From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Nov 21 19:34:15 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id iAM0YFi23457; Sun, 21 Nov 2004 19:34:15 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 19:34:15 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200411220034.iAM0YFi23457@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 #560 TELECOM Digest Sun, 21 Nov 2004 19:33:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 560 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson For Cellphones, Porn May be Call Away (Marcus Didius Falco) Needed: Dialogic Install CD for D/41H (PhoneGuy) The Persuaders (Monty Solomon) Re: SBC Wants Its Cut of VoIP Revenue (Adam) Re: Sears and K-Mart (Robert Bonomi) Re: Vonage Tech Support Dead? (Tony P.) Re: Couple of Basic Cellular Questions (Joseph) Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate (Robert Bonomi) Re: Movie Studios to Sue Internet File Traders (Robert Bonomi) Re: What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits (Robert Bonomi) Re: What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits (Michael A. Covington) Re: What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits (DevilsPGD) Re: Anyone Having any Luck With Google Ads? (Jeffrey Mattox) 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: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 03:13:50 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: For Cellphones, Porn May be Call Away From the Boston Globe -- http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11/20/for_cellphones_porn_may_be_call_away/ By Peter J. Howe The lure of pornography helped drive the mass-market adoption of videocassette recorders, satellite television, and the World Wide Web. Now, history could repeat itself in the world of cellphones -- specifically, the newest generation of cellphones, which sport high-resolution color screens and connections to super-fast data networks that can stream X-rated photos and film clips straight to the handset. Adults-only wireless websites have begun sprouting in many regions, including Europe and Australia, that are generally a year or more ahead of the United States in adopting advanced wireless technology. In Britain, the profusion of adult sites and the interest in them has forced the six major British wireless carriers to develop ways to block people younger than 18 from getting access. As implausible as the idea of trying to look at pornographic images on a screen of only three square inches may seem, some industry analysts think a combination of novelty, and especially privacy -- unlike a computer, a phone can be used almost anywhere -- make cellphones an appealing way for some to view pornography. Almost all of the content available today via cellphone is found on foreign websites. US cellphone users with Web access plans can already download images -- as explicit as anything that's found on the Internet -- without dialing an overseas number. They simply use the Web browsers in their cellphones. Usually, the sites offer free access. Playboy Enterprises Inc., which recently added Spain and Portugal to the dozen other countries where it is licensing adult content for cellphones, says it hopes to reach the US market within the next several months. US wireless carriers already offer pictorial and digital content, including television-style news clips, and roughly one-fifth of the 171 million US cellphone owners carry handsets that can receive full-color digital photos and video. "New technology is often brought forward and driven forward by adult services, and I don't think mobile phone content will be different," Chris Lane, director of the Australian cellphone carrier Optus Mobile Partners, said last month as the carrier outlined plans to add an adult channel on its wireless portal in the next six to eight months. Adam Zawel, a research analyst with The Yankee Group in Boston, recently estimated that one "phone erotica" website run from Britain is getting more than 300 million "hits" per month, including visits from some US cellphone owners, who have learned about the service largely by word-of-mouth. The site says it offers more than 3,000 images and short video clips formatted for display on a cellphone, plus erotic fiction that visitors download in 80- to 100-word snippets. For now, the service is free as its owner attempts to drive up traffic as a way to prove to the phone companies that a potential paying audience exists. Zawel estimates the annual market for "wireless adult content" will reach $1 billion globally by 2008, including $90 million in the United States. Although $90 million sounds significant, it would represent only 0.1 percent of current annual revenues for the largest US wireless carriers: Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless LLC, Nextel Communications Inc., and Sprint PCS. It would represent just 2 percent of the total projected US spending on adult content in all media, Zawel said. Pornography is not a revenue source that US carriers are rushing to wrap their brand names around, though. A Sprint Corp. spokesman, Mark J. Elliott, said its "PCS Vision" wireless data service "adheres to the standards of acceptability for general TV audiences. We do not endorse, support, or affiliate ourselves with any entities providing adult content." Alexa G. Kaufman, spokeswoman for Atlanta-based