From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Nov 24 21:40:59 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id iAP2exp01713; Wed, 24 Nov 2004 21:40:59 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 21:40:59 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200411250240.iAP2exp01713@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 #566 TELECOM Digest Wed, 24 Nov 2004 21:40:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 566 Inside This Issue: Happy Thanksgiving to All! RBOCs Seeking Quick Checkmate On VoIP (Lisa Minter) Re: Sears and K-Mart (Lisa Hancock) Re: The Persuaders (Lisa Hancock) Re: How to Pronounce "Skype" (Joseph) Re: Bofra Exploit Hits The Register Ad Serving Supplier (Monty Solomon) Re: How Do I Learn an Unknown Number? (Andrew Bell) Re: How Do I Learn an Unknown Number? (Tony P.) Article On How Hot Telecom Jobs Were (Tamra Burgwardt) Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate (Dan Lanciani) Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate (Slichter) Re: Lobbyists Try to Kill Philly Wireless Plan (Tony P.) Re: A-la-carte Pricing For Cable and Satellite TV (Tony P.) 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: Lisa Minter Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 13:30:32 -0500 Subject: RBOCs Seeking Quick Checkmate On VoIP [Note: There are a few links to other articles and web sites embedded in this article; therefore you may just want to go read it at the web site.] http://www.advancedippipeline.com/voip/53701340 By Paul Kapustka Advanced IP Pipeline As we predicted earlier this month, a Bush victory in the election would favor the incumbents in the telecom market. And without much delay, the RBOCs are already pressing their advantages with the hope of winning the Voice over IP battle before it even gets started. Last week, the spotlight belonged to SBC, with announcements all over the VoIP map. While SBC's entrance into the consumer-VoIP market is a positive addition to the competitive landscape, its clumsy attempt to paint its you-can't-run-your-VoIP-over-our-lines legal manuever as another positive fell flat on its face. Backpedaling furiously after a Wall Street Journal article pegged the "TipTop" service for what it truly is -- an attempt to legally force competitors to pay the highest current interconnection rates -- SBC issued one of the most-hilarious officialese statements of recent memory, saying that "some VoIP providers may find it more economical than what they are purchasing now." Sure, just in the same way that consumers may find it "more economical" to pay all their communications bills to one provider, even if the total is more expensive. That's the kind of doublespeak you can get used to as the RBOCs use their marketing and legal might to stomp all over the VoIP startups for as long as they can. The SBC announcements generated a lot of heat in the VoIP blogging world last week, with an insightful analysis from our friend Jeff Pulver among the better takes (make sure you scroll down for the 'reply' from what appears to be an SBC employee in the comments). Full story at: http://www.advancedippipeline.com/voip/53701340 ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Sears and K-Mart Date: 24 Nov 2004 11:46:34 -0800 Steve Sobol wrote: > Verizon has a large operation here in the Victor Valley. Aside from > the five or six COs they have within fifteen mintues of each other, > they have a Verizon Plus retail store and a call center operation... The > Victorville CO on Mojave Drive is much larger than you'd normally > expect a CO to be, and since there are a large number of company > trucks, etc., in its parking lot, I assume it's some sort of regional > service center. ... So it makes sense to have a human presence here ... Verizon (Bell of PA) has a large suburban building just like you describe. Indeed, it once held a business office. So it's reasonable to ask why it isn't open to public walk-ins. I don't know their reasonings, but my guess is as follows: 1) Security: It is in a blue collar neighborhood that while not the worst, it is not the best either. The cable company does have a public office, but it is very tiny and basially only a thick security window through which to transact business. I think both utilities are justifiably concerned about a patron being dangerous. 2) Consistency: I suspect Verizon chose to go to a region-wide policy of no visitors for operating consistency, important when training and supporting a large group of employees. 3) Cost: It may be cheaper to have contracted official payment agents rather than have company employees do it. Some such agents charge a fee to the payer. Years ago many people did not have checking accounts and needed this, today more people have such accounts (though not all.) ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: The Persuaders Date: 24 Nov 2004 11:51:06 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) wrote > The most fascinating aspect of TV advertising is to listen to TV > executives telling their advertisers how effective TV ads are at > influencing viewers one day, then see them in a Senate hearing the > next day saying that violence on TV doesn't have any effect at all on > viewers who are far too smart to confuse fiction and reality. > I wish they would at least make up their minds about how influential > TV really is :-). Good point. Before there was TV Congress was criticizing the motion picture industry in the 1930s, especially on gangster pictures and other violence. One result was the motion picture code which among other things required the bad guys always get what's coming to them. TCM recently showed a movie made before that code and the host explained how the central character, who had killed someone, was able to escape without being caught because the movie was pre-code. FWIW, on this day way back Congress was working over the "Hollywood Ten" for being Communists. A very good book "Reds" by Ted Morgan discusses what went on in detail -- the abuses made by the government _as well as_ the fact those people were in fact active communists under party control. