From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Mar 10 03:50:54 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i2A8osV13511; Wed, 10 Mar 2004 03:50:54 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 03:50:54 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200403100850.i2A8osV13511@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 #113 TELECOM Digest Wed, 10 Mar 2004 03:51:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 113 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: AT&T Wireless Introduces Early Evenings; New Options (Steven Sobol) Re: AT&T Wireless Introduces Early Evenings; New Options (Justin Time) Re: Nielsen PVR Plan Gives Agencies Pause (Linc Madison) Strange Phone Number (Adam) Re: Need to Block Outgoing Calls to Specific Numbers (Withheld) Re: EchoStar May Lose More After Removing Viacom's CBS (Sammy@nospam) Re: The Price of Email is Constant Vigilance (Sammy@nospam.biz) Re: Spam (jmayson@nyx.net) Re: Spam and the Law was Re: The Price of Email (Barry Margolin) Re: Spam and the Law was Re: The Price of Email (Thomas A. Horsley) Inflection of "Virus" (was Re: Spam Going Under My Name) (Mark Brader) Re: Curious Plurals (was Re: Spam Going Under My Name) (Nick Landsberg) 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: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: AT&T Wireless Introduces Early Evenings; New Options Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 14:24:54 -0600 Joseph wrote: > Woohoo! And how long will this last? Perhaps the article doesn't > mention it, but 7:00 p.m. night minutes were the norm until the > wireless companies decided to change start of night time to 9:00 p.m. > People are naive if they think that any particular market condition > won't make night minutes change again. It's triage. That's all it is. They want to stop hemorrhaging customers. 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 Domain Names, $9.95/yr, 24x7 service: http://DomainNames.JustThe.net/ ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: AT&T Wireless Introduces Early Evenings; New Options Date: 9 Mar 2004 13:06:54 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Monty Solomon wrote in message news:: > 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 Just talked to my AT&T Account Manager. The only plans that qualify are those billing $59.00 per month and up. So, those of us with cheap(?) plans can only wait - which is one reason I can't ever upgrade the plan I'm on. 60 minutes a month, free long distance from my home area and no roaming between North Carolina and Maine for only $14.99 a month. Rodgers Platt ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Nielsen PVR Plan Gives Agencies Pause Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 13:44:11 -0800 From: Linc Madison Reply-To: lincmad@suespammers.org Organization: California resident; nospam; no unsolicited e-mail allowed In article , Thomas A. Horsley wrote: > 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" :-). You are getting VERRRRRY SLEEEEEPY. That is NOT an elephant in your living room. I repeat, that is NOT an elephant in your living room. At least they did get wise to the idea that the networks might try to offer programming specifically to appeal to Nielsen households during sweeps. > However, without getting Nielsen involved, I can tell them the precise > and exact ratings for commercials for PVR owners: zero. Well, no, actually. Yes, I usually pick up the remote and zip through the commercials. In fact, when I'm watching "live TV" I often pause the show for a few minutes just in order to be able to zip through the commercials later. However, if I catch a glimpse of an ad that interests me, I will rewind and watch the ad. Being able to rewind also means I never have to scramble for a pen to jot down the phone number or web address. That is absolutely a small percentage of all the ads that my TiVo records, but not zero. 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: Adam Subject: Strange Phone Number Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 22:31:23 GMT Anyone know what type of phone number this is: 646-539-9007 ? I keep getting calls from this number but when I return the call, I am asked for a pin. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 00:16:03 -0600 From: Withheld Reply-To: the Digest Subject: Re: Need to Block Outgoing Calls to Specific Numbers [Hi, PAT -- privacy mode again, please...] > [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?) Hi, OP again ... (Refresher: An Alzheimer's patient is making dozens of calls daily to a couple of neighbors; the neighbors are threatening harassment action. I'm looking for a way to block outbound calls to a handful of local numbers.) Call Control is programmed from the customer premises, through the touchtone keypad. You must first set a password, thereafter a "star code" accesses a menu but the first thing you must do on that menu is enter the password. I'll provide details after the service is actually running and I've had a chance to play with it. There is a chink in the armor, though -- and I don't see any way to secure it. That chink is call completion through Directory Assistance, calling