TELECOM Digest     Fri, 29 Jul 2005 02:46:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 344

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Norvergence Forfeits $47 Million to FTC (Consumer.com News)
    Massive AT&T Internet Service Failure in Five States (AP News Wire)
    Court Bars Executive From Google Employment (Elizabeth Gillespie)
    Google Mapping: Taking Browsers to the Limit (Renai LeMay)
    Emergency Alerts Coming to Your Cell Phone (Lesley McCullough)
    Re: Credit Reports, was Re: AT&T Customers Taken Over By AllTel (Sobol)
    Last Laugh! Scamming the 419 Scammers (Aunty Spammer)

Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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               ===========================

See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest.  

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

From: Consumer News <consumer@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Norvergence Forfeits $47 Million to FTC
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:42:54 -0500


      Norvergence Forfeits $47 Million In FTC Settlement
      Consumers Billed for Worthless Telecom Services

The Federal District Court in Newark, New Jersey, has entered a final
default judgment against NorVergence, Inc., that will immediately
result in the cancellation of 1,600 contracts with the company valued
at more than $47 million.

The judgment is the result of a November 2004 Federal Trade Commission
complaint charging NorVergence with defrauding consumers through
misleading claims that it would provide them with dramatic savings on
their monthly telephone, cellular, and Internet bills.

The court found that consumers signed a set of applications and
agreements with a total price equal to the promised monthly payments
over five years. Most of the total payments were allocated to rental
agreements for a "Matrix" or "Matrix Soho" device that supposedly
would provide the promised costs savings.

In reality, the Matrix was just a standard integrated access device
(IAD), commonly used to connect telephone equipment to a long-distance
provider's lines. The Matrix Soho was essentially a firewall.

The Matrix boxes cost between $200 and $1,550. The total cost to the
consumer was $7,000 to $340,000, with an average cost of $29,291. The
price of the rental agreement had nothing to do with the cost of the
Matrix, which itself was an incidental part of the promised services.

NorVergence had an estimated 9,400 Matrix rental agreements totaling
over $275 million. Other than the 1,600 contracts cancelled by this
judgment, NorVergence sold its rental agreements shortly after they
were signed to over 40 finance companies for cash. These sold
contracts are not immediately affected by the default judgment.

An unknown minority of these contracts were sold to finance companies
for only a part of their typical five-year term. The default judgment
makes these contracts void and unenforceable as of the end of the
partial term when they are due to come back to NorVergence.

The court also found that NorVergence failed to tell consumers that it
did not have a long-term commitment from any service provider for the
services it was promising to provide. NorVergence also failed to tell
consumers that the Matrix boxes covered by the rental agreement would
be of little or no value to them if NorVergence failed to provide the
promised telecommunications services.

Finally, the court found that NorVergence had furnished the finance
companies who purchased its contracts with the means and instrumental-
ities to commit deceptive and unfair acts or practices violating the
FTC Act. It provided those finance companies with rental agreements
that allowed the finance companies to: 1) misrepresent that consumers
owe money on the rental agreements, regardless of whether NorVergence
provided the promised telecommunications services; and 2) file
collection suits against consumers in courts far from where the
consumers are located.

The FTC worked cooperatively on this matter with various state
attorney generals' offices, which also have investigated NorVergence's
business practices. More than 20 states also have reached settlements
with some of the finance companies that purchased and are collecting
on NorVergence rental agreements. Consumers in these states should
contact their attorney general directly for further information on the
state settlements.

The states include: New Jersey, New York, Florida, Massachusetts,
Illinois, California, Maryland, Rhode Island, Delaware, Georgia,
Connecticut, Kansas, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Indiana,
Ohio, Virginia, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia,
North Carolina, and the District of Columbia.

Copyright 2003-2005 ConsumerAffairs.Com Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
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------------------------------

From: AP Newswire <ap@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Massive AT&T Internet Service Failure in Five States
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:36:16 -0500


Subscribers to AT&T Corp.'s DSL Internet service in five Western
states lost their connections for several hours Thursday after the
telecommunications company experienced a problem with equipment that
routes data over its network.