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: How to Pronounce "Skype" Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 12:16:43 -0800 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 23 Nov 2004 23:37:20 -0800, dnoam@il.ibm.com (Noam Avnery) wrote: > Hi, > Is it like "Hype" or like "Sky-pee"? When in doubt google! http://www.skype.com/help/faq/ Rhymes with ripe, hype, type, tripe, swipe, etc. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 16:03:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Re: Bofra Exploit Hits The Register ad Serving Supplier http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/23/register_restores_adserver/ Register restores ad service By Team Register Site Notice On Saturday, The Register suspended service by third party ad serving supplier, Falk, following security issues detailed here. http://www.falkag.com/news.php?Id=26 Today we have restored the service, after satisfying ourselves that this problem is fixed. Falk's statement on what went wrong is here. Our thanks for all your emails. We appreciate the kind words and note the performance issues that many of you raise. We will be seeking to address this in coming weeks. At a rough guess, the number of Reg readers exposed to the Bofra /IFrame exploit was in the low hundreds. We have no means of estimating how many of these were protected by firewalls or anti-virus software protection. During the period Falk's service was compromised -- between 6.10am and 12.30pm on Saturday, 11660 unique individuals using Windows and IE6 visited The Register. We haven't drilled down the different flavours of Windows, but we assume that the majority were not on Windows XP SP2 boxes. Reader with Windows XP SP2 are protected from the Bofra /IFrame exploit, along with the rest of the non-Windows world. On average readers looked at three pages a pop. So that's around 35,000 pages in which the rogue ad could have been served. According to Falk, one in 30 requests for a banner ad were redirects to the site containing the bofra worm. If this is correct around 1,170 rogue ads were served on our site. We apologise again for exposing readers to this. We also urge readers using IE on Windows to switch browsers, at least until the iFrame exploit is patched properly. Here is advice from McAfee on removing the Bofra worm. http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=129629 ------------------------------ From: Andrew Bell Subject: Re: How Do I Learn an Unknown Number? Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:39:21 -0500 Nathan Strom wrote in message news:telecom23.563.10@telecom-digest.org: > rekingus@yahoo.com (reking) wrote in message > news:: >> Anyone know how I can retrieve a phone number for a line that I have >> recently discovered within our business. >> SBC is our carrier but they tell me I would have to have someone come >> out and trace the line at a charge. Is there a way of determining the >> nimber by using some code entered on the phone. > If there's a dialtone on the line, hook up a phone and try calling > 1-888-902-9998. It should read back the number of the calling phone. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I tried it just now and it worked fine > on my Vonage line, and also on my cell phone line. PAT] It seems to read back the caller ID info presented, not the ANI. I tried it from behind a PBX and got my DID number back. Andrew ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: How Do I Learn an Unknown Number? Organization: ATCC Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 20:44:04 -0500 In article , jtaylor@hfx.deletethis.andara.com says: > Nathan Strom wrote in message > news:telecom23.563.10@telecom-digest.org: >> rekingus@yahoo.com (reking) wrote in message >> news:: >>> Anyone know how I can retrieve a phone number for a line that I have >>> recently discovered within our business. >>> SBC is our carrier but they tell me I would have to have someone come >>> out and trace the line at a charge. Is there a way of determining the >>> nimber by using some code entered on the phone. >> If there's a dialtone on the line, hook up a phone and try calling >> 1-888-902-9998. It should read back the number of the calling phone. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I tried it just now and it worked fine >> on my Vonage line, and also on my cell phone line. PAT] > Whoopie! Works from the Great White North also! > Who runs this? Interestingly it uses Caller ID data, not the BTN. I tried it using my Vonage VoIP phone which is currently using virtual number 401-608-nnnn, but it passes 401-621-nnnn as Caller ID and that's what the 888 number read back to me. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:06:17 PST From: Tamra Burgwardt Reply-To: tamraburgwardt@yahoo.com Subject: Article on How Hot Telecom Jobs Were Hi, I will be happy to donate to your website. I need a favor though. I am in a custody trial that starts next week adn one of the issues that is coming up is why I moved 3 times in 7 years as a telecom exec during the compeitive telecom heyday of that period from 1995 thru about 2001. Do you have any articles of that nature? That talk about how hot the jobs situation was during that period? I didn't see a link to search the old articles so I can't seem to find it on my own. Thank you in advance. Tamra Burgwardt 716-578-5295 "The Miracle of Life is waking up in the morning.'" ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 18:49:13 EST From: Dan Lanciani Subject: Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote: > In article , jdj > wrote: >> On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 03:12:34 -0500, Dan Lanciani wrote: >>> 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. 