From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jul 9 14:49:33 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i69InXa01120; Fri, 9 Jul 2004 14:49:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 14:49:33 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200407091849.i69InXa01120@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 #326 TELECOM Digest Fri, 9 Jul 2004 14:49:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 326 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Administrivia : A Few Losses on Thursday (TELECOM Digest Editor) Driving While Distracted / Bill Would Limit Cellphone Chatter (Solomon) A Brief History of Wi-Fi (Monty Solomon) Re: Tap Into Neighbors' WiFi? Why Not, Some Say (Matt Simpson) Re: Tap Into Neighbors' WiFi? Why Not, Some Say (William Warren) Re: Tap Into Neighbors' WiFi? Why Not, Some Say (SELLCOM Tech support) Adaptive Filtering Limitations (fabrice) Re: Picking a Cell Service, was Re: What Happens (John R. Levine) Re: What Happens to Expired Wireless Numbers (David Esan) Re: US FCC Wants Radio, TV to Keep Tapes of Shows (Paul Vader) Re: T-Mobile USA Views Highest Rank in Customer Care (Hammond of Texas) Re: Internet Phone Service For Every Home Not Far Off (Robert Bonomi) Re: How Much Does Bill Gates Know About His Software? (Dave Garland) Re: Norvergence Bankrupt (DevilsPGD) Re: Norvergence - How Do I Get Out (Dan Lanciani) Re: Is There an Official Statement on NorVergence (Scott Dorsey) Re: Norvergence Bankrupt (T. Seam Weintz) Re: Us Like Spies - Doomed to Viruses (T. Sean Weintz) VOIP Solution Consumer VOIP (Keith Bare) AT&T's VOIP Rollout Heats Up Price War (VOIP News) Re: Jeff Pulver on VoIP Hearing in Washington, D.C (Fred Goldstein) 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: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 01:32:52 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Administrivia : A Few Losses on Thursday As you may have noticed, there has been quite an increase in telecom mail in the past few days, and yesterday there were three issues of the Digest and enough to make a fourth issue. But three or four messages got mixed up in the spam bucket and trashed accidentally. What you see in the this mid-day issue on Friday clears out my queue totally so if you said something and it has not appeared here in the past four or five issues of the Digest between yesterday (Thursday) and now (Friday, 2:00 PM Eastern), you may presume it got lost and should be resubmitted and I hope you will accept my apologies for the loss. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 01:41:18 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Driving While Distracted / Bill Would Limit Cellphone Chatter By Elise Castelli, Globe Correspondent | July 8, 2004 When it comes to cellphone use, many drivers are like Ashby resident Bob Higgins-Steele: They know it can be dangerous, but they do it anyway. They dial their children. They call the office. They gab with friends. All while navigating traffic. "I know I shouldn't do it," Higgins-Steele said this week as he left a Charles Street parking garage. "I see a lot of people talking while they drive, and it can't all be about work." Massachusetts lawmakers are considering legislation that would force drivers like Higgins-Steele to use a headset if they use the phone while driving. If the bill passes, Massachusetts would be the third state in the nation to restrict drivers' cellphone use. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/07/08/driving_while_distracted/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 01:51:02 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: A Brief History of Wi-Fi CASE HISTORY From The Economist print edition Wireless networking: Few people have a kind word to say about telecoms regulators. But the success of Wi-Fi shows what can be achieved when regulators and technologists work together IT STANDS as perhaps the signal success of the computer industry in the last few years, a rare bright spot in a bubble-battered market: Wi-Fi, the short-range wireless broadband technology. Among geeks, it has inspired a mania unseen since the days of the internet boom. Tens of millions of Wi-Fi devices will be sold this year, including the majority of laptop computers. Analysts predict that 100m people will be using Wi-Fi by 2006. Homes, offices, colleges and schools around the world have installed Wi-Fi equipment to blanket their premises with wireless access to the internet. Wi-Fi access is available in a growing number of coffee-shops, airports and hotels too. Yet merely five years ago wireless networking was a niche technology. How did Wi-Fi get started, and become so successful, in the depths of a downturn? Wi-Fi seems even more remarkable when you look at its provenance: it was, in effect, spawned by an American government agency from an area of radio spectrum widely referred to as "the garbage bands". Technology entrepreneurs generally prefer governments to stay out of their way: funding basic research, perhaps, and then buying finished products when they emerge on the market. But in the case of Wi-Fi, the government seems actively to have guided innovation. "Wi-Fi is a creature of regulation, created more by lawyers than by engineers," asserts Mitchell