From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Apr 5 02:53:56 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i356ruC26558; Mon, 5 Apr 2004 02:53:56 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 02:53:56 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200404050653.i356ruC26558@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 #161 TELECOM Digest Mon, 5 Apr 2004 02:54:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 161 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Tech Trends May Come Together (VOIP News) Setting up Internet Phone Service Not Costly (VOIP News) High-Speed Calling: Internet-Based Phone Service Goes (VOIP News) Regulators Weigh Whether New Services Fall In Their Realm (VOIP News) How India is Saving Capitalism (Monty Solomon) Re: Hot-Spot Wi-Fi Business (John R. Levine) Re: Hot-Spot Wi-Fi Business (Clarence Dold) Re: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Hassle (Rich Greenberg) Re: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Hassle (Nick Landsberg) Re: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Hassle (Tony P.) Re: Excel Communications (John A. Weeks III) Some Interesting Telecommunication Books on Ebay (Ray) Trying to Locate Robert K. Johnson Jr. (Lewis) 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 are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: VOIP News Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 16:43:26 -0400 Subject: Tech Trends May Come Together Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87~11271~2062678,00.html Wi-Fi wireless Internet access and voice-over service could bring free or inexpensive calls By Associated Press NEW YORK -- Two hot technology trends -- Wi-Fi wireless Internet access and voice-over-Internet service -- could come together soon with Wi-Fi phones that promise free or very inexpensive calls. Voice-over-Internet carrier Vonage Holdings Corp. is testing Wi-Fi handsets it hopes to sell by fall. The devices would look like cordless phones and would likely be used in homes with Wi-Fi networks. Rival Net2Phone Corp. is six months into a test of technology aimed at turning Microsoft Corp.'s Pocket PCs into Wi-Fi cell phone replacements. Full story at: http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87~11271~2062678,00.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 16:53:49 -0400 Subject: Setting up Internet Phone Service Not Costly Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~10834~2062675,00.html Free software downloadable By John Moran - HARTFORD COURANT Ray Wade, a computer systems operator in Atlanta, sounds puzzled as he answers my phone call. He doesn't get many incoming calls on this line. That's because Wade's phone isn't connected to the telephone network. It's connected directly to the Internet. I've dialed Wade's phone more or less at random from a list of hundreds of people who have signed up for free Internet telephone accounts. All that's required is a broadband Internet connection, a free downloadable software program, an account with an online phone provider and a PC equipped with microphone and speakers. Wade's Internet phone connection comes courtesy of a service called Free World Dialup, often abbreviated as FWD. Full story at: http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~10834~2062675,00.html ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 16:35:34 -0400 Subject: High-Speed Calling: Internet-Based Phone Service Goes Mainstream Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~10834~2062849,00.html By Eve Mitchell, BUSINESS WRITER NOEL FRANK LIKES to talk to his friends and family both in the U.S. and Canada. Now, the Oakland resident has found a way to talk to them as much as he wants without racking up a big long-distance bill. Frank is one of the growing number of consumers making inexpensive voice calls via his high-speed Internet connection and a regular phone instead of the traditional phone network that has been around since the telephone was invented more than 125 years ago. "I have family spread out around the U.S. and Canada. That was one of the reasons. And the other reason I'm doing it is for entrepreneurial activity. Some time the business I'm working on may end up on the East Coast," said Frank. Full story at: http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~10834~2062849,00.html ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 19:08:02 -0400 Subject: Regulators Weigh Whether New Services Fall Within Their Realm Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87~11271~2062848,00.html By Eve Mitchell, BUSINESS WRITER IF IT SOUNDS like a phone call and rings like a phone, should it be regulated like a phone company? That's the question facing regulators looking into the growing business of sending voice calls over the Internet. At issue before the Federal Communications Commission and the state Public Utilities Commission is whether VOIP, or voice over Internet protocol, providers like Vonage and Packet8 should be classified as telecom providers. Such a move would open them up to regulation and fees that don't apply to them now. A PUC staff report has concluded that VOIP is a telecom service but commissioners have yet to act on the recommendation. If VOIP is ultimately classified as a telecom service, providers would have to collect from their customers fees to support Universal Service Fund programs, pay access charges to traditional phone companies for using their networks, and provide enhanced 911 service for customers. VOIP providers are already trying to come up with solutions to meet 911 requirements. And because VOIP calls travel over the Internet instead of the traditional circuit-switched network, VOIP providers also are exploring ways to comply with federal wiretapping laws. Full story at: http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87~11271~2062848,00.