From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Mar 14 02:12:25 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i2E7CPl26561; Sun, 14 Mar 2004 02:12:25 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 02:12:25 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200403140712.i2E7CPl26561@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 #121 TELECOM Digest Sun, 14 Mar 2004 02:12:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 121 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson One File Swapper per Lawsuit, Please (Monty Solomon) Broadband in Northern MI (Lincoln J. King-Cliby) Billed by AT&T for PNG (Fred Atkinson) Ham Domain Article (Fred Atkinson) President Bush Wants to Bug the Internet (The Finger) Re: Ever Heard of PeoplePC Online? (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Ever Heard of PeoplePC Online? (Steven J Sobol) Re: SkyFILES: The Aftermath of DISH/Viacom (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: SkyFILES: The Aftermath of DISH/Viacom (ellis@no.spam) Re: Dial From Outlook (Gary Breuckman) Re: Anybody Know Anything About Broadband On Power Lines? (John Levine) Re: Last Laugh! Important notify about your e-mail (Geoffrey Welsh) 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: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 01:53:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: One File Swapper, One Lawsuit By Katie Dean A federal judge ruled on Friday that the music industry cannot sue over 200 alleged file sharers in one swoop and that the companies must sue each defendant individually. The Recording Industry Association of America grouped 203 so-called "John Doe" defendants -- "John Doe" because their identities are not yet known -- into one lawsuit when it sued them in federal court in Philadelphia last month. All of those sued use Comcast as their Internet service provider. Since a federal court barred the RIAA from using the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to subpoena names of suspected copyright infringers in December, the recording industry has resorted to the "John Doe" method. The RIAA now must identify alleged file swappers by their Internet Protocol addresses, but does not know the individuals' names. On Friday, Judge Clarence Newcomer authorized a subpoena in the case of John Doe No. 1, because the RIAA had submitted a detailed case against the individual. But the judge ordered the music industry to file separate suits against the remaining 202 alleged infringers. Each of the lawsuits will be doled out to judges in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and the RIAA will have to make separate requests to seek the identity of each alleged file sharer. http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62576,00.html ------------------------------ From: chsvideo@hotmail.com (Lincoln J. King-Cliby) Subject: Broadband in Northern MI Date: 13 Mar 2004 18:55:35 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello again, My grandparents recently relocated their primary residence from central California to what has been their vacation place in Northern Michigan (St. Ignace to be percise) ... Their CO is literally a few hundred feet away from their home, and they had been told by an Ameritech/SBC/whatever the heck they are this month telemarketer that DSL was available [I was a -bit- suprised given how sparsely populated the area is], now it appears that it isn't. Cablemodem service also does not appear to be available. Any ideas for a low-cost (I.e. $<60/mo) broadband option that may be available for them? (They've experienced DSL. They like the speed.) The town library is also nearby, so if nothing else, two WiFi access points in a point-to-point configuration may be an option ... Thanks, Lincoln [By the way - I have heard from various places that St. Ignace was one of the last places to eliminate its cordboard in the late 60s ... any truth to this?] ------------------------------ Reply-To: Fred Atkinson From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Billed by AT&T for PNG Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 18:22:03 -0500 My landlady switched from AT&T to Power Net Global in September of last year. I know this is true because I helped her switch over. And she has been paying Power Net Global ever since. AT&T's collections people have been calling her. They sent her an invoice for calls allegedly made in the December/January timeframe, a time when her calls were going through Power Net Global. I've heard of being billed for the same calls by two different carriers, but not in a long time. Every time she calls to try to get this resolved, she get's transfered and transfered and transfered and nobody ever wants to take responsibility for helping her resolve the situation. She's called them every month since she receive the bill. She called again today and I got on the extension. We finally got through to a supervisor. He now claims that the calls were for September. She has a check that cleared to pay for that. Finally, we got his name, address, and telephone number (his name is Jack Davis). She is sending him a copy of her payment (a copy of a canceled check, I believe). Meantime, AT&T's collections people are calling her and hounding her and will not take that she's already paid as an answer. They say she has to contact AT&T and resolve that with them. I told Mr. Davis to