum, and while I don't wish to take sides in that debate, I figured that some of those who do have strong positions might want to know about this Notice of Hearing and Opportunity to Comment from the Michigan Public Service Commission: http://www.cis.state.mi.us/cgi-bin/mpsc/vieworder.cgi?filename=/mpsc/orders/notices/2004/u-13996.txt Note that if you wish to comment, you must reference Case No. U-13996 and send your comments to the address at the bottom of the page. For further contact information, reference the Michigan Public Service Commission web site at http://www.mi.gov/mpsc/0,1607,7-159-16372---,00.html (that is the page for the Communications Division). I just figured that those who feel strongly about this company (pro or con), and especially those who live or do business in Michigan, might want to take this opportunity to let your opinions be known to a regulatory agency. I have personally never done business with this company and don't know anyone who has, so I hold no opinion one way or the other. ------------------------------ From: Steven Angelil Subject: Vonage Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:33:40 -0500 I saw your email address in a reply on Deja News about Vonage. I have a question and was wondering if you might know the answer. I receive calls at home via the Presodie Interactive network. Calls are not VOIP, but through a regular pots line. Presodie is only available in certain areas and I want to live in an area not served by them. I was wondering if the Vonage system would get me the calls quick enough to be able to work. The web site is http://www.presodieinteractive.com Do you know how long the delay is with Vonage? I know I can live anywhere and get a virtual number from anywhere which will trick the Presodie system to think I am in Fort Lauderdale. Thanks for any answer you might be able to give. Steve Angelil Oakland Park FL http://g.msn.com/8HMAENUS/2755??PS Get a FREE online virus check for your PC here, from McAfee. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What do you mean by 'delay with Vonage'? Are you referring to echo when talking to someone and the other person's voice 'bounces around' a little getting to you, and vice-versa? My suggestion would be to try it for free for a month and see how it works in your application. And yes, you can get a Vonage number in Fort Lauderdale or certainly somewhere that has Presodie available also. If you want to try Vonage for a month for free, write and ask me for an e-coupon. You get the Cisco ATA box from Vonage (although someone wrote to me recently saying they are now using Motorola boxes for some new customers (?) -- and you pay for the first month of service. The e-coupon I will sent you gets you the second month (of whatever service plan you select -- they have several) for free. Then if it does not work in your application, just quit the service. Send me a not-for-pub note asking for a Vonage e-coupon for a month of free service. ptownson@telecom-digest.org PAT] ------------------------------ From: BMN Subject: FOCAL Offers 32 Voice Channels per T1 Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:10:53 -0500 Organization: Bell Sympatico Focal Communications Corporation today announced unique enhancements to its Integrated Voice and Data (IVAD) service. Focal's IVAD now extends the voice capabilities of an integrated T1 beyond the traditional 24 voice channel limit, offering up to 32 channels on a single circuit. http://www.focal.com/prod_serv/ivad.html ------------------------------ From: Tom Betz Subject: Re: Here is the Norvergence Matrix Gear Solution Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:43:46 UTC Organization: Anything David Lepak wrote in news:telecom23.46.10@telecom- digest.org: > MATRIX BOX > http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=3D330749 Not there. |I always wanted to be someone,| Tom Betz, Generalist | |but now I think I should have | Want to send me email? | |been a wee bit more specific. | | [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In the above link, try stopping at the 'shop/products' level and see what you can find. PAT] ------------------------------ From: BMN Subject: Re: Here is the Norvergence Matrix Gear Solution Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 19:53:14 -0500 Organization: Bell Sympatico What! No Magic? :-( David Lepak wrote in message news:telecom23.46.10@telecom-digest.org... > Here it is ... see bottom for total cost: > MATRIX BOX http://www.adtran.com/adtranpx/Rooms/DisplayPages/LayoutInitial?Product=3Dcom.webridge.entity http://www.adtran.com/adtranpx/Rooms/DisplayPages/LayoutInitial?product=3DADTRAN CORPORATION > MODULES > > All modules: http://www.adtran.com/static/ENTERPRISEPRODUCTS/INTEGRATEDACCESS/TOTALACCESS850MODULES/ > Echo cancellation: http://www.adtran.com/static/ENTERPRISEPRODUCTS/INTEGRATEDACCESS/TOTALACCESS850MODULES/1203384L2.htm > MATRIX BOX > http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=3D330749 > ADTRAN POWER ADAPTER AND CHARGER http://www.cdw.com/shop/search/RESULTS.ASPX?key=3Dadtran+1175043L3&platform=3Dall > TOTAL COST > 1884.97 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No, there is no magic. It would seem that Mr. Skemer or the people to whom his patent was assigned, (Norvergence, perhaps?) have a relatively good thing going for them. The cease and demand letter the Norvergence people sent me about a month ago included as an exhibit some details about the patent filing done by Mr. Skemer and his patent attorney. There may be something amiss about the bill the people who use the equipment wind up paying by the time it is all over however. Consider that 1884.97 above with a reasonable markup for the seller or middleman versus what the end user winds up paying the finance company which carries the Norvergence paper. I am reminded an advertisement which has been playing on television several times daily for the past month: "You want a computer, but have poor credit? *Anyone* can have a computer if they have a checking account, a home telephone and can afford payments of 'merely' 35 dollars per *week* for one year. You can do the math on that one, 35 x 52 is all it will cost you. All the time the commercial is playing on the TV, in the background we see people, mostly minorities but some white guys as well, sitting at their new computer, happily typing away. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ken Lyle Subject: Followup Message About Norvergence Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 13:34:52 -0500 Patrick, We met with our Legal team today. They have asked me to find more info on Norvergence, including the name of the person who was supposed to be fined by the FCC (Salzano??), and ran a few Telecoms into the ground. I believe that either him or his brother are in charge of the company. Would you know his name by any chance? They want to run a check on him. Do you know what his first name is??? Thanks, Ken Controller B.S. Cable Co., Inc. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are thinking of Thomas Salzano and his brother Peter Salzano. They had an earlier company which I think was called 'Least Cost Routing' ? Salzano **was** fined some huge amount of money by the federal government and ordered to stay out of the telecom business for three years. But his period of (for lack of a better term) 'federal probation' expired at the end of 2002. I got some of this information from a message here in the Digest submitted by Michael D. Sullivan, a Washington, DC attorney. Some have suggested you may wish to also have your legal people do a background on Alex Wolf, the present CEO of Norvergence. Alex Wolf should not be confused with Alex Wulf, who has written occassionally here in the Digest. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Organization: Looking for work Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 22:37:15 GMT In article , DaveC wrote: > The content of the "bounce" message is easy to generate, as you point > out. But how do I change the "from" address to reflect something > other than my real address? Doesn't the mail server tag it as coming > from me? You should be able to put anything you want in the From field, and the server should not touch it (so long as it's syntactically valid). SMTP allows for people sending mail on behalf of others (e.g. a secretary sending mail for the boss). Furthermore, unless your SMTP server requires user authentication, it has no way of knowing who it's really coming from. If it does require authentication, it might put your real address in the "Sender" field, but it should still leave the "From" field alone. -- Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Don't most systems have a built in default 'user' called 'Mail Daemon' running as root who handles the bouced mail? PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: ATI Delivers Personal Video Recording The PC For Every Budget From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 23:33:58 GMT > Watching TV on your PC has never been more affordable thanks to new > additions to the ALL-IN-WONDER(R) family of video graphics cards. Funny thing: this reads exactly like the hype that led me to buy the original Radeon All-in-Wonder card, and I'm still waiting for ATI to come out with software that allows all the advertised features to work correctly at the same time (or, more accurately, I gave up waiting when I bought PowerVCR and found it functioned 1000% better than ATI's MMC application). >>==>> The *Best* political site >>==+ email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics <<==+ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have ATI software built into my Winbook XL2 laptop which runs Windows 98 and it seems to be horrible. Earlier this week, the Winbook XL2 kept insisting I had a 'web TV' attached to it and I wound up having to use the Winbook Restore CD to flush all out all the drivers and start over since none of *my* camera drivers would work in it with the ATI drivers stashed in there also. Very messy ... PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:08:12 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: David Nelson I did some looking around and found that even the David Nelson who is son of the late Ozzie & Harriet was stopped, but then was recognized and allowed to proceed. And a now-deceased University of Delaware athletic director and former head football coach was also called David Nelson. As for the recent writeup involving problems for men called David Nelson, I have seen a guess that perhaps some David Nelson was wanted somewhere for something. In unrelated same-name matters: Sometime in the last two years, I vaguely recall reading that some priest in the Boston Catholic archdiocese had to be pointed out as not the same as a priest with the same first name/last name combination who got caught up in the sex-abuse scandals. In my home county, there have been two other voters called Carl Moore, but I have never had a problem getting in to vote, although election officials have had to pay greater attention to middle name and suffix if any (I have the "Jr." suffix after my name). And in 2001 before the attacks of 9-11, I called ahead for a motel reservation (which was to be in Iowa), and when I got there I found it had been mistakenly made in the name of a Carlton Moore who was also from Maryland, and I was able to have it straightened out. ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Need to Host Child Porn, Illegal Content, or Spam Server? Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:26:27 -0600 > Need to host child porn, illegal content, Spam advert site? > Try www.volga.ru you will be able to host anything you desire. > Example of our word to host illegal content: www.cvv.ru > Hacked Credit Cards: http://forum.cvv.ru/viewtopic.php?t=3D848 > Fresh stolen dumps here: http://forum.cvv.ru/viewtopic.php?t=3D450 > As you can see from above we can host ANYTHING. > Do you want to offer such items to aid terrorists like counterfeit > drivers license? > Or counterfeit credit cards with your victim's information already > encoded on it? > Ready for you to go shopping and ruin the credit of thousands of fools > in the USA? > Contact us below and we can get you started. Spam night and day we > ignore all spam complaints and promise 100% uptime or money back! > Contact plat@ripn.net for pricing. I got this spam in email today. My question is, why don't police or FBI nip this in the bud, stop it before it even gets started? Lisa Minter lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Possibly because the guy appears to be in a foreign country, where USA authorities cannot touch him. At least it appears to me that '.ru' is some other country. PAT] ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Share Day For January, 2004 Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 2:00:00 EST Instead of changing the Digest over to an advrtising supported forum, I have always elected to keep it as a user supported forum, and for the most part keep it spam and virus free. I am *only* able to do this because of financial support from readers here, and if you would rather not see these messages every month, then please pitch in and help now and then! Consider it sort of like public radio, which goes on for days at a time trying to raise money ... and maybe I should adopt the same system. Turn over the entire Digest once or twice a year to fund raising (entire issues, etc) and stop doing it when the budget for the year has been raised. But for now, I will stick with the present system of devoting a few messages at the end of each month to raising money for the Digest publication expenses. Out of 400-500 messages per month, in a spam, virus free environment, two or three (only) devoted to fund raising. You know who you are; please provide some help here financially. You can use Pay Pal to donate with a credit/debit card by going to our web site http://telecom-digest.org and at the bottom of the home page look for the PayPal 'donate' button. Or if you prefer, send a check or money order to Patrick Townson/TELECOM, Post Office Box 50, Independence, Kansas 67301-0050. The amount you send is entirely up to you. You know best how much you can afford and whether or not this Digest has any value for you. Thank you very much. Patrick Townson, Editor/Publisher TELECOM Digest ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #47 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jan 30 15:51:01 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0UKp1726274; Fri, 30 Jan 2004 15:51:01 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 15:51:01 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401302051.i0UKp1726274@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 #48 TELECOM Digest Fri, 30 Jan 2004 15:48:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 48 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Some *Good News* About Norvergence! (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: VOIP Over Private IP (Bob Snyder) RCN Adds CBS Programming in High-Definition; Can Enjoy (Monty Solomon) Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? (Nick Landsberg) Strangeness with the W32.Mydoom.B@mm Virus (Darryl Smith) Re: Microsoft Cancels Further Upgrades to Windows or Explorer (Margolin) Make "FREE" Long Distance Calls with VoIP-Valet (Cousin Charles) No More Blank/Fake Caller ID For (Most) Telemarketers (Danny Burstein) Re: Words