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Those public servants never give up, do they? They'll be damned if they can't have VOIP service to screw up the way they have screwed up landline telco over the years. Anyway, I thought a couple days ago I read here that (a) the FCC had decided that VOIP was not going to be subject to those regulations and/or (b) the federal government was pre-empting all the state and local agencies and going to take it over exclusively for themselves. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 01:59:42 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: How India is Saving Capitalism For one Silicon Valley company, hiring Indian programmers wasn't about greed, it was about survival. A special report from Chennai, globalization's ground zero. Editor's note: This is the first of a series of reports on the offshoring of white-collar jobs, reported on location in India. By Katharine Mieszkowski April 1, 2004 | CHENNAI, India -- CollabNet's story is symbolic of a larger truth about the the globalization of white-collar jobs -- particularly those in the technology sector. If Silicon Valley now faces an uncertain future as a center for software development, the seeds of that uncertainty were planted not in India or China or the Philippines, but right at home. The build-out of the Internet and the tremendous advances in computer technology over the last decade have opened up new passageways between disparate economic realities. And no one has embraced one of the central premises of the Internet age -- easy interconnection between everybody -- more than software engineers. The immense strength and vitality of the open-source software phenomenon is a clear testament to that. It wasn't so-called "Benedict Arnold" CEOs or greedy shareholders or even the ruthless laws of economics that crafted these new virtual workplaces where job performance is measured purely by your output on the screen, no matter where you log on from. Technological innovation and investment opened up the doors for coders in India and China and everywhere else. It is one of the tremendous ironies of the digital era that the easy flow of capital and labor to every inch of the globe, made possible by the superhuman efforts of American and European programmers, has ended up wreaking havoc on the job security of those very programmers. Got a problem with that, Silicon Valley? Don't blame India, and don't blame the CEOs. Blame yourself. http://salon.com/tech/feature/2004/04/01/collabnet/ ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Hot-Spot Wi-Fi Business Date: 4 Apr 2004 16:35:48 -0400 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Why would you want to have security like WEP? No public hotspot >> that I've used has any encryption. >> ... which means, in effect, don't read or write anything over that >> link that you don't want anyone/everyone else in or near the >> coffee shop to read also. WEP doesn't secure you against other people on the same wlan. If you want security, you use ssh or ipsec to make an encrypted tunnel back to your home network. At one point I was looking into setting up a hotspot at my local coffee joint (see http://www.gimmecoffee.com/contact.php, the one at the lower left, sort of like Starbucks except with good coffee) and I found some open source Linux routing stuff that wouldn't have been too hard to adapt to hotspot accounting. In my case, my goal was more to ensure the viability of the store than to make money, so my plan was to print up tickets each with a code that was good for an hour's connect time, and have the barista give out a ticket on request whenever someone bought something. If you want to sell access, poking around on the web I found several packaged billing systems that you can either buy, or that they'll provide and split the revenue with you. ------------------------------ From: dold@Hot-SpotXW.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Hot-Spot Wi-Fi Business Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 04:23:37 UTC Organization: a2i network Tony P. wrote: > You need to somehow authenticate the users, and keep out those who > aren't paying. WEP can't be used as you'd have to constantly change > the key. I misunderstood the post. I thought you were suggesting that WEP wasn't sufficient, not that it wasn't the right solution at all. > Instead you get a solution like Blue Socket. That's the expensive part > of the system. I didn't recognize Blue Socket. I see that it is in use on at least a few college campuses. There aren't any prices listed on their web site. There would be other sub-$1000 hardware solutions to consider, but I suppose Blue Socket could be considered along with Cisco solutions, if that were the size endeavor being undertaken. http://bluesocket.com Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Major Hassle Date: 4 Apr 2004 16:20:23 -0400 Organization: Organized? Me? In article , AES/newspost wrote: > Or to phrase this differently, shall we both watch and see what further > news about this shows up on comp.risks? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not know if it will show up on > Computer Risks or not. I haven't communicated with Dr. Neumann for > quite a long time. If it does, you can let me know if you wish. PAT] Pat, since you were involved in this personally, why don't you submit it to Peter for the Risks Digest? Rich Greenberg Work: Rich.Greenberg atsign worldspan.com + 1 770 563 6656 N6LRT Marietta, GA, USA Play: richgr atsign panix.com + 1 770 321 6507 Eastern time zone. I speak for myself & my dogs only. VM'er since CP-67 Canines:Val(Chinook,CGC,TT), Red & Shasta(Husky,(RIP)) Owner:Chinook-L Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/ Asst Owner:Sibernet-L [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I am sort of busy right now with some other things; I have a lot of spam to clean out of the archives which manages to sneak in there every day, and deal with my sister and her son (my nephew)'s problems, etc. People are free to copy whatever they want from here (and god knows, some people take it wholesale like the Nigerian telecom digest people), so if its found to be interesting enough I should imagine it will find its way to Risks. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Reply-To: hukolau@NOSPAM.att.net Subject: Re: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Major Hassle Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 20:39:45 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Tony P. wrote: > In article , ptownson@telecom- > digest.org says: [SNIP] >> Apparently either Walmart Stores or the card processor ran the 'batch' >> two or three times instead of ONCE Thursday night, and a lot of people >> were affected. Credit cards were charged two or three extra times, >> and debit cards the same way. Debit cards which went negative as a >> result or credit cards which went over limit as a result were 'forced' >> to balance. Its all being ironed out now. > What it looks like is the batch was run three times, and each time > failed and was resent. It was probably communication problems. What it looks like to me is that: a) The programmers who programmed the batch fouled up, either issuing a bogus error message or aborting the continuance of the batch when (possibly) some single item was badly formatted. There is a concept of "commit transaction" in any well-designed system. If you are going to abort the whole run when you discover an error you should back out all the previously committed transactions from that run. (This is why database systems have rollback logs.) b) The technicians who were running the batch were not properly trained to do a backout when something failed. (Which brings up the question of the programmers again and it also casts doubt upon the wisdom of management to hire the least-trained help available as well as not to train them). See signature for bottom line. "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sunday afternoon I went over to the Independence Walmart Supercenter and the District Manager, local store manager and assistant managers all grew so weary of dealing with me they printed out a copy of the 'confidential memo to Walmart personnel' they received from their head office for me, after they had trimmed *their names* and the *senders names* from the top of the email. The email otherwise reads like this: Subject: Walmart Customers Affected by Computer Disruption at First Data; Special Toll Free Number Opened for Customer Inquiries Source: Comtex News Network (PR Newswire via Comtex) On Thursday, April 1, First Data (NYSE: FDC)experienced a computer hardware problem that affected MasterCard and Visa transactions at Wal-Mart. In some instances, the problem resulted in *triplicate* postings to consumer debit and credit card accounts. First Data has been processing corrections to the affected accounts since Friday, April 2. First Data opened a toll free hotline for customers at 1-888-893-0626 (as of 8 pm Friday night) to assist consumers. First Data apologizes to Wal-Mart and its customers for the inconvenience. This is a global issue with Visa/MasterCard debit and credit cards and concerns some Customer/Members being charged three times for their purchases processed by First Data Merchant Services on 4/1/04. This is not a Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. issue. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. only submitted ONE charge for processing and was only paid ONE time. Visa and MasterCard have sent notifications to their issuing financial institutions, asking that any overdraft/NSF charges related to the dupliate or triplicate transactions should be removed from the Customer's account. Action required: Any Customer/Member experiencing overdraft or NSF charges or sales authorization failures due to this problem *only on 4/1 or 4/2/04* should call 1-888-893-0626. For transactions involving an immediate purchase where customers are declined because of insufficient credit or insufficient funds on hand **due to this error only**, please call 479-273-4357 for evaluation and manual credit approval if warranted. We believe all reversals of this error should be completed by 4/5/04, but all Walmart managers and cashiers should be made aware of this issue. (There then followed a long paragraph entitled 'About First Data' which I am not including here which talked about all the wonderful things going on in Denver with FDC.) ================= Its too bad Walmart's first response was to simply deny any of this and tell people to contact their own 'credit card issuer'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Major Hassle Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 21:40:52 GMT In article , tom.horsley@att.net says: >> ..."not anyones fault"... > Ah yes, takes me back to the good old days when I worked in the > payroll/MIS area at Florida Atlantic University. > The management folks would tell us computer grunts, "Use this data set > tonight", or "Turn on/off the flag for this or that deduction > tonight". > Then it would turn out they were wrong, all the checks were screwed > up, so they would have to fix it in the next check and always included > a note about how "a computer error" was to blame :-). That's what comes of putting the finance guys in charge of the I.T. guys. It's been like that wherever I've worked and always had entertaining consequences. At one point I worked for a retail business and was responsible for their accounting and POS systems. The president of the company considered himself a financial genius of sorts. I've been gone from the place for about 3 years. While I was there, I worked with the controller and tamed the POS/Accounting interfaces to the point where we'd get regular distributions and things would actually balance out. We could actually say what our cash position was at any given time. Once