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TELECOM Digest     Thu, 26 May 2005 02:35:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 234

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Google and Privacy (Lisa Minter)
    The Dirty Tricks SBC and Comcast Play to Sink Muni Broadband (J Decker)
    Fatal Failure Halts Installation of 911 Caller-ID System (Monty Solomon)
    Re: Tangled up Over DSL - Some Cell Phone Users Demand (Don Bowey)
    Re: VOIP Provider Search (John R. Levine)
    Re: Thinking About VOIP (Sagor)
    Last Laugh! 86 Year Old Woman Jailed on 911 Complaint (Patrick Townson)

Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
Internet.  All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and
the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other
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               ===========================

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 are 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: Lisa Minter <lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com>
Subject: Google and Privacy
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 19:22:03 -0500


Biting the Hand That Feeds IT


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The above sentence _could_ apply to me,
since monthly Google advertising payments are a principal source of
my very limited income these days, but oh well ... PAT]

The Register 'Internet and Law' Digital Rights/Digital Wrongs
Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/13/asymmetric_privacy/

Google values its own privacy. How does it value yours?

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco (andrew.orlowski at theregister.co.uk)

Analysis: It's absurd to suggest that Google doesn't appreciate the
value of privacy. When it comes to its own privacy, the company takes
it very seriously indeed.

Let's recap some of the ways. Sometimes Google is so obsessively
private that it gets into trouble when it shouldn't. The company's
finances are formally a black hole, although great hopes rest on the
imminent IPO reviving the tech sector. The company also sets new
standards of secrecy when it comes to publishing research. Google is a
paradise for researchers in every way but one. Staff are allowed
twenty per cent of their time for "self-directed research" - which
gives them plenty of hours in the week to make ships in bottles, if
they so wish. It's one of the least product-orientated policies in
Silicon Valley, and explains why Google continues to recruit top grade
talent from its Valley neighbors. But there's one catch: Google
doesn't publish any of its research, giving it the reputation of a
lousy corporate citizen. Instead Google publishes lists of PhDs, but
this isn't the same thing. So Google's R&D department is a black hole,
too.

It does however allow staff to publish the daily Googleplex menu
(http://googlemenus.blogspot.com/). On this day last year you could
have chosen between Joaquin's Potato Salad -- steamed fingerling
potatoes, with red onion, English peas, basil, parsley and a lemon
aioli -- and Portabella Mushroom Pizza -- Roasted portabella mushrooms
topped with a roasted tomato sauce, kalamata olives, pepperonchinis
and parmesan. All quite delicious, but it's hard to see how it
advances the field of computer science. Because nothing gets
published, peer review works only if the peers are other Google
employees: a disturbing trend which could lead to a company
monoculture.

In one example well known to Register readers, Google refused to
publish a formal inclusion policy for its News site. Google News is
the fifth largest web destination in the world, and can be considered
as one of the largest disseminators of News on the planet. Although it
privately informs news outlets why they have been rejected, it won't
publish a policy. As a consequence, when Google began to include
corporate and lobby group press releases on the site, it led to some
agonizing contortions.

Take this remarkable statement:

(http://www.ojr.org/ojr/kramer/1064449044.php) by Google News creator
Krishna Bharat and see if you can work out whether or not Google includes
press releases as news (emphasis added):-

"Press releases we don't consider to be a news source, that's for
sure. I don't want to go and police all the news out there. I've seen
lots of articles where the press release appears verbatim. Do we wait
for that to show up hours late, or do we allow people to use it and
act on it -- especially when it's a business item?

"There are no press releases on the browsable pages or news pages. We
have a higher editorial responsibility on those because we're telling
you where you should look. On the news pages, we do not intend to use
press releases. Making a press release available as part of the search
results gives the full facts that were available to the reporter when
they wrote it."

Confused? Let's translate:

"Google News doesn't consider press releases to be news. We don't want
to be selective. But we are selective, and we consider press releases
to be news, especially when it represents a commercial interest. In
any case, we have news pages where we don't want to use press
releases. Except there we do, because it's good for you."