cards, or similar companies. Whether using Call Control from Telco, or some kind of CPE, once the call has been put through there is no more filtering. So it's possible to call DA, have them look up a blocked number, and then connect the call. Since that interaction is all by voice, there's no opportunity to filter it. Telco could conceivably maintain a database of blocked numbers that DA would dip into, but this is not really practical. Even if such a database existed, it would probably not be accessible to third-party providers (e.g. Infone) without some kind of regulatory action. So the next solution is to block DA, except that this lady uses DA because she can't read the phone book due to cataracts. And she does have legitimate needs to look up numbers. Now the way we've been keeping her from calling the offended neighbors is by removing their phone numbers from her handwritten book. However she's also got them written down in other places so we've been discovering those one by one and taking them out as well. But the other day I watched her make a call to a local business; she called 411 (yes, 95 cents per call), asked them for the number, then pressed "1" (or whatever) to have DA connect the call for her. It occurred to me that if we successfully removed every copy of the banned phone numbers from her house, this is how she would call these people. So I called Repairs and asked if Call Control would block calls completed through DA. Asking about Call Control was novel enough, but this question really threw them :-) I was put back on hold for several minutes, after which the rep came back on and said that the blocking was only effective on direct-dialed calls. So we're going ahead with Call Control, but will _leave_ the forbidden phone number for her to find, so she won't call DA for it. We also have someone in the house with her 4 hours a day, Monday through Friday, to help with meals, medication, pet care, housekeeping, and so on. Family members "drop in" to visit on weekends. Hopefully this will give her enough companionship that she won't feel the need to bug the neighbors any more. But she won't tolerate live-in help, so we need to do something to cover the parts of the day when she's unsupervised. She's a great lady, and it bugs me that I have to sneak around and mess with her freedoms like this. But it's necessary if she's going to be allowed to remain living "independently" in her own home. ------------------------------ From: Sammy@nospam.biz Subject: Re: EchoStar May Lose More After Removing Viacom's CBS Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 18:24:17 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications > You readers who subscribe to satellite: tell us more about it. What > is on all of those dark channels today? Anything, or old re-runs of > shows the satellite operators had in stock or what? PAT] I guess it makes a good case for staying with cable. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I turned on the television today more out of curiosity than anything else. Of course I am on cable, not satellite, and it appears to me they didn't miss a single beat. All the usual crummy day time stuff. Jerry Springer (is that Fox? I dunno for sure) had one of his 'confessions' programs on today. That's where some poor sap comes out on the stage, tells his life story, Jerry tells him his wife heard it all backstage, then she marches out and clobbers the guy (who either had secret mistresses, was secretly gay, or had some picadillo or another of which she did not approve). While the wife is 'counseling' her husband there on the stage, another guest whose claim to fame is his lust for indecent exposure is busily running amok through the audience and back to the stage, with all his clothes off. That show is such a riot! And imagine how the authorities were complaining about Janet Jackson. Sort of hypocritcal IMO ... PAT] ------------------------------ From: Sammy@nospam.biz Subject: Re: The Price of Email is Constant Vigilance Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 18:21:17 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications William Warren wrote: > We don't need more software: we need to fight back. Oh, please. Who has time to do that?! What we need is an authentication system, not software. ------------------------------ From: jmayson@nyx.net Subject: Re: Spam Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 03:14:04 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com > You have just experienced firsthand the reason why I no longer post to > netnews under my own name. (I know I'm not alone in this.) After one > weekend where our computer staff deleted five *thousand* spam e-mails > to me, I decided it wasn't worth it. This is something I have gone back and forth on for the past couple of years. I have been on USENET since 1987 when I started college. I had no idea what it was or that everything I posted was being archived. It was rather amusing to go back in 2002 or so and see things I wrote a decade and a half earlier. But I got a little nervous about it too. I don't *THINK* I ever said anything too stupid/inflamatory/idiotic/ off-color, but who knows. I usually tell people when they