and Numbers (was: T-Mobile USA Show Biggest Gains) (Al Gillis) Treo 600 - Not Turning Off (Jeff) Help Wanted With Call Attendant System (James) Re: Need to Host Child Porn, Illegal Content, or Spam? (Matt Simpson) Share Day Message for January, 2004 (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 02:21:56 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Some *Good News* About Norvergence! Lord knows we have had enough bad news about the Norvergence people here in recent weeks, lawsuits, complaints from people who say they were defrauded, lured into seemingly endless deals with finance companies, disgruntled employees, etc. Fifty years ago on the radio, I used to listen to Gabriel Heatter, with his fifteen minute nightly news summary. It seems the man seldom had anything but bum raps for all politicians, government policies, etc. With his whining, sniveling voice he seemed to delight in making sure you heard all the really rotten news of the day; ie. the Korean conflict, that red-baiter, Senator Joe McCarthy (R-Wisc) and whatever else there was to complain about. Gabriel Heatter did not miss a beat. But on the rare occassions when there was genuine, honest, good news in those days, Heatter would always sign on the air saying in an earnest voice, 'there is GOOD news tonight!' Some readers have suggested your Moderator seems to delight in making trouble for people and companies also, Maybe so ... but in this issue of the Digest I want to tell you about some people who really and truly think Norvergence is a great service. In response to my request a couple weeks ago inviting Norvergence and/ or Mssrs. Thomas and Peter Salzano or Norvergence CEO Alex Wolf to speak to readers and tell us the way things really are, they chose to send me testimonials *along with telephone numbers and in many cases email addresses* of several of their customers who are quite satisfied with the 'Matrix Box' solution to their telecom needs. This arrived several days ago in my mail as a huge, thick file full of testimonials from CEO's and others. You are invited to verify all these for yourself. They also feel the majority of the negative public relations the company has received in recent weeks was due to a disproportionatly angry response by a discharged employee, and nothing to do with their products and services as such. Anyway, read these excerpted testimonials, verify them as you wish, *then* decide what you think, and where the truth lies. After all, as the gospel of John tells us in Chapter 8 and verse 32, if we know the truth, the truth will make us free. So here are testimonials from a few folks who want to speak truthfully about the Matrix solution from NorVergence. ------------- Dale Y. Morris of Access Integrated Technologies, Morristown, NJ on 866-741-2580 email dmorris@accessitx.com is the office manager for the company. He writes that they have been a satisfied customer of NorVergence for two years. He says the system has been extremely reliable, stable and clear. He recommends Matix to anyone who needs a good system. If you have any questions, email or call him. ------------- Scott Frankel, President of Animatic Media, Lynbrook NY on 516-887-8820 email info@animatic.com said he gets a large amount of solicitations from sales people every day. Most he does not return. But the call he received from NorVergence sounded too good to be true, but skeptically he decided to hear them out. Mr. Frankel says he is a very 'hard sell' and many/most salesmen don't spend much time on him. He says the savings was mostly a wash, but they did go from DSL to a full T-l, and that they now save about $2500 per year. He has been telling business associates about NorVergence and invites your call or email. ------------ Pat Keller, of Arena Partition, Inc. in Columbia, MD, phone 410-997-6399 has been using Matrix Solution about a year (turned on in January, 2003 when letter was written in December, 2003) and claims it is more reliable than their electric supplier. They had only two minor outage incidents in the year, and in both cases they were back on line in less than two hours, and during that time, they still had their T-1 connection to the internet and they were able to make any phone calls needed on the wireless phones included in their contract with NorVergence. The savings have been overall about what was expected, but their main convenience comes from consolidated wireless communication, internet communication, internet services, and long distance calling. Although they do not make a lot of international calls, they appreciated the rates charged by NorVergence when they did. You are invited to discuss this further with Pat Keller. ------------ Bill Barney, President of Automated Print, Atlanta. GA on 404-892-1751 email automatedprint@mindspring.com noted that unlimited cell phone capability saves his company almost $300 per month. He says they were able to reduce the number of telco lines coming in by 25 percent, and the upgrade from dialup to T-1 was very welcomd by the graphics department at the company. Call or email him for more specifics. ------------ Jeni Murphy, President of Bernie's Roofing in East Hartford, CT on the phone number 860-528-5595 and 860-289-6557 http://welchroofing.com wrote to say although they expected there would be downtime on their phones and computers during the cutover, it went smoothly and quickly. They especially appreciate being able to send a photograph of a problem from the job site immediatly to the supervising executive in the office for fast turn around in their roofing work. She noted 'our employees were thrilled with the cell phone set up.' ----------- Some additional accolades came from these people: Steve Bock, Birds-Eye-View, Atlanta, GA 770-457-9597 Rich Giancola, Controller, Boston ECR, Phone 800-635-0273 Robert Greco, President, Central Auto and Transport, LLC 195 Maxim Road, Hartford, CT - 860-246-7616 Kevin Pickett, CFO, Channel Fish Processing, Inc. Boston, MA 617-464-3366 Michael J. Starovich, President, C&M Auto Service, 1723-A Waukegan Road, Glenview, IL 847-724-6311 service@cmauto.com Richard Colagouri, President, Colwood Electronics, Inc. 15 Meridian Road, Eatontown, NJ 732-544-1119 Computer and Electronic Enterprises, 5545 Chene, Detroit, MI 313-925-4100 Kirby Lunsford, Executive Pastor, Crosby Church Steve Weiskirch, DNW Enterprises, 540 Frontage Road, Northfield, IL Phone: 847-784-1072 email: dnwent@hotmail.com Joseph Sandy, VP, East Coast Resources, LLC 9304 D'Arcy Road Upper Marlboro, MD 301-333-8551 www.eastcoastresources.com Garland Sparks, President, eFluidpower EFPS, Inc. PO Box 45093 Houston, TX 713-973-9211 Sam Karimi, CEO Elite Technology Group, 870 East Higgins Rd. Schaumburg, IL 847-995-9525 SKarimi@EliteTechnology.com Les Chernauskus, VP, Geosciences Testing and Research, Inc. 33 Middlesex Street, North Chelmsford, MA 978-951-9395 Michael Gibbons, President, Gibbons Construction, Inc. 1020 Lunt Avenue, Schaumburg, IL 708-893-5947 Mark E. Grace, Controller, Grace Technologies http://gracetechnologies.com Del Dolive, President, Great Southern Iron Works, 440 Hembree Hollow Roswell, GA 770-664-1213 Jim O'Connor, Grove Automotive, Phone 714-893-0777 Rick Alfaro, VP Hallmark Personnel of Florida, Inc. 3201 W. Commercial, Fort Lauderdale, FL 954-739-0600 ralfaro@hallmarkpersonnel.biz Sean Kevin Roark, Harry E. Jones and Associates, Advertising Specialties 5773 Woodway, Houston, TX 713-463-0029 --------------- and about 30 more letters were recieved in the package which arrived here a few days ago. Altogether, about 50-60 letters in the package sent to me from Norvergence. An observation by myself: Every single one of these letters were written by the companies involved above during December, 2003, very frequently on December 9 or December 11. A few are dated later in December. I do not know if Norvergence did all that business in the late fall (so to allow the customers at least a month or two to evaluate the system and write letters) or if Norvergence specifically solicited letters of recommendation from their customers,or if all those customers decided to write at the same time, etc. I do know that when the very first negative words about Norvergence appeared here (or in some other newsgroup) I received *two* positive letters sent in email on the *very same day*. Just an observation, for whatever it is worth; maybe nothing. I also note that these letter writers for the most part, had been using Norvergence for between one and three months at the time they wrote their letters of recommendation. Perhaps one or more readers will follow up with inquiries in a few months and see if the letter writers remain satisfied. Anyway, my sincere thanks to the Salzano brothers, Alex Wulf and (very possibly) Susan Carol for sending me this batch of testimonials for review. I'll have them all on file here (along with the couple dozen or so space considerations forbade me printing here) in the event they come in useful some day. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ Subject: Re: VOIP Over Private IP From: Bob Snyder Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 14:31:23 -0500 nyukfah@pd.jaring.my (nyuk fah) writes: > My current internet connection is private ip and behind a firewall. > Thus I wonder any solution VOIP over HTTP? Which I can solve the > private IP and firewall limitation? No, not over HTTP, at least if you want decent quality VoIP, since HTTP uses TCP as it's transport. TCP guarantees a complete and in-order data stream, and does this by stopping the flow of data to an application under it gets missing packets resent by not acknowledging them to the sender. Thus, a couple of missing packets could easily cause at least several seconds of no audio, even though the missing packets may only make up a fraction of a second of loss. VoIP usually uses UDP for the audio connection, with H.323 or SIP controlling it. Many firewalls have provisions to be configured to properly NAT H.323, or you could use a gatekeeper routed setup for H.323. SIP has provisions for proxy servers and NAT inside the protocol. You probably want to check your firewall's documentation and see if it supports firewalling/NAT'ing H.323. Bob ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 21:56:35 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: RCN Adds CBS Programming in High-Definition; Customers Can Enjoy Super Bowl XXXVIII in HD Format PRINCETON, N.J., Jan. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- RCN Corporation (Nasdaq: RCNC) today announced that it has added CBS to its High-Definition TV platform. With award-winning sitcoms, popular crime dramas, and a great sports lineup including this Sunday's Super Bowl XXXVIII, CBS adds great entertainment choices to an already potent High-Definition lineup. The HD format will be available in RCN's Boston, Manhattan, Queens, Philadelphia, Washington DC, San Francisco and Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania markets. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200401291648_PRN__PHTH025 ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Subject: Re: Spoofing a "Bounced" E-Mail Error Message? Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 03:03:36 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet [snip] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Most computers have a user account > known as 'Mail Daemon' (often times running with root privileges) > which send out those notices. Set up a user called Mail Daemon to > get that 'from' address. PAT] Most of us don't have our own mail servers and have to rely on the ISP to do the mail handling. Thus, if everyone tried to create an account on Earthlink or Worldnet with the name MailerDaemon or some such, then only the first few with creative spellings would succeed. But I will try over the weekend and report back on the results ::grin:: Now, if ISP's would provide the "bounce" service as part of their package, that's something! BTW -- preliminary investigation shows that different mail services bounce message in different ways. For example, worldnet says: Error 551: Not our customer Yahoo does it totally differently. Maybe the 551 error is sufficient? "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are all kinds of variations on 'Mail Daemon'. Try it without a space in the middle, using an upper case /M/ and /D/. Try being Mailer Daemon, again with and without a space in the middle. Or become Mail Daemon 2 or whatever. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Darryl Smith Subject: Strangeness with the W32.Mydoom.B@mm Virus Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 16:07:39 +1100 Pat, Something strange is happening with the W32.Mydoom.B@mm virus that we all seem to get hit with right now. I have been getting some strange 'bounce' messages -- specifically messages saying that they are from Apache@uranium.radio-active.net.au Well, This is very strange, because the only people who have ever sent email to that address are spammers. No-one has a valid reason to send from or to the uranium sub-domain (and I am the only one who uses it anyway). And I *NEVER* use the apache address - it is just one of the standard alias'. Every week or so I get an email to that address ... well until the last few days when I am getting at least one bounce a day saying that the email was from that address. There are two options here ... a) the writer of the Virus is sending out the virus still, using to and from addresses from a Spam list. b) A spammer has caught the virus. Both have some interesting implications. Darryl Smith, VK2TDS POBox 169 Ingleburn NSW 2565 Australia Mobile Number 0412 929 634 [+61 4 12 929 634 International] www.radio-active.net.au - www.radio-active.net.au\web\tracking [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Don't you just wish it were true: a plague on both their houses; spammers get infected and virus writers start getting spammed heavily. As they spend their time and resources fighting with each other, the rest of us could go back to regular, everyday computing for the first time since the mid- to late 1990's. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Microsoft Cancels Further Upgrades to Windows or Explorer Organization: Looking for work Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 05:40:47 GMT In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > Microsoft cancels Eolas-related software changes > SEATTLE, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp., (NASDAQ:MSFT) > reversing its plans, said on Thursday that it will not make any > changes to its Windows operating system or Internet Explorer > Web browser in response to a verdict that said some components > of those programs infringe on another company's technology. I hope Monty was just having fun with his Subject line. I don't think MS has cancelled all Windows and IE changes, just the ones related to this lawsuit. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA ------------------------------ From: mysuccessmentor@excite.com (CousinCharles) Subject: Make "FREE" Long Distance Calls with VoIP-Valet Date: 29 Jan 2004 22:01:30 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com CALL your friends, family and business contacts around the world ... WITHOUT the worry of how much it's going to cost! Make FREE Long Distance Calls with VoIP-Valet and enjoy the opportunity to earn income at the same time! HEAR the quality and clarity of VoIP-Valet! http://www.cmp5830.calltheplanet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'll stick with Vonage, thank you, especially since they just recently (last few days) expanded into the 620 area code of rural southeastern Kansas. They are not yet in a position to port my local number 620-331 over, but Winfield, Kansas is very close. Anyone who wants an e-coupon for a free month of Vonage service can ask me for one in not-for-pub email. