From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Oct 13 02:40:20 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i9D6eJu20935; Wed, 13 Oct 2004 02:40:20 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 02:40:20 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200410130640.i9D6eJu20935@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 #486 TELECOM Digest Wed, 13 Oct 2004 02:40:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 486 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson US Funds Study on Net Chat-Room Surveillance (Monty Solomon) Piracy Rule is Definition of Misguided (Monty Solomon) 169 Fox Stations Fined in Indecency Case (Monty Solomon) Moving Music Off Your PC? New Gadgets Abound (Monty Solomon) Yahoo Third Quarter Financial Results (Monty Solomon) Re: Monthly Bill Fatigue (Joseph) Re: Monthly Bill Fatigue (Garrett Wollman) Re: Monthly Bill Fatigue (Bob Goudreau) Re: Two Way Radio Service (Chris Farrar) Re: Two Way Radio Service (Tony P.) Re: Two Way Radio Service (Bruce L. Bergman) Re: A New Phone and Techie Controversy at Verizon (Joseph) Re: Law Hits Home (William Warren) Re: REN Boosters From England? (John McHarry) 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: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 21:57:00 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: US Funds Study on Net Chat-Room Surveillance Research may aid antiterrorism fight By Associated Press | October 12, 2004 TROY, N.Y. -- Amid the torrent of jabber in Internet chat rooms -- flirting by QTpie and BoogieBoy, arguments about politics and horror flicks -- are terrorists plotting their next move? The government certainly isn't discounting the possibility. It's taking the idea seriously enough to fund a yearlong study on chat room surveillance under an antiterrorism program. A Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute computer science professor hopes to develop mathematical models that can uncover structure within the scattershot traffic of online public forums. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/10/12/us_funds_study_on_net_chat_room_surveillance/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 22:22:02 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Piracy Rule is Definition of Misguided By Hiawatha Bray | October 11, 2004 If a shopkeeper tried to charge $1,000 for a broken computer, you'd probably be outraged. You might even complain to the government. Don't bother. These days, the government wants us to buy broken technology. Specifically, the Federal Communications Commission, which has somehow come to regard the public interest as identical with that of the movie industry's. Cast your minds back to spring 2002. Democratic US Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina horrified technologists when he proposed a law to require that PCs and other digital devices have built-in features to prevent illegal copying of music and video files. Hollings trained as an attorney, not an engineer. Yet he proposed to mandate design specs for practically every piece of digital technology sold. The outrage consigned the Hollings plan to an early grave -- or so it seemed. But like the lurching undead in a zombie flick, it's back. Only this time it's being served up by the FCC. It's all about high-definition television. Little by little, the technology is catching on, as the networks show more HDTV programs and consumers shell out $1,000 or more for compatible sets. But HDTV worries TV and movie producers. It's easy to copy HDTV shows, and the copies look just as good as the originals. Having witnessed how digital piracy has ravaged the music industry, the Hollywood moguls had no desire to go next. Enter the 'broadcast flag,' an antipiracy technology to be built into HDTV signals sent over the airwaves. The plan, fortunately, doesn't apply to HDTV shows moved by cable or satellite. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/10/11/piracy_rule_is_definition_of_misguided/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 01:24:35 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: 169 Fox Stations Fined in Indecency Case By STEPHEN LABATON WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 - The Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday that it would fine 169 Fox television stations $7,000 each, or a total of $1.18 million, for violating indecency rules when it showed a particularly graphic episode of the show "Married by America'' last spring. The show, one of the reality' programs in Fox's lineup, features a group of single adults who agree to be engaged and marry, even though they had never previously met. The commission found an April episode of the show violated the indecency rules through a series of sexually suggestive and explicit scenes. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/business/media/13fox.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 21:05:40 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Moving Music Off Your PC? New Gadgets Abound By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff | October 12, 2004 As personal computers with broadband Internet connections become an increasingly popular way for Americans to acquire music, high-tech companies are rushing to offer systems for getting music out of the PC and onto the stereo. Four months after Apple Computer Inc. began selling a $129 Airport Express unit that wirelessly streams music from a PC to a stereo system, Microsoft Corp. is set to release details this week about its upgraded Windows Media Connect software. It is expected to enable playbacks of music and movies stored on a computer running Windows XP software on stereos, video players, and television sets. Microsoft also has a $200-range Internet & Media Player arriving in stores this month that radically reworks the former WebTV service, now owned by Microsoft. Besides music and video transfers, the device is expected to let people view digital photos on their TV sets and use the TV screen as a vehicle for e-mail, instant messaging, and Web surfing. Other high-technology giants like Intel Corp. ,Hewlett-Packard Development Co., and Sony Corp. also have devices and services coming to market soon. At the top end of the market, Sonos Inc., a 25-person start-up company in Cambridge and Santa Barbara, Calif., between now and Christmas will begin selling a digital music system that would let people play as many as 10 different songs from a computer on 10 different pairs of speakers in the house. Sonos charges $1,200 for two amplifiers and a portable remote control unit that selects songs from the computer hard drive; up to 10 amplifiers can be networked wirelessly. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/10/12/moving_music_off_your_pc_new_gadgets_abound/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 02:15:17 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Yahoo! Reports Third Quarter 2004 Financial Results SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 12, 2004-- Company Posts Revenues of $907 Million, Operating Income of $172 Million, Operating Income Before Depreciation and Amortization of $260 Million Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today reported results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2004. "Yahoo! began to demonstrate the next stage in the Company's evolution in the third quarter, and in doing so recorded its sixth consecutive quarter of record revenue," said Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive officer, Yahoo!. "We accelerated the pace at which new products and services were developed, which in-turn helped increase the level of user engagement across the Yahoo! network. Our engaged audience enables us to deliver an unmatched set of advertising opportunities, providing deeper value to our marketers, and supporting the mantra that great products are the key to a great business." -- Revenues were $907 million for the third quarter of 2004, a 154 percent increase compared to $357 million for the same period of 2003. -- Revenues excluding traffic acquisition costs ("TAC") were $655 million for the third quarter of 2004, an 84 percent increase compared to the $357 million for the same period of 2003. -- Gross profit for the third quarter of 2004 was $574 million, an 86 percent increase compared to $310 million for the same period of 2003. -- Operating income for the third quarter of 2004 was $172 million, an increase of 106 percent compared to $83 million for the same period of 2003. -- Operating income before depreciation and amortization for the third quarter of 2004 was $260 million, a 122 percent increase compared to $117 million for the same period of 2003. -- Cash flow from operating activities for the third quarter of 2004 was $267 million, an increase of 97 percent compared to $136 million for the same period of 2003. -- Free cash flow for the third quarter of 2004 was $202 million, a 108 percent increase over the $97 million reported for the same period of 2003. -- Net income for the third quarter of 2004 was $253 million or $0.17 per diluted share (including a net impact of $129 million, or $0.09 per share, related to the sale of an investment and the associated tax benefit resulting from fully reserved capital losses becoming realizable). Excluding this gain, net income for the third quarter was $124 million, or $0.09 per diluted share. This compares with net income of $65 million or $0.05 per diluted share for the same period of 2003. -- The provision for income taxes of $67 million yielded an effective tax rate of 21% for the third quarter of 2004 as a result of the previously described tax benefit associated with the capital loss carryforwards. The provision for income taxes in the same period of 2003 was $40 million, and yielded an effective tax rate of 38%. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=44220121 ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Monthly Bill Fatigue Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 16:53:17 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 03:39:02 GMT, Amin wrote: > I had been a country. Almost every business puts the telephone set > in the front of the store. Everyone is able to make free local call > everywhere. Why do they charge a lot only the local pay phone in the > US? I'm not sure that I totally understand what you're trying to say. Yes, many businesses will put a phone as available for people to use for making local calls. As far as pay phones they charge more now sometimes because people have found pay phones out of favour because many people now have cell phones. So the payphone owners had to increase the rate to make up for less business. I know that doesn't make sense, but it's what they've done. ------------------------------ From: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: Monthly Bill Fatigue Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 02:04:01 UTC Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > The Sirius satellite radio is indispensable for his frequent drives > to New York and Philadelphia. "It's like any luxury. I didn't think > I needed a microwave [oven], but I'm sure glad I have it now." Wait a minute ... Is he driving from Washington to New York by way of Altoona or something? I can't fathom how subscription radio could possibly be "indispensable" for the normal route between those two cities; there are good free broadcast stations serving almost every listening niche, from Christian preaching to hard rock, in all four of those markets. Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every wollman@lcs.