Perhaps confusion was the intention. We only quote this at length here
because that exchange six months ago was echoed with the confused
reaction to the privacy outcry last week.

How to boil a frog:

'I keep asking for a product called Serendipity,' said Eric Schmidt
recently. USA Today reported that "this product would have access to
everything ever written or recorded, know everything the user ever
worked on and saved to his or her personal hard drive, and know a
whole lot about the user's tastes, friends and predilections."

Google is already close to this goal, and if it isn't Google itself
that attempts to introduce such a product, we can be sure that someone
else will think it's a good idea.

Privacy is a lot more subtle than it's often portrayed. But it comes
down to trust, and an organization is as good as it is trustworthy.
The events of the past week are alarming not so much for Gmail itself,
but Google's reaction to the controversy. And that tells us a lot.
Google sees privacy asymmetrically: privacy is good for Google, but it
can't understand why anyone else would be concerned. Schmidt's
Serendipity, along with Larry Page's recent boob about wishing to have
a Google brain implant, show that Google's technical ambitions far
outpace its sense of social responsibility.

The flippant April 1 Gmail press release was ill-advised, and signaled
that the company didn't expect any controversy. In waded Larry Page
who refused to rule out cross-linking personal searches and email, in
reports published on April 2:

"Larry Page wouldn't say whether Google planned to link Gmail users to
their Web search queries. 'It might be really useful for us to know
that information" to make search results better, he said. 'I'd hate to
rule anything like that out,'" reported the Los Angeles Times.

Four days later, with Larry wisely hidden out of harm's way under the
stairs, Google VP of Engineering Wayne Rosing faced the fire. "Rosing
said there will be an information firewall separating Google's search
engine from Gmail," AP reported on April 6. "'We don't use the data
collected on one service, ' he said, 'to enhance another,'". Two days
later in the New York Times Rosing was less emphatic: "We have no
immediate plans to do so in the future," he said.

So Google had four statements on whether or not it cross-linked search
queries and email in a week. Unlike the News controversy, this time
people noticed. On April 8 the company also clarified its data
retention policy in its privacy statement, making clear that mail may
be retained on backups, removing the implication that you couldn't
remove your mail files from a closed account even if you wanted to.

Much of the controversy was therefore avoidable. As a measure of how
much damage the episode has done to Google, the final firebreak has
been reached in defense of the email service. This is the classic
libertarian argument that shoppers need not use it if they so wish, or
as we call it here, "The Shrug". But this fatalistic line of argument
vacates any moral responsibility, throwing it instead onto the
"market", which can be relied on to deliver the best of all possible
worlds, as we all know. A more honest answer would be simply to
profess not to care about privacy.

The erosion of privacy and the intrusion of commercial spam in our
lives is subtle. Like boiling a frog alive, we rarely notice how much
we've lost until its too late. Unless we draw a line now, reminding
companies like Google - which exhibit a kind of corporate Asperger's
Syndrome when it comes to privacy - of exactly what we value, then in
ten years time it will be too late.

"It's ironic," writes one reader, "for a company that says Do No Evil
 -- they don't know the definition." After Gmail, what price
Serendipity?

Copyright 2005, the register.co.uk

------------------------------

From: Jack Decker <jack-yahoogroups@withheld_on_request>
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 22:58:00 -0400
Subject: The Dirty Tricks SBC and Comcast Play to Sink Municipal Broadband


This is a long article but one that is well worth reading -- if you
have ever wondered what sort of dirty tricks companies like SBC and
Comcast are willing to play to sink municipal broadband, this is a
real eye-opener.

http://www.theind.com/cover.asp

Tri-Cities Trials:

A municipal fiber plan in Illinois' Tri-Cities failed twice. The
region's leaders and residents offer cautionary tales as Lafayette
heads toward its July 16 fiber-to-the-home referendum.  By Kristi
H. Dempsey, R. Reese Fuller, Scott Jordan and Nathan Stubbs | 5/25/2005

After first being introduced to the public more than a year ago,
Lafayette Utilities System's fiber-to-the-home initiative is headed
for a public referendum on July 16 for bond approval. Its the home
stretch for the contentious battle between Lafayette Consolidated
Government and incumbent telecom providers BellSouth and Cox
Communications, and no one knows what unexpected twists the next seven
weeks will bring. Only the dueling storylines are set in stone: LCG
wants to build its fiber network for economic development, while
BellSouth and Cox say government should not compete with private
business.