Cingular Wireless -- with 46 million subscribers, the biggest US carrier -- said, "We don't have any intention to partner with adult content providers." At number-two Verizon Wireless, spokeswoman J. Abra Degbor declined to comment. Verizon is 45 percent owned by Vodafone Group PLC, a British multinational carrier that has begun offering adult content in markets outside the United States. In Britain, carriers including Vodafone, Virgin Mobile, Orange, and T-Mobile have agreed to block adults-only content from subscribers unless they have demonstrated that the person who owns the phone associated with a specific phone number is over age 18, which would not keep minors from using adults' phones to visit adults-only sites. Carriers in Britain acted following pressure from national telecommunications regulators and groups such as the Children's Charities Coalition for Internet Safety, all of which expressed concerns about young people having easy access to hard-core pornography. Like all carriers, however, Cingular, Sprint, and others would profit indirectly from porn-driven wireless data traffic in the same way that landline Internet service providers depend on interest in adult content to enlarge their customer base. Getting into the business of directly offering and billing for adult content could be a political and public-relations minefield for image-conscious wireless brands. "This is obviously not a development that would thrill anyone with religious sensibilities or secular sensibilities who wants to protect some modicum of human decency and respect in our society," said the Rev. Diane C. Kessler, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. Carriers might never directly promote adult offerings. But they are also unlikely to actively block or censor them. Cingular's Kaufman said: "We do believe that the type of content customers access through their wireless services is a matter of personal choice. We also believe that parents are the best line of defense in protecting children from objectionable content. They should actively monitor their children's use of the cellphone, both for voice calls and data services." Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use 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 New York Times Company. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: PhoneGuy Subject: NEED: Dialogic Install CD for D/41H Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 13:33:45 -0500 I just purchased a Dialogic D/41H and it did not come with any installation software ... I am looking for a copy of that cd if anyone can help out that would be awesome... Please email me and let me know. PhoneGuy ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 10:35:23 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Persuaders Excerpt from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/etc/synopsis.html In "The Persuaders," FRONTLINE explores how the cultures of marketing and advertising have come to influence not only what Americans buy, but also how they view themselves and the world around them. The 90-minute documentary draws on a range of experts and observers of the advertising/marketing world, to examine how, in the words of one on-camera commentator, "the principal of democracy yields to the practice of demography," as highly customized messages are delivered to a smaller segment of the market. Take the 2004 presidential sweepstakes for example. Both the Republicans and the Democrats were prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to custom craft their messages. "What politicians do is tailor their message to each demographic group," says Peter Swire, professor of law at Ohio State University and an expert on Internet policy. "That means Americans will live in different virtual universes. What's wrong with living in different universes? You never confront the other side. You don't have to deal with the uncomfortable facts that go against your worldview. It hardens the partisanship that's been such a feature of recent American politics." FRONTLINE analyzes the 2004 campaign where, for the first time, the latest techniques in narrowcasting were put into effect. The antithesis of traditional broadcasting, narrowcasting involves crafting and delivering tailored messages to individual voters based on their demographic profiles. Political marketers are just now discovering new ways to use the techniques that have long been employed by the private sector. FRONTLINE visits Acxiom, the largest data mining company in the world, where vast farms of computers hold detailed information about nearly every adult in America. Data mining, a practice that predicts likely behavior based on factors such as age, income, and shopping habits, has been the gold standard of commercial advertisers. Acxiom promises its clients a better way to target their messages to individual consumers. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/etc/synopsis.html http://www.pbs.org/frontline/shows/persuaders/ Watch online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/view/ ------------------------------ From: Adam Subject: Re: SBC Wants its Cut of VoIP Revenue Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 15:17:41 GMT Hmmm ... my two attempts to respond to this thread through SBC's news server failed ... hmmm. But, I was able to post another thread through SBC's news server. Hmmm ... hmmm ... hmmm ... something to ponder seriously over. How can we fight to prevent S.B.C from reaching its greedy claws into the VoIP treasure chest? http://informationweek.networkingpipeline.com/news/53700323 Philip J. Koenig wrote in message news:MPG.1c086e3125a444ef98a69f@corp.supernews.com: Following document is a copy of a letter to the FCC by an organization that represents the interests of the CLECS (competitive local access carriers), pointing out the ominous undertones of a recent filing by SBC for a new tariff whereby they will demand anyone running a VoIP service over their infrastructure to pay them a fee. Long version: http://206.161.82.210/Filings/111904TIPTOP%20tariff%20investigation%20letter.pdf Short version: http://tinyurl.com/5durr Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. -- Albert Einstein To send email, remove numbers and spaces: pjkusenet64 @ ekahuna27 . com Simple answers are for simple minds. Try a new way of looking at things. ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: Sears and K-Mart From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 14:43:10 +0000 In article , Stanley Cline wrote: > On 19 Nov 2004 11:50:34 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) > wrote: >> My local carrier, Verizon, is running the same risk of becoming too >> distant from the people it serves. Years ago they had business >> offices in regions, several throughout a big city. Today when you >> call them (they no longer accomodate in-person visits) your call can > 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 ... There are two primary reasons (not necessarily in order): 1) Security, for _their_ employees. No customer presence, no risk of an unsatisfied customer 'going postal'. With ILEC 'quality of service', this is a _valid_ concern. 2) Cost. It takes nearly _twice_ the floor-space to provide a customer- service rep with a desk *and* space for a customer to sit, as it does to provide them _just_ the desk. Plus the 'waiting-room' space for those who are not yet talking to a rep. Plus an additional staff person ("receptionist") to manage the queuing before you get to the CSR. Also, space "convenient to customers" for walk-in business is *expensive*, compared to what one pays for 'non-customer-accessible office space in the same vicinity. Office space somewhere 'out in the boonies' is even _less_ expensive. In addition, there are substantial economies derived from running one large facility, vs. _many_ small ones that total the same square footage. Lastly, "queueing theory" says that the larger facility will have proportionally _smaller_ variance in load than smaller facilities. This translates to an over-all smaller staff requirement to handle the expected variations in normal load. Beyond that, it is a matter of 'priorities'. Is 'cutting costs' more important than 'customer convenience', or not? Everybody comes down on a different side of that question on various things. Look at how few companies have a live person answering the main phone number any more, for one example. They figure that the cost savings of the d*mn 'auto attendant' are 'worth' the increase in customer aggravation, and wasted _customer_ time (after all *they* aren't paying for the customer's time :). [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yet, they have the temerity to wonder 'why customers go postal' sometimes ... and your two reasons given for why there are no more (or very few) public offices available any longer does not explain how small independent telcos still manage to do it: Making floor space available for chairs and the cost of rent is an equal problem for them. And I would suppose theoretically the problem of someone 'going postal' is also worth considering. But why do you suppose the small, non-Bell telcos don't have those problems, and can continue to operate their public facilities? Do you think if SBC were to outsource all its 'customer service' functions to China or India they would be able to get rid of all their pseudo problems with finding good, cheap real estate? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Vonage Tech Support Dead? Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 09:49:40 -0500 In article , Tim@Backhome.org says: > 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. Ah, explosive growth without proper planning. I would hope Vonage management types read this group and learn a thing or two. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Couple of Basic Cellular Questions Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 03:31:22 -0800 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 00:06:57 -0500, Michael A. Covington wrote: > (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? If your phone is capable of using downloaded/uploaded graphics, ringtones and other data then yes, the Samsung. If you had provided the particular model it might be possible to recommend something. From a cursory google search there's quite a bit that seems to be available for Samsung just doing a search for "upload to Samsung with USB data cable." > (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? Unless it's a brand spanking new model I'm afraid that the answer is no; there's no real market for used mobile equipment other than stuff that's relatively new. I'm not sure what the situation is now that Cingular has acquired AT&T Wireless, but it was possible with AT&T Wireless resellers such as CallPlus and Beyond Wireless to activate used equipment with them and use their service. Some of them have monthly access as little as $1.50 (JusTalk) while others such as Beyond Wireless the account never expires you just have to use it for a minimum one minute call before the end of sixty days. > 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! You evidently did not use the correct search terms since I found lots and lots of stuff available. If you're too vague or use the wrong search terms you may indeed find "phone porn." I didn't find any of that. ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 14:14:52 +0000 In article , Dan Lanciani wrote: > 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. Suppose *your* email address got forged as the sender on spam that went to 100,000 people using a similar system. Guess what happens to _your_ mailbox. But, "why should those people care?" *You* don't care about being part of doing it to them. If all the spam had *invalid* addresses addresses, it wouldn't be an issue. But, it is _very_ common for the forged address to belong to a _real_person_ who had *nothing*to*do* with the spam. You *are* spamming _their_ mailbox. >> 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. >> 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. :) Yeah. you mail-bomb *innocent* parties who's address was used _without_their_permission_as the sender. > 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. It's called a 'dictionary' attack. Just one more way of trying to find 'valid' email addresses. ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: Movie Studios to Sue Internet File Traders From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 14:20:38 +0000 In article , Robert Bonomi wrote: > In article , > charsand wrote: >> billyzane1@excite.com (Bob Smythe) wrote in message >> news:: >>> The thing is, it is illegal to download or upload copyrighted works, >>> the concept of file sharing and actual file sharing is not illegal. I >>> do not condone illegal file sharing, but am just trying to clarify a >>> few things. >>> The MPAA (and RIAA) have not and will not target individual >>> downloaders. There is no real way to get them. They are not a law >>> enforcement agency. They cannot entrap individual users. If you >>> download from them, and they are the rightful owners, then there is no >>> law broken, even if it is widely know that the service being used is >>> to illegally obtain files. Plus having downloaded one file will not be >>> worthwhile anyway in court. > Statutory copyright infringement penalty, $30,000 per occurrence. Each > making of a copy is a separate violation. > Don't _bet_ on it not being worthwhile in court. > You can't afford to be _right_, let alone wrong. > (A _successful_ infringement defense typically runs into six figures > left of the decimal point.) > Particularly, an 'association' is _not_ looking to 'make money' from > the lawsuit -- their primary aim is the 'chilling effect', as it were, > of the successful prosecution. The _smaller_ the perp that is > successfully prosecuted, the stronger the message that is 'sent', > regarding the 'risk' of such actions. >>> > [[., munch ..]] >> I heard somewhere that those caught could receive not only fines, but >> jail time-is this true? >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It would not suprise me at all. Nor >> does it surprise me that they just toss out lawsuits all over the >> place without even having the *name* or *any identity* of the persons >> they intend to sue. I can see where 'John Doe' might be a valid way >> to sue someone you had caught when you could not otherwise get his >> name, but lawsuits at random against John Does 1 through 9999 (fill >> in the names, addresses and particulars when you find the person) >> seems to me to be a gross abuse of the legal system. But they seem to >> be setting out the lawsuits, then finding the person later on and >> already having the suit set up. Not a good faith thing, IMO. PAT] > Not surprisingly, our esteemed moderator doesn't understand the > process. > They've _already_ got the IP address, and timestamp, data, and all the > 'downloading' evidence to support the suit. But they don't know _who_ > was using that IP address at that time. And the ISP's will -not- > divulge *that* information except by court order. > Hence the John Doe filing. followed by a subpoena to the ISP. > Followed by an 'amended' filing to insert the actual perpetrators > name. Then, and *ONLY*THEN* can you 'serve' the perp with the summons > for the lawsuit. > Any _given_ "John Doe" is alleged to have committed _specific_ acts -- > e.g., "at this specific date/time, did download thus-and-such movie > from IP address aa.bb.cc.dd to xx.yy.zz.ww" > You can't file the suit, -then- go find some *other* violations, and > change the allegations in pre-existing suit to match. > As to the prior poster's question regarding jail time -- the answer is > "yes". The "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" _did_ introduce > *criminal* prosecution and penalties for certain kinds of copyright > infringement. In general, the criminal provisions deal with those who > _distribute_, for money or otherwise, infringing copies. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But many IP addresses are not static, > but dynamic. What do they do then to find the person who 'stole' the > movie or the piece of music? PAT] *READ* what I wrote, above. They have the IP address _and_ the timestamp. The subpoena the ISP to *find*out* _who_ was using *that* IP address *at* *that*time*. The _ISP_ *does* have that information, from authentication logs, etc. _Now_ they have the person's name, to replace the "John Doe" on the lawsuit. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But as someone else noted in a message, not all ISPs keep that information around very long. Once they have had a chance to do what they need with it, the information is dumped. And if someone called in on a dialup line and hacked a real user's name and password then they would have nothing to go on would they? PAT] ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 11:07:27 +0000 In article , Dave VanHorn wrote: >>> 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] First, it is not clear that WalMart is actually doing this (title remains with distributor), today. If not, Walmart _is_ the owner of the stolen (shoplifted) merchandise. Regardless, however, the merchandise is, legally, _in_their_possession_. They =are= the theft 'victim'. The situation is no different than if somebody breaks into your house and steals a rented video-tape. *YOU* are the theft 'victim', not the video-rental store. *YOU* are liable to the rental store for the full cost of the tape. Aside, a consignment vendor *is* liable to the 'owner' for losses incurred during the time that the vendor has 'entrusted' the agent with the vendor's property. *Unless*, that is, the 'consignment agreement' _expressly_ provides otherwise. No different than if the property was destroyed by a fire on the premises. The situation with someone who sells for a 'drop shipper' _is_ different_. That selling agent never has possession of the property, so they -never- incur loss liability. In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted: > [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? *GROSSLY*INSUFFICIENT*DATA* for a meaningful answer. Authoritative answer: "It depends." Just for starters: Was the item faulty in design or manufacture? *DID* the seller (WalMart) _know_, or _should_ they have known, it was faulty? Did the seller (WalMart) do anything to the product that caused, or possibly 'contributed to', the fault? IF the 'fault' was a result of something that the store did, beyond the control of the manufacturer, then the manufacturer has no liability for the problem. IF _nothing_ the store did contributed to the fault, and the store had no reason to be aware that there _was_ such a fault, then the store has no liability. This is what the legal types call a "fact specific" issue. To find out what the appropriate action is, consult a legal professional. Discuss _all_ the *details* of your *specific* situation. Then, and -only- then, can a competent opinion as to the appropriate action -- valid _for_your_ _situation_*ONLY*_ -- be offered. > 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] *AT*THE*STORE*LEVEL*, this was completely correct. There was a record, in the store computer, of _one_ transaction, and one transaction _only_. That store transaction is _not_ with your bank directly. It probably goes to 'corporate hq' first. From there, the corporate computers talk with a ' clearing house'. Which talks to a bank 'network' computer. Which talks to the computer of the actual bank involved. The store _CANNOT_ just go and issue 'credits' for the 'multiple' charges, after all, _they_ only got the *one* payment they were entitled to. "Somewhere" along the line, something 'stuttered'. _One_ side of the process thought it _sent_ the data successfully only once, the *other* side _saw_ the incoming data as valid multiple times. There are fairly extensive 'real-time' checks that are intended to prevent this kind of error from occurring, but they are *not* 'perfect'. Backing up those real-time protections are all sorts of 'end-of-day' summary checks and cross-verifications, internally within a given system, *and* between the systems that pass data to each other. When the end-of-day checks are inconsistent, *people* get called in to run down the disrepencies, and remedy them. Just what would you have the store do in such a situation? They looked into your problem report. They found _nothing_ to substantiate a problem in _their_ system. Until such time as they see something that implicates *their* system, their hands are pretty much tied; absent such evidence, the problem _is_ "somewhere else", and _not_ their responsibility. Now, _if_ it was a communication problem between the clearing house computer and the bank network computer, just _why_ *should* WalMart 'admit to any part of it'? It *wasn't* anything they did, in that situation. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Have you ever considered applying for a job as a Walmart 'customer service' representative? You already have their list of excuses perfectly memorized. When I first called then went back to the store, for all I knew, the clerk *had* swiped me three times, then took the money out of the register for the two additional swipes and pocketed it. There had been an article in the Independence Reporter a few days earlier about a cashier at Walmart who had gotten arrested for stealing several thousand dollars from the store and some customers. When I talked to Bob Donaldson (local Walmart store manager here in Independence) and the customer service manager here, I mentioned to them both about seeing that item in the newspaper. All they would say is, "we dealt with that problem when we found out about it, and we deal with other 'similar situations' here as they arise." They did **not** check any tapes or logs to either verify or deny what I said, just saying 'it could not have happened because our procedures call for X followed by Y and Z.' That, to them, was a satisfactory answer. I told them thank goodness I used my PayPal debit card, where I only keep a little money, so it it gets stolen it is not a big deal. I move a little money into PayPal from my credit card as needed when I plan on going shopping for just that reason. (As a matter of fact, my PayPal debit card account on the computer showed a **negative balance** (in theory I owed PayPal money at that point). I asked PayPal 'customer service' how they would have authorized a sale on an account with a zero credit limit (debit card) and they said 'Walmart told the clearing house to force the approval'. PayPal kept sending me snotty letters all weekend telling me to get the negative balance on my (debit card) account cleared up or they would cancel it and place me in collection. I told PayPal to shove it and get the money back from Walmart who had taken it to start with. The original sale was on Friday afternoon; on Monday my account was perfectly balanced once again; Walmart had a case of corporate amnesia about the weekend, and PayPal had no ideas about anything either. But an article on Monday evening in the Reporter said that Walmart had had a mix up with their card balancing over the weekend. I've also told Bob Donaldson (local Walmart manager) that his store security officers were pretty obnoxious also and that he should fire them and get more responsible guys to work at his store, and that he might start getting people to work there who helped customers out to their car or taxi with shopping bags, or made home delivery like other stores in town do. The whole place is really a dreadful store. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael A. Covington Subject: Re: What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 11:11:49 -0500 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > 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] It may genuinely not have been their problem. It sounds like something that would happen in the bank's computers and then get corrected there. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah I had forgotten that computers are never wrong and that human beings have to bend and flex to do what the computer requires of them. The 'customer service' people at Walmart absolutely worship the all-powerful, all-knowing computer system, and every rule they insist their customers have to follow is in keeping with the computer's terms. I said to Bob Donaldson at Walmart one day 'all the downtown stores have computers also but they can keep them under control and make them do what they want. Why can't you? They can deliver my stuff to my house, why can't you? They know my name when I walk in the store and greet me and as needed walk to a shelf and get what I want; when I walk in your store you have a camera in the ceiling follow me all around the store. Why?' His only response was 'we do what corporate tells us to do.' PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 13:04:16 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com In message TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Steve Sobol : > [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? Both. And the sales clerk who sold you the product, the stockboy who put it on the shelf, the stockboy's mother, and everybody else who was possibly involved with the design, production, delivery, sales, marketing, and use of the product. If you can remain calm, you just don't have all the facts. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 12:32:48 -0600 From: Jeffrey Mattox Subject: Re: Anyone Having any Luck With Google Ads? Pat: [Please withhold my email address if you publish this.] [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] I bet Google's hit count is more accurate regarding readership than examining your logs. Although your logs are correct for pages served, you cannot assume that every serve is to a human being. For example, any spider or robot looking at your pages will appear as a hit in your logs, but that robot will not trigger Google's hit counter because the robot won't go to Google's site to fetch the ads. I'm not sure how many daily hits are from spiders, but with all the search engines crawling for data and all the spammers crawling for email addresses, I bet it's significant. When you look at your logs, look at the count for an image (e.g., a JPG or GIF file) instead of the count for an HTML page. Most (but not all) robots won't bother loading images. On my site, I trust the Google page impressions count more than my server logs. In fact, I consider the Google counter as one of the benefits of the program because Google only counts humans. Several times you have mentioned to me that Google deducts from the Adsense for search revenue. I don't think you need to worry about that happening to you. This is from their