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. > I am totally inundated these days with misidirected challenge/response > messages and bounces from spammers that send out huge amounts of spam > using my e-mail in the return address. It's got to the point where I > just dump anything from mail-daemon or from postmaster addresses, and > I just dump anything that looks like a C/R. Under normal conditions I get only 20-30 of these per day so I try to look at them in case any really do represent something intended for me (or an interesting error). N.B. I'm not a big fan of pure C/R systems because of the obvious deadlock issues and the extraneous traffic. But I maintain that bouncing mail for content is no worse than bouncing it for any other reason, and explaining the reason as part of the bounce message is common sense. > When someone does a spam run with my return address, I will get ten > to fifteen thousand bounces in a 24 hour period. This is very > annoying. Yes. Happily I get those only every few months. > You _might_ do a lot better just to extract the first Received: line from > the header and send a complaint to wherever that came from. For example, > take the following procmail rule: > # Comcast dynamic addresses > :0 > |* ? /usr/local/bin/formail -xReceived: -uReceived: | grep > client.comcast.net > |cat $HOME/spam - | Mail -s "Your Spam" abuse@comcast.net > We can basically be sure that if something comes from a dynamically > allocated address on comcast, that it's spam from a zombie machine, so > the false positive rate on this is basically zero. Real mail from > comcast customers comes from the comcast mail server. I think that that would be an extremely bad idea for several reasons. First, it would fail to fulfill the primary purpose of responding: to inform false positives that an error has been made. Almost as important, it would require me to automatically create _outbound_ SMTP connections as a matter of course. That really is unsolicited email and, while I don't agree that it is actually "spam", it would provide the C/R haters ammunition to have my mail server blacklisted. As things stand I can almost always return my warning message via the incoming SMTP session that carries the spam. This has several advantages. First it avoids the issue of sending unsolicited email as above. Second, for cases where the spammer is connecting directly and not using a real relay it pretty much guarantees that bogus bounces will not make it back to the forged from address, thus sparing innocent users a little junk mail. > Of course, Comcast doesn't care and they won't do anything about the > complaints, but it will make you feel better to report the stuff > anyway. No, really, it won't make me feel better. :) I try to "feel" as little as possible about spam. I would feel very bad if I incorrectly reported someone for spamming, though. IMHO, too much "feeling" about spam -- keeping the War on Spam raging -- is a big part of the problem. There is a lot of empire building going on with hundreds of blacklists trying to punish various behaviors (apparently including in some cases the behavior of wanting to fight spam differently from the list's owner) yet ultimately doing little to prevent the increase of spam (let alone reduce it). This worries me in the same way that the anti-virus companies' dependence on the virus worries me. > And there are legitimate ISPs that do actually take care of > problems, although these days they are increasingly in the minority. Even if, say, 50% of them did something I'd still have way too much spam to look at. > Dan Lanciani wrote: >> 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"? > By removing spammers. Sure, but you haven't mentioned a practical way to accomplish that. Like most people, I learned to avoid stepping in cat/dog/whatever droppings on the lawn within a few years of learning to walk. Avoiding "receiving spam" seems a tad harder, and I find it a bit insulting to equate "receiving spam" with being so careless as to step in "what the cat leaves on the lawn." Again IMHO, the way to eliminate spam is to make it an ineffective tool for profit, and the only way to do that at the end user level is to make it invisible. Yet when anyone suggests a way to do this, the anti-spam warriors always have some scare tactic ready, e.g., the classic quip that you will lose business by missing important email (as if most businesses answer any -- let alone spamish -- email these days). > If every single one of us here went and injured a single spammer, the > spam problem would be more or less gone. In fact, if one person beat > Ralsky up with a baseball bat, I think we'd all see about a 50% drop > in spam. Yes, it seems to be ok to propose totally absurd solutions since there is little danger of their being implemented. However, an approach that might actually hurt the spammers financially (e.g., my suggestion of sending a SYN for each URL they deliver to you) is very dangerous because someone might be sued. This seems to be typical of collective anti-spam efforts that succeed in their direct goal (e.g., punishing owners of open relays) yet do nothing in the long run to stop spam, even though that is supposedly their indirect goal. >> 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. > The problem is that the number of people in that category is a very > small one, It is small, but it is still several per month. If I cannot bounce the messages with a warning I must look at them all. > and the number of people who receive misdirected bounces is > a very high one. That may or may not be true depending on the way the spam is sent in the first place. But even if it were true, do you really believe that it represents a significant burden over that created by other types of bounces (bad target address, over quota, sender not allowed, etc.)