From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Mar 8 23:59:11 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i294xBE03089; Mon, 8 Mar 2004 23:59:11 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 23:59:11 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200403090459.i294xBE03089@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 #111 TELECOM Digest Mon, 8 Mar 2004 23:59:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 111 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AT&T Wireless Introduces Early Evenings; New Options (Monty Solomon) Re: The Price of Email is Constant Vigilance (Fred Goldstein) Re: Should I Use 66-Block? (Scott Dorsey) Re: Should I Use 66-Block? (lawrence.jones@ugsplm.com) Re: Need to Block Outgoing Calls to Specific Numbers (Withheld) Re: Need to Block Outgoing Calls to Specific Numbers (DevilsPGD) Re: Spam Going Out Under My Name (Withheld) Re: Vonage Troubles (pop3svr@netscape.net) Re: Compensation For Telephones Sold Mis-Programmed (Consultant) Re: Nielsen PVR Plan Gives Agencies Pause (Thomas A. Horsley) Re: Snapshots in Time (Al Gillis) Last Laugh! Speaking of TV-Land (Al Gillis) 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, 8 Mar 2004 23:18:24 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AT&T Wireless Introduces Early Evenings; New Options AT&T Wireless Introduces Early Evenings; New Option Offers Unlimited Night and Weekend Minutes Beginning at 7 p.m. Instead of 9 p.m. - Mar 8, 2004 11:00 AM (BusinessWire) REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 8, 2004--AT&T Wireless (NYSE:AWE) has introduced an option called Early Evenings that makes available to new and current customers on qualifying plans unlimited night and weekend minutes beginning at 7 p.m. instead of the usual 9 p.m. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40775325 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2004 13:22:41 -0500 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: The Price of Email is Constant Vigilance On Sat, 6 Mar 2004 16:37:19 -0800, Rob Slade wrote: > Peter Wilson's article on spam and viruses (on Saturday, March 6, > 2004) lists a number of antispam measures that are currently being > promoted. He also retails Bill Gates' confident prediction that spam > will be a thing of the past by 2006. Remember that prophecy, because > Bill Gates is going to be proven wrong. An examination of the > measures listed in the article demonstrates why. That's certainly true ... > SPF (sender-permitted format) is currently garnering the greatest > interest. [It checks to see that the address isn't spoofed]... > Spammers, when creating spoofed addresses, don't bother to make > sure that they do. Or, at least, they haven't up until now. Bayesian filtering was a nice idea, too, but spammers retaliated by misspelling everything and using all sorts of tricks to break up filterable tokens (like words) and add noise. The result is bigger spams. SPF and CIDM would lead spammers to use non-spoofed domains. Big deal -- the can create throwaway domains (with phoney IDm and if necessary use anonymous or stolen credit or debit card numbers to pay for them) for a few bucks, run them on hijacked machines, and move on, all before being caught. They'd pass muster, because they're not spoofed, just not meaningful either. > SPF has promise, and it may be possible (unlike the Microsoft > proposal) to provide workarounds for a variety of systems, platforms, > and applications. However, there are a number of issues that still > have to resolved, such as email aliases, third-party services, and > applications such as mailing lists, which operate in a wide variety of > forms. The difficulties are not insurmountable, but an enormous > amount of work still has to be done. Indeed ... SPF probably won't stop spammers, but it will make it really hard to use your email while at a hotel, or at a hotspot, or at the office. You'll be sending from a domain not normally your own. And it could make "vanity" and small-business domains harder to use. One problem with email today is that unless you own your domain, you're tied to a provider -- there's no postal-like forwarding once you leave (unless your provider is particularly nice about it). SPF/CIDM could make it worse, if it makes private domains harder to use. > Microsoft's micropayments strategy is apparently the most recent one, > but has been raised many times over the history of the nets. (One of > the popular programs providing Usenet news, a type of topical > discussion, used to remind anyone who attempted to post a message that > it would possibly cost thousands of dollars to send this to everyone: > did they really want to do that?) Unfortunately, the issue of mailing > lists comes up almost immediately. Even if we assume one cent per > message, if I send a message to a popular list such as the RISKS-FORUM > Digest, with a possible hundred thousand subscribers, am I charged a > thousand dollars for that message? Is the list moderator