From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Nov 21 02:26:55 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id iAL7QtX14200; Sun, 21 Nov 2004 02:26:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 02:26:55 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200411210726.iAL7QtX14200@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 #559 TELECOM Digest Sun, 21 Nov 2004 02:26:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 559 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits (Dave VanHorn) Re: What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits (Steve Sobol) Re: Sears and K-Mart (Thomas A. Horsley) Re: Sears and K-Mart (Steve Sobol) Re: Off-Shore Call Centers (Steve Sobol) Re: Vonage Tech Support Dead? (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: The Pitfalls of VoIP (Tim@Backhome.org) Couple of Basic Cellular Questions (Michael A. Covington) Re: Anyone Having any Luck With Google Ads? (Michael A. Covington) Re: EFF: Anti-Spam Measures Block Free Speech (Michael A. Covington) Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate (Dan Lanciani) Re: Last Laugh! Re: Texas Officials Wary of Plan to Hunt (Covington) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Dave VanHorn Subject: Re: What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 18:42:27 -0500 >> Other stores can stay in business, but only in little tiny niches. No >> one can compete with Walmart. A new move by Walmart will leave >> merchandise in the inventory of the supplier until it is sold. $60 >> billion will disappear from Walmart books. This would really be "just >> in time". It would never belong to Walmart. It would be sold >> directly from the distributor to the consumer at the Walmart checkout. > So they're acting as a consignment vendor. How interesting. What a clever way to deal with theft! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have an interesting question. Someone gets caught shoplifting at Walmart. It happens here several times per week here, according to the police activities column in the Independence Daily Reporter newspaper. Walmart always prosecutes, but in these cases, how can Walmart prosecute for something that was not stolen from them since they did not 'own' it at that point in time (if they ever do, or do they merely act as collection agents for the owner, which is vender who supplied it?). Or do the venders authorize Walmart to act as their agent in such cases? I did not steal from Walmart, I stole from the vender, is that not correct? Advice, anyone? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 16:59:26 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Tony P. wrote: >> I was surprised that Walmart would put a store in Napa, since there >> was already one in American Canyon, 14 miles away. Since then, they >> have applied for a move of the American Canyon store to a larger >> position 3 miles closer to Napa. We have a Walmart in Victorville, and a Walmart in neighboring Apple Valley. As long as there's enough population to support both, the company doesn't have any issues with distance. >> Other stores can stay in business, but only in little tiny niches. No >> one can compete with Walmart. A new move by Walmart will leave >> merchandise in the inventory of the supplier until it is sold. $60 >> billion will disappear from Walmart books. This would really be "just >> in time". It would never belong to Walmart. It would be sold >> directly from the distributor to the consumer at the Walmart checkout. > So they're acting as a consignment vendor. How interesting. I don't think that's a bad idea, actually. People ARE going to walk into a Walmart and buy stuff. I wouldn't mind putting my stuff there on consignment, although I'd probably prefer to sell it to them directly and let them sell it out of their inventory. > Distance has nothing to do with location of stores period. In Boston > there are two CVS stores directly across the street from each other. > Granted, it's a busy street and the reasoning is that people don't have > to cross the street to get to CVS. Most of these situations like this one, and like the streetcorner in suburban Saint Louis with one Shell station on one corner and another Shell station on another at the same intersection (seen that in Cleveland too, near where I grew up, until Ashland Oil finally bought the land, tore down the Shell and put a SuperAmerica there), are probably caused by mergers and acquisitions. > Cox Communications tends to be generous with the communities they > serve. But they have no choice -- they are a protected monopoly to > some degree. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Is Cox Communications the same thing > as Cox Cable? Cox cable operations are owned by Cox Communications. It's the same company. 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. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here is another question for anyone who wishes to answer: The merchandise I bought from Walmart (or from a vender of Walmart is faulty, or injures me or makes me sick, etc.) I am advised to file suit. Do I sue Walmart or do I sue the vender or both of them? I know Walmart does not go out of their way now to do any customer service they can avoid. Earlier this year I went to Walmart to get something, and used my debit card to pay for it. When I got home I checked the computer and there were *three* identical charges instead of only one. I called and went back to Walmart, all they would say is 'not our problem, we did not swipe you three times, we only swiped you once. The problem got corrected in a couple days, but Walmart never admitted to any part of it. