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TELECOM Digest     Wed, 30 Nov 2005 02:10:00 EST    Volume 24 : Issue 540

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Talking Back To the Junk Fax (Monty Solomon)
    Disney Uses iPods for Ads / Media Giant and Clear Channel (Monty Solomon)
    Rumor: Reborn Mac Mini Set to Take Over the Living Room (Monty Solomon)
    Sony's Escalating "Spyware" Fiasco (Monty Solomon)
    When is TDMA Being Phased Out? ( http://www.interpage.net )
    Re: What Happened to Amanda Voicemail Company? (aadler@ctvi.com)
    Re: Hollywood and BitTorrent Reach Agreement (Seth Breidbart)
    Re: Voicepulse Owns Your Number (Seth Breidbart)
    Re: Holiday Observances Phone Rates (was Re: Kennedy) (Seth Breidbart)

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.  

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

Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:39:56 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Talking Back To the Junk Fax



By Don Oldenburg
Washington Post Staff Writer

All righty then, enough pleading! As promised, here are some solutions
for desperate fax machine owners who are sick and tired of screeching
junk-fax transmissions in the middle of the night, junk faxes
bogarting their machines during work hours, and junk faxes using their
printer ink and paper to deliver unsolicited, unwanted, cheesy
advertisements.

For many home fax machine owners, the junk-fax pandemic has grown into
an annoyance equivalent to telemarketing at its worst -- before the
National Do Not Call Registry struck a blow for privacy and
sanity. These dastardly faxed commercials typically break federal
law. Like spammers, junk-faxers broadcast the same message to millions
of fax machine numbers at once. And more often than not, the faxes
promote scams not worth the paper they're printed on.

Early last month, the Consummate Consumer was inundated with
complaints about junk faxes following the junk-fax column ("Your
Machine Is Spewing Again," Sept. 25) and asked readers to share
solutions for stopping the menace -- short of hammering the fax
machine with a Louisville Slugger. The result? Good news, sufferers!
Solutions R Us! The best of them:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/28/AR2005112800642.html

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

Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:47:58 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Disney Uses iPods For Ads / The Media Giant and Clear Channel


The media giant and Clear Channel deliver promotional videos to the
video iPod.

Walt Disney studios and media conglomerate Clear Channel said Monday
they're starting to advertise movies and other content over
video-enabled portable players like the iPod, marking a growing trend
of using the Internet for promotional purposes.

Media giant Disney and Clear Channel, which owns 1,200 radio stations
in the United States, will become the first major media companies to
deliver their promotional videos to the new iPods. Disney plans to
offer full-screen, theater-quality video content from its upcoming
release of fantasy film The Chronicles of Narnia directly to PCs and
video-enabled iPods.

Viewers will be able to download and transfer trailers, clips,
interviews, and other film content to their PCs and their iPods from
the Internet channel on the film's official website.

Disney has already gotten into selling video content online with a
partnership with Apple that allows viewers to buy clips of shows like
Desperate Housewives produced by Disney-owned network ABC at Apple's
iTunes Music Store (see Apple Up 9% After Video iPod).

Video is the latest medium for content owners to advertise their
wares. Its growing popularity appears to be evident in Apple's launch
of video on its iTunes last month with 1 million clips sold in the
first 20 days of its launch (See Apple: 1M Videos in 20 Days).

Spending on online video advertising is expected to triple in the next
two years, rising to about $640 million, according to research firm
eMarketer. By 2010, it could hit $1.5 billion.

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=14612

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

Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:50:59 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Rumor: Reborn Mac Mini Set to Take Over the Living Room


Road to Expo: Reborn Mac mini set to take over the living room

By Ryan Katz, Senior Editor
Think Secret 

November 29, 2005 - Apple's Mac mini will be reborn as the digital hub
centerpiece it was originally conceived to be, Think Secret sources
have disclosed. The new Mac mini project, code-named Kaleidoscope,
will feature an Intel processor and include both Front Row 2.0 and
TiVo-like DVR functionality.

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0511macmini2.html

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

Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:15:45 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Sony's Escalating "Spyware" Fiasco


News Analysis
By Lorraine Woellert

Sony's Escalating "Spyware" Fiasco

Along with lawyers, prosecutors, and furious fans, artists are joining
the backlash against the label for slipping a hidden, anti-theft
program into users' computers

Van Zant's Get Right with the Man CD was released in May, but six
months later it still was doing better-than-respectable business on
Amazon.com (AMZN ). The album ranked No. 887 on the online retailer's
list of music sales on Nov. 2. Then news of the CD's aggressive
content safeguards -- a sub-rosa software program incorporated
courtesy of Sony BMG -- exploded on the Internet.

To prevent audiophiles from making multiple copies of the CDs, Sony
(SNE) had programmed the Van Zant disk, and dozens of others, with a
hidden code called a "rootkit" that secretly installs itself on hard
drives when the CDs are loaded onto listeners' PCs. Soon enough,
hackers began designing viruses to take malicious advantage of the
hidden program, and a Sony boycott had begun (see BW Online, 11/17/05,
"Sony's Copyright Overreach").