charged? In > the case of RISKS, it is also redistributed by a number of sub-mailing > lists: do those costs get charged to the accounts of the local > administrators? The list moderator? Me? While others have diagreed with me on this and I respect their opinions, I'm still convinced that the *only* solution is to have micropayments. However, they need only apply to mail from *strangers*. The system should allow me to subscriber to a mailing list and, by doing so, grant that list "free" access to my mail receipt agent. Likewise, users should be able to put their normal correspondents, individual or a whole domain, into their whitelists. Micropayment would thus be limited in applicability, and not cost much to anyone but a spammer, for whom it would be prohibitive. > (The obvious second question is: who *gets* the money? The Internet > Engineering Task Force? Some bloated bureaucracy parcelling out the > cash to the various national telecom carriers? Charity? Microsoft? > The recipient? Hmmm. Maybe I should rethink my objection to the > micropayment system. At one point I was getting 8,000 [yes, eight > thousand] copies of spam from one system in China. Per hour. Same > message.) Micropayment infrastructure will cost money to operate. So whoever runs a micropostage service (essentially a certificate authority, granting one-time certificates that require real-time validation to prevent duplicate use) should keep the money. Of course if their price is too low, a spammer might use it, but then users need to be able to whitelist/blacklist micropostage issuers to prevent that. If the price is too high, somebody else will get in the business. (See Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations.) I see this as being in the private sector, though of course a post office is free to compete if they wish to. > And, of course, in order to provide for such a micropayment system, > everybody is going to have to use a Microsoft mailer. With a > Microsoft payment system. And a Microsoft account. This sounds like > an attempt to resurrect the (justly derided and roundly condemned) > Passport and Palladium systems. Which is precisely why there needs to be a micropostage system created without patent encumberance, not designed to be MS-specific! > In fact, most of these antispam technologies fail in the face of the > problem of spam nets set up by viruses. Spam sent from infected > machines could simply use the name of the owner, thus verifying the > identity. Spam sent from infected machines could use the micropayment > "wallet" on the infected machine, thus creating not only problems of > clean-up for the owner, but also a real cost. Infected machines could > be used to crack computational puzzles, or the owner could be > presented with challenges to respond to, in a variety of ways. Indeed that is a potential problem for micropayments; however, with end users getting only a certain ration per month via their ISP (since it's only used for contacting strangers, an individual would only need what, a few hundred?), the bounty from an infected computer wouldn't be huge. It would probably be a good idea for the "wallet" to require some kind of human input, like a password, before releasing a stamp, that a virus wouldn't be able to get. I don't foresee any end user's wallet having more than a dollar's worth of micropostage in it at a time. > There is no easy fix, and there is no easy answer. Administrators > have to ensure that they are not providing open relays that can be > used for spam. Email filtering services are checking for > inappropriate inbound email, but must also check what is going out. > ISPs (Internet Service Providers) must be more vigilant in regard to > the use being made of the net to which they provide access. Computer > users at all levels have to check for malicious software, unpatched > vulnerabilities, open ports and services, and what is going out of > their systems as well as what is coming in. Everybody needs to become > more aware of what is going on, and keep up with the changes in > threats around us all. > And anyone who tells you it is not going to be painful is selling > something. Well said. I note that there are a lot of problems around email, spam and worms being paramount. Rob Slade, whose post I am quoting above, was himself quoted in this week's eWeek. A couple of columns later, another person was quoted as saying, "E-mail was never designed to be a file transfer mechanism, and it is time to stop using it that way." It is going to be painful, and I think that the best way to fix it, once we accept that there's no simple fix, is to design an *entirely* new email machanism. SMTP is 32 years old. A new from-scratch email system can incorporate all of the requirements that have been clumsily overlaid on top of SMTP, which was after all designed to pass short text messages between timesharing computers on a closed network. Until a new system is in place, email will be a mess of spam and worms, growing less useful as countermeasures interfere with legitimate usage. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Should I Use 66-Block? Date: 8 Mar 2004 12:37:44 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) John wrote: > I bought a 66-block (Leviton 4066-M50) at Home Depot and I assumed > (incorrectly) that I could put the red, green, yellow, and black on > each column and then wire the extensions (TIA 568A) to each of the > rows. I now understand a 66-block doesn't work this way. It can. You punch the wires down on each row, so that from top to bottom, you see red, green, yellow, black, red, green, yellow, black, and so forth for all the extensions going down the first column of the block. You then punch down the pair coming from your service entry at the bottom of the block. NOW, you take one long piece of cross-connect wire, and you punch it down on the service entry line. Then you loop it up to the second column of the two rows carrying the red/green for the last phone, and punch it down without cutting it. Then you loop it again up to the next extension, and then to the next extension, and then up the line. Now you have one pair going to all eight phones. If you get a second incoming line, you can pop the wires off the panel for one of those phone, and run the second line to it. Or you can run the second line to the yellow/black pair of some two-line phones. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: lawrence.jones@ugsplm.com Subject: Re: Should I Use 66-Block? Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2004 21:13:02 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com John wrote: > I bought a 66-block (Leviton 4066-M50) at Home Depot and I assumed > (incorrectly) that I could put the red, green, yellow, and black on > each column and then wire the extensions (TIA 568A) to each of the > rows. I now understand a 66-block doesn't work this way. No, but you can use it in a similar way -- just daisy-chain your incoming line(s) to as many rows as you need down one side of the block (punch down using the non-cutting bit then route the wire back out of the block and back in again 8 rows down and repeat). Punch your extensions down on the other side and cross connect as desired. You might find a bridged distribution patch panel such as the Leviton 47603-110 (which you can also get at Home Depot) more convenient, though. -Larry Jones It must be sad being a species with so little imagination. -- Calvin ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Need to Block Outgoing Calls to Specific Numbers From: Withheld Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 13:14:31 -0600 (Patrick - please omit my name and e-mail address - Thanks.) In response to: > From: Sammy@nospam.biz > Subject: Re: Need to Block Outgoing Calls to Specific Numbers > Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2004 09:22:57 -0800 > Organization: Cox Communications > DevilsPGD wrote: >> In message <> Sammy@nospam.biz did >> ramble: >>> The only way you can solve that problem is to pay for call rejection >>> service for those three folks. Then, they can set the list (usually a >>> maximum of 10 numbers) to reject calls from your number. > Oh, I would like to see that tariff. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have that service myself. Dial *60 > then listen to the announcement. Dial #01# to reject the last call > received, whether or not you know the number. Or dial #(the number) to > reject further calls from any number. Its a very convenient service. > Prairie Stream has offered it since they started business here. PAT] Patrick -- I also have that service through Qwest and found out something just this past week. If the number you are trying to block is not on the Qwest (or any LEC, I suppose) network, the number cannot be accepted for blocking -- you get some type of error message/recording "the number you have entered is incorrect". I confirmed this with a tech when trying to report this scenario as a trouble. Pretty useless feature in such cases. ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Need to Block Outgoing Calls to Specific Numbers Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 02:19:38 GMT In message <> Sammy@nospam.biz did ramble: >>> The only way you can solve that problem is to pay for call rejection >>> service for those three folks. Then, they can set the list (usually a >>> maximum of 10 numbers) to reject calls from your number. > Oh, I would like to see that tariff. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have that service myself. Dial *60 > then listen to the announcement. Dial #01# to reject the last call > received, whether or not you know the number. Or dial #(the number) to > reject further calls from any number. Its a very convenient service. > Prairie Stream has offered it since they started business here. PAT] That rejects calls FROM a given number, not TO a given number. Similar, but it needs to be implemented on the other end. However, it might just work in this situation. 