For the Tri-Cities' area of Illinois, Lafayette's baptism-by-fire
education on fiber is old hat. Batavia, Geneva and St. Charles,
Ill. are located 45 miles outside of Chicago and have a combined
population of approximately 80,000 people; Tri-Cities government has
been trying to offer its own fiber program since 2003.

Telecom providers Comcast and SBC have vehemently opposed the
Tri-Cities' plan; the two companies mounted fierce opposition
campaigns that doomed cities' fiber network twice at the polls. A
Comcast representative declined to answer questions about Tri-Cities
from The Independent Weekly, issuing only a one-sentence statement:
"By voting down the idea of launching municipal broadband twice in
19 months, residents sent a clear message that they do not support a
municipally owned broadband utility." SBC spokesman Marty Richter
echoed that sentiment, saying, "[Voters] looked at both sides of
the issue, and didn't favor the cities plunging into this very
risky business, especially when they're already very well served by
the private sector, such as SBC."

Tri-Cities officials and residents paint a different picture. And the
image that emerges is David being crushed by Goliath or in this
case, a pair of Goliaths determined to maintain their market dominance
with a variety of tactics.

Full story at:
http://www.theind.com/cover.asp


How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home:
http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html

If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You may wish to read this report; it
sort of explains what happened in a couple of small towns in Kansas
thought about starting such ventures; SBC even is quite opposed to
the concept of municipal WiFi.   PAT] 

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 00:31:37 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Fatal Failure Halts Installation of 911 Caller-ID System


By David Abel, Globe Staff  |  May 25, 2005

A Hopkinton mother who lived about three blocks from a fire station
died last week after a glitch in a new 911 caller-identification
system that is being installed statewide failed to find her home,
state officials and local police said yesterday.

The death of the 49-year-old woman who dialed 911 and then apparently
stopped breathing, officials said, has led the Massachusetts Statewide
Emergency Telecommunications Board to suspend all planned
installations of the 911 equipment. Board officials said similar
problems have been found in other communities with the system.

Verizon has a state contract to install the Vesta equipment, which is
designed to allow 911 operators to better locate cellphone callers, in
every community throughout the state at a cost of about $75 million,
said Paul J. Fahey, executive director of the state's telecommunications
board. So far, he said, 16 communities in Massachusetts have received
the system since installations began last fall. Hopkinton was the
third.

State officials are working with Verizon to determine why the system
failed, Fahey said, and the phone company has supplied 911 operators
with ways to trace future calls that cannot be located.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/05/25/fatal_failure_halts_installation_of_911_caller_id_system/

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 17:14:49 -0700
Subject: Re: Tangled up Over DSL - Some Cell Phone Users Demand to Stand
From: Don Bowey <dbowey@comcast.net>


On 5/25/05 3:17 PM, in article telecom24.233.5@telecom-digest.org, William
Warren <william_warren_nonoise@comcast.net> wrote:

> Jack Decker wrote:

>> http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3195270

>> Some Cell Phone Users Demand to Stand Alone

>> By JOHN C. ROPER
>> Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

>> A growing number of U.S. consumers are cutting the cord on traditional
>> home telephone service, choosing instead to exclusively use cell
>> phones.

>> But many of these consumers have found ditching their land-line phone
>> service, and its accompanying cost, isn't possible if they want speedy
>> DSL, or digital subscriber line, Internet service in their homes.

>> Providers such as SBC Communications require customers to buy
>> residential phone service to have access to their broadband lines, a
>> tactic consumer advocacy groups say is unfair.

I'm sure the DSL price is based on there being a POTS line at the
premises, on which the DSL can be added.  If the premises has no LEC
service, then the DSL price would need to be raised to include a loop.
Are you certain that SBC won't offer DSL under those conditions?