? The problem is that you are elevating spam to a level beyond any other email such that it cannot even be bounced legitimately. For anyone that does not wish to miss genuine email that leaves only the option of looking at (at least) the subject of every message. This has the effect of keeping spam in the spotlight and perpetuating the associated angry feelings. > The cure is worse than the disease. I don't buy it. First of all, it at least is a cure. There are many other purported cures that are worse than the disease (e.g., blocking legitimate ISP clients to leverage collateral damage and similar political intrigue) that seem to do little good for end users while feeding the ever-growing war. Second, is reading a bounce message really worse than reading a spam message? Certainly it is for the spammers because it defeats their purpose of maximum visibility. > Note that on the whole, the vast majority of messages that your spam > cleaner detects will actually be spam, and therefore will not have an > accurate return address. In fact, the vast majority of messages > received at all will actually be spam, if your statistics are anything > like mine. They are. However, it is a mistake to equate a forged address with a bounce that may actually reach a legitimate user. From the samples I have examined, an extremely large percentage of spam messages that I receive have nonsense addresses that simply do not exist. From connections that I have monitored and even interacted with, a large percentage of spam delivery sessions appear to come direct from spam sending software and not from a real relay. There is no way that the spam delivery software is going to forward my 550-style rejection message back to the forged from user, if that user exists at all. In order for my system to cause bounces to a real (innocent) user a spammer must not only forge that user's from address but also send the message through a full-fledged mail relay that is willing to package up a session transcript and mail it "back" to the user. I don't think this is a common scenario these days. If it really is a problem it could be solved by something like SPF with an option that says, "please silently drop mail with my envelope address that comes from an unauthorized relay rather than rejecting it." (And yes, I know SPF is another thing that anti-spam warriors hate. And yes, I do understand how SPF reduces the generality of SMTP relaying. Or at least I understand how it would reduce that generality if it had not already been reduced by the war on open relays. :) Oh, and I also understand the argument about zombies using their host's legitimate relay. (a) I don't see a lot of that kind of traffic and (b) I'm not convinced that I owe such users (whose machine would be, after all, spamming me) the duty to silently absorb their spam. They are not quite the same as the competely innocent victims or forgery. Anyway, as I said the the other correspondent in this thread, please feel free to have the last word. I realize that this is a religious issue and could be debated forever. However, I ask that you not assume that I haven't done some fairly extensive analysis before implementing my solution. Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com ------------------------------ From: shlichter1@aol.com (Shlichter1) Date: 25 Nov 2004 02:22:10 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate As we all know, that all it takes is a couple of people replying and buying something the scum is selling and his costs are paid. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? I kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Lobbyists Try to Kill Philly Wireless Plan Organization: ATCC Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 20:38:36 -0500 In article , monty@roscom.com says: > By MARC LEVY Associated Press Writer > HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Philadelphia's plan to offer inexpensive > wireless Internet as a municipal service _ the most ambitious yet by > major U.S. city _ has collided with commercial interests including the > local phone company, Verizon Communications Inc. > In fact, a bill on Gov. Ed Rendell's desk that could humble > Philadelphia's ambitions began 19 months ago as a proposal drafted by > lobbyists for telecommunications companies. > Regional and long-distance phone companies, who sell broadband > Internet to consumers and businesses, have in recent months > intensified a national campaign to quash municipal wireless > initiatives like Philadelphia's as dozens of cities and towns have > either begun or announced such plans _ from San Francisco to Chaska, > Minn., to St. Cloud, Fla. > Telecommunications companies are doubly worried because hundreds of > other municipalities provide broadband service over cable or telephone > lines. > The idea of cheap, municipally provided Internet as social leveler is > particularly appealing to big city politicians. > - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=45214162 These activities by Verizon and other ILEC's are disgusting. It is one of the reasons I moved away from Verizon. The other reason is I get the same service via VoIP for more than $50.00 a month less. Sorry -- if they'd walked away from their beloved tariff twenty years ago maybe they wouldn't have the problems they have now. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, if *any of us* had known twenty years ago what we know today, things would have been a lot different. Had the people who did most of the development on email and SMTP twenty years ago known what they know today, do you think the spam problem would be as severe as it is? Bell did what they thought best twenty years ago also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: A-la-carte Pricing For Cable and Satellite TV Organization: ATCC Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 20:41:00 -0500 In article , nmclain@annsgarden.com says: > The FCC has released its report on a-la-carte pricing for cable TV and > satellite TV services (formally called "Report on the Packaging and > Sale of Video Programming Services To the Public"). It's posted on > the FCC website at > http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-254432A1.pdf . > It's a huge document (129 pdf pages), but it's interesting to read. > Neal McLain Most people don't understand the concept that a la carte would cost more, not less. When a cable company offers a channel they pay the provider a fixed cost for the years contract. That cost is then spread among ALL subscribers. But lets see you took, oh, the Cramp Channel (Aka Lifetime) and offered it among others a la carte. The subscriber base would likely be smaller but the provider wouldn't want to adjust their price because there are real costs behind producing those programs. Nobody seems to understand this. So if you want to pay $30 a month just for the Cramp Channel -- be my guest. But the tiered system we have now pretty much works. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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