Lazarus, an expert in telecoms regulation at Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth, a law firm based in Arlington, Virginia. As a lawyer, Mr Lazarus might be expected to say that. But he was also educated as an electrical engineer-and besides, the facts seem to bear him out. http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=2724397 ------------------------------ From: news01@jmatt.net (Matt Simpson) Subject: Re: Tap Into Neighbors' WiFi? Why Not, Some Say Date: 9 Jul 2004 05:56:12 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com SELLCOM Tech support wrote in message news:: > Monty Solomon posted on that vast internet thingie: > It is astounding how many people are running wide open wireless. I don't know which is more astounding: the number of people running wide open wireless without realizing it, or the number of people who know they're wide open and don't care. A while ago, I read a newspaper column, I forget where, but it was allegedly a "technical" column, meaning it was written by somebody that the newspaper was trying to pass off as a technical guru. He was raving about the benefits of free wireless. When he's on the road, he always looks for open nets, and doesn't feel guilty, because he's returning the favor by leaving his home wireless wide open so others can use it. He made it sound like it was some kind of wonderful exercise in communal computing; neighbor helping strangers. He didn't even mention all the possible problems. There's certainly a possibility for informed discussion about whether this is a good idea (sort of like leaving your house wide open in case somebody needs shelter, at the risk of being assaulted or robbed), but any such discussion should certainly mention the negatives, and some "technical columnist" was preaching its virtues as if there is no downside. ------------------------------ From: William Warren Subject: Re: Tap Into Neighbors' WiFi? Why Not, Some Say Organization: Comcast Online Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 15:06:09 GMT Tony P. wrote in message news:telecom23.324.13@telecom-digest.org: > In article , support@sellcom.com > says: >> Monty Solomon posted on that vast internet thingie: >> It is astounding how many people are running wide open wireless. I >> went to my car to check a power supply for my laptop and a wireless >> connection just popped up, and it wasn't mine. >> I went to a free WiFi coffee shop and had my choice of two free >> connections, one due to the kindness/wisdom of the coffee shop owner, >> the other probably some local business that was not aware that they >> were giving away free Internet. >> I think the limitation on range gives some people the feeling that if >> someone does use it that it is a neighbor so they don't really mind. > Yup ... I'm working for a government agency and the boss keeps a Linksys > router running so he can connect via his Mac. It doesn't forward SMB > packets which is good, but it does provide IP via DHCP. Granted, we're > in the sub-basement of a building made of marble, steel and brick. The > connection doesn't go far but he doesn't even bother turning on WEP or > even hiding the SSID. > I shake my head sometimes. Well, not to play devil's advocate, but -- why? Think about it: the only thing the business owner gets by turning off SSID broadcast, restricting MAC addresses, and enabling WEP is a lot of headaches and maintenance and complaints from his employees. The default (open) installation works, the effort to restrict it and track the restrictions and deal with the complaints and accomodate visitors costs real money -- probably several times what the bandwidth costs - so why wouldn't a businessman make a common-sense decision to ignore the "problem"? For as long as I can remember, salesmen at major companies have routinely sent free parts to anyone that asks for a single item: the cost of accounting for "one time" sales is larger than the profit to be gained. In like manner, so long as his network has spare capacity, why should a businessman care if someone else is using his bandwidth?(1) It's like trying to condone off your section of the land in front of your house. Yes, you paid for it: but the cost and effort of errecting and maintaining a fence -- and suffering the inconvenience of having to walk around it yourself -- will almost always outweigh the "benefit" of having the neighbor's kids not cutting across your yard. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If no other laws exist against this > sort of behavior (using someone else's WiFi without permission) do > you think FCC regulations against intercepting radio signals not > intended for yourself and using them to your benefit would apply? PAT] Pat, IMNSHO the FCC has more important work to do. I don't think it's "illegal", and if it is it's on a par with stapling a yard sale sign to a light pole. FWIW. YMMV. Bill (1) Please don't raise the "security" banner: it's a red herring to me. Anyone who has substantial money to gain by eavesdropping on a corporate network will find other ways in, and that's what strong end-to-end encryption is for anyway. The only "security" to be gained by guarding a WiFi network is job security for the IT guys. ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Tap Into Neighbors' WiFi? Why Not, Some Say Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 16:27:17 GMT Tony P. posted on that vast internet thingie: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If no other laws exist against this > sort of behavior (using someone else's WiFi without permission) do > you think FCC regulations against intercepting radio signals not > intended for yourself and using them to your benefit would apply? PAT] Well, you're sitting in a park with your laptop. How do you know for sure that it is not just a neighborhood "thing" to provide free wi-fi to the park. More free wi-fi areas are popping up all the time. The person running the router is giving away service. 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: fab540@caramail.com (fabrice) Subject: Adaptive Filtering Limitations Date: 9 Jul 2004 07:32:30 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi all, I'm simulating a transmission under simulink. Here are the characterisics. emitter QPSK modulation Factor 2 oversampling channel Fir filter [1 0.2 1 0.2 0.3 0.5] case 1 filter [1 0.2 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.5] case 2 receiver adaptive filtering (LMS algorithm) In the first case my filter does estimate properly the channel wherease in the second case I recuperate a good constellation. My question is, are traditional adaptive filtering technics still working when the transmission channel superimpose several path with the same power as the main path. (case 1) Thanks for your help! Fabien ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Picking a Cell Service, was Re: What Happens Date: 9 Jul 2004 06:55:01 -0400 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> - No locking the phone so that I can't use it with multiple > All the above, except as noted, sounds like Trac Fone to me. It's a > pre-paid cell service that you basically can get for about $8/month > plus time charges. You buy "units" which equate to minutes in your > home area, and 2 units per minute when roaming. In the US, most phones are de-facto locked even if they're not officially locked. The Trac Fones I've seen are TDMA, and all of the TDMA phones have per-carrier microcode for preferrred networks and the like. CDMA phones have per-carrier code, too. Only GSM phones are really portable among carriers. My Voicestream GSM tri-band works great with a Swiss Orange SIM. 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 ------------------------------ From: david_esan@hotmail.com (David Esan) Subject: Re: What Happens to Expired Wireless Numbers Date: 9 Jul 2004 07:03:40 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com ranck@vt.edu wrote in message news:: > All the above, except as noted, sounds like Trac Fone to me. It's a > pre-paid cell service that you basically can get for about $8/month > plus time charges. You buy "units" which equate to minutes in your > home area, and 2 units per minute when roaming. > I have been looking into this myself recently, and will probably be > getting one of their phones at WalMart in the next couple of days. > You can also buy the pre-paid cards at WalMart and other big > retailers. I was looking for a similar 'phone, and found one from Virgin Mobile. Cost is about $20 for 3 months, or less than $7/month, .25/minute at all times. The local Cingular people have one for $10/month, 10 cents per minute. Any other suggestions? Thoughts? Comments? ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: US FCC Wants Radio, TV to Keep Tapes of Shows Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 15:04:48 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Monty Solomon writes: > WASHINGTON, July 7 (Reuters) - U.S. communications regulators proposed > on Wednesday that radio and television broadcasters keep recordings of > their programming for a period of time to help the agency enforce > federal indecency standards. If the FCC wants to play morality police, they should make their own damn tapes. * -- * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Does FCC still require that all radio stations keep a log of all their programs for inspection by FCC on demand? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 17:18:14 -0700 From: Hammond of Texas Subject: Re: T-Mobile USA Views Highest Ranking in Customer Care by JD Power Monty Solomon wrote: > Confirmation that T-Mobile Customers Indeed do "Get More" > BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 8, 2004--The results of the > 2004 Customer Care Performance Study released today by J.D. Power and > Associates ranks T-Mobile USA highest among national carriers, by a > significant margin. Yep, and by now, the T-Mobile bean counters are hard at work figuring out just how much they have *over*-spent on customer service expenses. ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: Internet Phone Service For Every Home Not Far Off From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 11:42:46 +0000 In article , John R. Covert wrote: > Tony P. wrote: >> get a measured service line, in most places they're < $10 a month anyhow. > Not in Massachusetts. In fact, once you include the $6.45 FCC Line > charge and USF charge, not anywhere, unless local service is less than > $3.00 per month. And I doubt that it is less than $3.00 per month > anywhere. > 1 Measured Residence Service $12.36 > 2 Verizon Local Calls 1.05 > 3 Surcharges and Taxes > FCC Line Charge 6.45 > Federal USF Surcharge .57 > MA State and Local Tax .25 > Federal Tax .61 > Total $22.14 > The 1.05 in local calls paid for 41 calls totalling 40 minutes > at 0.0100 per call plus 0.0160 per minute, for $1.05 in usage. > /john Things are relative. In Illinois: basic residential service: $ 5.61 FCC Access Charge 4.50 ------ $10.11 9-1-1 local govt 1.50 State infrastructure maint .05 State additional charges .01 Infrastructure maint credit .79CR Federal Universal Service Fee .39 Il Universal Service Fee .01 ------ $ 1.17 Taxes Federal at 3% .30 State at 7% .70 Municipal telecom tax .60 ------ $ 1.60 Local calls .75 ====== GRAND TOTAL $13.63 The 0.75 in local calls paid for 21 calls totalling 86 minutes at 0.03 to 0.05 (time-of-day sensitive) per call. All were within 8 mi. radius, so 0.00/minute. ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: How Much Does Bill Gates Know About His Software These Days? Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 18:54:06 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) wrote: > You're right of course -- it was the first DOS basic. I'll be danged > if I can come up with a name other than just "Microsoft Basic" - did > the original one have any other name? * Nope. Sometimes it was referred to as MBASIC, to distinguish it from other flavors (like CBASIC, which IIRC compiled to intermediate p-code) that were sometimes available on the same machines. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My memory is a little hazy on this, but about 1977-79 when Apple introduced its ][ and ][+ computers, didn't they cut some deal with Microsoft to use Microsoft BASIC but rename *their* version of it Applesoft BASIC? The code and the command set and stuff was all identical to the Microsoft version, only the name was different, Applesoft instead of Microsoft. PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Norvergence Bankrupt Reply-To: bond-jamesbond@crazyhat.net Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 08:16:25 GMT In message csx130mph@yahoo.com (Dan Pham) wrote: > Will any criminal charges be filed against Norvergence's executives? Of course not, this is still corporate america. HAM AND EGGS: A day's work for a chicken; A lifetime commitment for a pig ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 04:08:30 EDT From: Dan Lanciani Subject: Re: Norvergence - How Do I Get Out Is there any possibility that someone could post one of these contracts? Sometimes folks talk about lease payments and sometimes about loan payments. In the latter case it has been suggested alternately that the bank may have originated the loan with the customer (such that the paperwork might not even mention Norvergence) or that the bank became a holder in due course of (only) the revenue component of a contract between the customer and Norvergence. I am not a lawyer, but these all seem like very different scenarios. Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A 'lease' is different than a 'loan'. The door-do-door encyclopedia sales people arranged with various loan companies (well, really one under various corporate names) to 'loan' the money (which the buyer never saw) to pay the encyclopedia company for the books which were allegedly free except that the end-user agreed to pay for twenty years of 'annual updates' for the books. The 'updates' cost for twenty years was much higher than any set of encyclopedias could possibly cost. The Court pretty much squashed the scheme but did allow some of the scheme to continue with massive reforms to meet the law. Those reforms largely put the encyclopedia door-to-door sales company out of business, but the final straw came in the early nineties with computers, Google, etc. I'd not be surprised at all to find some connections between the late, great Norvergence and the handful of banks -- or really,loan companies -- which 'loaned the money to buy the equipment' to the end user with all sorts of fancy legal terms like 'holder in due course', etc. Thirty years ago, the 'loan companies' all screamed and squalled about how they had been cheated out of their money owed them as 'holders in due course' until the Court connected all the dots and drew a very ugly picture for them. I am NOT saying for certain that same scenario exists now, but in my old age I seem to recall having seen this part of the movie before. I would not have said this earlier, when the corporation 'Norvergence' was in business and there was a chance that some modicum of technical and customer service could have been rendered, no matter how half-assed it may have been. But now that there is no longer any phone service to be repaired nor any fiction of how that repair might be rendered, then my non-legal self-help advice remains: FREEZE ALL ACCOUNTS PAYABLE TO NORVERGENCE AT LEAST -- BARE MINIMUM -- UNTIL THE ATTORNIES HAVE HAD A CHANCE TO INVESIGATE IT ALL, UNLESS *YOUR COMPANY* HAS MONEY TO BE WASTED. MOST DO NOT. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Is There an Official Statement on NorVergence Date: 9 Jul 2004 10:16:34 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Michael D. Sullivan wrote: >> The move leaves approximately 10,000 customers, mostly small and mid- >> sized businesses who use NorVergence for telephone and Internet service, >> in limbo. And the news was no better for many of NorVergence's >> employees. They were sent home for good last week. Wait a minute ... Norvergence had over a thousand employees, and only 10,000 customers? Does this seem a bit excessive to you? --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 13:32:29 -0400 From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Norvergence Bankrupt Dan Pham wrote: > Will any criminal charges be filed against Norvergence's executives? > William Van Hefner wrote in message news:: No. Criminal charges WILL be filed against top-posters, however. T. Sean Weintz - T. Sean Weintz - T. Sean Weintz - T. Sean Weintz May be copied freely without the express permission of T. Sean Weintz. T. Sean Weintz could care less. T. Sean Weintz does reserve all rights. T. Sean Weintz - T. Sean Weintz - T. Sean Weintz - T. Sean Weintz ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 13:42:36 -0400 From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Us Like Spies / How Computer Users Ask to be Doomed to Viruses Organization: VISI.com Lisa Hancock wrote: > When I took driver's ed, we were taught what goes on under the > hood and the function of various components. I certainly have no > idea how to repair my automatic transmission, but at least I know > what it is supposed to do and can be more alert for subtle malfunctions. > I know the basic functionality of the car -- from the key allowing > electricity from the battery to turn the starter motor to turn the > engine and fire the sparkplugs so the motor runs on its own, > generating its own electricity to recharge the battery and fire the > sparkplugs. I know that fuel in the tank is pumped to the motor and > injected with air into the cylinders, ignited to burn on the power > stroke. Then you seem to know more about how your car works than probably 70% of American drivers I'd say. > It doesn't seem unreasonable to me for a lay user to understand > an equivalent amount of functionaltiy for how a computer works. I think you are vastly underestimating just how mentally lazy the average computer user is. > That is, they should SHOULD. Ahh. yes tthey SHOULD. At least in my opinion. However most, if given an ultimatum that the had to learn before they could use an internet connected PC, would opt not to use one. > know that a program is a series of machine > instructions that tells electronic circuits to do various things-- > fetch and store things from memory, write things to the printer and > screen, accept data from the keyboard, and read/write to/from floppy > and hard disks. They should know the difference between the operating > system and an application program. They should know that when > starting up a program the machine instructions are recalled from disk, > loaded into memory, and execution of the instructions begin. > When we learn to drive, we also learn about car care and safety. It > isn't unreasonable for computer users to know some basics about that > as well, not just to protect themselves from viruses and hackers, but > some basics on how those things work and are spread around. > Geez, I couldn't differentiate between a bacteria, virus, or DNA > strand, but I understand the basics of what they are. I know leaving > milk out in the sun all day and then drinking it is not a good idea. > A computer virus is not mysterious as many biological viruses are, but > a known human creation. (It ought to be called sabotage.) > I blame two reasons: 1) The design of the Internet, and 2) software > that is too automated. Number 2 more so. But then again, #2 is what is driving the internet boom. > 1) The Internet was originally a private network among qualified > users and organizations. Such a population was unlikely to spread > mischief and strict controls weren't necessary. > However, when the Internet became public, legal and software controls > that were necessary not there. Nothing should be allowed on a network > without a secure 'from' identifier. "Anonymous" relay units should > not have been allowed. The many open places that hackers and spammers > take advantage of should not exist. The many open places hackers and spammers take advantage of are mostly unsecured PC's connected to cable modems by clueless newbies. > IMHO, backers of the Internet allowed it to expand too fast before > appropriate controls and safeguards could be adopted. > 2) In traditional mainframe systems (ie IBM S/360 and successors), > there is physical hardware protection to prevent an errant program > from straying outside its assigned space, and operating system > controls to prevent errant I/O access. As PCs grew more powerful, > such protections should have been included in the basic design. They are such controls in many OS'es. Just not in the consumer based windows systems. And it's the consumer market that needs them the most, ironically! > Secondly, some of the high automation is unnecessary. For instance, > upon receipt of an email, a user should explicity allow a program to > start running and be aware of initiating such a program. Secondly, > upon bringing up an application, the execution of a macro can wait > until the user explicitly tells it to go. While these explicit > commands won't stop all attacks, they will cut it down somewhat. I think you'd just have clueless users simply clicking "OK" to installing malware on their PC. May be copied freely without the express permission of T. Sean Weintz. T. Sean Weintz could care less. T. Sean Weintz does reserve all rights. T. Sean Weintz - T. Sean Weintz - T. Sean Weintz - T. Sean Weintz ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 08:56:20 PDT From: Keith bare Subject: The VOIP Solution Consumer VOIP Well, I am NOW reselling Voip for Packet8/Level3 http://www.VoipNuke.com Lets compare stories!! Skibare Have YOU talked on the Pack8/Level3 network???? 