GROWING OUTRAGE.  Overnight, Get Right with the Man dropped to No.
1,392 on Amazon's music rankings. By Nov. 22 -- after the news made
headlines and Sony was deep into damage control, pulling some 4.7
million copy-protected disks from the market -- Get Right with the Man
was even further from Amazon's Top 40, plummeting to No. 25,802.

The wrath of fans killed Sony's CD copy controls, with the company
pulling 52 titles off retail shelves, beginning the week of Nov. 14.
But the wrath of bands could be far worse for the company -- and for
efforts to protect content in general.

Singers and songwriters are increasingly expressing frustration at
devices used by record companies to protect digital content from
widespread theft that results when CDs are copied repeatedly or
popular tracks are given away on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, such as
LimeWire and BitTorrent. Sony's misstep has been bad for the company
 -- and its effects could spread much further, should the consumer
outcry gain traction with the recording artists who need to keep their
fans happy if they want to sell records.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2005/tc20051122_343542.htm

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

From: http://www.interpage.net <m3deshmukh@verizon.net>
Subject: When is TDMA Being Phased Out?
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:20:22 GMT


Hello,

Does anyone have the schedule for when the different Cingular/ATT
markets are phasing out TDMA?  Please let me know or where to find
that information.

Thanks,

Mayur Deshmukh
Interpage Network Services, Inc.
mayurXYZZTOP@interpage.net
[to email me, remove the CAPS]
http://www.interpage.net 


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The word from Mike Alexander, Cingular
Wireless customer service/sales manager here in Independence is that
it will s-l-o-w-l-y disappear a tower at a time. I switched my
personal phone from TDMA to GSM just two weeks ago, when it got to
the point the 'bars' were not as high as they had been and more often
than not a call attempt had to be made two or three times before it
would go through. The phone was still _usable_ but it made me nervous
seeing only two or three bars on the left (signal reception) side of
the display, and after dialing and not hearing the ringing tone in
the usual one or two seconds I would look at the display and see a
message saying 'redialing'. He told me 'you can keep on using that
older phone as long as you want, but eventually it will be seeking a
signal from a tower in Caney or Coffeyville. I've got a nice new
Nokia 6010 you can have with a new contract if you want.' So I 
decided to bite the bullet and go with it. He also pointed out that
'this area code 620 is eventually all going to be GSM and then for
a good signal if you have a prepaid phone the company will put you
out of Wichita (area 316). I also have a prepaid spare phone, Nokia
5165 now, and Cingular insisted _it_ had to be in the 316 area.  There
was a time here, until two or three years ago that we were entirely
in 316, even for landlines.   PAT]

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

From: aadler@ctvi.com
Subject: Re: What Happened to Amanda Voicemail Company?
Date: 29 Nov 2005 15:21:53 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


OK ... they are up today. Must have been an issue with their carrier.

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

From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart)
Subject: Re: Hollywood and BitTorrent Reach Agreement
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:30:56 UTC
Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless


In article <telecom24.531.12@telecom-digest.org>,
Paul Vader <pv+usenet@pobox.com> wrote:

> Gary Gentile <ap@telecom-digest.org>  writes:

>> The agreement requires 30-year-old software designer Bram Cohen to prevent
>> his Web site, bittorrent.com, from locating pirated versions of popular
>> movies, effectively frustrating people who search for illegal copies of
>> films.

> Ineffectively, they mean! What gave them the idea that bittorrent.com
> was the only place to get torrent files, or even a major place? *

At least they don't require bittorrent to install a rootkit on every
machine that uses it.  (Not that they could, but they'd probably try
if it hadn't already proven too embarrassing.)

Seth

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

From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart)
Subject: Re: Voicepulse Owns Your Number
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:43:25 +0000 UTC
Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless


In article <telecom24.531.7@telecom-digest.org>, Fred Atkinson
<fatkinson@mishmash.com> wrote:

> I've sent Voicepulse notice that I expect them to release my number.
> They say they will not.  In fact, they called me just a few minutes
> ago and said that the porting request from Carolina Net would be
> declined.

> I'm looking for recourse and I'm not interested in hearing that there
> is no recourse.  Can anyone here make some suggestions as to most
> effective avenue to pursue?

Port it to a landline carrier, then port it to Carolina net.  Numbers
port only between carriers that have agreements, and VOIP carriers
tend not to have agreements with each other.  They all have agreements
with the local landline companies in order to be able to _take_
numbers.

Seth

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

From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart)
Subject: Re: Holiday Observances Phone Rates (was Re: Kennedy)
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 03:36:39 UTC
Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless


In article <telecom24.538.16@telecom-digest.org>,
<hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:

> Some years ago they passed a Monday holiday law, switching the date of
> a number of national holidays so they would always be on a Monday,
> creating a three day weekend.  That includes Martin Luther King Day,
> Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, and Columbus Day.

The Monday Holiday Law predates Martin Luther King Day.

> Roughly speaking, workers have seen a gradual cutback in the number of
> holidays they get a day off from work.  There were always the big
> 5--NY, Memorial, Independence, Labor, Thanksgiving, and Christmas,
     1     2           3          4       5                 6
> that everyone got off (except critical personnel).

For a large value of 5.

Seth

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


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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #540
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