The service went down about 6 a.m. PDT, and about 50 percent of
customers were restored by Thursday evening, said AT&T spokesman Andy
Backover.

The company confirmed homes and businesses in California and four
other Western states were affected, but it would not provide the total
number of subscribers who lost service or name the other
states. Backover said AT&T received more than 2,000 reports of
trouble.

"We're working as hard as we can to restore the service," he
said. "We're very apologetic to any customers who were
inconvenienced."

Backover added the problem stemmed from a problematic router that's
been identified and was being repaired. But he did not know when all
affected customers would be restored.

The outage affected only customers of digital subscriber line, or DSL,
service, and not other portions of the network for T1 service and
other Internet backbone functions that AT&T maintains.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

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

From: Elizabeth M. Gillespie <ap@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Ex-Microsoft Exec Barred From Googe Job
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:29:02 -0500


By ELIZABETH M. GILLESPIE, Associated Press Writer

A former Microsoft Corp. executive who defected to Google Inc. cannot
immediately perform the job Google hired him to do, a judge ruled
Thursday, saying Microsoft has a well-grounded fear that leaked trade
secrets could hurt its business.

Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez granted a temporary restraining
order barring Kai-Fu Lee from working at Google on any product,
service or project similar to those he worked on at Microsoft,
including Internet and desktop search technology.

Google, which hired Lee to lead a research and development center it
will soon open in China, asked for a more specific list of tasks Lee
can and cannot perform. Microsoft agreed to provide the court with a
recommended list by Monday.

In a statement e-mailed after the ruling, Google lawyer Nicole Wong
called the judge's decision "only a temporary measure to maintain the
status quo and to give the court more time to fully consider the
parties' positions.

"We are confident that once the judge has done so he will side with
Google and Dr. Lee. Microsoft will not prevail in their intimidation
campaign."

Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake said the ruling would stand until
Sept. 6, the date Gonzalez set for a hearing on a motion for a
preliminary injunction that could make the restrictions on Lee's work
at Google last until the case goes to trial.

"We felt we needed to take this step to protect our sensitive business
information and to ensure that Google and Dr. Lee honor the
confidentiality and noncompetition agreements he made when he started
working here," Drake said.

Gonzalez set the trial for Jan. 9.

Microsoft sued Lee and Google last week, claiming that by taking the
Google job, Lee was violating an agreement he signed in 2000, barring
him from working for a direct competitor in an area that overlapped
with his roles at Microsoft.

Lee and Google, which countersued, say he is not a search expert and
that he had only limited involvement in Microsoft's China operations
since 2000, the year he signed the agreements at the heart of the
dispute.

Most recently a vice president working on speech recognition in
Microsoft's server and tools division, Lee headed up the creation of
the company's research center in Beijing in the late 1990s and later
worked in the MSN search unit.

Microsoft said it paid Lee handsomely and would not have hired him if
he had not promised to honor confidentiality and noncompetition
agreements. The company said Lee made more than $3 million over nearly
five years, and that he earned more than $1 million last year.

Google claims that Lee has not disclosed any Microsoft secrets, and
that it has repeatedly told Lee not to betray Microsoft's confidence.

In court documents, Google said a conversation Lee had with Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates suggests that the software company is becoming
increasingly concerned about Google siphoning away talent - and
perhaps intellectual property.

In a July 15 meeting, Lee said, Gates told him, "Kai-Fu, (CEO) Steve
(Ballmer) is definitely going to sue you and Google over this. He has
been looking for something like this, someone at a VP level to go to
Google. We need to do this to stop Google."

Drake earlier declined to comment on Gates' statement directly, saying
that the company's concern is that Lee has knowledge of highly
sensitive information.

Microsoft and Google, along with Yahoo Inc., are locked in a fierce
battle to dominate Internet search technology, both online and through
desktop search programs. Google has launched new services, including
e-mail, that compete with Microsoft offerings.


Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com
Google: http://www.google.com

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

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

From: Renai LeMay <newswire@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Google Mapper: Take Browsers to the Limit
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:30:50 -0500


http://www.news.com/

By Renai LeMay
http://news.com.com/Google+mapper+Take+browsers+to+the+limit/2100-1038_3-5808658.html

SYDNEY -- The only way to transform the Web into the desktop platform
of the future is to fully embrace bleeding-edge features in browser
software.

This advice came from the lead engineer of the Google Maps project,
Lars Rasmussen.

Speaking at a conference on Web engineering here, Rasmussen cited
Google Maps' use of the XSL+ (Extensible Stylesheet Language) standard
and Microsoft's Vector Markup Language, which he said were useful
technologies seldom used by Web developers. Both are supported only by
certain browsers.

If a Web application takes advantage of the best technologies a user's
browser can offer, then "each individual gets the sexiest experience
in their browser," he said.

"Go beyond browsers' lowest common denominator," he advised developers.

For example, Maps can command Internet Explorer to use VML (Vector
Markup Language) to display a blue line between geographical points,
but use the PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format and a linear
description for the Firefox browser.

The Sydney-based developer said the release of Maps created a critical
mass of interest from the programming community in the development of
AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) applications, or Web
applications with sophisticated graphics.

"Google Maps was originally a C++ app intended to be downloaded
separately," he recalled, harking back to the days before the
acquisition of his start-up company, Where 2 Technologies, by Google
last October.

However, that changed when Rasmussen and his colleagues--looking for
some venture capital -- pitched their mapping expertise to Google.

At that point, the team changed their development model and started
focusing on the Web instead. "We were surprised by the things you
could do in a Web browser," he said.

First, the Web allows rapid deployment and there is no software for
users to install. It's also much easier to make sure code runs on
multiple browsers compared with multiple operating systems like Mac OS
X and Windows.

The downside is that browsers don't give programmers full access to a
computer's resources such as memory, process power and hard disk
space. This is a bottleneck the engineer sees being removed in future,
although he thinks the simplicity of the current Web-browsing
experience needs to be maintained.

As such, Rasmussen remains disappointed with Google Earth, which is
similar to Maps but utilizes three-dimensional modeling and has to be
downloaded before use. "Much as we have tried, we haven't been able to
do this in JavaScript," he said, expressing hope that Google Earth and
Maps would eventually be merged into one Web application.

According to Rasmussen, Google is looking for Web mapping experts to
beef up its Sydney office. The primary driver to obtaining resources
is somewhat unique at Google -- the bottom line is whether users will
find its projects useful or otherwise, Rasmussen said.

In addition, the company will not shy away from releasing unfinished
products to its user base, who in turn provide valuable feedback --
when Maps first launched, it received 5,000 e-mails a day.

Recalling an incident which took place early in his career at Google,
Rasmussen said one day he was unexpectedly summoned into a meeting
with the company's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and other
executives.

"I was preparing my defense," he said, for fear the immaturity of his
project would come under fire. Instead, Page told him Maps worked well
enough to launch immediately.

Working for Google has other advantages, he said, adding that when a
bug that caused Maps to malfunction with the Firefox browser was
discovered, "we called up the Firefox (lead engineer) the weekend
before launch, and he came around and plugged in his debugging code."

While interest in the Maps project has always been relatively strong,
the engineer said it skyrocketed when satellite imagery was added. Web
traffic levels increased overnight by a factor of 10 to 15 times,
Rasmussen said.

Although life at Google is good, it's not always predictable. The
company's moon mapping service -- which launched on the anniversary of
the original moon landing -- turned out to be partly a practical joke
on Rasmussen.

"I was getting all these congratulatory e-mails and I didn't know what
the heck was going on," he said, noting Moon was developed in the
U.S. One e-mail was from a friend of astronaut Neil Armstrong, who
apparently appreciated the software.