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own Opinions not those of| search for greater freedom. MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. ___ (2003) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Isn't it funny how a short time after we buy or otherwise obtain some new electronic toy, we discover that it is 'indispensible' for us to be without? In talking to my mother one hot day this past summer, I asked her, "how did you survive all during the 1930's (when she was growing up) without any air conditioning in your home?" Her response was, "well, we suffered but somehow survived. How did *you* (meaning me) get along in the 1970's without a computer, let alone five or six or them?" I dunno what I did ... now these days, even though I consider my cable connection an 'indispensible thing' with its 24/7 wall-to-wall classical music, I still sometimes prefer the 'older style' over the air KRPS, where ocassionally there are human announcers telling us things. And the last thing **absolutely last thing** in the world I need is that DVR that Cable One gave me, with assurance it would 'change my television viewing habits forever.' It really hasn't; I have not even watched television more than an hour or two in the past month, but you know I am never going to get rid of it. Does anyone ever give up a new toy even if they do not use it very often? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: Monthly Bill Fatigue Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 22:32:46 -0400 Marcus Didius Falco wrote: > Businesses can only allow the general public to use their telephones > for free in places where there is no charge for local usage. This > might be the case in some countries, though I am not aware of any. The United States, for one. > In most countries the telephone company charges businesses for usage > (even local usage), and businesses would have to pass on that charge. It is true that in some states, unmeasured local service is available only to residential subscribers, but this is not universally true. For instance, BellSouth here in North Carolina offers flat-rate unlimited local calling packages for businesses as well as for residential accounts. The former have a higher monthly cost than the latter, but there are no incremental per-call or per-minute charges for local calls in either case. Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 22:16:01 -0400 From: Chris Farrar
Subject: Re: Two Way Radio Please withold my email address from publication. editor@telecom-digest.org wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I can think of many 'two way radio >> service providers'. Why don't you begin by being a bit more >> precise as to your intended application. PAT] > Indeed. > Two way radio is not the same as cellular, telephone, etc. > One does not pay a fee just to use two way radio. There is no > subscription plan, no free minutes, no talk plan, etc., and you buy > the radios you want, typically at full price. If someone is selling > you a contract for "two way radio", I suggest you run. Fast. > and: ------------------------------ > From: Gary Novosielski > Subject: Re: Two Way Radio Service > Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 02:41:51 GMT > Geller wrote: >> Is there any two-way radio service provider.? >> Can any one give me the list of service providers.?? > I'm a little confused. If you have a pair of two-way radios, and are > appropriately licensed where applicable, you just turn them on and use > them. There's no "provider" involved. > But you can send me money every month if you like. It depends if he is talking about Commercial two-way radios, involing repeaters or trunked service. If your geographic area is big enough two individual radios won't have the range needed and you contract with XYZ Ltd. to provide you with radios & service, either using dedicated frequencies, PL tone squelch on shared frequencies, or on a trunked radio service. Or you can go the Nextel route. All of the above will cost money, either as a flat monthly fee or airtime minutes. If someone is selling him a contract for 2 way radio, you need to know what is being provided, trunked service covering what area, or if on a dedicated frequency or using a shared frequency/PL Tone squelch, do they have enough repeaters to cover the area you expect to use the radio in. Chris VE3CFX ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Two Way Radio Service Organization: ATCC Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 02:31:15 GMT In article , jdj@now.here says: > On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 09:01:14 -0700, Geller wrote: >> Hey guys ... >> Is there any two-way radio service provider.? >> Can any one give me the list of service providers.?? >> S.Geller >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I can think of many 'two way radio >> service providers'. Why don't you begin by being a bit more >> precise as to your intended application. PAT] > Indeed. > Two way radio is not the same as cellular, telephone, etc. > One does not pay a fee just to use two way radio. There is no > subscription plan, no free minutes, no talk plan, etc., and you buy > the radios you want, typically at full price. If someone is selling > you a contract for "two way radio", I suggest you run. Fast. But licensing is an issue. While at the state AG's office we had these nice little Kenwood 2-way radios. (Actually it's half duplex for obvious reasons.) One of the common complaints was that every now and then a very inappropriate conversation would be heard. Being the resident amateur and general radiotel guy of the office I got the tech specs. The radios were operating on the high 70cm band and had CTCSS capability. So I enabled the CTCSS (Aka PL or Private Line TM of Motorola) and that filtered out most of it. Until one day I get a call that we're interfering on a business frequency. Sure enough, that is what these radios are. I call the FCC and ask about licensing -- and they tell me we're using the wrong service that we should actually be on the public service bands. So we traded radios and got a public service frequency set up for us. ------------------------------ From: Bruce L. Bergman Subject: Re: Two Way Radio Service Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 05:47:16 GMT PAT: OK to post name, please leave the E-mail munged. c.d.t reader. On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 16:06:45 -0700, jdj wrote: > On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 09:01:14 -0700, Geller wrote: >> Hey guys ... >> Is there any two-way radio service provider.? >> Can any one give me the list of service