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: No More Blank/Fake Caller ID For (Most) Telemarketers Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 03:33:42 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Compliance on the Line: Telemarketers to Start Transmitting Caller ID Information Beginning January 29, 2004, telemarketers must transmit Caller ID information in order to comply with the Federal Trade CommissionÕs Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR). This information will help consumers choose which sales calls they want to take. Telemarketers are required to transmit their telephone number, and if possible, their name, to consumersÕ Caller ID services. While it is technologically possible to transmit callersÕ numbers nearly everywhere, transmitting callersÕ names may not be available everywhere yet. [ snip ] http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/01/callerid.htm _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Family Radio was chattering about it all day yesterday in their newscasts. At last, the 'reject last caller' feature of SWB Tel will be worth something. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: Words and Numbers (was: T-Mobile USA Show Biggest Gains) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 03:25:44 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote in message news:telecom23.45.17@telecom-digest.org: >> Deutsche Telekom's (DE:DTEGn) T-Mobile, the sixth largest >> U.S. wireless service, said it added 1.015 million customers > Purely as a curiosity, why would anyone write "1.015 million" instead > of "1,015,000" (or, even better, "just over a million customers")? > -Joel Those Germans just think everything has to be so precise! ------------------------------ From: jeff@customfitness.com (Jeff) Subject: Treo 600 - Not Turning Off Date: 30 Jan 2004 11:57:08 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, Ever since I got my Treo 600, it has not been able to turn itself off when it is charging. Even though, I have the setting "turn off after 1 minute", it stays on all night when I have it plugged in and charging! It will NOT turn off when it's plugged in. I don't know if some setting transfered over from my Sony Clie when I first did a sync to tranfer the data over from my Clie to the Treo. Is there a way to fix this? If not will this hurt the Treo if the screen stays on overnight when charging? Thanks, Jeff ------------------------------ From: jcoronat@paulbunyan.net (James) Subject: Help With Call-Attendant System? Date: 30 Jan 2004 12:32:13 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Can anyone help in constructing an automated telephone answering system for me? The idea is to allow a caller to sample one or more long books over the phone. Each of the one or more books will be playing continuously, and a caller will simply tap in to a particular recording at whatever point it happens to be when the caller calls in. It should work as follows: the caller dials our toll-free number and connects to our system ("System" - the one you supply me). The System should then: 1. automatically answer the call and play an outgoing message of 1-2 mins ("Hello and thank you for calling! To hear Book One, press"); 2.then automatically connect to a live feed-through for 2-4 minutes minutes (this is one of the continuously playing CD players or tape players); 3. then automatically disconnect or fade out the live feed-through and play a short termination message ("Thank you for listening. For additional information write"); 4. then automatically disconnect the call. To start the System, I'd insert my book CD or audiocassette into a CD or tape player, set the player on "continuous play" mode, and jack it into the live feed-through port on the machine you supply. If the system had more than one port, I'd jack additional CD players, each playing different books, into the other ports. Then I want to walk away and have it service callers unattended. To summarize: when callers dial in, they'll hear an introductory message, then 2 to 4 minutes of the book's text at whatever point the recording happens to be at that moment; then, a short message telling what to do if more information is desired. At the end, the system disconnects the caller automatically. Does anyone know how I could assemble a system of telephone equipment that will do this? Sincerely, James. ------------------------------ From: net-news02@jmatt.net (Matt Simpson) Subject: Re: Need to Host Child Porn, Illegal Content, or Spam Server? Date: 30 Jan 2004 09:30:37 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lisa Minter wrote in message news:: > I got this spam in email today. My question is, why don't police or > FBI nip this in the bud, stop it before it even gets started? Maybe because it's the police or FBI sending it out as a sting operation, trying to catch people stupid enough to respond to something that's so blatant about being illegal. ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Share Day For January Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 2:00:00 EST Instead of changing the Digest over to an advrtising supported forum, I have always elected to keep it as a user supported forum, and for the most part keep it spam and virus free. I am *only* able to do this because of financial support from readers here, and if you would rather not see these messages every month, then please pitch in and help now and then! Consider it sort of like public radio, which goes on for days at a time trying to raise money ... and maybe I should adopt the same system. Turn over the entire Digest once or twice a year to fund raising (entire issues, etc) and stop doing it when the budget for the year has been raised. But for now, I will stick with the present system of devoting a few messages at the end of each month to raising money for the Digest publication expenses. Out of 400-500 messages per month, in a spam, virus free environment, two or three (only) devoted to fund raising. You know who you are; please provide some help here financially. You can use Pay Pal to donate with a credit/debit card by going to our web site http://telecom-digest.org and at the bottom of the home page look for the PayPal 'donate' button. Or if you prefer, send a check or money order to Patrick Townson/TELECOM, Post Office Box 50, Independence, Kansas 67301-0050. The amount you send is entirely up to you. You know best how much you can afford and whether or not this Digest has any value for you. Thank you very much. Patrick Townson, Editor/Publisher TELECOM Digest ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #48 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Jan 31 13:55:04 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0VIt4c03317; Sat, 31 Jan 2004 13:55:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 13:55:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401311855.i0VIt4c03317@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 #49 TELECOM Digest Sat, 31 Jan 2004 13:55:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 49 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AT&T Wireless Offer Provides Free, Unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile (Solomon) Ads for Gambling Sites Abound Despite Legal Crackdown on Media (Solomon) Comcast Takes on Broadcast TV for Local Ads (Monty Solomon) Hughes Cuts Jobs, Boosts DirecTV Prices (Monty Solomon) The Company They Kept (Monty Solomon) Cell Phone Explosion Burns Man's Buttocks (Monty Solomon) Making the Call / It's Not as if Their Lifelong Ambition (Monty Solomon) Re: VOIP Over Private IP (Bob Snyder) Vonage Router Taken Abroad? (Chas) Re: Some *Good News* About Norvergence! (BMN) Re: Need to Host Child Porn, Illegal Content, Spam? (Fritz Whittington) Re: Treo 600 - Not Turning Off (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Wireless Transmission (Ijaz Ahmed) Optical Fiber (Ijaz Ahmed) 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: Monty Solomon Subject: AT&T Wireless Offer Provides free, Unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 18:54:01 -0500 BASKING RIDGE, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 30, 2004--AT&T Wireless (NYSE:AWE) today announced an offer -- the first of its kind -- that can give new and current customers on qualifying plans the freedom to make unlimited domestic mobile-to-mobile calls at no charge to any of the company's nearly 22 million customers. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40359863 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 18:29:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Ads for Gambling Sites Abound Despite Legal Crackdown on Media By Kate Kaye Contributing Writer Who will win the coin toss or be first to challenge a referee call? Better yet, who will win the halftime pay-per-view Lingerie Bowl? No matter who is betting on what this Sunday, odds are that many Super Bowl-related wagers will be placed online. Prominent Web media outlets like MSNBC.com and Lycos could lead the way, despite a government crackdown on media companies that run ads for online gambling sites. http://www.mediapost.com/dtls_dsp_news.cfm?newsID=236319 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 18:51:34 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Comcast Takes on Broadcast TV For Local Ads By Michael Learmonth NEW YORK, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ:CMCSA), the No. 1 U.S. cable operator, has forged alliances with cable operators around the country in the past year to get a bigger share of the $28 billion local advertising market from broadcasters. The culmination of the effort, to be announced Monday, is called "Comcast Spotlight," the company's $1 billion local advertising sales operation, which will sell time not only on Comcast's systems but on others in 75 markets. The alliances will allow Comcast to sell advertising in regional markets served by rival cable operators, a direct challenge to broadcast TV which has enjoyed a de facto monopoly on local advertising. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40364114 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 23:58:19 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Hughes Cuts Jobs, Boosts DirecTV Prices By Greg Tarr El Segundo, Calif. - Hughes Electronics said it has begun an 'organizational restructuring' effort, which has reduced certain Hughes Corp. administrative jobs and relocated others to its DirecTV unit. Now under the direction of News Corp., the company said it has 'consolidated several functions that have been based at the company into its DirecTV unit.' As a result of the restructuring, approximately 50 positions have been eliminated at the Hughes corporate office, while approximately 30 other posts were relocated to DirecTV. A Hughes spokesperson said the jobs were primarily administrative support positions. http://www.twice.com/index.asp?layout=story&doc_id=130801 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 00:25:48 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Company They Kept By ROGER LOWENSTEIN In the old days in Coudersport, a tiny Pennsylvania town at the northern edge of Appalachia, if you had trouble with your cable hookup, you simply called John Rigas to come over and fix it. If you needed a loan, or a few bucks for a local charity drive, you darn sure called him too. There didn't seem to be anyone in this town of 2,600 that Rigas wouldn't help, or didn't like, which is maybe why Rigas seemed cut from the same cloth as his idol, the pundit Will Rogers. Rigas's other hero was Sam Walton, and like the folksy Walton, Rigas built his company, Adelphia Communications, from scratch into a giant corporation. This sort of story has become so familiar in recent years that you almost don't have to add the kicker. Yes, it all came tumbling down. Yes, Rigas's company failed, and Rigas himself, along with two of his sons, is sitting in the dock, accused of the worst case of looting of any C.E.O. of the Enron era. The difference is that unlike other supposed villains, Rigas, a 79-year-old son of Greek immigrants, was a genuine business hero, a pioneer in cable television. Many of the current corporate miscreants -- think Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco -- appear to be calculating and utterly unrepentant. Rigas, who has spent much of the past two years in a state of shock, is nothing if not likable. And when he goes on trial this month in Manhattan's federal courthouse, the jurors will confront the improbable: a central figure in a white-collar scandal who is as ordinary as they are. The mystery of how Rigas, a frail, white-haired man who seemingly had neither the motive nor the disposition to commit a fraud, came so undone, has riveted his hometown. Some say the answer lies with his sons, who directed the company's frantic growth in the late 90's; others cite the family's habit of blurring private interests and public ones, which was pretty easy to do in a remote company town like Coudersport. Mystery or not, Rigas's fall says a lot about America's wave of business scandals. The explanation put forth by people from Alan Greenspan on down is that executives got greedy (as if that were something new), but Rigas, who never sold a share of his company's stock, and didn't get stock options either, doesn't quite fit the mold. So what else was it? However badly the Rigases behaved, they were helped along the way by lenders and investment bankers, auditors, lawyers, analysts -- just about anyone whose job it should have been to protect the public. And this is what truly distinguishes the latter stages of the last bull market: not that a handful of executives got greedy but that the safeguards supposedly built into our financial culture stopped functioning. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/magazine/01RIGAS.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 01:34:43 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cell Phone Explosion Burns Man's Buttocks KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- A Malaysian man was shaken and scalded Tuesday after his mobile phone exploded beside him while he was sleeping, the national news agency reported. Mohamed Radzuan Yasin said he was recharging his cell phone and placed it on his bed near him before he took a nap. Three hours later, he was jarred awake by what he described as a small explosion. http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2004/01/27/cell_phone_explosion_burns_mans_buttocks/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 10:26:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Making the Call It's not as if their lifelong ambition is to irritate us at dinnertime By Wells Tower Sunday, January 25, 2004; Page W12 Washington Post Magazine Sometimes when Darren Dooley's team of telemarketers is not selling as much as it might be, a quick word of encouragement will get the crew back on track. Other times, the situation requires what Dooley, who is the night and weekend manager at RDI Marketing in Cincinnati, calls "lighting a fire under their [butts]." It is late morning on a Sunday, and Dooley has just ordered 15 employees to lay down their headsets and report to the training room. They regard him nervously. They can hear the tinder beginning to crackle. "All right, listen up," Dooley says. "Everyone in this room has one thing in common, and one thing only. You're all sitting in there collecting a paycheck and you all have zero sales." The under-performers, mostly high school and college students, have spent the morning trying to persuade people all across America to sign up for new Gold MasterCards. They nibble their lips, fiddle with their cuticles. They look guilty and bored. "I know it's Sunday, but that's no excuse," he says. "I don't care what the situation is. If you call somebody and he's already pissed off, then try to make him happy. There's other people in there who've got four and five sales. They're being assumptive. They're being enthusiastic. If you're not getting sales, it's because you're in there talking and . . . not giving a hundred percent." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36801-2004Jan21.html ------------------------------ Subject: Re: VOIP Over Private IP From: Bob Snyder Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 14:31:23 -0500 nyukfah@pd.jaring.my (nyuk fah) writes: > My current internet connection is private ip and behind a firewall. > Thus I wonder any solution VOIP over HTTP? Which I can solve the > private IP and firewall limitation? No, not over HTTP, at least if you want decent quality VoIP, since HTTP uses TCP as it's transport. TCP guarantees a complete and in-order data stream, and does this by stopping the flow of data to an application under it gets missing packets resent by not acknowledging them to the sender. Thus, a couple of missing packets could easily cause at least several seconds of no audio, even though the missing packets may only make up a fraction of a second of loss. VoIP usually uses UDP for the audio connection, with H.323 or SIP controlling it. Many firewalls have provisions to be configured to properly NAT H.323, or you could use a gatekeeper routed setup for H.323. SIP has provisions for proxy servers and NAT inside the protocol. You probably want to check your firewall's documentation and see if it supports firewalling/NAT'ing H.323. Bob ------------------------------ From: xarush@omelas.com (Chas) Subject: Vonage Router Taken Abroad? Date: 30 Jan 2004 16:59:07 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have a Vonage phone and I am really satisfied with the service. I wonder if anyone has any experience taking the router to different countries. I was thinking of sending one to my friend Gustavo in South America. He has a high speed internet connection. Any thoughts? Any Experience? Thanks. Chas [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Vonage works anywhere there is high- speed internet. Gustavo will have to have a USA phone number, however. Maybe when you get it for him, have Vonage set it up with a number in the same community yourself, so that your calls to him will always be free even if you use some other hardwired phone (in your town) to call him other than your Vonage line. His calls to you or anywhere else will always be 'free' of course. You are *certain* he has high speed broadband service? Some times people in other countries refer to 'high speed' when they actually mean 56-K dialup. I will help you pay for setting him up: write and ask for an e-coupon for one month of free service. You get the box and pay for the first month's service, then apply the e-coupon I will send on request for the *second* month's service. Actually, you use the link in the e-coupon to open his account in order to get the one month free. Write to me not-for pub and ask for a Vonage account. PAT] ------------------------------ From: BMN Subject: Re: Some *Good News* About Norvergence! Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 19:35:01 -0500 Organization: Bell Sympatico Well that's just great, but what happens when you factor in the cost of the matrix box + interest over five years? I would think that would chip away at my real potential saving considerably. On average I can save a client 30% off their telecom expenses without signing any long term contracts or requiring any capex. That's just simple optimization. Also, what happens next time a better deal comes around? The client is stuck! If you consider that next opportunity could save them 20% or more then the NorVergence solution again becomes uncompetitive. It's not like you can go to Norvergence and renegotiate your rates now is it? Moreover the more clients they get the more minutes they buy, the better the deal for NorVergence, but do they pass on the saving to their clients? Regardless of what happens in the telecom sector you are stuck paying X $ until the end of the lease. By the way, then what? What happens at the end of the lease? Is there an equipment buyout? Will Norvergence try and re-sign you for another 60 months? -- yikes! --> If I save $$ in my first two years with them but is costs me $$$ over the next 3 years plus I end up paying $10000 for a $2000 channel bank, I am sorry but their deal just plain sucks. What is truly unfortunate is that these people got sucked in and they have no clue. And I can assure you that I am not a disgruntled ex employee of NorVergence. If any of you manage a telecom dept or a clients, just do quarterly reviews on your service or better yet hire a consultant to do it for you. Keep yourself optimized and on track with the latest products and services. If NorVergence offered 12 month terms, I might be compelled to review their offering. Things change too quickly to be locking yourself or a client into a 60 month term. It's just irresponsible. (IMHO) Brett (flame suit, ON!) TELECOM Digest Editor wrote in message news:telecom23.48.1@telecom-digest.org: > Lord knows we have had enough bad news about the Norvergence people here > in recent weeks, lawsuits, complaints from people who say they were > defrauded, lured into seemingly endless deals with finance companies, > disgruntled employees, etc. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And it is that finance company with no outs allowed which is the hard pill to swallow, isn't it? So much of what Norvergence says is purely an applications problem, Maybe it will work out well for some customers, or maybe not others. Now if Norvergence offered an 'early buy out' option, where the customer and the company both made some compromises, that would work better for a lot of guys. The VP of Telecom (or whatever his/her title is) gets pissed, comes into work and says 'get that junk out of here'. So Norvergence and the telecom manager make an arrangement fair to both and Norvergence aids in an orderly transition to the system the Telecom people want. That would be a little easier to deal with. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Fritz Whittington Subject: Re: Need to Host Child Porn, Illegal Content, or Spam Server? Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 02:08:58 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet On or about 2004-01-30 11:30, Matt Simpson whipped out a trusty #2 pencil and scribbled: > Lisa Minter wrote in message > news:: >> I got this spam in email today. My question is, why don't police or >> FBI nip this in the bud, stop it before it even gets started? > Maybe because it's the police or FBI sending it out as a sting > operation, trying to catch people stupid enough to respond to > something that's so blatant about being illegal. Could be. I don't read much Russian, but I think this may be a "joe job". The site seems to be pretty legitimate, at first glance. The odd thing is, the spam email seems to originate from somewhere in China. Not to mention that I really can't see a Russian company co-operating with the FBI ... Fritz Whittington I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope (Aeschylus, Agamemnon) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 00:36:35 -0600 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelectronics.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Treo 600 - Not Turning Off Jeff wrote: > Ever since I got my Treo 600, it has not been able to turn itself off > when it is charging. Even though, I have the setting "turn off after 1 > minute", it stays on all night when I have it plugged in and charging! Perhaps the Treo is using its microprocessor to monitor the charging process. I know the HP100LX and 200LX work like this; even pressing the Power button won't turn them off when they're plugged in with battery charging enabled. > ... will this hurt the Treo if the screen stays on overnight when > charging? Probably not. The backlight probably has a lifespan, so if it's on all the time that could cause problems. But the LCD doesn't care. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin ------------------------------ From: Ijaz Ahmed Subject: Wireless Transmission Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 03:10:32 +0500 Hi! I am Ijaz Ahmed from Pakistan . Here are my research articles about Wireless Transmission Please post them in the Digest For the benefit Of Telecomm readers. Thanks! Ijaz WIRELESS TRANSMISSION For unguided media, transmission and reception are achieved by means of an antenna. For transmission, the antenna radiates electromagnetic energy into the medium (usually air), and for reception, the antenna picks up electromagnetic waves from the surrounding medium. There are basically two types of configurations for wireless transmission: directional and omnidirectional. For the directional configuration, the transmitting antenna puts out a focused electromagnetic beam; the transmitting and receiving antennas must therefore be carefully aligned. In the omnidirectional case, the transmitted signal spreads out in all directions and can be received by many antennas. In general, the higher the frequency of a signal, the more it is possible to focus it into a directional beam. Three general ranges of frequencies are of interest in our discussion of wireless transmission. Frequencies in the range of about 2 GHz (gigahertz = 109 Hz) to 40 GHz are referred to as microwave frequencies. At these frequencies, highly directional beams are possible, and microwave is quite suitable for point-to-point transmission. Microwave is also used for satellite communications. Frequencies in the range 30 MHz to 1 GHz are suitable for omnidirectional applications. We refer to this range as the broadcast radio range. Another important frequency range, for local applications, is the infrared portion of the spectrum. This covers, roughly, from 3 X 10 n to 2 X 10M Hz. Infrared is useful to local point-to-point and multipoint applications within confined areas such as a single room. Terrestrial Microwave Physical Description The most common type of microwave antenna is the parabolic dish. The antenna is fixed rigidly and focuses a narrow beam to achieve line of-sight transmission to the receiving antenna. Microwave antennas are usually located at substantial heights above ground level in order to extend the range between antennas and to be able to transmit over intervening obstacles. To achieve long-distance transmission, a series of microwave relay towers is used, and point-to-point microwave links are strung together over the desired distance. Applications The primary use for terrestrial microwave systems is in long-haul telecommunications service, as an alternative to coaxial cable or optical fiber. The microwave facility requires far fewer amplifiers or repeaters than coaxial cable requires over the same distance, but necessitates line-of-sight transmission. Microwave is commonly used for both voice and television transmission. Another increasingly common use of microwave is for short point-to- point links between buildings. This can be used for closed-circuit TV or as a data link between local-area networks. Short-haul microwave can also be used for "bypass"applications. A business can establish a microwave link to a long-distance telecommunications facility in the same city, bypassing the local telephone company. Transmission Characteristics Microwave transmission covers a substantial portion of the electro- magnetic spectrum. Common frequencies used for transmission are in the range 2 to 40 GHz. The higher the frequency used, the higher the potential bandwidth and therefore the higher the potential data rate. As with any transmission system, a main source of loss is attenuation. This loss is proportionally less than with twisted pair or coaxial cable, allowing repeaters or amplifiers to be placed farther apart for microwave systems-10 to 100 km is typical. Attenuation is increased with rainfall. The effects of rainfall become especially noticeable above 10 GHz. Another source of impairment is interference. With the growing popularity of microwave, transmission areas overlap and interference is always a danger. Thus, the assignment of frequency bands is strictly regulated. Satellite Microwave Physical Description A communication satellite is, in effect, a microwave relay station. It is used to link two or more ground-based microwave transmitter/receivers, known as earth stations or ground stations. The satellite receives transmissions on one frequency band (uplink), amplifies or repeats the signal, and transmits it on another frequency (downlink). A single orbiting satellite will operate on a number of frequency bands, called transponder channels or simply transponders. Two common configurations for satellite communication are generally used In the first, the satellite is used to provide a point-to-point link between two distant ground-based antennas. In the second, the satellite provides communications between one ground-based transmitter and a number of ground-based receivers. For a communication satellite to function effectively, it is generally required that it remain stationary with respect to its position over the earth. Otherwise, it would not be within the line of sight of its earth stations at all times. Applications The communication satellite is a technological revolution as important as fiber optics. Among the most important applications for satellites: 1. Television distribution 2. Long-distance telephone transmission 3. Private business networks Because of their broadcast nature, satellites are well suited to television distribution and are being used extensively for this purpose throughout the world. In its traditional use, a network provides programming from a central location. Programs are transmitted to the satellite and then broadcast down to a number of stations, which then distribute the programs to individual viewers. A more recent application of satellite technology to television distribution is direct broadcast satellite (DBS), in which satellite video signals are transmitted directly to the home user. Satellite transmission is also used for point-to-point trunks between telephone exchange offices in public telephone networks. It is the useful medium forhigh-usage international trunks and is competitive with terrestrial systems for many long-distance intranational links, particularly in remote and undeveloped areas. Finally, there are a number of business data applications for satellite. The satellite provider can divide the total capacity into a number of channels and lease these channels to individual business users. A user