Ultimately the engineer is extremely enthusiastic about his project,
which has in recent times seen a myriad of third-party programmers use
its now-public programming interfaces to add external
functionality. Even Microsoft's competing Virtual Earth product --
released this week -- was praised by Rasmussen.

"It's quite good," he grudgingly admitted.

Renai LeMay of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

Copyright 1995-2005 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the
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profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in
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understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic
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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
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For more information go to:
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------------------------------

From: Lesley K. McCullough <medill@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Emergency Alerts: Coming to Your Cell Phone?
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:40:52 -0500


Feds consider a system to deliver warnings to the public via text
messages.

Lesley K. McCullough, Medill News Service

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Emergency alerts may soon be delivered by more
than just your television set or old-fashioned radio: The federal
government is considering alerting you via text message should a
possible natural disaster or terrorist attack directly affect your
area.

The Senate Subcommittee on Disaster Prevention and Prediction met this
week on Capitol Hill to discuss creating a national, integrated
all-hazards alert system that uses digital technology to efficiently
send public warnings to Americans.

In case of a national emergency or natural disaster, the president
already can communicate with the nation through the Emergency Alert
System (EAS). However, during the last five decades the system has
been in place, a national alert has never been fully activated --not
even during the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The current system, developed in the Cold War era, can transmit
messages only to radios and televisions and is simply outdated, says
Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chair of the Senate Commerce, Science,
and Transportation committee.

"It was a good system in its time, but I don't know many people that
carry radios around in their pockets anymore," Stevens says.
"Therefore, we need to be able to communicate with people on their
cell phones and BlackBerries."

The technology to deliver alerts to your PC or handheld device exists,
but EAS primarily works at the state and local level to disperse
regional messages, including AMBER alerts, hazardous-material
incidents, and severe-weather warnings, Reynold Hoover, director of
the office of National Security Coordination within the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), told the committee. A national
scheme must integrate the various regional systems and technologies in
which municipalities have already invested millions of dollars across
the country.

Legislation Needed

"A public-warning interoperability solution will not be achieved by
the federal government purchasing a new national emergency alert
network or buying a software application," said Richard Taylor,
testifying on behalf of the National Emergency Alerting and Response
System Initiative.  "We need standards for interfacing existing
programs."

Hoover echoed that sentiment. "We need legislation to tell us exactly
what the integration policy will be," he said.

Noting that the threat of future terrorist attacks still looms,
subcommittee chair Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) said
government should play an important role in the creation of a national
alert system.

"The system is too important to the nation not to get it right,"
DeMint said.

The federal government is still exploring options. Hoover said FEMA is
planning to test a Geo-Targeted Alerting System that uses reverse 911
technologies to provide specific and targeted warnings to individual
households and businesses, such as warning of an impending
tornado. Once the infrastructure is in place and integration methods
are resolved, Hoover said, FEMA may offer a consumer opt-in system;
people could log on to a designated Web site and sign up for the types
of alert messages they want to receive. But because the system is
still in an early stage, he said, it is unclear what the cost, if any,
would be to consumers.

While an exact timeline for national implementation of an all-hazards
alert system is still unknown, Hoover said FEMA should know more from
the pilot studies next year.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

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

From: Steve Sobol <sjsobol@JustThe.net>
Subject: Re: Credit Reports, was: AT&T Customers Being Taken Over By AllTel
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 22:12:27 -0700
Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com


Danny Burstein wrote:

> Most of the US is already covered, but the east coasters have to wait
> until September, 2005.

Correct, and thanks for the correction. I caught that after going to
annualcreditreport.com *after* I posted. I thought the deadline had
passed already. The original poster, however, is in Texas, so they're
already eligible.

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But by the time the original party 
> refuses to pay the thousand dollars, gets placed with an agency (if
> that happens, which I doubt) we will be around to September already.

That's true too.

