From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Mar 10 14:03:52 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i2AJ3po19527; Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:03:52 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:03:52 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200403101903.i2AJ3po19527@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 #114 TELECOM Digest Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:04:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 114 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Comcast to Carry NBA TV; NBA's 24-Hour Television Channel (M Solomon) EPIC Alert 11.05 (Monty Solomon) Nextel Seen Having to Pay For New Airwaves - Sources (Monty Solomon) Re: The Price of Email is Constant Vigilance (Fred Goldstein) Re: The Price of Email is Constant Vigilance (Scott Dorsey) Re: The Price of Email is Constant Vigilance (William Warren) Re: Snapshots in Time (Sammy@nospam.biz) Cell Number Portability: An Update (Eric Friedebach) Directory Assist Charges, was Re: Need to Block Out (Danny Burstein) Re: Need to Block Outgoing Calls to Specific Numbers (AES/newspost) Data and Clock Synchronization (Martin) Re: Strange Phone Number (Joseph) Re: EchoStar May Lose (James Bellaire) 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: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 09:37:51 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Comcast to Carry NBA TV; NBA's 24-Hour Television Channel Comcast to Carry NBA TV; NBA's 24-Hour Television Channel Will Be Available to Comcast's 21 Million Customers PHILADELPHIA & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 9, 2004-- Separate Initiative to Provide NBA VOD Programming to Comcast Customers Comcast Cable and the National Basketball Association today announced a comprehensive multi-year agreement through which NBA TV will be made available to Digital Cable customers on Comcast systems serving more than 21 million customers. With this agreement, NBA TV will be available to 66 million U.S. homes. Beginning in April, Comcast, the nation's leading cable and broadband communications provider, will make NBA TV, the league's 24-hour television channel, available as part of its Digital Cable service in major markets - including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Seattle -- with plans to launch to most markets later this year. Customers who subscribe to Comcast's HDTV service also will be able to enjoy select NBA TV programming in crystal-clear high-definition. In addition, through a separate agreement with NBA Entertainment, Comcast will provide customers with access to NBA video-on-demand programming as part of its ON DEMAND service. On-demand content will include game highlight packages as well as popular programs such as NBA Inside Stuff. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40787951 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 09:56:10 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EPIC Alert 11.05 ======================================================================= E P I C A l e r t ======================================================================= Volume 11.05 March 9, 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington, D.C. http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_11.05.html ====================================================================== Table of Contents ====================================================================== [1] EPIC Files Brief in National DNA Database Case [2] International Privacy Framework Almost Final [3] EPIC Replies to Northwest's Defense of Privacy Policy Breach [4] Electronic Voting Problems Plague Super Tuesday [5] Gov't Seeks Public Comment on Important Privacy Regulations [6] News in Brief [7] EPIC Bookstore: Beyond Genetics [8] Upcoming Conferences and Events http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_11.05.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 09:32:35 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Nextel Seen Having to Pay For New Airwaves - Sources By Jeremy Pelofsky WASHINGTON, March 9 (Reuters) - Nextel Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:NXTL) will likely have to pay more for airwaves it wants in a spectrum swap aimed at resolving interference with emergency service users, officials close to the matter said on Tuesday. The Federal Communications Commission has developed a plan to let Nextel move operations to the 1.9 gigahertz band from three lower bands while paying $850 million to reorganize the 800 megahertz band and upgrade public safety communications, they said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Nextel would have to pay the overall difference between the valuation of the airwaves swapped, the costs incurred for moving its operations and to reorganize the 800 Mhz band, the officials said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40789188 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 10:05:27 -0500 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: The Price of Email is Constant Vigilance William Warren replied to my