From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Nov 2 01:57:46 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id iA26vkm15326; Tue, 2 Nov 2004 01:57:46 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 01:57:46 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200411020657.iA26vkm15326@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 #525 TELECOM Digest Tue, 2 Nov 2004 01:58:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 525 Inside This Issue: Be Sure to Go Vote Today! Universal Home API Forum (Monty Solomon) Nokia 9500 Communicator Receives Wi-Fi Certification (Monty Solomon) Free For the Listening -- and Legal (Monty Solomon) Re: Pre-Recorded Phone Should be Illegal (Thomas A. Horsley) Re: Pre-Recorded Phone Should be Illegal (J Kelly) Re: Pre-Recorded Phone Should be Illegal (Steve Sobol) Re: Clicking in Phone Line From Electric Fence (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: What Happened to Channel 1? (Neal McLain) Re: Last Laugh! Our Weekend Auto Trip (Fritz Whittington) Re: VOIP and Telnet (Andy Janssen) Re: New Electronic Check Law Sinks 'Float' (DevilsPGD) Re: When Phones Go Bad (David Clayton) Web Site Renovation Complete! (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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, 2 Nov 2004 00:11:22 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Universal Home API Forum Leading Companies Establish The Universal Home API Forum to Create Standards for the Converging Consumer Electronics Industry PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 1, 2004-- Universal Home Application Programming Interface Dramatically Reduces Time and Expense of Software Application Development for the Connected Home A group of leading consumer electronics (CE) and semiconductor companies including Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (LSE (GDR):SSNHY) (KSE:005930), Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE:PHG) (AEX:PHI), HP (NYSE:HPQ) (NASDAQ:HPQ), the Digital TV Industry Alliance of China (DTVIA) and ACCESS Co., Ltd., today announced the formation of the Universal Home Application Programmer Interface (UHAPI) Forum. The UHAPI Forum will standardize hardware-independent application programming interfaces (APIs) for analog and digital televisions, set top boxes, DVD players and recorders, personal video recorders (PVRs), home servers and other consumer audio/video (A/V) devices. The Forum invites other organizations to contribute to the UHAPI specification process and implement the UHAPI specification in their respective consumer A/V products. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=44671414 http://www.uhapi.org/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 00:19:59 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Nokia 9500 Communicator Receives Wi-Fi Certification NEW YORK, November 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Nokia today announced the Nokia 9500 Communicator has been granted the IEEE 802-11b and WPA (Wireless Protected Access) certifications by the Wi-Fi Alliance. The Nokia 9500 Communicator is the first mobile device operating in both cellular and wireless LAN networks to receive this qualification. The Wi-Fi certification verifies that the product meets the compatibility and interoperability requirements under the standards identified by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a global organization that works to promote wireless LAN standards across all market segments. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=44649368 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 00:28:00 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Free for the Listening -- and Legal By Hiawatha Bray The Internet remains as tuneful as ever, record-company lawsuits notwithstanding. Any kind of music you fancy is free for the listening, and you don't even have to steal it. With thousands of legitimate music streams online, a good broadband connection is all you need. Of course, we humans can only listen to one channel at a time. Our computers aren't so limited. With the right software, you can tune in to two, five, or a dozen Internet audio streams, record them all, then listen at leisure. It's not altogether good news for the recording industry, already busy trying to stamp out the music file-swappers. But there's not much they can do about it. It's perfectly legal to record a TV show for personal use, or to tape a favorite AM radio talk show. The same principle applies to Internet audio streams. As long as you don't pass out copies to others, you're on the right side of the law. So all you need is software that will capture the incoming music and save it to your hard drive. You can download a number of these programs, ranging from the primitive to the polished. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/11/01/free_for_the_listening____and_legal/ ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Pre-Recorded Phone Should be Illegal From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 22:15:06 GMT Yep, I think I'm getting repetitive stress syndrome deleteing messages on my answering machine this weekend -- fortunately it will all stop tomorrow :-) >>==>> The *Best* political site >>==+ email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics <<==+ ------------------------------ From: J Kelly Subject: Re: Pre-Recorded Phone Should be Illegal Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 18:06:12 -0600 Organization: http://newsguy.com Reply-To: jkelly@newsguy.com On 31 Oct 2004 19:43:19 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: > In this election season, I have been BOMBARDED with pre-recorded phone > calls pitching various candidates, flooding my answering machine. > I know election phone calls are legal. > However, I think pre-recorded phone calls, of any kind, should be > illegal. > The constant ringing of the phone this year was terribly annoying. > If it had been last year, it would've been devastating. Last year at > this time I was caring for a seriously ill person and was ill myself. > I was in frequent touch with doctors, phamarcies, nurses, and > families. I had to keep the phone open and answer all calls. > To a healthy person, the constant ringing was terribly annoying. I > would've gone out of my mind last year. > When you're in bad pain, a ringing telephone is not a pleasant thing. > BTW, I also received several live calls urging a deceased member of > family to go vote, even though that person was removed from the > election rolls quite some time ago. [In hindsight I wish I requested > they come and assist that person to the polls.] > When I go to the polls Tuesday, I will talk to the politicians (the > people who stand outside and give out leaflets). I will ask them for > their home phone numbers, but I have a funny feeling they, for some > strange reason, won't give them to me. I wish they would send valid Caller ID also. I get a LOT of calls from "Dir Asst Iowa" at 515-555-4143. Almost all of them are the Governors office begging me to please vote for Democrats. Also had at least 20 calls from 000-000-0000 and 10 or so from 111-111-1111. One guy did send valid CID, and it was his home phone number. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The poor devil; probably just a hapless volunteer working for some candidate he likes; but refreshing to see, wasn't it? Makes you feel like voting for his candidate. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Pre-Recorded Phone Should be Illegal Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 17:24:09 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Lisa Hancock wrote: > In this election season, I have been BOMBARDED with pre-recorded phone > calls pitching various candidates, flooding my answering machine. > I know election phone calls are legal. > However, I think pre-recorded phone calls, of any kind, should be > illegal. Me too. Apple Valley, California town council incumbent Tim Jasper got a call from me on Friday telling him I had decided not to vote for him due to a prerecord. He got my message and called back and said "I can't reach everyone -- it is necessary for me to make those calls." Bullshit. The prerecord contained the exact same content his radio ad had. Hm. Oh, that's right, the radio ad only reached a couple people! What was I thinking?! Bite me, Tim Jasper. You had already used several more acceptable channels to broadcast your message. Telemarketing calls are bad enough, but if you don't have enough respect for me to call me yourself, don't talk to me at all. 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: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 22:44:45 -0600 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Clicking in Phone Line From Electric Fence > {TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had telephone service once where the > line went bad, and telco decided it was necessary to swap the pairs. > Trouble was, they had a hard time finding *any* spare pairs in the > cable, but about a half-dozen pairs which were out of order. So what > telco wound up doing (I found out later) was to take *one* good wire > from one pair and a second good wire from another pair I'm astonished that they would do this. What you've described is called a "split pair" and is a huge no-no! Since the two wires being used are not twisted _together_ in the bundle, they are not exposed to exactly the same noise environment and thus the pair is not balanced. Of course, a DC resistance check will claim that the line is fine, but it's not. It's no wonder they had to come out a second time and fix it for real. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 17:45:25 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: Re: What Happened to Channel 1? Stanley Cline wrote: > As for the channel 4 issue, my guess as to why Cable One isn't using > it now is that they used to use it for a premium channel such as HBO > using negative traps (which remove the signal of a given channel or > group of adjacent channels), and they moved HBO to another analog > channel or to digital and left channel 4 idle because reusing it for > something else would require visiting the homes of all current > customers who don't have HBO to remove traps ... Good point. I've known this to happen in other cable systems as well. However, I still think that in the specific case at hand, the Coffeyville TV station was probably the primary reason for not using cable channel 4. Given that channel 4 is subject to interference from a television station (even a weak one like W04EJ), it seems unlikely that the cable company would have used that channel for an important service like HBO or Showtime. Neal McLain ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 19:22:36 -0600 From: Fritz Whittington Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Our Weekend Auto Trip TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response on or about 2004-11-01 09:02 to Tim@Backhome.org by whipping out a trusty #2 