make sure they stopped hounding her as my landlady is trying her best to get this resolved. It's sad she has to go through all of this just because no one at AT&T customer service is able to work with her to settle the matter. I have doubts that this is going to get it stopped. Does anyone have any suggestions? Fred [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: AT&T is the classic example of an unstoppable object meeting an unmoveable object. The company reaches some 'decision' and then things just start moving along and nothing seems to stop them. Nothing makes them go away. And if, by chance, someone at AT&T -- not their collection office; forget that bunch -- ever does take some pity on you and listen to what you are saying, you'll be the person expected to do the back track and the auditing, the required 'customer service' work to close the matter. Long ago I gave up on almost every telco of any size to accomplish anything. Not AT&T, certainly not Southwestern Bell. If your landlady has copies of past bills (either from AT&T or from Power Net Global), and cancelled checks for the same period of time (let's say September through December) I would make one final attempt to resolve it by sending a copy of each cancelled check and each bill for the months in question; two copies, one each to the collection people and one to the company with a note saying "We are paid in full, our file on this matter is now closed. If you contact us again further, by phone or letter, we will regard it as harassment." Maybe then they will let you alone. Oh, certified mail is the best way to send the letters. Or use "poor man's certified" which is called 'proof of mailing' and that only costs about fifty cents. You take the letter(s) to the post office and give them to a counter clerk. **DO NOT DEPOSIT THEM IN A MAIL BOX. THEY HAVE TO PHYSICALLY BE HANDED OVER TO A CLERK WHO PLACES THE POSTAGE ON THEM, APPLIES THE PROPER INDICIA AND KEEPS THEM IN HER/HIS POSSESSION.** You then get back from post office a slip of paper with indicia on it marked 'proof of mailing'. Certified or registered mail is much more expensive, and 'proof of mailing' works quite well and is much less expensive. After a few days, if the mail 'sticks' (that is, was not returned to the sender), the legal assumption is delivery was accomplished. Maybe that will clear this mess up for you. PAT] ------------------------------ Reply-To: Fred, WB4AEJ From: Fred, WB4AEJ Subject: Ham Domain Article Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 18:23:44 -0500 Pat, I've noticed that there seems to be some ham radio operators on Telecom-Digest. So, I thought I'd send a blurb along about this. I've written an article showing a very inexpensive way to set up a ham radio domain on the Internet (Example: My call sign is WB4AEJ, therefore my ham radio domain is: http://www.wb4aej.com (or .net, or .org, etc.) and my email address is 'fred@wb4aej.com'. The URL to the article is: http://www.wb4aej.com/hamdomain. I have documented over 600 ham domain sites on the Internet (in the article) and most of them were done even without the aid of my article. But, if you're not sure how to get started doing this, my article is a good place to get help. It gives a step-by-step procedure that keeps the guesswork out of it. Also, Pat, I'd appreciate a link to this article on the Telecom Digest site if you are so inclined. Anyone else that can provide links to it on a Web site with ham related content please feel free to do so. I have some 'link to' graphics at http://www.wb4aej.com/hamdomain/faq.html#linkto if you want to use them. But, a text link would be appreciated as well. Thanks, Fred Atkinson, WB4AEJ ------------------------------ From: The Finger Subject: President Bush Wants to Bug the Internet Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 17:55:50 GMT Organization: RoadRunner - Tampa Bay Hello, fellow techies, An insidious plot is underway to bug the Internet. Many of you who have lost jobs know what bad news the Bush administration has been to the IT community. The story is getting even worse. President Bush wants to bug the Internet. He wants to read your email, see what you are downloading and find out what you are buying on Ebay. He also wants to listen in your VoiP calls. If you are as angry as I am, please call him or send a fax or email to: president@whitehouse.gov Phone: (202) 456-1414 Fax: (202) 456-2461 Please crosspost this article in other conferences you read. Justice, FBI Seek Rules for Internet Taps TED BRIDIS Associated Press WASHINGTON - Technology companies should be required to ensure that law enforcement agencies can install wiretaps on Internet traffic and new generations of digital communications, the Justice Department says. The push would effectively expand the scope of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 law that requires the telecommunications industry to build into its products tools that U.S. investigators can use to eavesdrop on conversations with a court order. Fearful that federal agents can't install wiretaps against criminals using the latest communications technologies, lawyers for the Justice Department, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration said their proposals "require immediate attention and resolution" by the Federal Communications Commission. They called wiretaps "an invaluable and necessary tool for