From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 27 23:50:28 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i7S3oSk22791; Fri, 27 Aug 2004 23:50:28 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 23:50:28 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408280350.i7S3oSk22791@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 #402 TELECOM Digest Fri, 27 Aug 2004 23:48:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 402 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson OnHD.TV (Monty Solomon) Oral Arguments in Grokster & Ch. 4, 5 of "Free Culture" (Monty Solomon) EFFector 17.31: Induce Act Update - Turning Up the Heat (Monty Solomon) Outsource Firm Sues in India / Alleged Code Theft Highlights (M Solomon) Siemens Cites Problem With New Phones (Monty Solomon) Army Says JetBlue Data Use Was Legal (Monty Solomon) Nokia, Vodafone Eye Java For Wireless Revolution (Eric Friedebach) Re: Forced Ads on Auto Response System (Rich Greenberg) Re: Norvergence Employees Bilked Out of More Than Just Paycheck (Strom) Re: Book Review: Fighting Spam for Dummies, Levine/Young/Church (Sobol) Handset Tester (Joe Elichaa) MSN & Hotmail Improper Spam Filtering? (friendly) Re: NBC Sees Last-Minute Olympic Profit Boost (Joseph) Video of Old Telephone Exchanges (Rick Miller) Re: Response to "Hundreds Arrested in Internet Crime Sweep" (B Margolin) Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind (friendly) VOIP Connects Workers as They Flee Convention Site (J Decker-VOIP News) 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, 27 Aug 2004 13:55:16 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: OnHD.TV Excerpt from About OnHD.TV OnHD.TV is the first entertainment guide to High-Definition TV. The site is for HDTV owners and people who are considering buying one. OnHD.TV provides show reviews and previews, HDTV-specific viewing recommendations and HDTV shopping tips among consumer-related information. http://www.onhd.tv/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:32:02 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Oral Arguments in Grokster & Ch. 4, 5 of "Free Culture" EFF has put up the oral arguments in Grokster[MP3] [Ogg], so you can hear the music industry lawyers try to persuade an unpersuadable court that P2P users are all or at least 90% thieves and that P2P systems like Grokster should be shut down like Napster was. The following exchange will give you a feel for the event. One attorney argues to the court that "the Internet is not a license to steal," and that "there's nothing different from what they're doing from organizing and instructing the participants in a trafficking network that is trading in counterfeit materials". One of the judges interrupts him and says: "Let me say what your problem is. You can use these harsh terms, but you are dealing with something new. And the question is, Does the statutory monopoly that Congress has given you reach out to that something new, and that's a very debatable question. You don't solve it by calling it theft. You have to show why this court should extend a statutory monopoly to cover the new thing. That's your problem. So address that, if you would, rather than use abusive language." You don't want to miss listening to the attorney's reaction to that rebuke. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040823002045984 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 13:45:14 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 17.31: Induce Act Update - Turning Up the Heat EFFector Vol. 17, No. 31 August 26, 2004 donna@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 303rd Issue of EFFector: * Action Alert: Induce Act Update - Turning Up the Heat * This Song Belongs to You and Me * E-voting on Trial in Maryland - Stand Up for Voting Integrity! * EFF Court Docket: What's Next? * MiniLinks (11): Grokking Grokster * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/17/31.php ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:42:01 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Outsource Firm Sues in India / Alleged Code Theft Highlights By Karl Schoenberger Mercury News In a case that exposes the intellectual-property risks of outsourcing in India, a small San Carlos software company has sued Mumbai police for refusing to investigate the alleged theft of proprietary source code by an employee at its Indian subsidiary. Sandeep Jolly, the founder and chief executive of Jolly Technologies, said U.S. technology companies should beware of the risks of doing business in his native land at a time when many are taking advantage of the cost savings of offshoring and entrusting sensitive software development and testing work to Indian contractors. Protection of intellectual property is still a new concept for lawmakers, police and prosecutors, he said. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9500402.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 17:08:19 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Siemens Cites Problem With New Phones FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- Siemens AG said Friday it anticipates unspecified additional costs from a software problem with new mobile phones that has led retailers to suspend sales. The German electronics company said five models of its new 65 series could under certain circumstances emit a piercing melody into users' ears if the battery fails during a call. Hearing damage could result "in extreme cases," the company said in a statement. