From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Nov 11 19:22:03 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id iAC0M3E16542; Thu, 11 Nov 2004 19:22:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 19:22:03 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200411120022.iAC0M3E16542@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 #542 TELECOM Digest Thu, 11 Nov 2004 19:21:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 542 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Advertisers Tune In to New Radio Gauge (Marcus Didius Falco) Book Review: "WarDriving: Drive, Detect, Defend" - Hurley (Rob Slade) Pennsylvania Norvergence Victims Group (Alecia) My Vonage Experience So Far (Tony P.) Re: Internet Without Landline? (Robert Bonomi) Internet Telephony Rings up Business, Regulatory Interest (Lisa Minter) 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: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 23:52:11 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Advertisers Tune In to New Radio Gauge http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60013-2004Oct24.html By Dina ElBoghdady Washington Post Staff Writer The device, the size of a shoe box, is tough to spot unless you make a habit of looking skyward to inspect utility poles while driving. But in 14 locations around the Washington area, the devices are there, sensing which radio stations drivers are listening to by picking up faint electronic signals emitted from car antennas as they drive by. The technology, owned by MobilTrak Inc. of Phoenix, was introduced in this region in May. By year-end, MobilTrak hopes to mount nine more units to monitor the listening habits of more than 1 million drivers and present the results to advertisers eager to better reach the audience in the country's eighth-largest radio market. The monitoring aims to help retailers choose where to advertise by giving them a snapshot of which stations consumers tune into as they drive by their businesses. The most enthusiastic MobilTrak adopters: auto dealers, who generally believe that 80 percent of their business is with people who live or work within 10 miles of a given dealership. "It's all about precision marketing," said C. David Boice, 39, MobilTrak's managing partner. "It's about giving marketers real-time data about what's happening in certain areas at certain times so they don't waste their advertising dollars." The approach is the most recent example of the powerful ways marketers are using technology to track customer behavior in natural settings. The strategy in slightly different form is already well entrenched in supermarkets, which track customers' purchases with loyalty cards. Much to the alarm of privacy advocates, technology is helping marketers identify their ideal customers, such as the frequent buyer of a certain brand of detergent, and fine-tune their selling. In this case, privacy advocates are not too worried because MobilTrak does not collect identifiable data about a car or the person driving it. It cannot see or eavesdrop on the driver. MobilTrak compares its technology to a rubber hose laid across a road to count traffic. Its solar-powered units randomly pick up signals across six lanes of traffic from cars up to 140 feet away in the same way a police officer measures car speeds by pointing a radar detector at traffic and repeatedly resetting it. Still, one privacy expert called the technology "creepy" while another raised concerns about the potential of combining it with other technologies to create more intrusive marketing techniques. "It would be a quick leap to connect that data with other data," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union. "Technology is moving at the speed of light. We've reached a point where there are few technological bars to doing anything." Jim Giddings, general manager of Lustine Toyota Scion Dodge in Woodbridge, sees that as progress. Every month his dealership spends $90,000 on radio advertising. For years, he spent $25,000 on one talk-personality station and another $25,000 on a contemporary music station. Both were recommended by his advertising agency, which consulted ratings from Arbitron Inc.'s research team in Columbia, Md. Arbitron tracks listening habits by asking small, random samples of people in the nation's major broadcast markets to keep daily diaries. It is the arbiter of how much stations can charge for commercials based on the estimated number of listeners and the demographics those stations attract. But when Giddings signed on with MobilTrak two months ago, he found that Arbitron's top two stations didn't even rank in the top 10 for in-car radio listeners driving past his dealership. So he shifted his budget, allotting the most money to a news show and a contemporary music station identified as popular by MobilTrak. "It was a real eye-opener," he said. But is MobilTrak helping him attract more customers? "I don't know yet," he said. "I'll have a better idea 90 days from now maybe." Thom Mocarsky, a spokesman for Arbitron, described MobilTrak as "complementary" to Arbitron's wide variety of services. "MobilTrak tells you what your selection of stations should be but it doesn't tell you how many people you are reaching and what you should pay for it," Mocarsky said. "The station with the biggest audience is not necessarily the best buy for a particular advertiser." A drawback to MobilTrak, Mocarsky said, is that it captures only