Don

> The independents, such as Covad, have had to order and use separate
> loops since they started in business.

> Cross-subsidy and competition issues aside, the Bells are certainly
> _able_ to offer the service on a technical level.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, SBC claimed to me that naked DSL
was _not_ something they offered (as of a couple years ago.) Our local
ISP TerraWorld is permitted to resell SBC DSL, but the presumption is
the purchaser has SBC service. TerraWorld also is the local phone
company Prairie Stream, but they are _not_ allowed to resell DSL to
Prairie Stream customers. Duane (Prairie Stream and TerraWorld owner)
said he doesn't care. If he has to choose, he says, he would rather 
have the customer on the Prairie Stream side anyway. He told me. "I
just tell customers to turn off the DSL (in order to use Prairie Stream)
and get Mike Flood (general manager of CableOne here locally) to turn
on their cable internet. They get better and faster service than with
DSL anyway, and Southwestern Bell turns out to be the loser, not Cable
One nor myself and Prairie Stream." He must have a good point ... Bell
has lost _a lot_ of business here in Independence in recent months.  PAT]

------------------------------

From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine)
Subject: Re: VOIP Provider Search
Date: 25 May 2005 22:53:38 -0400
Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA


> I am pulling my hair out by the roots looking around for a provider.
> I can't yet confirm whether Cullowhee is local to Asheville, NC or
> not.  A number in the Cullowhee area is (828) 227-XXXX if that helps
> anyone.

The wonderful local calling guide at
http://members.dandy.net/~czg/lca_index.php says that Cullowhee can
only make local calls to Cashiers and Sylva.

> Vonage has been no help.

My experience with Vonage was that they're never any help.

> Failing that, does anyone know an economical VOIP provider that can
> help me with this?

A little poking around reveals that Broadvoice offers numbers in both
Cashiers and Sylva.  Packet8 offers numbers in Sylva.  Take your pick.

R's,

John


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And SBC only allows local calling in
Independence to other Independence numbers. SBC subscribers cannot 
call Coffeyville, Cherryvale, Parsons, Neodesha or anywhere else
without a toll charge.  I know we are a rural area, but still ...  PAT]

------------------------------

From: sagor <sagor2@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Thinking About VOIP
Date: 25 May 2005 22:11:19 -0700
Organization: http://groups.google.com


Pleasew let me know the name list for the best carriers of VoIP for
Bangladesh and any other details about the setup of VoIP. This will
help me a lot. 

Thank you,

Sagor

------------------------------

From: Patrick Townson <ptownson@cableone.net>
Subject: Last Laugh! 86 Year Old Woman Taken to Jail Account of 911 Call
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 19:09:15 -0500


Woman Calls 911 With Pizza Complaint

An 86-year-old woman was jailed after police said she called 911
dispatchers 20 times in a little more than a half-hour -- all to
complain that a pizza parlor wouldn't deliver.

Dorothy Densmore was charged with misusing the 911 system, a jail
spokeswoman said.

She told dispatchers Sunday that a local pizza shop refused to deliver
a pie to her south Charlotte apartment, said Officer Mandy
Giannini. She also complained that someone at the shop called her a
"crazy old coot," Giannini said.

Densmore wanted them arrested. Instead, police came to arrest her, and
she resisted, Giannini said.

It's unusual for someone to face charges for nonemergency calls,
Giannini said. But on Sunday, Densmore kept calling 911, even after
she was told to stop, Giannini said.

When an officer arrived at her apartment, the 5-foot-tall, 98-pound
woman attacked him, Giannini said. Densmore scratched him, kicked and
bit his hand, she said.

Densmore also is charged with resisting a public officer and two
counts of misusing the 911 system, jail records show.


Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Poor, brave, courageous police officer.
I sure hope he was not hurt when this 86 year old woman 'assaulted'
him. On the other hand, the old lady should have made her calls to
police on a VOIP line. If she had, chances are the police would still
be looking for her, in order to arrest the 'crazy old coot'.  PAT]

------------------------------


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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #234
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