pencil: > Patrick Townson wrote: >> Over this Halloweeen holiday weekend, I took a ride with some friends >> through the countryside, and made a little movie for you to see. > Great camera work. You must have a huge film crew. > Really nice hills, too. What part of Kansas is that? > > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Me thinks maybe you missed the point > of the exercise. It was Halloween, after all. I don't honestly know > where the .mpeg clip came from; it was e-mailed to me a couple days > earlier as a joke by Lisa Minter. She identified it as 'a new guy > who I met when I was traveling to my grandparent's house last week.' > Identify it however you like, but be sure to tell the prospective > viewer to have their sound up loud and be watching closely when the > car comes out of the bushes. Can anyone read the language on that > notice on the screen at the very end? PAT] First screen: So wake yourself up like never before! Last screen: Coffee in convenient cans. Fritz Whittington "You need only two tools. WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use WD-40. If it moves and shouldn't, use the tape ..." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for that translation, Fritz. What language was it in? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 00:23:51 GMT From: andy janssen Subject: Re: VOIP and Telnet Organization: Shaw Residential Internet rshlain@hotmail.com wrote: > It is possible to have VOIP and be able to connect to machines that > have modems and use telnet? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If I understand it correctly, VOIP -- > or at least Vonage -- can do everything a telephone can do. PAT] I can't answer this, but I think I understand the question better ... Can you use a standard Telco modem over VoIP? What kind of speeds could you expect? 56k? SLower due to the inherant digital -> analog -> digital -> analog -> digital conversions? computer -> tel modem -> VoIP -> tel modem -> computer >> Hey! >> NEWS dosn't belong in email! ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: New Electronic Check Law Sinks 'Float' Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 17:51:10 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Isaiah Beard wrote: >>> IF these images were accessed it would give criminals access to an >>> image of the customer's signature. Said criminal could then use a >>> laser printer with 640 dpi resolution to print checks that would be >>> indistinguishable from the photo check after a 240 dpi Scan!? >> I'm curious, is there a requirement that the bank which accepted the >> cheque store it for any period of time? > Quite the reverse actually. If they send the check along > electronically, then the original is destroyed. Interesting -- So if I say I wrote a different dollar value on the cheque, and the electronic copy isn't sufficient to provide proof one way or the other, does the transfer of funds get reversed? Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool. ------------------------------ From: David Clayton Subject: Re: When Phones Go Bad Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 15:21:31 +1100 Danny Burstein contributed the following: > In Marcus Didius Falco writes: > [ snip ] >> For most cell phone users, replacing a phone that's gone bad comes >> with an added cost in time and aggravation: pecking away at the keys >> of the new phone to reconstruct a mobile address book of often-used >> names and numbers. > Hence one of the beauties of the SIMcard method used on GSM (and a > handful of other) phones. All the info can be stored in the thumbnail > sized chip, and all you need to do is move it from the old phone to > the new one. And even better, you frequently "back up" your SIM card data to a PC, so in the event of losing the phone (with the SIM card in it), you can restore all of your valuable contact info into the replacement SIM card. Regards, David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@XYZ.myrealbox.com Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. (Remove the "XYZ." to reply) Dilbert's words of wisdom #18: Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 01:28:47 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Web Site Renovation Complete! I am very pleased to announce that the http://telecom-digest.org website has been completely rebuilt and is now on line for your reference. All the old files were kept around, of course, all 23 years of the back issues of the Digest, etc, but there is a shiny new face on it all, and I hope it is much easier to sort through and use. Please check it out and report any typographical errors, etc, I really hope you will enjoy it, and searching for articles in back issues, etc should now be a lot easier also. And this being the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November (that is an important distinction; voting can occur anytime between November 2 and November 8, but *never* on November 1) please go to your polling places when you wake up sometime Tuesday and vote for the Demopublicans or the Republicrats of your choice. As Mayor Daley would say, 'vote early, and often'! I would personally suggest you try out the Libertarian candidate for president, Mr. Badnarik; he is the only *real* alternative to the present system, but do as you wish, just go do it. And check out the rejuvinated telecom web site, http://telecom-digest.org and let me know how you like it. PAT ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #525 ******************************