radio listening in cars, which accounts for 33 percent of all radio listening. Another third of radio listening takes place at work and the rest is done at home. Also, MobilTrak captures only FM stations. But MobilTrak counters that research shows there's no indication that preferences are different at home than in the car. The company also said it plans to introduce technology that picks up AM and satellite station signals next spring. MobilTrak was founded in Alabama in 1998 by Jim Christian, who once owned the software firm TapScan, which interpreted ratings from radio and TV stations. Christian, a former radio deejay, sold TapScan to Arbitron in 1998 and sank $10 million to $15 million of his own money into developing MobilTrak's technology, said Boice, the company's managing partner. The company's early years were devoted to refining the sensors and scaling back their size. (The original was refrigerator-sized and needed electricity.) Along the way, Christian picked up customers. But MobilTrak ramped up its marketing efforts when Boice and his two partners bought it in April 2004, shortly after selling a Virginia software company they owned. The three -- Boice, his father Craig Boice, and Kevin Gallagher -- now own 80 percent of the company while Christian owns the rest, Boice said. Christian was not available for comment. Boice and his partners work in Herndon and 15 people work in Phoenix, where the sensors are built. Three MobilTrak salespeople are based elsewhere in the country. MobilTrak also operates in Seattle, Los Angeles, New Jersey and Charlotte. Within 36 months, Boice hopes to have a presence in 100 markets. One California company, Smart Sign Media, uses MobilTrak's sensors and changes the advertising on digital billboards, depending on which radio station people are listening to as they approach. The price of the MobilTrak service ranges from $500 to $6,000 a month, depending on the client and the number of locations they want to monitor. Home Depot just tested the technology in Phoenix, Boice said. Simon Property Group is about to install it in the parking lot of a California mall, he said. And two of the nation's largest radio station owners -- Clear Channel Communications Inc. and Infinity Broadcasting Corp. -- are trying the service in the Washington area. Radio stations use the data MobilTrak collects to lure advertisers. For example, if MobilTrak shows that Clear Channel stations have a loyal following in the Tysons Corner area, "that's a chance for me to show all the retailers there that we're a good investment," said Bennett Zier, Clear Channel's vice president for the Washington-Baltimore area. Michael Hughes, a senior vice president at Infinity, appreciates that MobilTrak can produce ratings information quickly. For example, the firm provided him with data on listeners of a Washington Redskins game on WJFK (106.7) the day after it was broadcast. Hughes said he knows the data are limited because the information comes from only a few locations around the region. "But media these days is about immediacy," he said. "And to have immediate measurement is very attractive." Copyright 2004 The Washington Post Company *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance The Washington Post Company. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 10:49:14 -0800 Subject: Book Review: "WarDriving: Drive, Detect, Defend", Hurley/Thornton Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca (Hi, I'm back. What a trip! Did ya miss me? :-) BKWARDRV.RVW 20040823 "WarDriving: Drive, Detect, Defend", Chris Hurley/Frank Thornton/Michael Puchol, 2004, 1-931836-03-5, U$49.95/C$69.95 %A Chris Hurley %A Frank Thornton %A Michael Puchol %C 800 Hingham Street, Rockland, MA 02370 %D 2004 %G 1-931836-03-5 %I Syngress Media, Inc. %O U$49.95/C$69.95 781-681-5151 fax: 781-681-3585 www.syngress.com %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931836035/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931836035/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931836035/robsladesin03-20 %P 495 p. %T "WarDriving: Drive, Detect, Defend" Chapter one is an introduction to the concept, with a discussion of required components, and the relevant characteristics thereof. Installing NetStumbler is described in chapter two, with operating instructions in three (which also repeats some of the earlier advice on component choice). Kismet installation is detailed for Slackware in chapter four, Fedora in five, and the operations are listed in six. Screenshots of using StumbVerter (and Microsoft MapPoint) or DiGLE to produce maps with the data previously obtained are shown in chapter seven. Chapter eight describes, in detail, how to organize your own wardriving contest (including an eight page Perl script for scoring results). Simple means of attacking and connecting to wireless networks are given in chapter nine. Screenshots of dialogue boxes for enabling basic security features on the major wireless routers are listed in chapter ten. Some features providing more advanced security are discussed in chapter eleven. The material provided in the book is clear, and will provide you with enough information to start wardriving and connecting to other networks. The content is fairly rudimentary, though, without the background information of a work like "Wireless Hacks" (cf. BKWLSHCK.RVW), by Rob Flickenger, which would allow the reader to go further in both understanding the technology and defending wireless networks. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2004 BKWARDRV.RVW 20040823 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu Those damn digital computers! - Vannevar E. Bush http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ From: Alecia Subject: Pennsylvania Victims Group Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 14:38:59 -0500 A group is being formed consisting of Pennsylvania Norvergence victims. This also includes companies outside of PA who have PA Leasing Companies. With this group, we could attack our problem with a united front and exchange information. We are considering using this information for the following: Group meeting ? (possibly one in the East and one in the West ? Or maybe one in Central PA ? - please give your feedback). One member has offered his company's teleconferencing services to assist with this. United mailings to government agencies, elected officials, etc. Getting media coverage to put pressure on the PA AG and also to find other victims. Exchanging information and helping each other develop strategies. Please respond to this email OFF BOARD and let me know if you are interested in joining such a group. You must let me know if it is OK to use your name and information to share with others in the group. Also let me know if you are willing to be listed along with us if we contact the media, government agencies, etc. Of course, if at any time you wish to be removed from the group, just let us know. If you are interested, please give me full information -- name, company name, address, telephone number, fax number, email address, leasing company and their state, and anything else you feel is important. You might want to include whether you have been sued, what equipment you received, what your lease amount is, whether you are paying, etc. If you think there is more information we should gather, please let me know. I will be glad to share with you all of my information once I hear from you off-board. Please feel free to contact me by phone as well. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you, Alecia M. Quinn VP, Administration Keystone Foam Corporation PO Box 355 Loyalhanna, PA 15661 (724) 694-8833 (724) 694-8519 fax amquinn3030@comcast.net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Alecia, before you attempt to re-invent the wheel on this, you may want to check into federal actions in recent days on Norvergence. The Federal Trade Commission has already, not long ago, declared that Norvergence was a total fraud (and a very good one, I might add), and they have declared that the leasing things that companies like yours signed were equally fraudulent documents. Some have suggested that the leasing companies were at best, very casual and careless in agreeing to accept the lease assignments, as 'holders in due course' and at worst, complicit in the fraud. Use our web site http://telecom-digest.org to search for Norvergence in our archives for all you would ever want to know about that bunch of charlatans. As I understand it, essentially no one these days is paying on that lease arrangement, no matter how it was phrased, nor no matter how aggresive the banks and finance companies have gotten, and the more agressive of the 'debtors' (who were defrauded as you apparently have been) have begun looking into ways to force the return of the money they already paid under duress from collectors, etc. Read the last two months or so of this digest at our web site for more details before you try to organize people in Pennsylvania at some expense to yourself, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: My Vonage Experience So Far Organization: ATCC Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 23:18:28 -0500 Got it hooked up yesterday. Sound quality is pretty good for packet. That being said I have one major complaint that has blossomed into two now. The first is that my Trimline, 2702B and Celebrity phones won't work the way they're supposed to. By that I mean they don't ring except for one little ding of the bell. Hooking up my AT&T 1523 to the line gets full electronic ring. Now I read the specs for the Linksys router -- it says it supports 5 REN. A bell is 1 REN by default and it can't drive it? Something is up there. The spawned complaint is hold times for support. Excessive. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I agree sometimes the hold time when calling Vonage is worse that it should be. I can also tell you that as I have heard from others, Vonage is no longer using the Linksys router for their adapter; too many other complaints including yours. I have a Motorola adapter, which seems to do okay and one day in a conversation with a Vonage rep we were talking about the (new for them) Linksys router. I started with Vonage using the Cisco phone adapter, switched over the Motorola since I have other Motorola products here (Surfboard cable 'modem'), and asked the guy if I should try the newest adapter they have, the Linksys. "Nah," he said, "You don't want to mess with it. We've already had various complaints on it, and I think they are going to stop shipping it as well." My suggestion is try your various (cluster of) phones one at a time giving you one REN on the line at a time talking to the Linksys. See if your two offending phones can at least work along with the Linksys by themselves, i.e. adapter to one phone. If they can get that far, then when they are on your internal network and act up again, you may want to think about a possible problem with your own network. Let us know how it works for you. PAT] ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: Internet Without Landline? From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 03:49:43 +0000 In article , Robert Bonomi wrote: > In article , Markus Dehmann > wrote: >> Is it possible to get high-speed internet access without a >> phone/landline at home (in Maryland/U.S.)