303 951 4992 ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 11:05:28 -0400 Subject: AT&T's VOIP Rollout Heats Up Price War Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1620265,00.asp By Ellen Muraskin While the telecom giant's push into the market raises VOIP's street cred, its aggressive service pricing may drive startups over the edge, analysts say. AT&T announced June 30 that it is rolling out its consumer VOIP service in 10 more markets. The company also lowered the introductory price of the service to $19.99 a month, pitching it squarely against startup providers such as Vonage and BroadVoice. The AT&T brand gives a great boost to VOIP's credibility among consumers, said Jon Arnold, a VOIP market analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "The more people who have a choice of [using] AT&T [VOIP], the faster this market can grow," he said. "When you're the consumer and you're getting all these fliers and TV ads and pop-ups from all these VOIP offers, it creates confusion that makes average customers more likely to default to the name they know." If brand awareness matters more than technology or being first to market, as Arnold and many others believe, AT&T's VOIP service may have the best survival prospects for the long term. "The scary part is, they're discounting so quickly," Arnold said. "It's turning into a price game right off the bat. That kills the value proposition of what VOIP really is. Anybody can do cheap voice; that's just a commodity. The real power of IP is multimedia, data, and video, all that on your PC. That's the fun stuff." David Epstein, president of VOIP provider BroadVoice Inc., has more faith in the telecom consumer's and particularly the broadband consumer's willingness to try something new. "Don't underestimate today's broadband consumer," Epstein said. "People do not believe in a brand 'just because.' People are doing a ton of research with a few mouse clicks; people are talking to their peers." Epstein said he sees AT&T's efforts as a boon to the VOIP market as a whole. "The dollars spent by AT&T are a wonderful thing for the VOIP community," he said, "since it's driving people to the Internet where they research AT&T's offer and look for alternatives. Keep in mind that most of the folks looking for a VOIP service want to get away from Ma Bell, not run back to her." Full story at: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1620265,00.asp 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/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 19:43:06 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Jeff Pulver on Yesterday's VoIP Hearing in Washington, D.C Jack "news" Decker quoted the Pulverblog thusly: > Stearns and Boucher seem set on doing an entire rewrite of the > Telecom Act, which they believe was flawed from the get-go, and, in > particular, does not allow the Bells to compete on a level playing > field with cable companies. Their bill also speaks of generally not > regulating "Advanced Internet Communications Services." > The Stearns-Boucher Bill, however, indicates that this is also the > time to deregulate the underlying telecom transmission facilities > used to provide IP-based communications services. The biggest > problem I see with the Stearns-Boucher bill is that it probably gums > up the works. Jeff Pulver is starting to get it. The Stearns-Boucher bill would be very, very bad. It would essentially put about 5000 ISPs out of business! You'd have a choice of exactly two ISPs, one being your cable company and the other being the ILEC. Full stop. A couple of years ago, Boucher (who is to be sure a good guy on copyright issues, but a very bad guy on telecom) introduced a bill that would have helped the Bells re-monopolize service. It didn't pass, though the Powell FCC and the DC Circuit Court have done far more damage than Boucher or even the Bell CEOs themselves could have dreamed possible at the time. Let's address the first quoted paragraph. Level playing field? Let's try again. The ILECs were granted a monopoly on common carriage, with a virtually guaranteed rate of return. They built the wires, promising to make them available to all users (common carriage) on a nondiscriminatory basis. When the RBOCs were created in 1984, in fact, the rules at the time explicitly prohibited them from providing any sort of information services, since that would be anticompetitive, too much risk of abusing their monopoly. In the early 1990s, in fact, NYNEX hosted its electronic yellow pages in France, presumably to get around that rule! Cable companies, on the other hand, got