equipped with the antennas at a number of sites can use a satellite channel for a private network. Traditionally, such applications have been quite expensive and limited to larger organizations with high-volume requirements. Today, the very small aperture terminal (VSAT) system, which provides a low-cost alternative is also in use . A number of subscriber stations are equipped with low-cost VSAT antennas. Using some discipline, these stations share a satellite transmission capacity for transmission to a hub station. The hub station can exchange messages with each of the subscribers and can relay messages between subscribers. Transmission Characteristics The optimum frequency range for satellite transmission is in the range 1 to 10 GHz. Below 1 GHz, there is significant noise from natural sources, including galactic, solar, and atmospheric noise, and human made interference from various electronic devices. Above 10 GHz, the signal is severely attenuated by atmospheric absorption and precipitation. Most satellites providing point-to-point service today use a frequency band width in the range 5.925 to 6.425 GHz for transmission from earth to satellite (uplink) and a bandwidth in the range 4.7 to 4.2 GHz for transmission from satellite to earth (downlink). This combination is referred to as the 4/6-GHz band, or C band. Note that the uplink and downlink frequencies differ. For continuous operation without interference, a satellite cannot transmit and receive on the same frequency. Thus, signals received from a ground station on one frequency must be transmitted back on another. Several properties of satellite communication should be noted. First, because of the long distances involved, there is a propagation delay of about 0.25 sec from transmission from one earth station to reception by another earth station. This delay is noticeable in ordinary telephone conversations. It also introduces problems in the areas of error control and flow control . Second, satellite microwave is inherently a broadcast facility. Many stations can transmit to the satellite, and a transmission from a satellite can be received by many stations. ------------------------------ From: Ijaz Ahmed Subject: Optical Fiber Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 03:13:51 +0500 OPTICAL FIBER Physical Description An optical fiber is a thin, flexible medium capable of conducting an optical ray. Various glasses and plastics can be used to make optical fibers. The lowest losses have been obtained using fibers of ultrapure fused silica. Ultrapure fiber is difficult to manufacture; higher-loss multi component glass fibers are more economical and still provide good performance. Plastic fiber is even less costly and can be used for short-haul links, for which moderately high losses are acceptable. An optical fiber has a cylindrical shape and consists of three concentric sections . The two innermost are two types of glass with different indexes of refraction. The center one is called the core, and the next layer the cladding. These two sections of glass are covered by a protective and light absorbing jacket. Optical fibers are grouped together into optical cables. Applications One of the most significant technological breakthroughs in data transmission has been the development of practical fiber optic communications systems. Optical fiber already enjoys considerable use in long-distance telecommunications, and its use in military applications is growing. The continuing improvements in performance and decline in prices, together with the inherent advantages of optical fiber, have made it increasingly attractive for local-area networking. The following characteristics distinguish optical fiber from twisted pair or coaxial cable: Greater capacity. The potential bandwidth, and hence data rate, of optical fiber is immense; data rates of 2 Gbps over tens of kilometers have been demonstrated. Compare this to the practical maximum of hundreds of Mbps over about 1 km for coaxial cable and just a few Mbps over 1 km or up to 100 Mbps over a few tens of meters for twisted pair. Smaller size and lighter weight. Optical fibers are considerably thinner than coaxial cable or bundled twisted-pair cable-at least an order of magnitude thinner for comparable information transmission capacity. For cramped conduits in buildings and underground along public rights of-way, the advantage of small size is considerable. The corresponding reduction in weight reduces structural support requirements. Lower attenuation. Attenuation is significantly lower for optical fiber than for coaxial cable or twisted pair and is constant over a wide range of frequencies. Electromagnetic isolation. Optical fiber systems are not affected by external electromagnetic fields. Thus, the system is not vulnerable to interference, impulse noise, or crosstalk. By the same token, fibers do not radiate energy, causing little interference with other equip- ment and providing a high degree of security from eavesdropping. In addition, fiber is inherently difficult to tap. Greater repeater spacing. Fewer repeaters means lower cost and fewer sources of error. From this point of view the performance of optical fiber systems has been steadily improving. Five basic categories of application have become important for optical fiber: 1. Long-haul trunks 2. Metropolitan trunks 3. Rural exchange trunks 4. Subscriber loops 5. Local-area networks Long-haul fiber transmission is becoming increasingly common in the telephone network. Long-haul routes average about 900 miles in length and offer high capacity (typically, 20,000 to 60,000 voice channels). These systems compete economically with microwave and have so under priced coaxial cable in many developed countries that coaxial cable is rapidly being phased out of the telephone network in such countries. Metropolitan trunking circuits have an average length of 7.8 miles and may have as many as 100,000 voice channels in a trunk group. Most facilities are installed in underground conduits and are repeaterless, joining telephone exchanges in a metropolitan or city area. Included in this category are routes that link long-haul microwave facilities that terminate at a city perimeter to the main telephone exchange building downtown. Rural exchange trunks have circuit lengths ranging from 25 to 100 miles and link towns and villages. In the network , they often connect the exchanges of different telephone companies. Most of these systems have fewer than 5000 voice channels. The technology used in these applications competes with microwave facilities. Subscriber loop circuits are fibers that run directly from the central exchange to a subscriber. These facilities are beginning to displace twisted pair and coaxial cable links as the telephone networks evolve into full-service networks capable of handling not only voice and data but also image and video. The initial penetration of optical fiber in this application is for the business subscriber, but fiber transmission into the home will soon begin to appear. A final important application of optical fiber is for local-area networks. Recently, standards have been developed and products introduced for optical fiber networks that have a total capacity of 100 Mbps and can support hundreds or even thousands of stations in a large office building or a complex of buildings. The advantages of optical fiber over twisted pair and coaxial cable become more compelling as the demand for all types of information (voice, data, image, video) increases. TRANSMISSION CHARACTERISTICS Optical fiber systems operate in the range of about 1014 to 1015 Hz; this covers portions of the infrared and visible spectrums. The principle of optical fiber transmission is as follows. Light from a source enters the cylindrical glass or plastic core. Rays at shallow angles are reflected and propagated along the fiber; other rays are absorbed by the surrounding material. This form of propagation is called multimode, referring to the variety of angles that will reflect. When the fiber core radius is reduced, fewer angles will reflect. By reducing the radius of the core to the order of a wavelength, only a single angle or mode can pass: the axial ray. This single-mode propagation provides superior performance, for the following reason. With multimode transmission, multiple propagation paths exist, each with a different path length and hence time to traverse the fiber. This causes signal elements to spread out in time, which limits the rate at which data can be accurately received. Because there is a single transmission path with single-mode transmission, such distortion cannot occur. Finally, by varying the index of refraction of the core, a third type of transmission, known as multimode graded index, is possible. This type is intermediate between the other two in characteristics. The variable refraction has the effect of focusing the rays more efficiently than ordinary multimode, also known as multimode step index. Two different types of light source are used in fiber optic systems: the light emitting diode (LED) and the injection laser diode (ILD). Both are semiconductor devices that emit a beam of light when a voltage is applied. The LED is less costly, operates over a greater temperature range, and has a longer operational life. The ILD, which operates on the laser principle, is more efficient and can sustain greater data rates. There is a relationship among the wavelength employed, the type of transmission, and the achievable data rate. Both single mode and multimode can support several different wavelengths of light and can employ laser or LED light source. In optical fiber, light propagates best in three distinct wavelength "windows," centered on 850, 1300, and 1550 nanometers (nm). These are all in the infrared portion of the frequency spectrum, below the visible-light portion, which is 400 to 700 nm. The loss is lower at higher wavelengths, allowing greater data rates over longer distances . Most local applications today use 850-nm LED light sources. Although this combination is relatively inexpensive, it is generally limited to data rates under 100 Mbps and distances of a few kilometers. To achieve higher data rates and longer distances, a 1300-nm LED or laser source is needed. The highest data rates and longest distances require 1500-nm laser sources. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My thanks to Ijaz Ahmed for sharing his writing on radio waves and fiber optics with us. Those of you in our readership who are familiar with these topics may want to critique the papers presented above and possibly begin a discussion with Ijaz on any errors, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #49 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Jan 31 13:57:22 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0VIvMQ03454; Sat, 31 Jan 2004 13:57:22 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 13:57:22 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401311857.i0VIvMQ03454@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 #49 TELECOM Digest Sat, 31 Jan 2004 13:55:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 49 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AT&T Wireless Offer Provides Free, Unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile (Solomon) Ads for Gambling Sites Abound Despite Legal Crackdown on Media (Solomon) Comcast Takes on Broadcast TV for Local Ads (Monty Solomon) Hughes Cuts Jobs, Boosts DirecTV Prices (Monty Solomon) The Company They Kept (Monty Solomon) Cell Phone Explosion Burns Man's Buttocks (Monty Solomon) Making the Call / It's Not as if Their Lifelong Ambition (Monty Solomon) Re: VOIP Over Private IP (Bob Snyder) Vonage Router Taken Abroad? (Chas) Re: Some *Good News* About Norvergence! (BMN) Re: Need to Host Child Porn, Illegal Content, Spam? (Fritz Whittington) Re: Treo 600 - Not Turning Off (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Wireless Transmission (Ijaz Ahmed) Optical Fiber (Ijaz Ahmed) 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: Monty Solomon Subject: AT&T Wireless Offer Provides free, Unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 18:54:01 -0500 BASKING RIDGE, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 30, 2004--AT&T Wireless (NYSE:AWE) today announced an offer -- the first of its kind -- that can give new and current customers on qualifying plans the freedom to make unlimited domestic mobile-to-mobile calls at no charge to any of the company's nearly 22 million customers. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40359863 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 18:29:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Ads for Gambling Sites Abound Despite Legal Crackdown on Media By Kate Kaye Contributing Writer Who will win the coin toss or be first to challenge a referee call? Better yet, who will win the halftime pay-per-view Lingerie Bowl? No matter who is betting on what this Sunday, odds are that many Super Bowl-related wagers will be placed online. Prominent Web media outlets like MSNBC.com and Lycos could lead the way, despite a government crackdown on media companies that run ads for online gambling sites. http://www.mediapost.com/dtls_dsp_news.cfm?newsID=236319 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 18:51:34 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Comcast Takes on Broadcast TV For Local Ads By Michael Learmonth NEW YORK, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ:CMCSA), the No. 1 U.S. cable operator, has forged alliances with cable operators around the country in the past year to get a bigger share of the $28 billion local advertising market from broadcasters. The culmination of the effort, to be announced Monday, is called "Comcast Spotlight," the company's $1 billion local advertising sales operation, which will sell time not only on Comcast's systems but on others in 75 markets. The alliances will allow Comcast to sell advertising in regional markets served by rival cable operators, a direct challenge to broadcast TV which has enjoyed a de facto monopoly on local advertising. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40364114 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 23:58:19 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Hughes Cuts Jobs, Boosts DirecTV Prices By Greg Tarr El Segundo, Calif. - Hughes Electronics said it has begun an 'organizational restructuring' effort, which has reduced certain Hughes Corp. administrative jobs and relocated others to its DirecTV unit. Now under the direction of News Corp., the company said it has 'consolidated several functions that have been based at the company into its DirecTV unit.' As a result of the restructuring, approximately 50 positions have been eliminated at the Hughes corporate office, while approximately 30 other posts were relocated to DirecTV. A Hughes spokesperson said the jobs were primarily administrative support positions. http://www.twice.com/index.asp?layout=story&doc_id=130801 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 00:25:48 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Company They Kept By ROGER LOWENSTEIN In the old days in Coudersport, a tiny Pennsylvania town at the northern edge of Appalachia, if you had trouble with your cable hookup, you simply called John Rigas to come over and fix it. If you needed a loan, or a few bucks for a local charity drive, you darn sure called him too. There didn't seem to be anyone in this town of 2,600 that Rigas wouldn't help, or didn't like, which is maybe why Rigas seemed cut from the same cloth as his idol, the pundit Will Rogers. Rigas's other hero was Sam Walton, and like the folksy Walton, Rigas built his company, Adelphia Communications, from scratch into a giant corporation. This sort of story has become so familiar in recent years that you almost don't have to add the kicker. Yes, it all came tumbling down. Yes, Rigas's company failed, and Rigas himself, along with two of his sons, is sitting in the dock, accused of the worst case of looting of any C.E.O. of the Enron era. The difference is that unlike other supposed villains, Rigas, a 79-year-old son of Greek immigrants, was a genuine business hero, a pioneer in cable television. Many of the current corporate miscreants -- think Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco -- appear to be calculating and utterly unrepentant. Rigas, who has spent much of the past two years in a state of shock, is nothing if not likable. And when he goes on trial this month in Manhattan's federal courthouse, the jurors will confront the improbable: a central figure in a white-collar scandal who is as ordinary as they are. The mystery of how Rigas, a frail, white-haired man who seemingly had neither the motive nor the disposition to commit a fraud, came so undone, has riveted his hometown. Some say the answer lies with his sons, who directed the company's frantic growth in the late 90's; others cite the family's habit of blurring private interests and public ones, which was pretty easy to do in a remote company town like Coudersport. Mystery or not, Rigas's fall says a lot about America's wave of business scandals. The explanation put forth by people from Alan Greenspan on down is that executives got greedy (as if that were something new), but Rigas, who never sold a share of his company's stock, and didn't get stock options either, doesn't quite fit the mold. So what else was it? However badly the Rigases behaved, they were helped along the way by lenders and investment bankers, auditors, lawyers, analysts -- just about anyone whose job it should have been to protect the public. And this is what truly distinguishes the latter stages of the last bull market: not that a handful of executives got greedy but that the safeguards supposedly built into our financial culture stopped functioning. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/magazine/01RIGAS.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 01:34:43 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cell Phone Explosion Burns Man's Buttocks KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- A Malaysian man was shaken and scalded Tuesday after his mobile phone exploded beside him while he was sleeping, the national news agency reported. Mohamed Radzuan Yasin said he was recharging his cell phone and placed it on his bed near him before he took a nap. Three hours later, he was jarred awake by what he described as a small explosion. http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2004/01/27/cell_phone_explosion_burns_mans_buttocks/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 10:26:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Making the Call It's not as if their lifelong ambition is to irritate us at dinnertime By Wells Tower Sunday, January 25, 2004; Page W12 Washington Post Magazine Sometimes when Darren Dooley's team of telemarketers is not selling as much as it might be, a quick word of encouragement will get the crew back on track. Other times, the situation requires what Dooley, who is the night and weekend manager at RDI Marketing in Cincinnati, calls "lighting a fire under their [butts]." It is late morning on a Sunday, and Dooley has just ordered 15 employees to lay down their headsets and report to the training room. They regard him nervously. They can hear the tinder beginning to crackle. "All right, listen up," Dooley says. "Everyone in this room has one thing in common, and one thing only. You're all sitting in there collecting a paycheck and you all have zero sales." The under-performers, mostly high school and college students, have spent the morning trying to persuade people all across America to sign up for new Gold MasterCards. They nibble their lips, fiddle with their cuticles. They look guilty and bored. "I know it's Sunday, but that's no excuse," he says. "I don't care what the situation is. If you call somebody and he's already pissed off, then try to make him happy. There's other people in there who've got four and five sales. They're being assumptive. They're being enthusiastic. If you're not getting sales, it's because you're in there talking and . . . not giving a hundred percent." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36801-2004Jan21.html ------------------------------ Subject: Re: VOIP Over Private IP From: Bob Snyder Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 14:31:23 -0500 nyukfah@pd.jaring.my (nyuk fah) writes: > My current internet connection is private ip and behind a firewall. > Thus I wonder any solution VOIP over HTTP? Which I can solve the > private IP and firewall limitation? No, not over HTTP, at least if you want decent quality VoIP, since HTTP uses TCP as it's transport. TCP guarantees a complete and in-order data stream, and does this by stopping the flow of data to an application under it gets missing packets resent by not acknowledging them to the sender. Thus, a couple of missing packets could easily cause at least several seconds of no audio, even though the missing packets may only make up a fraction of a second of loss. VoIP usually uses UDP for the audio connection, with H.323 or SIP controlling it. Many firewalls have provisions to be configured to properly NAT H.323, or you could use a gatekeeper routed setup for H.323. SIP has provisions for proxy servers and NAT inside the protocol. You probably want to check your firewall's documentation and see if it supports firewalling/NAT'ing H.323. Bob ------------------------------ From: xarush@omelas.com (Chas) Subject: Vonage Router Taken Abroad? Date: 30 Jan 2004 16:59:07 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have a Vonage phone and I am really satisfied with the service. I wonder if anyone has any experience taking the router to different countries. I was thinking of sending one to my friend Gustavo in South America. He has a high speed internet connection. Any thoughts? Any Experience? Thanks. Chas [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Vonage works anywhere there is high- speed internet. Gustavo will have to have a USA phone number, however. Maybe when you get it for him, have Vonage set it up with a number in the same community yourself, so that your calls to him will always be free even if you use some other hardwired phone (in your town) to call him other than your Vonage line. His calls to you or anywhere else will always be 'free' of course. You are *certain* he has high speed broadband service? Some times people in other countries refer to 'high speed' when they actually mean 56-K dialup. I will help you pay for setting him up: write and ask for an e-coupon for one month of free service. You get the box and pay for the first month's service, then apply the e-coupon I will send on request for the *second* month's service. Actually, you use the link in the e-coupon to open his account in order to get the one month free. Write to me not-for pub and ask for a Vonage account. PAT] ------------------------------ From: BMN Subject: Re: Some *Good News* About Norvergence! Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 19:35:01 -0500 Organization: Bell Sympatico Well that's just great, but what happens when you factor in the cost of the matrix box + interest over five years? I would think that would chip away at my real potential saving considerably. On average I can save a client 30% off their telecom expenses without signing any long term contracts or requiring any capex. That's just simple optimization. Also, what happens next time a better deal comes around? The client is stuck! If you consider that next opportunity could save them 20% or more then the NorVergence solution again becomes uncompetitive. It's not like you can go to Norvergence and renegotiate your rates now is it? Moreover the more clients they get the more minutes they buy, the better the deal for NorVergence, but do they pass on the saving to their clients? Regardless of what happens in the telecom sector you are stuck paying X $ until the end of the lease. By the way, then what? What happens at the end of the lease? Is there an equipment buyout? Will Norvergence try and re-sign you for another 60 months? -- yikes! --> If I save $$ in my first two years with them but is costs me $$$ over the next 3 years plus I end up paying $10000 for a $2000 channel bank, I am sorry but their deal just plain sucks. What is truly unfortunate is that these people got sucked in and they have no clue. And I can assure you that I am not a disgruntled ex employee of NorVergence. If any of you manage a telecom dept or a clients, just do quarterly reviews on your service or better yet hire a consultant to do it for you. Keep yourself optimized and on track with the latest products and services. If NorVergence offered 12 month terms, I might be compelled to review their offering. Things change too quickly to be locking yourself or a client into a 60 month term. It's just irresponsible. (IMHO) Brett (flame suit, ON!) TELECOM Digest Editor wrote in message news:telecom23.48.1@telecom-digest.org: > Lord knows we have had enough bad news about the Norvergence people here > in recent weeks, lawsuits, complaints from people who say they were > defrauded, lured into seemingly endless deals with finance companies, > disgruntled employees, etc. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And it is that finance company with no outs allowed which is the hard pill to swallow, isn't it? So much of what Norvergence says is purely an applications problem, Maybe it will work out well for some customers, or maybe not others. Now if Norvergence offered an 'early buy out' option, where the customer and the company both made some compromises, that would work better for a lot of guys. The VP of Telecom (or whatever his/her title is) gets pissed, comes into work and says 'get that junk out of here'. So Norvergence and the telecom manager make an arrangement fair to both and Norvergence aids in an orderly transition to the system the Telecom people want. That would be a little easier to deal with. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Fritz Whittington Subject: Re: Need to Host Child Porn, Illegal Content, or Spam Server? Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 02:08:58 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet On or about 2004-01-30 11:30, Matt Simpson whipped out a trusty #2 pencil and scribbled: > Lisa Minter wrote in message > news:: >> I got this spam in email today. My question is, why don't police or >> FBI nip this in the bud, stop it before it even gets started? > Maybe because it's the police or FBI sending it out as a sting > operation, trying to catch people stupid enough to respond to > something that's so blatant about being illegal. Could be. I don't read much Russian, but I think this may be a "joe job". The site seems to be pretty legitimate, at first glance. The odd thing is, the spam email seems to originate from somewhere in China. Not to mention that I really can't see a Russian company co-operating with the FBI ... Fritz Whittington I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope (Aeschylus, Agamemnon) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 00:36:35 -0600 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelectronics.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Treo 600 - Not Turning Off Jeff wrote: > Ever since I got my Treo 600, it has not been able to turn itself off > when it is charging. Even though, I have the setting "turn off after 1 > minute", it stays on all night when I have it plugged in and charging! Perhaps the Treo is using its microprocessor to monitor the charging process. I know the HP100LX and 200LX work like this; even pressing the Power button won't turn them off when they're plugged in with battery charging enabled. > ... will this hurt the Treo if the screen stays on overnight when > charging? Probably not. The backlight probably has a lifespan, so if it's on all the time that could cause problems. But the LCD doesn't care. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin ------------------------------ From: Ijaz Ahmed Subject: Wireless Transmission Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 03:10:32 +0500 Hi! I am Ijaz Ahmed from Pakistan . Here are my research articles about Wireless Transmission Please post them in the Digest For the benefit Of Telecomm readers. Thanks! Ijaz WIRELESS TRANSMISSION For unguided media, transmission and reception are achieved by means of an antenna. For transmission, the antenna radiates electromagnetic energy into the medium (usually air), and for reception, the antenna picks up electromagnetic waves from the surrounding medium. There are basically two types of configurations for wireless transmission: directional and omnidirectional. For the directional configuration, the transmitting antenna puts out a focused electromagnetic beam; the transmitting and receiving antennas must therefore be carefully aligned. In the omnidirectional case, the transmitted signal spreads out in all directions and can be received by many antennas. In general, the higher the frequency of a signal, the more it is possible to focus it into a directional beam. Three general ranges of frequencies are of interest in our discussion of wireless transmission. Frequencies in the range of about 2 GHz (gigahertz = 109 Hz) to 40 GHz are referred to as microwave frequencies. At these frequencies, highly directional beams are possible, and microwave is quite suitable for point-to-point transmission. Microwave is also used for satellite communications. Frequencies in the range 30 MHz to 1 GHz are suitable for omnidirectional applications. We refer to this range as the broadcast radio range. Another important frequency range, for local applications, is the infrared portion of the spectrum. This covers, roughly, from 3 X 10 n to 2 X 10M Hz. Infrared is useful to local point-to-point and multipoint applications within confined areas such as a single room. Terrestrial Microwave Physical Description The most common type of microwave antenna is the parabolic dish. The antenna is fixed rigidly and focuses a narrow beam to achieve line of-sight transmission to the receiving antenna. Microwave antennas are usually located at substantial heights above ground level in order to extend the range between antennas and to be able to transmit over intervening obstacles. To achieve long-distance transmission, a series of microwave relay towers is used, and point-to-point microwave links are strung together over the desired distance. Applications The primary use for terrestrial microwave systems is in long-haul telecommunications service, as an alternative to coaxial cable or optical fiber. The microwave facility requires far fewer amplifiers or repeaters than coaxial cable requires over the same distance, but necessitates line-of-sight transmission. Microwave is commonly used for both voice and television transmission. Another