both of us left it went straight down hill. From what I hear, they haven't been able to get the POS distributions into the accounting system for months. It's because the company president, being the know it all, has completely fouled the entire system. In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to dold@WalmartXMi.usenet.us.com: > And yes, it was First Data Merchant Services, whose latest line was > 'you will get the credit when we get a chance to issue it sometime > soon.' They could not produce any supervisor today either. I told > them and Paypal (who has already started nagging me to 'cure my > negative balance') that I would prefer to get sued so they could all > get exposed for the fools they are. PAT] Go for it. They will not take the bait so instead, contact your local television station. Most of them now have a consumer unit that aggressively goes after these things and makes a big public stink about it. Because this involves three national names it will probably get uploaded to the network. On the flip side, you state attorney general or the district attorney more than likely has a consumer unit. I'd suggest giving them a call too. As to FDMS, I set up several merchants with various 'banks' and 95% of them were tied in via FDMS. It's because they basically own the transport network for all transactions. And they have their share of problems, believe me. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The first of the two credits back to my PayPal account came through Sunday evening on the computer. The second credit appeared a few minutes ago, at 1:00 AM Monday morning. PayPal had dutifully given me 55 cents 'bonus cash back' for each of the two erroneous transactions. I will see if tomorrow they reverse those as well; probably they won't. But this whole exciting weekend has been an excellent example of *why* I keep a 'financial firewall' in place, and only keep enough money in my 'working debit card' (the plastic I use for internet purchases and other small items where plastic is the preferred [or only realistic] method of payment) in my account. Imagine if I had used an open ended credit/debit card and instead of Walmart (a reasonably honest, even if ineffectual) merchant I had used one of the internet guys. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Excel Communications Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 17:51:44 -0500 From: John A. Weeks III Organization: Newave Communications In article , John Levine wrote: > I'm currently paying ECG 4.9 cpm, one minute increments, no monthly > fee or minimum, and if I got around to calling them up and asking for > their new plan, that'd drop to 3.5 cpm. These rates are not the > lowest available > It'd take an awful lot of MLM kickbacks to make Excel cheaper than > normal LD service. I think I'd rather just pay less and not have to > build a pyramid. Keep in mind that most people are on the most expensive plan that their carrier offers. The reason is that folks convert to companies like AT&T and MCI, and their discount program is discontinued after a year or two. They end up on some default plan. I have seen folks on MCI plans that pay 25 cents a minute plus a monthly access fee, and they have been on these plans for years. In comparison, any other rate plan looks like a good deal, Excel included. Most of these carriers are quite content to rape their smaller customers. LD is a funny business ... you can find rates as low as 2.5 cents per minute and as high as $2.50 cents a minute for the very same minute of long distance time carried on the same fiber optic lines. I don't know of any other product that has a two order of magnitude price variation like this. ==================================================================== John A. Weeks III 952-432-2708 john@johnweeks.com Newave Communications http://www.johnweeks.com ==================================================================== ------------------------------ From: rayj00@yahoo.com (Ray) Subject: Some Interesting Telecommunication Books on Ebay Date: 4 Apr 2004 16:54:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have a 5 volume set of books entitled "Telephone Communication Systems". These were put out by Western Electric in 1970. They cover early telehone exchanges as well as a slew of other information. These would make a nice addition to anyones technical library. This set is in NEW condition and could probably be considered antique. Please go to ebay and check out the desciption if you are interested. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4202098340 Thanks, Ray ------------------------------ From: Lewis Subject: Searching for Robert K. Johnson Jr. Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2004 10:41:16 -0600 Patrick, I recently noticed an e-mail thread that included some messages from a Robert K. Johnson Jr. I have been trying to locate an old Air Force friend by that name who went to work for IBM in the early '70s. I lost touch with him at that time. His e-mail address was deleted by request in the online thread. I wonder if you would do me the favor of forwarding this message to him to allow him the opportunity to respond to me if he would choose to do so. The guy I'm looking for was from the Detroit area and stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base, an officer and navigator. He was also an avid skier. A Mississippi native, I was at Ellsworth in the missile wing. Please let me know if you're willing and able to forward this to him. Thanks. Lewis McCool Dolores, Colorado lmccool@sprynet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If it is the one I am thinking of I will pass it on now. No guarentees is the right one. I think the only reason he asked to be anonymous was because of the Norvergence problem. 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'. 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 #161 ******************************