no guaranteed returns, and were never common carriers. In the 1990s, when the Internet caught on, the cable companies created cable modem service. Technically (note that this is the view of the FCC and some of the circuit courts, but not the Ninth Circuit), cable modem services are self-provisioned ISPs, not telecom service providers. They're the same as wireless ISPs who stick up access points on towers. This is the system that the Cable Act of 1992 and the Telecom Act of 1996 foresaw: LECs would remain common carriers, while cablecos would not be. The Bells are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They know that the cable companies are not common carriers, and aren't about to be. Instead, they want to get rid of their own common carriage obligations. Technically they're not de jure monopolies any more: Another company *could* legally hang new wires on the poles, or dig up the streets. It would in general be economic suicide, but not illegal. Given that cover of not *quite* a full monopoly, the Bells and other ILECs are asking to have their own common carriage obligations deleted, except with regard to voice-grade circuit-mode (TDM) telephone calls made on the "legacy" network ("old wires", not necessarily even applicable to newly-constructed houses). Without common carriage, other ISPs would not be able to purchase access services (between themselves and their subscribers) from the ILECs. So DSL would be ILEC-ISP only, full stop, unless the ILEC-ISP decided to enter into some kind of commercial contract with another ISP. Verizon last week suggested to the FCC *again* that this is their plan, to end common carriage and fixed-price ISP access, though they would entertain letting other ISPs share their networks on a revenue-sharing basis instead. (So competing ISPs who made such deals would have to open their books to the ILEC, or let the ILECs handle all of their collections, for a fee and a large majority percentage of the take. That would be the deal, take it or leave it, with no regulatory oversight.) And if you think that these telco DSL monopoly ISP services would allow you to use VoIP the way you can now, in order to bypass the telco's voice billing, then perhaps you should see invest in a bridge I know of, in New York. Or perhaps you think that guy with the big ears at Disneyland really is a mouse. Blocking VoIP is childs' play. Hell, blocking *any* protocol is childs' play. Layer 7 filters are on the market. I've seen boxes that allow the ISP to charge you *by the message* for SMTP/POP mail you exchange with your own ISP! Only competitive pressure prevents it now. And remember, an ISP has the right to filter content ... Even dial-up is in jeopardy: The ILECs are *still* trying to get the notorious "modem tax" to go ahead, by reclassifying ISP-bound calls as "switched access", rather than "exempt information access". (They already killed "local" status, which had required them to pay CLECs who carried the terminating half of such calls.) And that leads to the second paragraph. By definition, information service is provided over telecommunications. Layer 1, as it's generally known, is telecommunications. And when the ILECs provide it, it's common carriage, also technically known as telecommunications *service*. The ILECs do not like this. They want the raw wire itself to be regulated on the basis of the content. So if there's ISP service across the wire, then it is no longer eligible for common carrier treatment, because ISP service (content, not carriage) is itself unregulated. Get it? You are what you eat. Carry IP and become *not telecommunications service*. And if you're not telecommunications service, you're not regulated, and *not common carriage*, and thus *not available to independent ISPs.* You see? Become an ISP and lose your rights to the wire! Layers don't exist to an ILEC -- it's "beads on a string", layer 1 to 7 all together. SBC's Comments in the pending FCC VoIP docket (WC 04-36) apply this "beads on a string" methodology across the board, including VoIP. If the phone call has any contact with IP (e.g., the switch uses IP internally, the trunks use IP internally, or somebody whispers "eye pee" in the same telco's cafeteria), then the "beads on a string" theory applies and your home phone becomes an ISP service, whether you want it or not. No longer is the phone call regulated. They can charge whatever they want. They can charge tolls to dial up ISPs other than their own! (Discrimination is prohibited of common carriers, but permitted of ISPs.) All they have to do to get this status, by their proposal (hint: Reply Comments are still allowed, but please read past the first couple of dozen namby-pamby pages of SBC's Comment to get to the real meat), is to configure their loop carrier systems to use IP instead of ATM or TDM (GR-303, the current standard). It's all transparent. It's all on the market. The Stearns-Boucher bill would apparently legislate that kind of monopoly world. Note that the older Sununu VoIP bill does nothing of the sort; Sununu is really just prodding the FCC to behave rather sanely. Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ ------------------------------ 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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