federal, state, and local law enforcement in their fight against criminals, terrorists, and spies." "The ability of federal, state, and local law enforcement to carry out critical electronic surveillance is being compromised today," they wrote in legal papers filed with the FCC earlier this week. "Communications among surveillance targets are being lost ... These problems are real, not hypothetical." The FCC agreed last month to hold proceedings on the issue to "address the scope of covered services, assign responsibility for compliance, and identify the wiretap capabilities required." Critics said the government's proposal would have far-reaching impact on new communications technologies and could be enormously expensive for companies that need to add wiretap-capabilities to their products, such as push-to-talk cellular telephones and telephone service over Internet lines. The Justice Department urged the FCC to declare that companies must pay for any such improvements themselves, although it said companies should be permitted to pass those expenses on to their customers. Stewart Baker, a Washington telecommunications lawyer and former general counsel at the National Security Agency, complained that the government's proposal applies broadly to high-speed Internet service and puts limits on the introduction of new technology until it can be made wiretap-friendly. Baker said the plan "seeks to erect a brand new and quite extensive regulatory program" that gives the FBI and telephone regulators a crucial role in the design of future communications technologies. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 11:50:51 -0600 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelectronics.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Ever Heard of PeoplePC Online? PAT wondered about PeoplePC ... I used their internet service for a couple of years, until early 2003 when they switched to requiring a proprietary dialer program. PeoplePC got their start as a PC sales outfit that gave away internet access with their PCs; apparently they've unbundled the internet part now and dropped PC sales entirely. They were still selling them a year ago, though. You could buy a cheap PC from them for about what you'd pay for AOL dialup. The PCs were refurbished and/or last year's model and what you were actually getting was a 3-year installment sale. Still, it might have been useful for someone who had no money skills. If you're going to be paying AOL $29/mo. anyway, why not send it to these guys and get a PC in the bargain? Of course it's not much of a PC and you're locked in for several years. But what do you have after three years of AOL? WRT their internet service -- no complaints from me about price, reliability, or speed. I don't know if any of this changed when they went to the proprietary dialer because I can't use one of those so I never accessed the service in that configuration. There are cheaper ISPs out there for dialup access, though. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Ever Heard of PeoplePC Online? Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 13:34:22 -0600 dold@everxheard.usenet.us.com wrote: > TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: >> month, you can get the PeoplePC Online 'Accelerated' version where > They, or at least the name and the kid in the ads on TV, have been > around for a while. A couple of years ago you could get a PC and > internet service for $29.95 per month, with a new PC every year or > two. > I think they gave up on that one, and just offer the ISP service now. And I believe they resell Earthlink. > I have no experience with them. Me neither. JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, Apple Valley, CA PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net Domain Names, $9.95/yr, 24x7 service: http://DomainNames.JustThe.net/ "someone once called me a sofa, but i didn't feel compelled to rush out and buy slip covers." -adam brower * Hiroshima '45, Chernobyl '86, Windows 98/2000/2003 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Earthlink has a division which is called 'Mail Station', which is an email only device that looks sort of like an electric typewriter. Subscribers get an internet address of name@mymailstation.com . If you have a Mail Station (you can buy them at Walmart and various places) they use dial-up to send and receive email. I think the price at Walmart, etc is around a hundred dollars for the device and a year of prepaid service on mymailstation.com if all you want is email, and yes, those folks get a truckload of spam in their email everyday also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 20:09:57 EST Subject: Re: SkyFILES: The Aftermath of DISH/Viacom In a message dated Sat, 13 Mar 2004 10:55:56 -0500 Monty Solomon writes: > by Michael Hopkins > Viacom and EchoStar have ended their skirmish. But was the dispute > just the beginning of more challenges to come for the cable and > satellite TV industry? > The spat between the companies, concerning DISH Network's carriage of > Viacom channels and CBS owned-and-operated nets, not only put the > spotlight on the two entities. It opened up a Pandora's Box of issues > for the entire pay-TV business. > This week, consumers got a peek behind the curtain that divides them > from the wizardry of multichannel programming. The curtain was wide open for several months as Cox and ESPN fought over ESPN increases. Both sides ran TV commercials and full-page newspaper ads, and of course Cox threatened to take ESPN off Cox Cable. Probably they would have, too, Hardly a peek inside the curtain, but virtually a war noisily played out in public. It's not clear how the DISH-Viacom battle was any different, except that one of the players was a satellite service and the other was the cable company. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: ellis@no.spam Subject: Re: SkyFILES: The Aftermath of DISH/Viacom Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 03:55:17 -0000 Organization: S.P.C.A.A. In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > and they may begin to push for the chance to pick and choose > only the channels they want instead of paying for dozens of > channels they don't really care to watch. I've been wanting that chance for years and now that I've heard that ESPN is the most expensive "basic" cable channel I want it even more. I have no use for sports channels, shopping channels, channels that aren't in English, soap opera channels, or Fox News. So why am I paying for them? http://www.spinics.net/linux/ ------------------------------ From: Gary Breuckman Subject: Re: Dial From Outlook Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 21:47:55 -0600 Organization: Puma's Lair - catbox.com In article , "saturnius" wrote: > Hello, > I am looking for a product that connects a standard telephone with MS > Outlook. I was just wondering whether there is a standard telephone > with a serial/USB/Bluetooth interface and an Outlook plugin. I would > like to use the Outlook Contacts but also keep my standard telephone. Is > there something like this? There are other 'contact managers' that do well with this, ACT is the one that I use. Act will find a contact, dial the number for you (using the computer's modem), and will keep a log of all the calls with the notes you enter after the call. It will schedule a later call for followup, if you want it to. The only problem with ACT is that it's hard to do this with a multi-line telephone in an office environment, unless you can plug the modem into one of the lines on your telephone set. With a single line (or at least a less 'shared line large office' type setup, it's fairly easy. There are others besides ACT -- Goldmine is another, and there are contact managers for specific industries like PC-Law and Amicus for the legal profession. They are very similar to ACT, but keep different information and organize it in the format the profession finds more useful. ------------------------------ Date: 14 Mar 2004 04:04:41 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Anybody Know Anything About Broadband Over Power Lines? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Does anybody know anything about broadband service provided over power >> lines? > It's basically an impractical idea. Power lines are not exactly the > constant-impedance at very high frequencies. Yup. It also turns out to be rather expensive. A transformer very efficiently filters out RF, so the power company has to put equipment on each transformer to bridge the data from one side to the other. In Europe, which I gather is where BPL was originally proposed, the voltages are higher and people live closer together, so you get over a hundred customers on a typical transformer. In the US, the average number is four. If you have to go out and add extra expensive equipment for every user or two, the economics are really bad. > The folks promoting BPL are mostly promoting it for last-mile access > in rural areas, which is in fact the place where the lines are least > going to be able to handle any sort of impressed carriers. Yes, and where you're going to have only one or two customers per transformer, making the economics even worse. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly. ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Important notify about your e-mail account. Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 13:14:13 -0500 Organization: Bell Sympatico noreply@telecom-digest.org wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This not so funny spam showed up in > my mailbox here at MIT on Friday. PAT] > Dear user of e-mail server "Telecom-digest.org", > We warn you about some attacks on your e-mail account. Your computer > may contain viruses, in order to keep your computer and e-mail account > safe, please, follow the instructions. > For details see the attach. > Sincerely, > The Telecom-digest.org team http://www.telecom-digest.org > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There then followed a particularly > nasty virus the 'Telecom-digest.org team' sent out around the net to > everyone. NASTY IGNORANT PEOPLE DOING THIS.! PAT] (1) It's not spam, it's a virus (Bagle, version j and later); someone who has your e-mail address on their system has been infected and you're the lucky recipient of a gift from them. (2) You haven't been singled out - the virus uses one of several templates, and fill in the text using the recipient's domain name (i.e., when sending itself to joe@foo.com it would say "Sincerely, The foo.com team http://www.foo.com") Geoffrey Welsh Always looking for a good condition original 'chicklet keyboard' Commodore PET ------------------------------ 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #121 ******************************