FAQ: What are the fees mentioned in the Terms and Conditions? The AdSense for search fees that are referenced in the AdSense Terms and Conditions will not be applied to all publishers. Google incurs a cost for each search that is performed through AdSense for search, and generally we cover this cost through our portion of the earnings from advertiser clicks. However, publishers with very high numbers of searches in relation to their revenue may have an amount deducted from their final AdSense for search earnings. We expect the number of publishers to be impacted by this to be very small - less than 1% will be affected. The AdSense for search fees will never be greater than the publisher's AdSense for search earnings, so no publisher will owe Google at the end of the month as a result of these fees. Earnings from AdSense for content clicks will not be affected. The adjustment will take place at the end of each month, when earnings are calculated. https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=9890&topic=144 Jeff [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Regards discrepancies in hit counts, I do as follows: I grep the log at massis looking for telecom archives hits; many, many thousands of lines. I separate out those lines, then I go back and grep that extraction looking for .jpg, .gif, etc and deduct that from the total. I then take this latest refinement and go back again grepping through it and deducting all the IP addresses of *known crawlers* such as mit.edu's own crawler, and other crawlers which examine me often enough that it matters. Now I am down to only around three thousand entries still left. Then I go back and grep for my own IP address, and deduct those. Then to show that I try to play fair, (not like some web sites which claim they have millions of hits daily but ignore all the .jpg and .gif images and spiders) I make another 'general adjustment' downward and throw out ten or twenty percent of the (still remaining) hits, leaving myself with around two thousand hits. Guess what, Google does not come close. They had me down for eight hundred some hits on Friday last. Now regards Google charging publishers (by offsetting their earnings) for search work done, what I told their customer service person on Friday was "YOU are the people in the search engine business, not me. YOU are the people whose brand name appears on the search engine, not me. YOU are the people who presumably adjust your rates to your clients (the advertisers) to reflect a profit for yourself in YOUR search engine business, not me. YOU are the people who already adjust my earnings by paying less for click throughs on ads *behind the search engine* (only a penny or two for ads on search pages) than you pay otherwise for ads on my pages. And despite the fact that you pay less for those ads *behind the search engine* rather than in front of it, you want to reserve the right to charge me via offset against that pitiful amount of money. If search engines are not a profitable business for you, then get out of the business. You should not blame ME if searches cost YOU a lot of money to perform." "And to say that it only pertains to certain publishers and I will probably never see any charges and in any event I will never owe you more money than you owe me is an insult also. If the day came I even owed you five cents for something your search engine did, I would never pay it anyway. I feel like I am doing you a favor by giving you an outlet to place your customer/client's ads, not the other way around. In other words, I am *not* going to be YOUR customer. If I wanted to pay to run a search engine, I would get either yours or Yahoo's or Microsoft (or one of several others) and brand it as the Telecom Digest Search Engine and expect to pay for it, not nickle and dime its cost of operation off on my users. I've had my own search engine tools here over the years mostly things written by me." I have not yet heard back from them; but I venture to say they probably feel they are something special. I told them I should start playing the 'key words' game I have read about so much on the net and in the papers, where I put up a page with nothing but a bunch of high paying key words such as 'gambling', 'sex', 'viagra', 'penis enlarge' and such. They did answer that part of my letter and said "well, that would be against our terms of service to manipulate your pages with irrelevant key words". I asked if it would be against their TOS if I simply went in on my pages and yanked all their javascript code out and tossed it away. They said they hoped I would not do that. But when they started talking about their 'terms of service' and that they reserved the right to not pay me for the ad space if they felt like it, I realized then that they thought they were something special around here. Their sales person who first contacted me back in the summer telling me 'because of your longevity on the net and your good web pages you have been pre-approved for our program' also told me I would be making a couple hundred dollars per month and probably have a ratio of hits to click throughs in the range of three to four percent, to which I come no where close. 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. 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You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #560 ******************************