'Tis far better to have snipped too much than to never have snipped at all. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The original writer (wrote back and) said the telco had offered to provide a service known as 'Call Control'. It has to be programmed through the central office (otherwise, of what value would there be if a 'star code' could turn it off and on?) The original writer said -- if I quote correctly -- the central office would implement it at that level. I've never heard of that service option before; maybe it is a 'customer specific tariff'; they still have those around as needed. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 21:51:02 +0000 From: Withheld Subject: Re: Spam Going Out Under My Name In article , Linus Surguy writes: > By the way, the plural of virus is viruses, not viri[i] - this is a > reoccuring thread on anti-virus newsgroups, and apparantly is because > virus is an 'air noun' in Latin and therefore cannot have an 'ii' form > -- or something like that! [ Pat: If you feel it ought to be broadcast, please remove my email address; thanks. ] Nouns in Latin come in 5 categories, called declensions. The commonest has a singular ending in -us, with plural -i; an example is "cactus", forming "cacti". If "virus" was from that class, its plural would be "viri", but it isn't. A rare declension (the 5th) also has words ending -us, with the plural also in -us; an example is "status". (The u is short in the singular, and long in the plural.) But "virus" doesn't come from that declension either. The 3rd declension is a bit of a random collection. Two examples are opus (work), forming the plural opera, and corpus/corpora (body). Plausible plurals for "virus", then, are "virera" or "virora". Maybe. The Romans never wrote down the plural, so we don't know exactly what it was. And we have evidence that "virus" was odd in other ways. (It's neuter, which 3rd declension nouns aren't supposed to be. Perhaps it's like "pelagus/pelage" (sea).) The best plural, then, ignores the Latin, and is "viruses". Graeme ------------------------------ From: pop3svr@netscape.net (pop3svr@netscape.net) Subject: Re: Vonage Troubles Date: 8 Mar 2004 17:22:07 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com If you want cheap, and poor service, Vonage is your company. If you want to test your patience, and keep making excuses why you are using that phone service, and want to keep explaining to your relatives why they need to call you back again and again and again, sure sign on up. If you want really crappy customer service, sign right up. Then, that is really magnified when you want to cancel the service. That is when they are at their very worst. But, yes, by all means, if the only thing you care about is cheap, Vonage has that down pretty well. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am sorry your experience with Vonage has been so negative. Vonage is, IMO, a very good, very inexpensive alternate to conventional phone service. Some people say their service has been quite good, and although I do not use it often enough to make a really definitive statement, it has never been totally awful for me, as it seems to have been for you. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ConsultingServices2004@yahoo.com (Consultant) Subject: Re: Compensation For Telephones Sold Programmed to Call my Phone Date: 8 Mar 2004 17:31:56 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com (continuing the earlier account): They have asked me to name the amount. They have offered to pay me in the method of my choosing. They have offered to compensate for airtime costs. I told them the main issue was my time & the interuptions (hundreds or hundreds per day over what is becoming weeks). I told the telecom manager that called that I thought they were being nice to me. They said I had been nice to them (I have been). I want to be reasonable, but the calls have not stopped. I was called to work early early in the morning today to handle an emergency call. I didn't take time (due to the emergency nature) to brush my hair (wore hat all day) or even my teeth (used gum). I didn't even stop to eat "breakfast" for 12 hours. HOWEVER, I had several of calls from the misprogrammed home phones. I had to take the calls because I didn't know if these may be related to the many people we had to pull in to address the emergency problem. In addition to the number being preprogrammed into the telephone, the INSTRUCTION MANUAL even gives them directions on how to program the phone. The INSTRUCTION MANUAL gives them directions that makes the phone call my mobile phone! Again, I am a reasonable person. I understand mistakes happen. I apperciate the effort they are making. However, I continue to get these calls even after they say they have called all of their customers in my area that have these phones. Thank you to you for your advice & input. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In your first report on this, you said the number the phones were (mis)programmed to dial for voicemail would only work in one state, and that when those phone customers were in *your* state (or did you say *any* state other than the one where it works?) the result was the calls came to you. It sounds to me now like the toll free (?) number used to call into the voice mail needs to be an *interstate* rather than an *intrastate* number. If that is the case, is the company going to get the number adjusted to a wider area? You also note the instruction manual appears to have typographical errors. Is the company going to reprint their instruction book or at least distribute an errata sheet to their customers? If the company is going to do either/both of these things, then there is still nothing illegal except perhaps some negligence on their part. Or, worst case scenario, is the company going to do nothing, except buy you off this one time, then (after you sign their release which I am sure they will require) say 'sorry, but you settled with us' when the problem rears its head again in the future. You say they seem to be offering a generous settlement on your terms. That alone would make *me* suspicious of anything but this eventually reaching 'worst case scenario' status. I think I would under the circumstances want to get an entirely new (lastest generics of course) cell phone and a new number. Naturally you will need new business cards for associates, etc. By all means, take them up on their generosity **as long as you get a new phone/new number/business cards out of them first.** PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Nielsen PVR Plan Gives Agencies Pause From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 01:57:41 GMT > Madison Avenue would like to hit the rewind button on Nielsen's plans > to measure households with digital video recorders (DVRs), and see > Nielsen replay the announcement with one additional element: a plan to > provide TV commercial ratings. Without them, say media agency > executives, the time- shifted viewing data from DVR users would be > interesting -- but almost meaningless from a media planning point of > view. It is interesting that an industry that bases ad prices for the whole season in large part on ratings generated by "sweeps" where the networks don't even broadcast their normal programming could deride anything as "meaningless" :-). However, without getting Nielsen involved, I can tell them the precise and exact ratings for commercials for PVR owners: zero. (That's why we own PVRs for cripes sake :-). >>==>> The *Best* political site >>==+ email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics <<==+ ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: Snapshots in Time Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 19:27:24 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com wrote in message news:telecom23.110.11@telecom-digest.org: > In a message dated Sun, 7 Mar 2004 19:44:00 -0800 Al Gillis > writes: >> An oddity that would probably never happen in this age is reviewed on >> pages 83-85. Moving the Indianapolis headquarters building of Indiana >> Bell WHILE IT'S STILL IN OPERATION as an office and Central Office >> building! Those guys were gutsy! > The Dallas Automatic Telephone Company building, full of step > equipment, was moved while still in service to accomodate a street > widening project. > Wes Leatherock > wesrock@aol.com > wleathus@yahoo.com That's interesting, Wes ... First, I couldn't even imagine such a feat, then I hear it's not unique! Well, I guess those Texans were gutsy, too! Do you have any additional information about this move? About when did it take place? Where in Dallas was the building located? Any web resources available to see photos or read accounts of the move? Thanks!! Al ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Last Laugh! Speaking of TV Land (Was Ergen Waiting Out Viacom) Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 19:22:48 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Pat said: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This morning on 'I Love > Lucy' at 10:00 AM followed by 'Leave it to Beaver' at 10:30 every five (Some Snipage...) Speaking of TV Land ... where is Brodrick Crawford and "Highway Patrol"? Who could forget his plantive calls over the squad car radio: "2150 to Headquarters ... Come In, Headquarters!" Al [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What I am getting rather annoyed by lately is the thing on TV-Land where they do 'marathons' of one par- ticular show for hours or days at a time. They've been running "Leave it to Beaver" for several hours now; one thirty-minute episode after another, in sequence. I think they are up to installment 115 now, and sometimes they run the same installment two or three times in the same day. They *surely* must have other shows around in addition to 'Beaver' they could run. 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'. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #111 ******************************