Steve Sobol, Professional Geek   888-480-4638   PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Company website: http://JustThe.net/
Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/
E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307

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

From: Aunty Spam's Net Patrol <aunty-spammer@web.site.com> 
Subject: Last Laugh! Scamming the 419 Scammers
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:46:28 -0500


Scam Baiting for Fun and ... Well, Just for Fun
Aunty Spam's Net Patrol

Spam, spyware, spoofing, security breaches, and other Internet
nasties. Aunty Spam's Net Patrol gives you up-to-the minute reporting,
along with a healthy dose of editorial commentary and pithy, witty
remarks.

Scam baiting -- the act of leading scammers on a wild goose chase --
has been raised to a new art form with the advent of the Internet, and
Internet scammers. And none more so (or more deservingly) than the
so-called 419 scammers. You know the ones: "I am Mariam Abacha.", and
someone has always died with a lot of money hidden away, and they want
you to help them get the money out of the country. But first you have
to send them some earnest money.

While some do it on their own, for the sheer joy of baiting a scammer,
groups and even complete websites have sprung up, all dedicated to
scamming 419 scammers. And unlike the controversial Mugu Marauder,
which encourages untargeted users to churn bandwidth of websites which
may themselves be innocent, the individuals involved with the 419 scam
baiting sites are responding directly to 419 scammers who have
targeted them.

One of the more prolific, and certainly amusing, sites is the 419
Eater site.  http://419Eater.com
 
The 419 Eater site starts out with this warning: "Please remember that
these people are CRIMINALS and should be treated as such. Under no
circumstances must you enter into any communications with these people
unless you feel you are adequately prepared to deal with them."

Good advice, that.

Clearly the people running 419 Eater feel adequately prepared, and
indeed they seem to be. The 419 Eaters regularly send their pet 419
scammers on goose chases which involve filling out and returning bogus
forms (" the bank said you must first fill out a Money Laundering and
Fraud Suppression Certificate"), and even taking and returning photos
of their scammy selves holding up hand-lettered signs for the camera
("Ohwa Tafu Kwit Iam").

Ok, so maybe it isn't getting these guys arrested, but hey, it's
keeping them busy, and exposing them (in more ways than one!)

And it's darned funny.

Check out 419 Eater at http://419Eater.com.

Every once in a while you have to just laugh at the 419 scammers who
abound on the Internet. Ok, maybe twice in a while, as we all just had
a good laugh looking at the pictures at the 419 Eater website.

Anyways, a colleague, after reading about the 419 Eater site, sent
Aunty the link to another scam slamming site, "Urgent & Confidential:
Dean Cameron's Nigerian Spam Scam Scam" web site, at SpamScamScam.com.

Dean, it seems, has not only honed the art of baiting scammers, but
has in fact turned his art into . well . art. Not surprising, really,
as Dean is an accomplished and oft-employed actor -- you may best
remember him from Summer School, Ski School, or Rockula. No? Well,
maybe not -- then take Aunty's word for it. He's also appeared on Will
& Grace, and in Mad About You.

In any event, Dean Cameron has put together a live multi-media show
based on his own experiences in baiting a 419 scammer, in which he
"assumed the identity of a sexually confused Florida millionaire,
whose only companions are his houseboy and cats, and began a 9 month
correspondence with the scammer," explains the web site. The show is
based on the actual correspondence between Dean and his scammer, all
of which is available on Cameron's website.

But the thing to which I most want to direct your attention is
actually Dean 's Scam-o-Matic 419 scam letter generator. It's a Mad
Libs-style form -- it asks you for nouns (a bunch of them), adjectives,
and numbers, and then when you press "submit" it spits out a 419
letter to rival the best -- only much funnier.

In fact, generally, this is a very funny site, by a very funny man.

Except for his guacamole, which is decidedly unfunny. I mean, who puts
sour cream in their guacamole? Yuck!

You can play with Dean's Scam-o-Matic here; 
Cameron's Nigerian Spam Scam Scam" web site, at SpamScamScam.com.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

*** 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, Aunty Spam's Web Site.

For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

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


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credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the
skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including
data, video, and voice networks.

The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College
of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the
College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has
state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus
offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum.  Classes
are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning.

Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at
405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at
http://www.mstm.okstate.edu

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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #344
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