send an email or post to USENET that they're not only effectively sending a postcard that anyone can see, but everyone who touches the postcard is making a photocopy of it and pasting the photocopy on their front door. I started using an assumed identity (my first and middle names only, as my middle name is more common than my last name). I did not do this to defraud, fool, slander, or otherwise participate in inappropriate conduct, but I was protecting my identity. However, I just felt odd pretending to be someone else. So I've gone back to being myself online. > I can do this because I don't edit anything online. You can't, > unfortunately ... (comment was addressed to TELECOM Digest Editor). I'm active in the radio monitoring community, even writing periodically for Monitoring Times magazine. It'd be sort of hard for me to "disappear" online then have a guy who sounds just like me show up the next day. My solution now is I mostly lurk and respond to people personally as much as possible. I ask myself: 1. Is this posting necessary? 2. Will people care about it? 3. Will it embarrass me next week? Next year? Next decade? I often don't get past #1 before I kill the message or decide to send it just to the sender and not the mailing list. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No, I cannot do that, and I am not sure > if I would want to anyway. I am thinking however about doing something > like PGP on my signature, then disavowing anything that does not have > my encrypted mark on it. But I am getting so many requests to hide > email addresses these days in the Digest, I am giving serious consid- > eration to **removing all email addresses** in the Digest, something > I would have been horrified by a few years ago. I *like* the idea of > having open addressing here so readers can contact one another with > questions, solutions, etc. It is not up to me to control the flow of > mail here, or require everyone to come through here with comments and > answers, etc. But there really is not going to be much of a choice > very soon. I am also thinking about installing a 'challenge/white list' > approach on incoming mail. Everyone will *have* to use a valid > address to reach me and 'good' for-real correspondents will go on a > 'white list' for future incoming mail, however I will automatically > strip off the email addresses on everything before it leaves here and > goes back out. No good answer to the challenge, I won't even see the > mail; not that it will fall in an overflowing spam bucket; it will > just get bashed on the way in the door. Nothing definite on this yet, > but I have to do something. The spam count is now higher than ever. > PAT] I chuckle when I read about the latest virus or the volume of spam people receive. I have a heavy-duty procmail recipe (see http://handsonhowto.com/pmail101.html for more information) plus I have spamassassin available to me on Nyx (http://www.nyx.net). I stand there with my shining armor saying in a deep voice, "I laugh in the face of spam!" then offer a hardy chuckle. I really don't care if my email address gets out because it's not going to cause me any worries. Knock on wood. I was a strong supporter of the Do Not Call list, but I am totally against the Do Not Spam list. I don't see this as a contradiction. I have positive control of my email. I decide when I check it. I can decide from whom I will receive messages. I simply don't have that kind of control over my phone. Well, I'll close this before this posting embarrasses me. ;-) John Mayson Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Spam and the Law was Re: The Price of Email is Constant Organization: Looking for work Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 16:13:38 -0500 In article , Danny Burstein wrote: > Each and every ISP, in order to gain continued connectivity, simply > has to establish terms of service (and enforce them) in a way so as to > prevent its customers from spamming. (see below for my suggestion) > If the East Cupcake Bakery and Internet Service allows its customers > to spam, then we cut it off. Pure and Simple. It and its spammers can > cheerfully wallow in the smelly pit of their own putrid intranet. Yes, > some non spamming customers will get hurt. But that is NOT my problem. Your *own* customers also get hurt, since they can't communicate with all the other customers of ECBIS. If the ISP that you cut off is much bigger than you, your customers will be more inconvenienced than the other ISP is by your boycott. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not really, Barry. Yes, there would be some disruptions for a short time as people migrated off of non- complying ISPs to the ones who complied, but that would not take too long to get resolved. Take for example AOHell, one of the biggest ISPs. If they chose not to go along, most of their customers would raise a lot of hell about not being able to get 'internet' any longer. Consider a couple years ago when the German government cracked down on 'internet pornography' and the various alt newsgroups for sex forcing Compuserve to quit providing the alt newsgroups. CIS subscribers just about went crazy. Same thing would happen with any of the *big* ISPs whose output to the net was no longer accepted. So you would not be able to 'talk' with your friends on that parti- cular ISP for a couple weeks while *they* scrambled around to find a new ISP to use. That's all. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Spam and the Law was Re: The Price of Email is Constant From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 00:00:38 GMT > Each and every ISP, in order to gain continued connectivity, simply > has to establish terms of service (and enforce them) in a way so as to > prevent its customers from spamming. (see below for my suggestion) I've been an advocate of this kind of thing for a long time now. I'd love to see "two internets" the one where spammers can freely spam each other and support the ISPs that won't agree to reasonable standards, and the other one where everyone else can exist in peace, and never the two shall meet :-). >>==>> The *Best* political site >>==+ email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics <<==+ ------------------------------ Subject: Inflection of "Virus" (was Re: Spam Going Out Under My Name) Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 01:49:36 EST From: msb@vex.net (Mark Brader) "Graeme" writes: > Nouns in Latin come in 5 categories, called declensions. However, there are also some subcategories and special cases. > 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. Right. These are 2nd declension masculine nouns. There are also 2nd declension neuter nouns, which resemble the 2nd declension masculine nouns in many inflections, but the basic (nominative) forms have singular -um and plural -a. For example, "medium" and "media". (Note that the I in this example is part of the stem, not the ending. Similarly, the first I in "radii" is part of the stem; the singular is "radius". So even if "virus" was 2nd declension masculine, its plural still would not be "virii", which people who don't know better use sometimes; it'd be "viri", as stated above.) > 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. Actually that's 4th declension. 5th declension nouns end in -es in both singular and plural; "species" is one example. > 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. But if "virus" was 3rd declension and one of those was the nominative plural, the accusative singular would be "virerem" or "virorem". In fact this form is known to be "virus". But that's odd, because accusative singulars in all declensions end in M, not S. > The Romans never wrote down the plural, so we don't know exactly what > it was. It probably was strictly a mass noun and didn't have one, like its approximate translation "slime" in its normal usage. > And we have evidence that "virus" was odd in other ways. See above. > (It's neuter, which 3rd declension nouns aren't supposed to be. No, there are lots of 3rd declension neuters. What we're looking at here is a special case -- a 2nd declension neuter *without* the normal -um ending. That isn't "supposed to be" either. Perhaps it's better to just describe the thing as irregular, no declension. > Perhaps it's like "pelagus/pelage" (sea).) This is also 2nd declension neuter. Normally all neuter nouns have plurals that end in A, but this one doesn't. "Vire", by analogy, is a plausible choice; so also is "vira". > The best plural, then, ignores the Latin, and is "viruses". For sure. For those who've read this far and are now wondering about the 1st declension: those have singular -a and plural -ae, and are usually feminine. An example is "nebula". Mark Brader, Toronto | The plural of "virus" is "ad nauseam". msb@vex.net | --Fred Bambrough My text in this article is in the public domain. ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Reply-To: hukolau@NOSPAM.att.net Subject: Re: Curious Plurals (was Re: Spam Going Out Under My Name) Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 21:02:54 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Michael Quinn wrote: > This discussion of latinate plurals reminds me of one I saw some > sometime back ago in a handbook on shipboard radio antenna systems - > it went to some length to argue that that the plural of (radio) > antenna was "antennas", not "antennae", the latter being reserved for > insects (or as I later read, politicians, as in "political antennae", > which may invite a debate over the distinctions between the two > species.) Never came across it again, but I think of it when I > occasionally hear someone refer to "radio antennae". > Regards, > Mike > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So are there any real differences > between politicians and insects, or spammers for that matter. Or > did spammers (a low specie of life) evolve from insects? PAT] No Patrick, the spammers are a by-product of "whale s*it". Stuff that drifts to the bottom of the ocean and is the lowest known form of life. :) >> Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 21:51:02 +0000 >> From: Withheld >> Subject: Re: Spam Going Out Under My Name >> 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. "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ 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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