From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jul 2 03:03:42 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i6273gS01843; Fri, 2 Jul 2004 03:03:42 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2004 03:03:42 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200407020703.i6273gS01843@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 #314 TELECOM Digest Fri, 2 Jul 2004 03:04:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 314 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson WFMT, WCPE, YUSA Lost Satellite Carriage on G5-T7 (Neal McLain) Re: Interception of E-Mail Raises Questions (Barry Margolin) Re: What Happened to the "2-Way" Craze? (Chris Farrar) Re: Internet Access With a 800 Number (John Levine) Re: Domain Registration Recommendations (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Domain Registration Recommendations (SELLCOM Tech support) Re: Inet Domain Name, Help (J Kelly) Re: Inet Domain Name, Help (Steven J Sobol) Re: New Wrinkle - Nigerian Scam (Carl Moore) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 23:28:43 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: WFMT, WCPE, YUSA Lost Satellite Carriage on G5-T7 In my post of May 24, 2004 (TD 23:255) , I noted that WFMT, WCPE, and YUSA were about to lose carriage on Galaxy 5, Transponder 7. They lost carriage at 6:05 PM EDT on June 30, 2004, when all five aural subcarriers fell silent. The backstory: Back in the late 1970s, when the cable industry began to use satellites to distribute television broadcast stations to cable systems, no broadcast station was permitted to uplink its own signal. Due to a quirk in the FCC policy at the time, only an independent third-party common carrier could do so. The first television station to be uplinked under this rule was Turner's WTCG (subsequently WTBS), carried by Tulsa-based common carrier Southern Satellite Systems. Shortly thereafter, United Video, another Tulsa-based carrier, started carrying WGN-TV. In 1979, United Video added FM radio station WFMT, "piggybacked" (as separate left-and-right aural subcarriers) on the WGN-TV signal. In subsequent years, it added WCPE (Wake Forest) and YUSA (Yesterday USA, a non-broadcast audio service). Since that time: - Tribune Company has split its programming operations into two separate signals: WGN-TV (the Chicago television station) and "WGN Superstation" (the satellite feed for cable TV and DBS companies). Although both WGNs carry a lot of the same programming, "WGN Superstation" is legally not a broadcast station; consequently Tribune can legally uplink the signal itself. - The owners of United Video have sold the company to Gemstar- TV Guide (the same company that publishes TV Guide). As a division within Gemstar, United Video was renamed UVTV. UVTV has continued to uplink WGN Superstation (on G5-T7) even though by now Tribune could opt to do so itself. UVTV also has continued to uplink radio signals WFMT, WCPE and YUSA on subcarriers of the WGN Superstation signal. - Gemstar-TV Guide sold UVTV to EchoStar in April, 2004. EchoStar, of course, owns Dish Network, which makes it one of the cable industry's least-favorite competitors (as in "don't feed the cable pig"). This situation puts Tribune in an awkward position: Tribune sells WGN Superstation to Dish Network as well as to all of Dish's competitors: cable TV companies, DirecTV, and VOOM. Understandably, Tribune probably doesn't want to be EchoStar's customer for uplinking service at the same time it's also selling WGN Superstation to EchoStar's competitors. The net result of all this is that Tribune has discontinued its relationship with UVTV. I believe it has built its own uplink facility, although it may have contracted with somebody else. In the process, it's providing two versions of WGN Superstation's signal: one digital and one analog. The two signals are transmitted over a single transponder (still G5-T7); these signals occupy the entire bandwidth, with no room for subcarriers. And that means there's no room for WFMT, WCPE, or YUSA. Furthermore, since Tribune is not a common carrier, it doesn't have any reason to carry any other signals anyway. For its part, UVTV, now that it's part of EchoStar, certainly isn't about to do anything that would benefit the cable TV industry! Furthermore, without the WGN Superstation signal, it may not have anything to piggyback aural subcarriers on anyway. So WFMT, WCPE, and YUSA have been forced to make other arrangements. As of July 2: WFMT has not arranged for any form of alternate satellite carriage, and it apparently doesn't intend to. It has announced informally (in e-mails and phone calls to distressed listeners) that it intends to resume internet streaming as a subscription service (it had discontinued streaming in October 2002 for cost reasons. ). But it still hasn't made any official announcement about its streaming plans or the proposed subscription fee. Its website is silent on the issue. WCPE has moved to Galaxy 5 Transponder 15 (HBO East), at the same subcarrier frequencies (5.58 and 6.12 MHz) . WCPE's internet stream remains unchanged (and free) at . YUSA (Yesterday USA) has moved to AMC-4 satellite, Transponder 6 (Ku-band) as an SCPC signal at 11.807 GHz . Neal McLain nmclain@annsgarden.com ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Interception of E-Mail Raises Questions Organization: Looking for work Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 22:56:16 -0400 In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > An advocacy group said Tuesday's ruling by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court > of Appeals opens the door to further interpretations of the federal > Wiretap Act that could erode personal privacy rights. What I don't understand is why they prosecuted the company under the Wiretap Act. The court ruled that this wasn't wiretapping, because they analyzed the messages while they were stored on the server, not in transit. OK, but what about the Electronic Communication Privacy Act? I thought it protected the privacy of email. The provider is only allowed to read the mail as necessary to provide the service (e.g. for troubleshooting, or spam/virus filtering that the customer authorizes). Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I thought that those rules did not apply to a company monitoring its own servers and its own employees activities. ? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 21:19:52 -0400 From: Chris Farrar Reply-To: cfarrar@spamcop.net, cfarrar@attglobal.net Subject: Re: What Happened to the "2-Way" Craze? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Am I correct that the 'walkie-talkie > two way feature' was not a Walkie-Talkie in the 'traditional' sense of > using a two-way radio as such (RF or radio frequency) signals but was > actually a speed dial type thing for one number on the cell phone > which in addition to being speed dialed was put on a handsfree type > 'loudspeaker' type thing? How did that Nextel feature actually work? PAT] Not really Pat. Nextel in the US, and Telus Mobility (Mike) in Canada operate iDEN networks. The Popular Science magazine did a "How does it work" story about Nextel's system a few issues ago. Basically, Nextel (or Telus/Mike) give you the hand held phone. To interface with the phone system, it has a dialable number in the North American Numbering Plan in the NXX-NXX-XXXX format. It also has a "private" number, in the form of AREA*NETWORK*UNIT. For instance, the company I work for has Mike "phones" in every vehicle. They have a dialable telephone number like any other phone. But to chat vehicle to vehicle, you only punch in the 4 digit vehicle number and push the PTT (push to talk) button on the side of the phone, just as you would with a traditional walkie-talkie or CB radio mike. To use the phone mode you dial a number and hit the send (not PTT) key, and to hang up you hit the end button (again, not the PTT key). Every time you release the PTT the call "drops" so if you are unit 1, and talking to unit 2, if 2 doesn't key the PTT to speak to you fast enough, unit 3 could talk to you while unit 2 gets a message along the lines of "User is busy in private" on his phone LCD. It is essentially a traditional walkie-talkie, but goes through a cellular switch and is half duplex (if the other party is talking, you can't, and vice versa) rather than a full duplex telephone connection. Otherwise it acts like a fancy Family Radio Service (FRS) walkie-talkie with much longer range. Also you can establish talkgroups, so instead of 1 to 1 communication, you can do 1 to as many as needed, like a conventional 2 way radio, and even set it up so a base or dispatch can do 1 to many, but all others can only do 1 to 1. Also selectable when you set up your plan is whether or not you want other groups to be able to call your units. For instance, if my "home" is Buffalo NY my phone number could be 716-555-1257 and my private number is 716*12345*1257. Anyone in my network group (12345) can call my unit by simply punching 1257 and hitting the PTT. But Jose's Widgets which has 716*54321*3456 can only reach my walkie talkie feature with my permission. If I allowed "interconnect" Joe would have to enter the entire sequence, including the stars (ie 716*12345*1257) and he could talk to me, not just the last 4 digits. He could save that in the directory on his phone, and cut out having to punch it in all the time, but if he as a different network group, you have to "dial" all the digits. He could still reach me as a telephone by dialing 716-555-1257, and I can't block that while I can block the walkie talkie feature. The last 4 digits of the private number don't have to be related to the phone number, ie 716-555-1257 could have a private number of 716*12345*1151, or 716*12345*1 On an aside, Nextel, Telus, and a few other companies recently signed a roaming agreement for the walkie talkie feature. Until early April 2004 if you had a Nextel phone and were in Canada, only the telephone part would work, the walkie talkie (Direct Connect) feature wouldn't. Likewise a Telus Mike unit would only Direct Connect in Canada and only operate in telephone mode in the USA. As of the middle of April 2004, users can Direct Connect to each other in different countries (Ie a Nextel user in Charleston South Carolina can Direct Connect to another Nextel user in Toronto Canada, or a Nextel user could Direct Connect from Vancouver BC to Toronto ON, or Mike from Montreal PQ to Los Angeles CA). I believe the other 2 countries involved are Argentina and Chile, but not positive. ------------------------------ Date: 1 Jul 2004 23:11:33 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Internet Access With a 800 Number Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > The only thing 800 numbers buy you is ANI and the ability to let > customers call you from anywhere without incurring long distance > charges. ANI is available without getting an 800 number if your dialup > lines run off PRI circuits or T's. ANI can also give you the ANI II digits that tells you what kind of line the call is from: http://www.nanpa.com/number_resource_info/ani_ii_assignments.html As others have noted, lots of people make entirely legitimate pizza orders from mobile or coin phones, but at least it gives you a hint that you need a different callback number. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 20:47:56 -0500 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Domain Registration Recommendations Richard Gozinia wrote: > 1) Use a quality hosting company, where Spam Assassin or similar, > possibly in combination with Real Time Block Listing, is incorporated > into their mail server. No, no, no, NO! I recently had a problem where my email provider blackholed a mailserver from which I receive a large amount of legitimate email. It took a week to get the block removed, and during that time email sent to me through the blackholed server was irretrievably lost. A couple of years ago email I sent to my father was dropped for about two weeks when my father's ISP blackholed my ISP's mailserver. I prefer to receive ALL my email -- spam included -- and filter it locally. That way, if a filter becomes "overly aggressive" for some reason it's under _my_ control, not that of some faceless dweeb who is only reachable when it suits him. The pipe that brings me email should be just that: a pipe. No filters, no blacklists, no tampering of any kind. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Domain Registration Recommendations Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 23:26:57 GMT Richard Gozinia posted on that vast internet thingie: > 3) Use Javascript to obscure e-mail addresses displayed on your web > pages. I just went to your site and I see that "support@sellcom.com" is > placed on the home page in the clear (and you posted it in this group). > I hope you're not blaming your registrar for spam you receive at that > address, because I bet you're getting tons of it. That's because the > spammers' robots will continue to harvest it as long as it's posted in > the clear, as it is now. This is plainly unnecessary. Use simple > Javascript techniques to prevent this, since spammers' harvesting robots > can't (yet?) cope with Javascript. Check out these URLs for more info on > obfuscating your addresses: I publish my email address and run filters etc and etc and when I have time just report the scum that manage to get through. The problem here was that buydomains had a scheme that involved publishing a temp email addy in the whois but auto-forwarding it on to me. Because of that I could not block the IP without blocking them (my registrar, not good to block, eh). Spammers just started harvesting and spamming the "temp" addys which were then auto-forwarded to the real email address. To their credit and honor buydomains has now modified their system to either not publish any email address for the domain or require manual web intervention in order to email the "temp" whois address. They, once they figured out what was going on acted extremely fast to fix the problem. This was far more complicated than I initially realized or said. Steve at SELLCOM http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Motorola Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Beamer, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Mini-Splitter log splitter! If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ From: J Kelly Subject: Re: Inet Domain Name, Help. Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 20:49:19 -0500 Organization: http://newsguy.com Reply-To: jkelly@newsguy.com If you own xyzabc.com then you automatically own all subdomains for that domain as well. The subdomains do not have to point to the same IP address, it all depends on how you set up the records in the DNS zone for the domain. On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 20:40:43 GMT, Ron Reaugh wrote: > What exactly is a registerable Internet domain name and how does that > relate to subdomains? For instance if one owns or is renting > xyzabc.com then what exactly is jkl.xyzabc.com? I understand that the > jkl is known as a subdomain. But is the complete entity > jkl.xyzabc.com something that is independently registerable from > xzyabc.com? OR if one owns xyzabc.com then does one own automatically > all subdomains off xyzabc.com in Internet domain name space? I guess > the question boils down to whether '.' is a special and > non-registerable character below the TLD level and therefore the > registerable domain name is that entity in the right most portion of > the name including one and only one '.' which preceeds a valid TLD? ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Inet Domain Name, Help Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 19:15:56 -0500 Brad Houser wrote: >> What exactly is a registerable Internet domain name and how does that >> relate to subdomains? For instance if one owns or is renting >> xyzabc.com then what exactly is jkl.xyzabc.com? A subdomain of xyzabc.com. :) When you register a domain, "glue" records are placed in the root nameservers (a group of servers that handle top-level references for domains like .com, etc.) saying "if you're looking for xyzabc.com, this is where to look." "This" normally refers to nameservers you or your ISP run, and if you wanted to set up, for example, www.xyzabc.com, whoever maintained those nameservers would have to set up a record ... normally that'd be you, or your ISP (one or the other, depending on who maintains the domain). Several domain registrars also provide other services like email accounts and web space. They generally also offer the use of their nameservers if you don't want to run your own or use your ISP's. >> jkl is known as a subdomain. But is the complete entity >> jkl.xyzabc.com something that is independently registerable from >> xzyabc.com? No ... >> OR if one owns xyzabc.com then does one own automatically >> all subdomains off xyzabc.com in Internet domain name space? Yes. >> I guess the question boils down to whether '.' is a special and >> non-registerable character below the TLD level and therefore the >> registerable domain name is that entity in the right most portion >> of the name including one and only one '.' which preceeds a valid >> TLD? Any given part of a domain name must not use the dot. Dots are only used to separate the top level from the second level, etc. (top level being "com" in this example, second being "xyzabc", third being "jkl") JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/ Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED) Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 16:56:31 EDT From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: New Wrinkle - Nigerian Scam Try going to the web site for the Netherlands embassy (at least in the U.S.). Among "headlines" is an entry for June 2, 2004 (only about a month ago) which answers inquiries received in the U.S. by the Netherlands embassy and consulates about those "Netherlands / lottery" emails. It points out some of what we call "red flags", and one of those is the use of a cell phone number to reach the supposed "official". In the case of the Netherlands, it's pointed out that such numbers start with "+31 6". Do you remember there being noise in opposition to use of special area codes in +1 for cell phones? Yes, I saw Paul Cook's message, and a "last laugh" response which pointed out the use of 31 September as a date in one of those "Netherlands / lottery" emails. Do any of those emails have a fax number in area code 413 in western Massachusetts? ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #314 ******************************