providers.?? >> S.Geller >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I can think of many 'two way radio >> service providers'. Why don't you begin by being a bit more >> precise as to your intended application. PAT] > Indeed. > Two way radio is not the same as cellular, telephone, etc. > One does not pay a fee just to use two way radio. There is no > subscription plan, no free minutes, no talk plan, etc., and you buy > the radios you want, typically at full price. If someone is selling > you a contract for "two way radio", I suggest you run. Fast. For normal two-way radio services where you are talking line-of-sight with another handheld or mobile radio, there is no such thing as a "Monthly Fee". You have to get an FCC license for the service you will use, and you might have a /maintenance/ contract to keep the equipment in proper repair and adjustment, but that's all. And with the excellent reliability of today's solid-state radio equipment a maintenance contract is a waste of money, just take each radio in every few years for a quick frequency adjustment checkup. Unless you are talking repeater services for Business Radio Service (or Remote Base Station links for your office dispatcher) to get a much larger effective coverage area, and the ability to easily talk to people using lower-powered handheld radios. Then you do need to subscribe with the repeater owner and pay a monthly fee to be allowed to use their mountaintop repeater, or repeaters if they have multiple hilltops linked together. To find a local Radio Common Carrier that runs repeater systems in your area, let your fingers do the walking to the "Radio Communication Equipment & Systems" category of your local phone book. (Unless you are in a major metropolitan area like New York City or Los Angeles, where you should be warned that the radio spectrum is practically at gridlock capacity.) Or there's the two-way radio function of Nextel, which really is a hybrid of Business Radio and Cellular Telephone -- you have to pay for an account to use their equipment also. --<< Bruce >>-- Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700 5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545 Spamtrapped address: Remove the python and the invalid, and use a net. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: A New Phone and Techie Controversy at Verizon Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 16:43:12 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 15:31:02 GMT, Truth wrote: > So then buy cameras and video games and you have it. If I want to > cool my beverage or heat my coffee, I don't buy a cellphone that can > do those things. Here's a news flash! It's not always all about you! People get what they need. If all you need is two tin cans and a piece of string well ... good on ya. Other people use what *they* need. No one is forcing you to get anything you don't want to get. > It amazes me how stupid humans really are. It amazes me how some people think they can dictate what the rest of us want. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Law Hits Home From: William Warren Organization: Comcast Online Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 23:51:46 GMT On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 12:37:52 EDT, Lisa Minter wrote: > by Anush Yegyazarian > A recent court decision on a 5-year-old case highlights the failure of > our laws to protect the privacy of personal e-mail. > Everyone (or almost everyone) knows that the e-mail you send and > receive at work, using your employer's computers and network, isn't > really private: The company and your boss have the right to both > monitor and read what you're sending and receiving. But if you're like > me, you probably thought that the Internet service provider you use at > home -- and by extension those who work there -- doesn't have the same > right. We're wrong: They do. [snip] The safest approach to this problem is the same one the military uses: they assume that everything transmitted electronically is fully open to everyone in the world, and employ appropriate levels of cryptography to secure information while in transit. In other words, go to http://www.thawte.com/email/index.html and get a free encryption certificate, which will allow you to receive encrypted emails using most email clients. If your correspondents do the same, you'll be able to encrypt things you send to them as well. You may also use GPG, and encrypt emails offline for inclusion in an email (either inline or as an attachment). GPG is Open Source, and free: http://www.gnupg.org/. John Ashcroft will thank you. The NSA will thank you. HTH. William (Filter noise from my email for direct replies.) ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: REN Boosters From England? Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 01:24:31 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Paul Coxwell wrote: > Oh, and the British units won't have FCC approval, of course! Points well taken, but I don't think FCC approval is required for a ringing booster. I comment because it reminds me of being in the UK some years ago when modems required some sort of approval. Everybody I knew just built adaptors for US modems. When Brits came to visit us, we had a couple people who could cobble them the other way. You had to flip a couple wires around, much like wiring a 10 base T connector. When I visited the BT labs at Martlesham Heath, the first thing they did was present me with a prewired adaptor in a little plastic package. The rule was kind of a dead letter, even with them. In Holland the hotel had a few adaptors for loan at the front desk. I suspect it was much the same elsewhere. I think the Siemens training center south of Muenchen just used RJ11s. The Macs in the UK had an RJ11 jack on the machine with a cord that plugged into a UK socket. The cord wouldn't work with my modem -- they had rewired the RJ11 so the pinout didn't require a crossover in the cord. ------------------------------ 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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