increasingly common use of microwave is for short point-to- point links between buildings. This can be used for closed-circuit TV or as a data link between local-area networks. Short-haul microwave can also be used for "bypass"applications. A business can establish a microwave link to a long-distance telecommunications facility in the same city, bypassing the local telephone company. Transmission Characteristics Microwave transmission covers a substantial portion of the electro- magnetic spectrum. Common frequencies used for transmission are in the range 2 to 40 GHz. The higher the frequency used, the higher the potential bandwidth and therefore the higher the potential data rate. As with any transmission system, a main source of loss is attenuation. This loss is proportionally less than with twisted pair or coaxial cable, allowing repeaters or amplifiers to be placed farther apart for microwave systems-10 to 100 km is typical. Attenuation is increased with rainfall. The effects of rainfall become especially noticeable above 10 GHz. Another source of impairment is interference. With the growing popularity of microwave, transmission areas overlap and interference is always a danger. Thus, the assignment of frequency bands is strictly regulated. Satellite Microwave Physical Description A communication satellite is, in effect, a microwave relay station. It is used to link two or more ground-based microwave transmitter/receivers, known as earth stations or ground stations. The satellite receives transmissions on one frequency band (uplink), amplifies or repeats the signal, and transmits it on another frequency (downlink). A single orbiting satellite will operate on a number of frequency bands, called transponder channels or simply transponders. Two common configurations for satellite communication are generally used In the first, the satellite is used to provide a point-to-point link between two distant ground-based antennas. In the second, the satellite provides communications between one ground-based transmitter and a number of ground-based receivers. For a communication satellite to function effectively, it is generally required that it remain stationary with respect to its position over the earth. Otherwise, it would not be within the line of sight of its earth stations at all times. Applications The communication satellite is a technological revolution as important as fiber optics. Among the most important applications for satellites: 1. Television distribution 2. Long-distance telephone transmission 3. Private business networks Because of their broadcast nature, satellites are well suited to television distribution and are being used extensively for this purpose throughout the world. In its traditional use, a network provides programming from a central location. Programs are transmitted to the satellite and then broadcast down to a number of stations, which then distribute the programs to individual viewers. A more recent application of satellite technology to television distribution is direct broadcast satellite (DBS), in which satellite video signals are transmitted directly to the home user. Satellite transmission is also used for point-to-point trunks between telephone exchange offices in public telephone networks. It is the useful medium forhigh-usage international trunks and is competitive with terrestrial systems for many long-distance intranational links, particularly in remote and undeveloped areas. Finally, there are a number of business data applications for satellite. The satellite provider can divide the total capacity into a number of channels and lease these channels to individual business users. A user equipped with the antennas at a number of sites can use a satellite channel for a private network. Traditionally, such applications have been quite expensive and limited to larger organizations with high-volume requirements. Today, the very small aperture terminal (VSAT) system, which provides a low-cost alternative is also in use . A number of subscriber stations are equipped with low-cost VSAT antennas. Using some discipline, these stations share a satellite transmission capacity for transmission to a hub station. The hub station can exchange messages with each of the subscribers and can relay messages between subscribers. Transmission Characteristics The optimum frequency range for satellite transmission is in the range 1 to 10 GHz. Below 1 GHz, there is significant noise from natural sources, including galactic, solar, and atmospheric noise, and human made interference from various electronic devices. Above 10 GHz, the signal is severely attenuated by atmospheric absorption and precipitation. Most satellites providing point-to-point service today use a frequency band width in the range 5.925 to 6.425 GHz for transmission from earth to satellite (uplink) and a bandwidth in the range 4.7 to 4.2 GHz for transmission from satellite to earth (downlink). This combination is referred to as the 4/6-GHz band, or C band. Note that the uplink and downlink frequencies differ. For continuous operation without interference, a satellite cannot transmit and receive on the same frequency. Thus, signals received from a ground station on one frequency must be transmitted back on another. Several properties of satellite communication should be noted. First, because of the long distances involved, there is a propagation delay of about 0.25 sec from transmission from one earth station to reception by another earth station. This delay is noticeable in ordinary telephone conversations. It also introduces problems in the areas of error control and flow control . Second, satellite microwave is inherently a broadcast facility. Many stations can transmit to the satellite, and a transmission from a satellite can be received by many stations. ------------------------------ From: Ijaz Ahmed Subject: Optical Fiber Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 03:13:51 +0500 OPTICAL FIBER Physical Description An optical fiber is a thin, flexible medium capable of conducting an optical ray. Various glasses and plastics can be used to make optical fibers. The lowest losses have been obtained using fibers of ultrapure fused silica. Ultrapure fiber is difficult to manufacture; higher-loss multi component glass fibers are more economical and still provide good performance. Plastic fiber is even less costly and can be used for short-haul links, for which moderately high losses are acceptable. An optical fiber has a cylindrical shape and consists of three concentric sections . The two innermost are two types of glass with different indexes of refraction. The center one is called the core, and the next layer the cladding. These two sections of glass are covered by a protective and light absorbing jacket. Optical fibers are grouped together into optical cables. Applications One of the most significant technological breakthroughs in data transmission has been the development of practical fiber optic communications systems. Optical fiber already enjoys considerable use in long-distance telecommunications, and its use in military applications is growing. The continuing improvements in performance and decline in prices, together with the inherent advantages of optical fiber, have made it increasingly attractive for local-area networking. The following characteristics distinguish optical fiber from twisted pair or coaxial cable: Greater capacity. The potential bandwidth, and hence data rate, of optical fiber is immense; data rates of 2 Gbps over tens of kilometers have been demonstrated. Compare this to the practical maximum of hundreds of Mbps over about 1 km for coaxial cable and just a few Mbps over 1 km or up to 100 Mbps over a few tens of meters for twisted pair. Smaller size and lighter weight. Optical fibers are considerably thinner than coaxial cable or bundled twisted-pair cable-at least an order of magnitude thinner for comparable information transmission capacity. For cramped conduits in buildings and underground along public rights of-way, the advantage of small size is considerable. The corresponding reduction in weight reduces structural support requirements. Lower attenuation. Attenuation is significantly lower for optical fiber than for coaxial cable or twisted pair and is constant over a wide range of frequencies. Electromagnetic isolation. Optical fiber systems are not affected by external electromagnetic fields. Thus, the system is not vulnerable to interference, impulse noise, or crosstalk. By the same token, fibers do not radiate energy, causing little interference with other equip- ment and providing a high degree of security from eavesdropping. In addition, fiber is inherently difficult to tap. Greater repeater spacing. Fewer repeaters means lower cost and fewer sources of error. From this point of view the performance of optical fiber systems has been steadily improving. Five basic categories of application have become important for optical fiber: 1. Long-haul trunks 2. Metropolitan trunks 3. Rural exchange trunks 4. Subscriber loops 5. Local-area networks Long-haul fiber transmission is becoming increasingly common in the telephone network. Long-haul routes average about 900 miles in length and offer high capacity (typically, 20,000 to 60,000 voice channels). These systems compete economically with microwave and have so under priced coaxial cable in many developed countries that coaxial cable is rapidly being phased out of the telephone network in such countries. Metropolitan trunking circuits have an average length of 7.8 miles and may have as many as 100,000 voice channels in a trunk group. Most facilities are installed in underground conduits and are repeaterless, joining telephone exchanges in a metropolitan or city area. Included in this category are routes that link long-haul microwave facilities that terminate at a city perimeter to the main telephone exchange building downtown. Rural exchange trunks have circuit lengths ranging from 25 to 100 miles and link towns and villages. In the network , they often connect the exchanges of different telephone companies. Most of these systems have fewer than 5000 voice channels. The technology used in these applications competes with microwave facilities. Subscriber loop circuits are fibers that run directly from the central exchange to a subscriber. These facilities are beginning to displace twisted pair and coaxial cable links as the telephone networks evolve into full-service networks capable of handling not only voice and data but also image and video. The initial penetration of optical fiber in this application is for the business subscriber, but fiber transmission into the home will soon begin to appear. A final important application of optical fiber is for local-area networks. Recently, standards have been developed and products introduced for optical fiber networks that have a total capacity of 100 Mbps and can support hundreds or even thousands of stations in a large office building or a complex of buildings. The advantages of optical fiber over twisted pair and coaxial cable become more compelling as the demand for all types of information (voice, data, image, video) increases. TRANSMISSION CHARACTERISTICS Optical fiber systems operate in the range of about 1014 to 1015 Hz; this covers portions of the infrared and visible spectrums. The principle of optical fiber transmission is as follows. Light from a source enters the cylindrical glass or plastic core. Rays at shallow angles are reflected and propagated along the fiber; other rays are absorbed by the surrounding material. This form of propagation is called multimode, referring to the variety of angles that will reflect. When the fiber core radius is reduced, fewer angles will reflect. By reducing the radius of the core to the order of a wavelength, only a single angle or mode can pass: the axial ray. This single-mode propagation provides superior performance, for the following reason. With multimode transmission, multiple propagation paths exist, each with a different path length and hence time to traverse the fiber. This causes signal elements to spread out in time, which limits the rate at which data can be accurately received. Because there is a single transmission path with single-mode transmission, such distortion cannot occur. Finally, by varying the index of refraction of the core, a third type of transmission, known as multimode graded index, is possible. This type is intermediate between the other two in characteristics. The variable refraction has the effect of focusing the rays more efficiently than ordinary multimode, also known as multimode step index. Two different types of light source are used in fiber optic systems: the light emitting diode (LED) and the injection laser diode (ILD). Both are semiconductor devices that emit a beam of light when a voltage is applied. The LED is less costly, operates over a greater temperature range, and has a longer operational life. The ILD, which operates on the laser principle, is more efficient and can sustain greater data rates. There is a relationship among the wavelength employed, the type of transmission, and the achievable data rate. Both single mode and multimode can support several different wavelengths of light and can employ laser or LED light source. In optical fiber, light propagates best in three distinct wavelength "windows," centered on 850, 1300, and 1550 nanometers (nm). These are all in the infrared portion of the frequency spectrum, below the visible-light portion, which is 400 to 700 nm. The loss is lower at higher wavelengths, allowing greater data rates over longer distances . Most local applications today use 850-nm LED light sources. Although this combination is relatively inexpensive, it is generally limited to data rates under 100 Mbps and distances of a few kilometers. To achieve higher data rates and longer distances, a 1300-nm LED or laser source is needed. The highest data rates and longest distances require 1500-nm laser sources. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My thanks to Ijaz Ahmed for sharing his writing on radio waves and fiber optics with us. Those of you in our readership who are familiar with these topics may want to critique the papers presented above and possibly begin a discussion with Ijaz on any errors, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-330-6774 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #49 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Feb 1 22:38:51 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i123cpq13656; Sun, 1 Feb 2004 22:38:51 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 22:38:51 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200402020338.i123cpq13656@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 #50 TELECOM Digest Sun, 1 Feb 2004 22:39:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 50 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: "Superman TV" and Telephones (Gail M. Hall) How to Evaluate Phonecards? (Barry F Margolius) High Speed Internet - Doesn't Allow New Connections (Harialbth) Re: AT&T Wireless Offer Provides Free Unlimited Mobile/Mobile (Hamilton) Re: AT&T Wireless Offer Provides Free Unlimited Mobile/Mobile (Eric F) Re: Help With Call-Attendant System? (SELLCOM Tech Support) Re: Need to Host Child Porn, Illegal Content, or Spam Server (Ed Clarke) Re: Comcast Takes on Broadcast TV For Local Ads (noname) Re: Treo 600 - Not Turning Off (pieterek@spamcop.net) Entrepreneurs Resource Expo: Come Share Your Resources (Entresource) NTIA Forum on Public Safety Spectrum Mgmt - Feb 10-11 in DC (Nick Ruark) 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: Gail M. Hall Subject: Re: "Superman TV" and Telephones Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 22:05:10 -0500 Reply-To: gmhall@apk.net On 12 Jan 2004 07:01:25 -0800, in comp.dcom.telecom message , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: > I saw an old episode of the TV "Superman" (mid 50s) and > noticed how today's phones would've made a difference. Some of those differences are interesting to think about. Last night I watched an old episode of Columbo on the A&E channel. I didn't catch what year this story was taking place or what year the film was made. In this episode, the bad guy was a fairly wealthy radio personality who had a fancy mountain mansion. He also had a cell phone that he used in his car. Columbo decided that it would be nice to get himself a cell phone, too. Actually, he wanted to check out the guy's story about calling from his cell phone when Columbo pointed out that the call he claimed to have made from his house was not on the phone records. What struck me was that when they used their cell phones, the tones were sounded as the buttons were pressed instead of the way my current cell phone works. Mine makes a beep with each phone press, but I don't hear the normal phone tones until I press "Talk" on my phone. I didn't have a cell phone before 2001, so I don't know if the makers of the episode were showing the cell phone usage realistically or just guessing how they worked. Another thing in the story was that they would immediately enter the numbers over and over again and *then* get some kind of beep that indicated they didn't have a signal. My phone has a little graphic on it that indicates signal strength from the time I turn on the phone. It also has a graphic that indicates battery power. I would know without entering any numbers if I had a signal or not. I would not have to dial any number first. The household and office phones were all hardwired. I didn't see any cordless phones being used in the story. On another issue, I noticed that the bad guy had a big TV, which he said was hooked to a satellite with 200 channels. I didn't see a box. Also, there was no remote, so he had to use the TV's on/off button to turn it on and off. My parents had a satellite dish for their TV back around 1980. It was a big thing. At first it could get lots of channels, but eventually the companies started jumbling their signals so people would have to buy a service to descramble the signals to see the channels. By the '90's, that satellite dish was essentially useless. My brother-in-law took down the dish last summer and has plans to make something else out of it -- maybe something to let plants climb on or something. I learned one advantage of modern satellite service compared to cable. My sister and her husband subscribe to a satellite service that comes with two boxes. They also alternate between two different homes. They have a "dish" at each house. So for the price of one subscription, They can take one or both boxes with them when they go to either of the houses. It takes only a couple minutes to hook the box up to the TV when they get to whichever house they are at. I hear you can also get a dish to hook to your RV or motor home. You certainly couldn't do all that with cable! Gail in NE Ohio USA [TELECOM Digest Editor' Note: Television and Hollywood tend to take some liberties with the realities of cell phones in their productions. I do not think any cellphones ever worked differently than the way they do now. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Barry F Margolius Subject: How to Evaluate Phonecards? Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 17:14:01 -0500 I have found a phonecard company, ITG Services, that provides a good mix of services for my needs. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing if they are a reliable company or not. Anybody got any ideas about how to check up on them? They're at https://www.talkitg.com/pub/index.cfm?loc=int Thanks in advance, -barry ------------------------------ From: minloson@yahoo.com (Harialbth) Subject: High Speed Internet - Doesn't Allow New Connections Date: 31 Jan 2004 09:36:19 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I have a USB alcatel high speed modem. The problem is that my connection seems to stop after a while. If a connection already exists (eg:downloads, msn) it doesn't disconnect. But often it doesn't seem to be able to make a new connection, through a browser, for example. Sometimes after about 20 seconds it connects, sometimes never. Has anyone had this problem, is there a reason? Thanks, Loson ------------------------------ From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: AT&T Wireless Offer Provides free, Unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 11:33:08 -0800 Organization: Copyright (c) 2004 by Jack Hamilton. Reproduction without attribution and archiving without permission are not allowed. Reply-To: jfh@acm.org Monty Solomon wrote: > BASKING RIDGE, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 30, 2004--AT&T Wireless > (NYSE:AWE) today announced an offer -- the first of its kind -- that > can give new and current customers on qualifying plans the freedom to > make unlimited domestic mobile-to-mobile calls at no charge to any of > the company's nearly 22 million customers. > - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40359863 Not quite free. You have to sign a two year contract, which is free to enter but time-consuming or expensive to get out of. Most of the people I know with mobile phones are not with AT&T, so it wouldn't help me anyway. It's probably technically possible to offer free calls to *any* carrier's mobile phones, but that's not what they're doing. In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted comfort and security. And in the end, they lost it all - freedom, comfort and security. Edward Gibbons Jack Hamilton jfh@acm.org ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: Re: AT&T Wireless Offer Provides Free, Unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile Date: 31 Jan 2004 13:47:47 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Monty Solomon posted TELECOM Digest V23 #49: > BASKING RIDGE, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 30, 2004--AT&T Wireless > (NYSE:AWE) today announced an offer -- the first of its kind -- that > can give new and current customers on qualifying plans the freedom to > make unlimited domestic mobile-to-mobile calls at no charge to any of > the company's nearly 22 million customers. > - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40359863 A nice idea, but not the *first of its kind*. This feature is one of the reasons I left AT&T last fall for Sprint. For consumers it costs an extra $5 per month, and for business customers its included in all plans. Oh, and you don't have to sign a two year contract like what AT&T requires. Eric Friedebach ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Help With Call-Attendant System? Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 23:32:51 GMT jcoronat@paulbunyan.net (James) posted on that vast internet thingie: > Does anyone know how I could assemble a system of telephone equipment > that will do this? I can't promise that I can offer a complete solution, but can offer some help I believe. We have a nice music on hold device that you could use as your music source http://www.holdphone.com The 5000 model has a CD player but downloads the audio from the CD player. You don't really want to leave a CD playing 24/365 do you? The other piece to the puzzle might be our Talkswitch product http://www.shopvoicemail.com that allows people to "cue" and supports music on hold. I believe it also supports announce only mail boxes and is expandable for more lines and more memory. I do not offer this as a definite "plug and play" solution for you, but just as a possibility. We try to put enough info on our website for you to research a product *before* purchase. Steve at SELLCOM http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Motorola Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Talkswitch, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Minuteman UPS systems If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ From: Ed Clarke Subject: Re: Need to Host Child Porn, Illegal Content, or Spam Server? Date: 31 Jan 2004 19:48:50 GMT Organization: Ciliophora Associates, Inc. Reply-To: clarke@cilia.org In article , Matt Simpson wrote: > Lisa Minter wrote in message > news:: >> I got this spam in email today. My question is, why don't police or >> FBI nip this in the bud, stop it before it even gets started? > Maybe because it's the police or FBI sending it out as a sting > operation, trying to catch people stupid enough to respond to > something that's so blatant about being illegal. Yeah, like the myth that there are 14 year old girls on the internet. No way, Jose! They're all fat, balding 55 year old detectives. Real 14 year old girls are at the mall strutting their stuff and secretly watching 16 year old boys out of the corner of their eyes. ------------------------------ From: noname Subject: Re: Comcast Takes on Broadcast TV For Local Ads Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 20:23:04 GMT In article , monty@roscom.com says: > By Michael Learmonth > NEW YORK, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ:CMCSA), the No. 1 > U.S. cable operator, has forged alliances with cable operators around > the country in the past year to get a bigger share of the $28 billion > local advertising market from broadcasters. > The culmination of the effort, to be announced Monday, is called > "Comcast Spotlight," the company's $1 billion local advertising sales > operation, which will sell time not only on Comcast's systems but on > others in 75 markets. > The alliances will allow Comcast to sell advertising in regional > markets served by rival cable operators, a direct challenge to > broadcast TV which has enjoyed a de facto monopoly on local > advertising. > - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40364114 They'll probably do just what Cox has done and which was one of my the factors in my telling them to take a hike. Know what ads they blocked? All the competitive ads -- for example we never saw DirectTV or Dish ads on Cox cable in RI, and very few Verizon DSL commercials. I'll be happy when there is real competition for the cable industry. Providence came so close with AB Cable but that happened around the time of the tech burst. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 08:09:10 -0600 From: pieterek@spamcop.net Subject: Re: Treo 600 - Not Turning Off On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 00:36:35 -0600, Gordon S. Hlavenka wrote to discuss Re: Treo 600 Not Turning Off > Jeff wrote: >> Ever since I got my Treo 600, it has not been able to turn itself off >> when it is charging. Even though, I have the setting "turn off after 1 >> minute", it stays on all night when I have it plugged in and charging! > Perhaps the Treo is using its microprocessor to monitor the charging > process. I know the HP100LX and 200LX work like this; even pressing the > Power button won't turn them off when they're plugged in with battery > charging enabled. The Treo is a PalmOS-based device and should have in Preferences | General | Power (IIRC, it is a PalmOS 5.x device), a drop-down menu for "Stay on in Cradle" (or something similar". It sounds like Jeff may have that set to "On". Change it to "Off", and voila, the Treo screen will no longer light up the night while it is plugged in and charging. Best regards, Claire Pieterek Sr Technical Editor, Computing Unplugged http://www.computingunplugged.com ------------------------------ Reply-To: <37273-feedback-29@lb.bcentral.com> From: Entresource Subject: Entrepreneurs Resource Expo: Come Share Your Resources Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 12:05:33 0000 ENTREPRENEURS RESOURCE EXPO Tuesday, February 10, 6-10pm Spenger's Restaurant, 1919 Fourth Street, Berkeley, in the Atlantic & Pacific Rooms One huge banquet hall filled with resources for you and your business. EXHIBITING SPONSORS SO FAR: Bay Area Business Woman News Magazine B&T Bookkeeping Emeryville Chamber of Commerce Gevity Merril Lync MuyBueno.net National Association for the Self-Employed PagePoint Yellow Belly Web Design YOU OR YOUR COMPANY CAN BE AN EXHIBITOR Tables are still available!! Table rental fees are $105 for half a 6-ft. table (for 1 person) and $140 for a 6-ft. table (for 2 people), which includes the $20 admission fee for each person. Table locations are on a first-paid, first-choice basis. Send us an email, and we will fax you an application. Once we receive your paid application, we will call you regarding table location. Over 100 entrepreneurs are expected to attend. 25 exhibitors will offer great resources for your business. Admission $20 Price includes hors d'oeuvres buffet. For more information, send an email to: GH@EntreSource.org Include your fax number ------------------------------ From: Nick Ruark Subject: NTIA Forum on Public Safety Spectrum Management - Feb 10-11 - DC Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 14:08:01 -0800 Pat & Lisa.... Thought some folks on the list might be interested in this --- especially since it appears to be the ONLY opportunity they may have to publicly participate and/or speak out on the subject. Nick Ruark Quality MobileCommunications ---------------------------- National Forum on Public Safety Spectrum Management A Public Meeting to Address Objectives in the President's Memorandum on Spectrum Policy February 10-11, 2004 The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will host a 2-day public meeting designed to gather information from state and local public safety entities and governments about better ways to manage the Nation's airwaves. The meeting will be held on February 10-11, 2004, at the Omni Shoreham in Washington, DC. The Omni Shoreham is located at 2500 Calvert Street NW. Phone: (202) 234-0700 Fax: (202) 265-7972 This public meeting will offer an opportunity for interested parties to participate in the President's initiative to develop a U.S. spectrum policy for the 21st century to ensure national and homeland security, promote economic growth, and foster new technologies. If you cannot attend, but would like to participate, a webcast will be conducted. Information will be forthcoming. In addition, a comprehensive online survey will be posted at the beginning of February. The Department of Commerce will develop recommendations for revising policies and procedures to promote more efficient and beneficial use of spectrum based on the input gathered through this public meeting. There is no registration for this free event. If you are interested in attending or, wish to receive related fact sheets, meeting preparation materials, and updated agendas, please visit http://www.pswn.gov/dc_forum.cfm or http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/frnotices/2004/publicsafetyforum_01082004.htm Forwarded from: The Private Wireless Forum for Mobile Communication Professionals http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivateWirelessForum ------------------------------ 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #50 *****************************