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Sears and K-Mart From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 00:11:35 GMT > ...Frontier -- has at least some walk-in offices. I wonder what the > Bells are so afraid of that non-Bells aren't ... My impression has always been that they feel they are "The Phone Company" and By God you ought to be using your $#@! phone to do business with them. Many years ago I went to a local phone office to try and solve some problem in the hope that speaking to a real person would help, and all they did was put me on the phone with somebody :-). >>==>> The *Best* political site >>==+ email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics <<==+ ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Sears and K-Mart Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 17:00:38 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Stanley Cline wrote: > What's strange is that the lack of walk-in offices is pretty much a > Bell/GTE-only thing; practically every phone company that is not one > of Verizon, SBC, BellSouth, or Qwest -- *including* the very large > multi-state independents like Sprint LTD, ALLTEL, CenturyTel, and > Frontier -- has at least some walk-in offices. I wonder what the > Bells are so afraid of that non-Bells aren't ... Verizon has Verizon Plus (landline/long distance/DSL/wireless) stores in areas where they are the ILEC, like the one in my area, in Victorville. In places like the area where I grew up where they are only the ILEC in select exurban areas, they probably won't have any. 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: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Off-Shore Call Centers Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 16:01:56 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com John Schmerold wrote: > The problem is, when I need SBC DSL support, I have no choice. I can't > say "charge me $20 so I don't have to talk to an Indian" If there are one or more local ISPs in your area that resell SBC, that's an option. You will deal with them directly instead of SBC. 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: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Vonage Tech Support Dead? Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 16:48:02 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications DevilsPGD wrote: > In message Tony P. > wrote: >> I've had no problems getting a human the two times I've had to call >> Vonage. But the hold times are on the high side. >> On my last call to them I waited for 45 minutes before getting a human >> being. > I've never had problems before. I don't mind hold time, I have a good > speakerphone, but this time I can't even get into the hold queue. I've been a customer since March 2003. Tech support has gone from very good to terrible. Yesterday, my voicemail box was locked out for over an hour. I finally called tech support and was told by a recording to use the web. I used the web and received no response as of 24 hours later. With that kind of service the LECs are quite dead yet. ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: The Pitfalls of VoIP Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 16:51:48 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications Having used Vonage for 19 months I think the article is on target. We still have one SBC wireline phone for local, residential use. It is toll-blocked so we have to use Vonage or our cell phones for long distance. I do use the Vonage number for limited inbound calls for a part-time work-at-home consulting service. It will be a long time before I even consider dropping all convential wireline service. Power failures are a way of life where I live. Lisa Minter wrote: > Jack Decker note: Lately the press has been spreading a lot of FUD > (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about VoIP. I have heard that some phone > companies have been known to spend more advertising dollars with > publishers and broadcasters that run stories favorable to them, and > negative toward any perceived competition. I'm not saying there's any > such quid pro quo in the case of this specific story, just that the > increase in negative stories about VoIP in the press has me wondering. > http://www.komando.com/kolumns_show.asp?showID=8068 > The Pitfalls of VoIP > by Kim Komando - 11/22/2004 > Using your computer and Internet connection to make local and long > distance calls has been getting a lot of attention lately. People are > enticed by the savings offered by Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) > and the ability to use a regular telephone. Before you jump on the > bandwagon, consider the drawbacks. > Most VoIP providers charge a monthly fee of $20 to $30 for unlimited > local and long distance calling anywhere in the U.S., and sometimes > Canada. You also receive a host of features that would normally cost > extra, such as call forwarding, voice mail, caller ID and call > waiting. > There are enhanced features, too. Many providers will forward your > voice mail to an e-mail account. There is a super version of > call-forwarding that forwards calls to five or so different phones. It > will ring them one at a time or all five simultaneously. > Although VoIP is still in its infancy, there are a number of companies > providing service, such as AT&T, > (http://www.usa.att.com/callvantage/index.jsp), Packet8 > (http://www.packet8.net/), VoicePulse (http://www.voicepulse.com/) and > Vonage (http://www.vonage.com/). The quality is better than a cell > phone and often matches traditional phone service. But there is a > potential for dropouts similar to a cell phone. > http://www.komando.com/kolumns_show.asp?showID=8068 ------------------------------ From: Michael A. Covington Subject: Couple of Basic Cellular Questions Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 00:06:57 -0500 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) I just entered the 21st Century by trading in my family's TDMA Nokia cellphones for a set of Samsung GSM ones, complete with color screens, polyphonic ringtones, and flip-open cases ("Beam me up, Scotty!") ... Couple of questions: (1) If I were to buy Samsung's USB data cable, would I be able to download my own ringtones and graphics directly to the telephone? Pointers on how to do this would be most welcome. What software do you use on the PC? What are the file requirements for ringtones and screen graphics? (2) Is there any market or good use for used Nokia TDMA telephones that are deactivated? They still connect to Cingular, they just aren't allowed to make calls. Am I right in thinking that such a phone can still call 911? In that case we might put one in each car along with its car charger. Or is there a secondhand market? I realize these are probably FAQs and it's quite OK to reply by just giving me a URL. Trying to find the answer on Google I found a mess of 'hacker' and pornographic sites. Apparently there is a brisk market for cell phone screen pornography! ------------------------------ From: Michael A. Covington Subject: Re: Anyone Having any Luck With Google Ads? Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 00:12:26 -0500 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) I'm getting about $2.50 a day with *wild* fluctuations (some days $8, some days $1). The ads are mostly appropriate. None have been in bad taste as far as I know. I have put Google Ads only on a few of my pages that are basically reference information (e.g., www.covingtoninnovations.com/noppp, www.covingtoninnovations.com/dslr). One of them, a general reference page on digital SLR cameras, actually gets ads only for the Nikon D100 even though about half of its content is Canon-oriented. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have not had very good luck with them to date. They seem to undercount hits to my various pages (based on my examination of my logs) and some days they cannot come up with any good ads at all. According to their figures, I am getting about 1.2 % rate of impressions to clicks, but most people seem to get a lot more. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael A. Covington Subject: Re: EFF: Anti-Spam Measures Block Free Speech Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 00:13:52 -0500 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) Let's go ahead and admit it - the EFF is not infallible. I find myself agreeing with them less and less often as time goes by. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 00:22:44 EST From: Dan Lanciani Subject: Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate jdj@now.here (jdj) wrote: > On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 03:12:34 -0500, Dan Lanciani wrote: >> Interesting. I didn't realize that this was considered a bad thing. > There are a lot of people who equate receiving spam to stepping in > what the cat leaves on the lawn. This makes no sense. How exactly can you avoid "receiving spam"? > It makes them all kinds of upset when someone suggests doing > something other than killing received spam. Tell me how to kill received spam without also killing legitimate mail and I'll do it. >> My filters respond to every (seemingly) spam message with a note >> indicating how to bypass the filter if in fact the mail is not spam. >> (Actually they do this only once per sender per some months, but you >> get the idea.) I really can't just dump (seeming) spam in the bucket >> since there are a few false positives. But I get 1500+ spams per day >> and I can't look at them all. > Chances are that your filters are sending responses to forged > addresses. Obviously. But why should I care? The point of the response is to tell people who were neither sending spam nor forging their address that their mail has been incorrectly identified as spam. Note that I do not include the body of the original message in my automated response, so you can't use my filter to reflect spam to a third party. > Occasionally I see messages like that and they are treated > like spam, since they have nothing to do with me and responding to > them is useless. They go to /dev/null. Until it's full. That works only if you have time to look at all the messages. I don't. >>> There is an added benefit if spam to bad addresses were responded to: >>> the bad addresses are confirmed valid and permanently taint the >>> databases, which get sold around and the fun starts all over again. >> Because of the way my filters are integrated into sendmail they >> generate responses for spam sent to bad addresses. I always >> considered this a bug (though at least I fixed it to send only one >> response to envelopes with multiple bad to: addresses :) but I'm glad >> to hear it may do some good. I've noticed lately that spammers will >> make many simultaneous connections to my mail server and run through >> huge lists of bogus recipients. This was overwhelming my system until >> I added a semaphore for spamassassin use and queued most of the >> responses. Do they think I'm an ISP or such? > I should have made it clear that I was not talking about replying to > mail. Yes, that would have been helpful ... > I meant responding by using the url's in the mail body. Only a small minority of the spam emails that I've examined bother to encode a destination address tracking cookie in the URLs. Thus your comment about tainting the database doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of accessing the