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43336931 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 23:28:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Army: JetBlue Data Use Was Legal By Ryan Singel An Army data-mining project that searched through JetBlue's passenger records and sensitive personal information from a data broker to pinpoint possible terrorists did not violate federal privacy law, according to an investigation by the Army's inspector general. The inspector general's findings (PDF) were accepted by some, but critics say the report simply highlights the inability of the country's privacy laws to cope with 21st-century anti-terrorism efforts. News of the Army project came to light in September 2003 when JetBlue admitted it had violated its privacy policy by turning over 5.1 million passenger records to Torch Concepts , an Alabama-based defense contractor. Torch subsequently enhanced the JetBlue data with information about passengers' salaries, family size and Social Security numbers that it purchased from Acxiom , one of the country's largest data aggregators. The Army says it was testing the data-mining technology as part of a plan to screen visitors to Army bases. ... http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64647,00.html ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: Nokia, Vodafone Eye Java For Wireless Revolution Date: 27 Aug 2004 10:54:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Greg Levine, 08.26.04, Forbes.com Back to basics. As technology and its applications grow ever more complex, two mobile telephone titans are teaming to tackle the obstacle they see holding back a utopia of smart phones: simplifying the software. Nokia and Vodafone -- led by Chief Executive Jorma Ollila and CEO Arun Sarin, respectively -- issued a joint statement Thursday declaring their determination to render universal the software utilizing Java. http://www.forbes.com/2004/08/26/0826autofacescan03.html Eric Friedebach /Favorite OnStar commercial: crying woman drops keys in toilet/ ------------------------------ From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: Forced Ads on Auto Response System Date: 27 Aug 2004 15:24:51 -0400 Organization: Organized? Me? In article , Lisa Hancock wrote: > I called my credit card bank to check my balance and got their > automated response system. > Before it would give me the information, it forced me to listen to > some ads for extra services (ie card protection, etc). Then it added > salt in the wound by asking me TWICE if I wanted this package. That > is, once I said no, it repeated part of the spiel then asked me again > if I was sure I didn't want it. Two things you can try: 1) When asked to key in your card number or whatever, just enter nothing. MOST systems will time out and give you a human, assuming rotary dial. A few tell you to call back from a TT phone and dump you. 2) Try their web site instead. And when you do reach a human, complain. Rich Greenberg N6LRT Marietta, GA, USA 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, Red & Shasta (RIP),Red, husky Owner:Chinook-L Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/ Asst Owner:Sibernet-L ------------------------------ From: nstrom@ananzi.co.za (Nathan Strom) Subject: Re: Norvergence Employees Bilked Out of More Than Just a Paycheck Date: 27 Aug 2004 12:52:16 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Isaiah Beard wrote in message news:: > Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/4zyan > (registration required unfortunately) I just made an account "telecomdigest" with password "telecomdigest" for those who don't want to register. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you! PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Book Review: Fighting Spam for Dummies, Levine/Young/Church Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 12:55:27 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com John Levine wrote: > Had Mr. A.C. spent a few seconds and actually taken a look at the Wiki > he refers to, he would find a bunch of little used add-on packages > that let you set up a proxy mail server on your Windows box that they > say can be set up to run mail through a version of spamassassin. I > believe that they can be made to work, but I don't know anyone who > uses spamassassin that way, and I certainly wouldn't recommend any of > them to the nontechnical users who are the target of our book, because > they're way too hard to manage and update. It's interesting. I've always assumed that spamassassin DOES run on Windows. It's a PERL program. What part of the package is platform- specific? 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. ------------------------------ From: Joe Elichaa Subject: Handset Tester Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:41:53 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com I am looking for a real good handset tester that will measure values and be able to compare these values to other handsets. Does anybody know of such device? Thank you, Joe ------------------------------ From: friendly Subject: MSN & Hotmail Improper Spam Filtering? Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 22:22:10 GMT Recently I've noticed that both MSN and Hotmail are putting emails in the junk mail folder that are clearly not junk mail and come from sources that wouldn't ordinarily be associated with spam. Is there something new going on with spam filters? Where does one go at MS(MSN or Hotmail) to find why a particular email was identified as junk mail? I've recently noticed this for a number of different/independ- ent MSN and Hotmail accounts with completely separate senders(nothing in common except MSN or Hotmail recipients). ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: NBC Sees Last-Minute Olympic Profit Boost Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 18:01:12 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 17:41:49 -0400, Monty Solomon wrote: > LOS ANGELES, Aug 26 (Reuters) - NBC Universal, riding high on a Summer > Olympics that appears on track to set a record for viewership, will > beat early forecasts and turn a profit of $60 million to $70 million > for its coverage of the Games from Athens, an NBC executive said on > Thursday. And it's no wonder! With the coverage interrupted *every* five minutes for a commercial. ------------------------------ From: rickmillerenterprises@hotmail.com (Rick Miller) Subject: Video of Old Telephone Exchanges Date: 27 Aug 2004 18:12:21 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com It's been awhile since I've posted here -- the last (and first) time I've posted here was about a year (?) ago, asking about old telephone equipment, vestiges of old / historical phone stuff still on the network. Well, last week I found it at the New England Museum of Telephony, they've got lots of old switching hardware, including SxS switches, a #3 crossbar (both working!), an Automatic Electric relay switch (I don't recall the exact type) a Leich switch, many frames of #5 crossbar, and various kinds of other neat old stuff. While there, I shot some video of the switching gear in operation, on MiniDV tape ... its good quality video but I'm not that great of a cameraperson. (grin) My question is this: Once I get the video transferred and edited to my liking, where should I host the video? I could host it on my own system, but I'm not sure my ISP would be happy about that. Anyone out there with a Telecom related webpage that might be willing to host the file? Or, what might be the first of many files if I further document the sights and sounds of these old switches? Thanks! -Rick Miller [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would be happy to house them in the Telecom Archives here so anyone using our web pages could see them. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Response to "Hundreds Arrested in Internet Crime Sweep" Organization: Symantec Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 21:58:03 -0400 In article , Withheld by Request wrote: > You guys are on a wild goose chase. You're going after the wrong > people in this scenario. Instead of the administrators and hub owners, > you need to be worrying about the USERS that are sharing 100+ GBs of > these files the FBI claimed they downloaded. The hub owner didn't push > that file on you. YOU requested it, then DIRECTLY CONNECTED to the > other user to download it. The hubs simply provide a meeting place for > people with like interests. You can chat, get help, or share > files. What you do is up to YOU. That's what Napster did, but it didn't stop them from being shut down. Even though these organizations don't directly perform the copying, they *facilitate* it. And you know damn well what kind of material most of your users are sharing -- you know your user base, and you encourage it because that's your bread and butter. Regarding the "lies" in the article, I take that to be imprecise reporting, which is what we see for pretty much *all* news articles about anything high-tech. I don't know anything about these file-sharing networks (I've never even fired up the iMusic that came on my Mac), but I'll bet there's an "inner circle" of well-known members, and that's what they might have been referring to when they mentioned how hard it was to "join the network". Kind of like what narcotics officers have to do to meet a major distributor, as distinguished from buying a few joints from a dealer on the street. In order to find out who the big players are in the piracy networks, they have to get in good with them by appearing to be one of them. Sure, anyone can join the network, but the main bad guys aren't going to start giving out their real names to them. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is purely IMO, but narcotics police officers, like officers who specialize in Vice matters, are the underside of a corrupted system to begin with. Total losers, all the way around. PAT] ------------------------------ From: friendly Subject: Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 02:06:02 GMT Thanks for describing MS great products that most the world chooses to use because they are superior and cost effective and kept very up to date. Make sure and get XP SP2 as it's a big improvement and installs seemlessly for the large majority of users. ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 20:41:21 -0400 Subject: VOIP Connects Workers as They Flee Convention Site Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1640338,00.asp By Ellen Muraskin Opinion: With the Republican National Convention descending on New York, Midtown employees are avoiding the office. Infinity Consulting is using Cisco IP phones and M5's IP Centrex service to stay connected from the outer boroughs and New Jersey. Let's review: Why is IP telephony relatively indifferent to physical location? Because the IP telephony server, whether an in-house IP PBX or the softswitch of your VOIP service provider, maps your public "phone" number to the IP address you log in with, every time you log on, or every time you activate the phone that logs on for you. And why is this a good thing? Because you can take your IP phone or the soft phone running on your laptop, plug it in to any broadband tap, and have an extension to a shared, Centrex-style or dedicated enterprise phone system. The server/softswitch registers your new IP address and can take calls from you or send them to you, just the way an IM server sends IM messages wherever you log in. And why is this a good thing for businesses? Because their remote workers can work wherever they like, as long as there's broadband and a VOIP-accommodating firewall. And why is this an especially good thing this week for Infinity Consulting Group, an IT services firm with an office on West 31st Street in Manhattan? Because Infinity Consulting's New York office is across the street from Madison Square Garden, where this week the Republican National Convention and its attendant battalions of security forces, not to mention protestors will make navigating everyday New York congestion look like a luge run. Full story at: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1640338,00.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/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VoIPnews/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: VoIPnews-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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