suggestion thusly, > If a small percentage of spam recipients take the time to answer the > pitches, track down those whom have started the spew, and make their > feelings known, the human costs to the spammers will quickly overwhelm > their profit margins. > When I get a mortgage pitch, I fill it out and send it back. If > someone is pitching a weigh-loss product, I demand details via postal > mail. For "herbal viagra", I ram my complaints right down the throat > of the distribution center. ... Those are, of course, labor-intensive. And they can expose the victim's identity to the spammer. Bad. I understand the old "fill the business reply envelope with junk and stick it in a maibox" trick, but I have doubts that it would be safe with spammers, who, after all, are by definition criminals. > Mark Crispin says, >> SMTP is 32 years old. > More like 22 or so years old. > Until the TCP/IP transition on January 1983, the primary means of > conveying mail was via the MAIL command in FTP. > I wrote one of the first widely-distributed SMTP servers in 1982. Well, yes; I was taking some liberties by going back to the 1972 predecessor of SMTP, when IIRC two commands were added to FTP in order to transfer mail. SMTP redid the syntax and made some tweaks, but stayed with the host-to-host realtime transfer model. In contrast, FIPS98 and X.400 are very different mail systems. Not that I'm recommending X.400! (FIPS98 was probably better, but lost out to the CCITT's might. I think we used it inside DEC for a while, in the DECmail MTA.) > Danny Burstein says, >> 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. > Once again I'll disagree with this whole concept. The only thing > necessary is to acknowledge that ISPs and their customers only have > connectivity to others because of the kindness of strangers. And to > take action based on that. > 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) Impossible. Period. We've had blacklists (RBLs) for years. We've had terms of service for years. But the Internet is global, with open entry for new ISPs. It's not possible to shut down every possible entry point for spam before the damage is done. It's a common misperception that if 90% of foo comes by way of path X, that if path X is closed, the arrival rate of foo will drop by 90%. This gets used in a lot of public policy debates -- for instance, if country X produces Y% of drug Z, then shutting down country X's export of drug Z will reduce the amount on the street by Y%. It ignores the fact that countries T, U, V and W will happily fill the gap. It's more like fluids -- if something is not absolutely airtight, gas or liquid will find an opening. Spam is like noxious, corrosive gas. It finds the smallest holes and blasts an opening through. One opening might be shut, but the spammer will find another one, if it possibly exists, or even create one. Today, mail worms (viruses) are being used by spammers to create proxies on innocent ISPs' networks. That joins the established "open a temporary account" trick, whereby the spammer remotely signs up (via free trial, stolen credit card, whatever) for an ISP service and blasts through it for as long as it takes for the ISP to catch on. Even a few hours of that can cause a lot of spam. It doesn't much come from the Spam King's IP address block any more. I'm differentiating here between "policing" and "enforcement". Danny is calling for a "policing" approach, whereby misbehavior is noted, stopped, and punished after the fact. Spammers *will* get around that -- there's too much money involved, and the protocols are too inviting. I'm saying that *enforcement* is necessary, which means that certain actions are monitored in real time and blocked before misbehavior occurs. Micropostage is an enforcement mechanism. The Postal Service doesn't come around annually and ask you how many letters you sent, please pay up. They don't deliver the letter without the stamp. That's enforcement. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: The Price of Email is Constant Vigilance Date: 10 Mar 2004 10:23:59 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) In article , wrote: > William Warren wrote: >> We don't need more software: we need to fight back. > Oh, please. Who has time to do that?! If you don't have time to fight back, you don't have time to use mail. The reason that e-mail has become almost completely useless for legitimate work is that admins running major sites didn't take care of their problems when the spam problem began almost a decade ago. If the folks at uunet had actually disconnected spamming customers when they got complaints in 1996, instead of finding excuses, the problem would never have got out of hand the way it is now. Until major backbone sites actual take spamming seriously, until folks refuse to peer with spam sources and refuse to sell service to spam sources or buy connectivity from spam sources, we will have spam. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: William Warren Subject: Re: The Price of Email is Constant Vigilance Organization: Comcast Online Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 13:08:51 GMT wrote in message news:telecom23.113.7@telecom-digest.org: > 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. Who has time to do that? YOU DO! As soon as you poison a list, they'll stop sending you their sleeze! Think of it as a front-loaded mutual fund. The pain is only at the start, and then it's payoff. Bill ------------------------------ From: Sammy@nospam.biz Subject: Re: Snapshots in Time Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 05:31:33 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I remember very well three such 'cuts' > in my life. In 1986, I knew the cut time for my local Pacific Telephone Crossbar to DMS-100. I had two lines at the time, with one connected to the other, and one on speaker phone at the designated time (2:00 AM Saturday). They were about 20 minutes late but there was no doubt when the connection dropped. Interesting bit of trivia: Why are cuts at 2:00 AM on Saturday rather than Sunday? Answer: it gives them 24 additional weekend hours to repair a cut gone bad. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Also, (at least many years ago when the theory was first developed) [1] Saturday was the slowest day, traffic wise and [2] 2:00 AM was the least amount of traffic on Saturday. I do not know if those satistics are still true or not, but old habits are hard to get rid of. PAT] ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: Cell Number Portability: An Update Date: 10 Mar 2004 09:17:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Aude Lagorce, 03.09.04, Forbes.com NEW YORK - As corporate doomsday scenarios go, it was right up there with the biggies. Millions of Americans would dump their cell phone providers, we were told last fall, when wireless number portability came into effect. Oops. Between Nov. 24 and mid-January, just slightly more than one million Americans switched providers, far fewer than originally predicted. But number portability hasn't been all good news for the carriers. A very large percentage of switches couldn't be completed and complaints were far greater than had been anticipated. While some of those problems have been fixed, a second round of number portability looms. "It was a tempest in a glass of water," concedes Roger Entner, a program manager at the technology research firm the Yankee Group, of the switching hubbub. Entner, who had expected that up to five million users would change carriers, puts the actual tally at 1,015,000 as of Jan. 12, the latest period for which statistics are available. Gartner analyst Tole Hart writes in a report that "the amount of porting was generally lighter than the industry expected." http://www.forbes.com/technology/networks/2004/03/09/cx_al_0308portability.html Eric Friedebach /No Dirty Words On The Whiteboard/ ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Directory Assistance Charges, was Re: Need to Block Outgoing Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 08:58:45 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Withheld writes: [ lots snipped ] > (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.) [ snip ] > 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. I recognize how difficult this whole situation is. Dealing with a degrading mental illness like Alzheimers takes a toll on everyone. But I may be able to suggest something that will help, at least a tiny bit. In the above paragraph you mentioned your relative uses directory assistance at $0.95/call. Many telcos will, on the determination that the customer is unable to use a paper telephone book, offer "free" directory assistance (just like in The Good Old Days). The exact requirement for this disability rating varies, but you mentioned in your post (in a section I clipped, now that I look ...) that your relative had serious cataracts. A note to that effect by a medical professional may be enough to get you at least this small amount of relief. Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think the writer can also get telco to disable the 'press one to have this call connected' option removed from the line. I do know that people have tried to override any restrictions on 900/976 dialing by asking the operator to complete the call, but that won't work. TSPS won't allow the operator to complete the call. I do not know whether or not an operator can complete a call to an otherwise blocked number. If the operator *can* complete such a call, then I doubt 'call blocking' (*60) would protect the called party either, since the call's ID is lost in the switching matrix once it leaves the TSPS place. PAT] ------------------------------ From: AES/newspost Subject: Re: Need to Block Outgoing Calls to Specific Numbers Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 08:10:18 -0800 > (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.) Tough problem (in multiple senses). Get a programmable phone with a lot of storable numbers (I've seen 'em with 20 choices), put all the numbers she needs in those, and somehow disable the keyboard for anything else??? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You know that President Reagan has a rather advanced case of Alzheimer's in the past few years. His saint of a wife, Nancy, is with him almost constantly. It **is** tough on all concerned. PAT] ------------------------------ From: visepp@yahoo.de (Martin) Subject: Data and Clock Synchronization Date: 10 Mar 2004 05:48:31 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'm desiging at a 3 wire pcm audio interface with clock, frame sync and data. Clock, data and frame sync are fed from extern. The max. clock rate starts is 2.048MHz. This clock generates interanlly a 12.288MHz clock. So far so good. The problem is, that I have to synchronize the incoming singal with the 12.288MHz signal but I don't know the phase between the 12.288MHz Clock and the incoming signals. This can be +/- T/2 of the 12.288MHz clock. This can result in cycle slips. Who has experiences which such a problem? I'm implementing this circuit into a Spartan II device. Regards, Martin ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Strange Phone Number Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 07:19:09 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NONOcom On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 22:31:23 GMT, Adam wrote: > 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. That NPA/NXX is owned by Broadview Networks, Inc. It's a New York City zone 2 office. http://www.telcodata.us/telcodata/telco?npa=646&exchange=539 remove NONO from .NONOcom to reply ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 10:30:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: EchoStar May Lose From: James Bellaire In TD 23-112 Pat said: > You readers who subscribe to satellite: tell us more about it. I've tried not to let it consume my life. :) It is fair to note that Viacom is a huge conglomorate with media outlets across the nation, not only in the 16 cities that were pulled. So watch the news for bias -- in case one has ever watched the news and thought there would be no bias. Echostar had no choice. Without a contract it would have been illegal to continue airing the TV and "cable" feeds that are now slates or gone. They managed to keep them on for a few more weeks thanks to a court order. Viacom offered and accepted no "extension while negotiating" as Time Warner (Turner Network channels such as CNN, TNT, TCM, etc) and Echostar are operating under. They demanded the final contract be signed. That contract asked for 5-7% increases each year for the next several years AND forced carriage of many Viacom channels. And they are using their CBS channels as leverage. Echostar doesn't want the whole package and do not want what will amount to a 40% price increase over the next few years. And now we have a stalemate. Viacom started playing inaccurate banners on their main feeds to ALL cable and satellite providers on Friday evening in an attempt to flood Echostar's phone centers. Plus, as you note, they have been playing this channe "only on DirecTV and cable" ads on TVLand and SpikeTV ... two Viacom channels that remain under contract and will remain on Echostar until at least 2005. But Viacom has the media. They can blast Echostar 24x7 on their feeds that are still airing on DirecTV and cable and put up emotion targeted websites. And in the end, Echostar can do nothing until Viacom *allows* their channels to be aired on Dish Network. It is a mess -- but I as a DishNetwork subscriber still have over 100 video channels in my "120 channel package". This dispute has removed 8 of "my" channels -- and Echostar has moved some channels down from higher packages. Plenty to watch while we wait it out. PLUS they are giving $1 or $2 credits to compensate their customers. ($2 if you lost your Viacom O&O CBS.) It's not the end of the world. James Bellaire http://telecomindiana.com/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What are you getting now on the empty channels? Were they reassigned to somestuff that had previously been in a more expensive package? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mark Atwood Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 18:13:12 GMT Subject: More About TiVo, ReplayTV [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Due to an editing glich, the subject line on this had to be reconstructed to approximation. PAT] Linc Madison writes: > However, if I catch a glimpse of an ad that interests me, I will rewind > and watch the ad. I have the same experience, my ReplayTV does a decently good job of autozapping the ads, but sometimes it leaves a second or so of the last ad in a block, or a few seconds of the middle of a longer 60 second ad in the middle. And sometimes occationally, rarely, I will see it, jump back, turn off the autoskip, and FF to that ad. PVR is not the death of ads. It's the death of *boring* ads. In the Superbowl before last, the bit that had the most TiVo replaying was the Brittney Spears Pepsi ad. Mark Atwood | When you do things right, mra@pobox.com | people won't be sure you've done anything at all. http://www.pobox.com/~mra ------------------------------ 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. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #114 ******************************