URLs rather than responding by mail. > Since spammers never use a real From: address replying by mail is > useless. It is extremely useful for my purposes; it just may not happen to also do what you (said you) want. :) > Spammers hit every machine with an open smtp port. If your mail server > accepts connections and even looks like it relays, it will be on > spammer lists as a good relay. They don't care if nothing is actually > delivered. My machine doesn't look like a relay and they are not trying to use it as a relay. They are sending to long lists of (invalid) *local* addresses. >>> Should not be too difficult to set up a procmail script for >>> servers to send a few http requests to a spammer's website instead >>> of bouncing mail with bad addresses. >> Hmm. Maybe just send a SYN to each http:// address that can be >> extracted from the mail. Though I guess that might not count >> against the correct spammer if they are sharing IP addresses. > A SYN would do nothing and with multiple SYNs being sent from all > over the place it would probably be regarded as a dDOS attack. That's quite a stretch, given that each SYN would be in response to something the spammer had actually sent, i.e., there would be no third party initiating the attack. Of course, you would have to be careful not to build a distributed machine that *could* be used by a third party for such an attack. > To be charged for a hit a page must be requested. So sending a SYN > would cost the spammer nothing. So you are saying that spam hosters do not charge their clients for IP traffic? Even if that is true, they might change their policy in the face of such a response. Unfortunately, I can't afford to waste the bandwidth by actually requesting the pages. However, I'm sure many would see the value in an application that screened incoming mail's URLs to be sure that the referenced pages did not contain offensive or otherwise troublesome content. Think of the children. Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com ------------------------------ From: Michael A. Covington Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Re: Texas Officials Wary of Plan to Hunt Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 00:08:30 -0500 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) You forgot the April 1 dateline. Admittedly it's November now... :) RobertPlattBell wrote in message news:telecom23.557.15@telecom-digest.org: > You think Internet HUNTING is bad? Take the concept to its logical > conclusion ... (some fun with cut and paste techniques). > By Jeff Franks > HOUSTON (Reuters) - Killers soon may be able to sit at their computers > and blast away at people in an unnamed third-world country via the > Internet, a prospect that has human rights activists up in arms. > A controversial Web site, http://www.live-shot.com, already offers > target practice with a .22 caliber rifle and could soon let Killers > shoot at women and children, site creator John Underwood said on > Tuesday. > U.S. Government officials are not quite sure what to make of > Underwood's Web site, but may tweak existing laws to make sure > Internet killing does not get out of hand. > "This is the first one I've seen," said senior FBI agent Mike Berger. > "The current state statutes don't cover this sort of thing." > Underwood, an estimator for a San Antonio, Texas auto body shop, has > invested $10,000 to build a platform for a rifle and camera that can > be remotely aimed on his 330-acre (133-hectare) estate located in an > undisclosed third-world country, by anyone on the Internet anywhere in > the world. > The idea came last year while viewing another Web site on which > cameras posted in in various third-world countries are used to snap > photos of people. "We were looking at a beautiful young Hispanic girl > and my friend said 'If you just had a gun for that.' A little light > bulb went off in my head," he said. > Internet killing could be popular with the disabled unable to get out > of the house who still want to experience a "thrill kill", or for > those who cannot afford a trip to third-world countries to commit > murders, Underwood said. > Berger said state law only covers "regulated people" such as U.S. > Citizens within the United States and cannot prevent Underwood from > offering Internet kills of "unregulated" people such as foreigners > located in distant lands. > He has proposed a rule that will come up for public discussion in > January that anyone killing people via Internet, even if the victim is > in a foreign land, could be tried for murder in the State. > Berger expressed reservations about remote control killing, but noted > that humans have always adopted new technologies to kill. > "First it was rocks and clubs, then we sharpened it and put it on a > stick. Then there was the bow and arrow, black powder, smokeless power > and optics," Berger said. "Maybe this is the next technological step > out there." > Underwood, 39, said he will offer human killing as soon as he gets a > fast Internet connection to his third world estate that will enable > killers to aim the rifle quickly at passing people. > He said an attendant would retrieve shot people for the shooters, who > could have the heads preserved by a taxidermist. They could also have > the meat processed and shipped home, or donated to orphanages. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is a problem in any event with using a gun on the internet. What if someone logs in using a false name, then uses a gun to shoot at a person in a deliberate way? Who is held responsible, the user, the web site operator, or?? PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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