? >> I only have a cell phone, but internet at home would be good, too. I >> don't need a landline, though because the cell phone is enough. >> Thanks! >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, it is not only possible, but >> for many folks more desirable. You get your high speed internet from >> the cable company there in Maryland and otherwise use your cell phone >> for voice calls. That's essentially what many folks do, or they have >> a very inexpensive landline phone from a CLEC as a backup only. PAT] > If you order _SDSL_ service, it always comes on a separate pair. > *ordering* can be an 'interesting time' (in the sense of Chinese > _curse_ :), but it can be done. > Depending on locale -- and I have _NOT_ researched the specific case > of Maryland -- ADSL on it's own pair *may* also be available; where > available it is typically $5-10/mo more than 'shared' ADSL > (piggy-backed on a POTS line). 'dry pair' ADSL is becoming more > common than it was a year or two ago. > Visiting the 'dslreports.com' website, and using a next-door > neighbor's phone number, _will_ get you a list of providers and > service options that are available at your location. > When actually ordering, the order usually has to go up the food-chain > *several* layers, between the DSL provider and the ILEC. The > situation I ran into, the DSL provider's computer system would -not- > accept the order _without_ some sort of a 'phone number' for location, > while the _phone_company_ (ILEC) computer would not accept the order > *with* a phone number (it -knew- there was no phone service at that > location). *PEOPLE* had to actually get involved from the DSL > provider, in placing _their_ order with the phone company. > When the install was actually done, the DSL 'field technician' was > _really_ puzzled, cuz his paperwork showed a 'site phone number' of > "000-0000". > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What you say is all well and good, but > why should someone have to go to all that trouble of arguing and > pleading with telco to get them to sell you service when you could > just go to your cable company and have them turn it on the same day? > And regardless of what you say about SDSL service, Southwestern Bell > Telephone (now known as SBC) **will not** sell it to you without > taking 'regular' phone service as well. I think it is against their > religion or something. They do it only in California where a court > ordered them to do so. Forget it elsewhere from SBC. People who want > high speed internet up and running in a hurry just go to their cable > company. PAT] Why? Any of a large _number_ of reasons. To name a few: 1) It *isn't* always 'turn it on the same day' with the cable companies. Not even the same *month*. or *YEAR*. Last spring a client of mine moved into different office space in the Chicago Loop (Jackson and Wells). Called the Cable TV company to get *TV* hooked up; they looked up the address, and said "Oops! that building is _NOT_WIRED_ The lead time for getting you service is *two*years*". They got satellite TV instead. 2) In some places the cable company is _not_ an Internet access alternative. Because they *do*not* offer Internet access. 3) Some people need a more _trustworthy_ connection than the Cable companies provide. 'Reliability' is *not* a selling point for cable Internet services. In Chicago, service outages are _frequent_ (like average 3-5 times a week), although of short (30 minutes or less) duration. For 'hobby' use this is fine, but it doesn't cut it when you're trying to use the connection for 'real work'. 4) Some people need higher _uplink_ throughput, and/or more 'predictable' download speeds, even when a lot of their neighbors are "on-line". 5) Trying to _keep_ Internet access running from the cable company, when you *don't* subscribe to the cable _TV_ service, gets even *more* interesting than trying to order DSL w/o a POTS phone line. A friend in Philly got *sued* by the cable company -- for 'stealing' TV service, would you believe? -- because the TV techs found this 'tap' running into his house. They disconnected it, he called in trouble to the ISP operation, when his connection went down; they re-connected, Next time by, the TV tech discovered the 'illegal' tap had been re-installed, and guess what? . "lather, rinse, repeat" applies. The TV side eventually _did_ file a lawsuit, *and* a criminal complaint. It took more than 6 months, and several *thousand* dollars in lawyer fees to get *that* mess straightened out. And, no, the cable company did -not- offer to make good on the out-of-pocket expenses incurred due to *their* failure to communicate between their departments. BTW, SBC, in Illinois, _will_ sell SDSL to someone who does not have 'regular' phone service from SBC. It is true that they do not offer dry-pair ADSL, but only 'shared' service. Furthermore, SBC is _not_ the only alternative for the actual DSL circuit, in *this* area. I have a choice of _THREE_ physical-layer DSL providers, with more than 80 ISPs reselling connectivity through one (or more) of those physical-layer providers. I can get 'dry pair' ADSL from at least one of the non-SBC providers. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: By chance, were you thinking about the Judy Sammel incident in your example above? That poor lady really had a hellish adventure with Comcast. I am going to add her experience as a 'feature story' on our web site http://telecom-digest.org sometime soon. You can read it now, it is in the archives in the 'security- fraud' directory, but it is all in html which makes it hard for anyone to read in straight ASCII text. I dunno why that file never got a straight text version made up to go along with the web site version. Nor have I ever figured out why Judy Sammel did not sue the pants off of Comcast for the hell and humiliation she had to endure. But that's her business, I guess. I guess I also forgot that not everyone lives in Independence, KS where the workers at the local cable company, Cable One, are local residents, where everywhere has long since been wired up and where they are unlikely to make the sort of goof-up that Judy Sammel endured, and where, indeed, when you go in the office downtown and say "I would like to try X" the lady probably already knows your address, sits at the computer, types in a few things and says, "okay, it is turned on now, it should be working when you get back home." and if you do have some problems then her husband, or their kid or the other guy drives over and looks at it a few minutes after you called. I guess I forgot that Chicago has a lot of problems, poor customer service in cable being just a minor one. It reminds me of the day I went to our local Social Security office on Penn Street just north of the downtown area. When I told the ladies there that I had formerly lived in Chicago (which is where I was at when I was approved for Social Security Disability due to the brain aneurysm), their eyes got big, wide like saucers. The office manager said to me, "Well, I have never been in Chicago in my life, but we have had to call the warehouse/service center there, and it takes a long time to get anything done, to even get their attention, and I work for the same bunch as they do." Then a lady said, "Is it true when you have to go into the Social Security office, in Chicago you have to wait an hour before your number is called for you to get 'waited on' then you go stand in a little cubicle while they sass at you? I've never been to Chicago either." I said that was true, she made a clucking noise and pursed her lips. Yeah, I guess I forgot all that when I suggested 'go for cable, get it turned on same day'. Ditto with Prairie Stream telco. Having *local, community residents* to deal with is a much better deal than having to diddle around on the phone or fax for many days/weeks to get a job done. Maybe that is my one major gripe with SBC, or Southwestern Bell. For years, they had a single service rep and cashier over at the combination CO/business office at 6th and Maple. When you went in to see them, the lady would write up the paperwork, take your money or whatever, then as needed call upstairs to the guy in the switch and tell him what you wanted done, and it happened, same day. They also lived right here in the community, just like the Cable One people, the ladies who run our Social Security office, the guys at Prairie Stream and others. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 10:42:55 -0500 Subject: Internet Telephony Rings up Business, Regulatory Interest http://www.mlive.com/businessdirect/stories/index.ssf?/businessdirect/central/stories/20041111telophany.html By Mark Fellows A new Internet-based network linking Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing to campuses in Grand Rapids and Oakland County will allow high-speed connections not just for instruction and administration, but to cut phone bills as well. Cooley last month hooked up with Grand Rapids-based fiber-optic service provider U.S. Signal to upgrade its voice and data system into a virtual private network with speeds up to 45 MB per second. That's a 15-fold speed boost using an Internet protocol, or IP, system. [.....] Yet how -- and whether -- to regulate VoIP is in dispute. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell advocates a hands-off approach and vows to head off state efforts to regulate it. Although the Michigan Public Service Commission is one of many around the country looking into the technology, by November it had not followed up a March call for testimony with any report or action. "We are in limbo land and I fully expect that we're going to stay there for quite a while," telecommunications specialist Rick Coy of the Lansing office of the Clark Hill law firm said. "Not only are the feds saying to states 'Don't do anything,' but there are some serious questions whether states have the authority to do much." Convergence of data, video and voice information technologies into digital packets, Coy said, undermines such efforts. Although telecommunications giants are consolidating such technologies to remain major competitors, he said, "regulation itself is a declining industry." Full story at: http://www.mlive.com/businessdirect/stories/index.ssf?/businessdirect/central/stories/20041111telophany.html ------------------------------ 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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