From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Feb 18 01:18:28 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i1I6ISu28622; Wed, 18 Feb 2004 01:18:28 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 01:18:28 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200402180618.i1I6ISu28622@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 #77 TELECOM Digest Wed, 18 Feb 2004 01:18:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 77 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Mainstream Marketing v. FTC (Monty Solomon) Ecard-Hijack Spam Analysis (Monty Solomon) The Five Sisters (Monty Solomon) Re: Cell Phone Numbering Arrangments (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: Verizon May Hang up on Plan to Sell Phone Number (Herb Sutherland) My SBC Experience (was Re: Phantom DSL Reprised) (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Monty Solomon Postings (was My New Blog (Web log)) (jbl) Re: The Virus Underground (Lawrence Jones) Re: The Virus Underground (William Robison) Re: Experts Warn of Microsoft 'Monoculture' (email@crazyhat.net) Re: Cardinal/Candela Phone Systems (Carl Navarro) Re: Cingular to Acquire AT&T Wireless, Create Premier Carrier (Melon) Honesty From Earthlink (Spacey Spade) 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 is definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 15:46:10 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Mainstream Marketing v. FTC Mational do-not-call registry Appeals court opinion http://www.ck10.uscourts.gov/opinions/03-1429.pdf http://www.ck10.uscourts.gov/opinions/03-1429.txt http://www.ck10.uscourts.gov/opinions/03-1429.wpd ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 15:49:42 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Ecard-Hijack Spam Analysis http://www.tjhsst.edu/~agupta/ecard-hijack/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 22:25:20 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Five Sisters By WILLIAM SAFIRE WASHINGTON - If one huge corporation controlled both the production and the dissemination of most of our news and entertainment, couldn't it rule the world? Can't happen here, you say; America is the land of competition that generates new technology to ensure a diversity of voices. But consider how a supine Congress and a feckless majority of the Federal Communications Commission have been failing to protect our access to a variety of news, views and entertainment. The media giant known as Viacom-CBS-MTV just showed us how it controls both content and communication of the sexiest Super Bowl. The five other big sisters that now bestride the world are (1) Murdoch-FoxTV-HarperCollins-WeeklyStandard-NewYorkPost-LondonTimes-DirecTV; (2) G.E.-NBC-Universal-Vivendi; (3) Time-Warner-CNN-AOL; (4) Disney-ABC-ESPN; and (5) the biggest cable company, Comcast. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/16/opinion/16SAFI.html ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Cell Phone Numbering Arrangments Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 03:30:56 GMT In article , jared.NospaM@netspace.net.au says: > In the USA part of the NANP at least, the FCC, the American approximation > to OFTEL, banned doing so. There was cell phone area code that predated > the decision, I'm not sure what happened to it. > A prefix isn't needed in the USA as it's not caller-pays for calls to > mobiles, instead the mobile phone owner pays for the call > time. Roaming is interesting too: whether the caller pays a local or > long distance rate depends on the mobile phone's area code, not where > it happens to be with respect to the caller. >> Do NANP counties use a 'standard' area-code for cellphones as opposed >> to the UK (cell phone numbers begin with 07XXX) or other countries, where >> different codes are required? Before the FCC banned technology-specific overlay area codes, it authorized New York to use a new overlay code (718?) for cell phones, faxes, and internal telco lines for several years. That code has since become a normal overlay code, with wireline phones in it as well as the others. Given the introduction of full number portability between wireline and wireless phones (with some exceptions, probably temporary), the genie is out of the bottle; it won't be possible to have an area code that is wireless-only or wireline-only. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD, USA Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. ------------------------------ From: herbsu@netscape.net (Herb Sutherland) Subject: Re: Verizon May Hang up on Plan to Sell Phone Number Date: 17 Feb 2004 20:17:07 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com And what ever happened to Beechwood 4-5789 ??? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 20:34:54 -0600 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelectronics.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: My SBC Experience (was Re: Phantom DSL Reprised) Nick Landsberg wrote: >> So, it seems, the providers are hoarding the DSL circuits in my CO >> so they can milk the businesses for $160 bucks a month before >> offering it to residential customers Matthew Elvey wrote: > I've even caught SBC lying to the PUC, in writing. > They just don't let up; the next month they crammed my cellphone bill, > about a month after that (this month) my POTS bill. > Morality doesn't enter into the equation. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I was a regular customer of SBC I > cannot tell you how many times I would call the business office to get > some minor adjustment or another on my bill only to get the next > month's bill with an even higher balance due of new charges, etc. I'm an SBC customer as well, in 630-832-xxxx (used to be Ameritech (used to be Illinois Bell)) and this has not been my experience. It was an Illinois Bell customer service rep who spent about half an hour going over available numbers with me when setting up new service at my first house -- two cool numbers (xxx-8088 and xx8-0386), no extra charge. OK, they don't do this any more (who does?). But they did then. It was an Ameritech customer service rep who told me about Alternate Answering and Busy Line Transfer (combined cost: $1.50/mo) when I called to order Call Forwarding ($18/mo or thereabouts). In my situation the cheaper alternative actually did what I wanted better than the more expensive (but popular and heavily advertised) choice. It was SBC who had my DSL up in 3 days when they promised it in a week. And when I had a bizarre intermittent problem with it, they had two trucks out for the better part of an afternoon, and again the next day, and fixed it. (It was a flaky line card in the RT -- worked about 99.9% of the time.) Illinois Bell/Ameritech/SBC has never crammed me -- and when one of my employees didn't say "NO!" loudly enough to some teleslime and I ended up with "Voicenet E-mail by phone" on my bill, it was SBC who cleared the charge and told Integretel where to stuff it. Maybe I just lead a charmed life. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I remember the very same situation years ago when I lived in Chicago and was served by Illinois Bell. An early phone number of mine RAVenswood-8-7425 was selected for me by a service rep who took some time to look though available numbers then chose that one for me explaining to me it also spelled PATRICK. In those days you ordered phone service one day, and the man came out to your house and installed it the very next day, or sometimes, if you called early enough in the morning, very late the same day. And they did repairs the same day you asked for it, or the next day. And they did not ask for a security deposit or any money in advance. Even Southwestern Bell used to have very good service, as my mother explained to me. They had a business office right here in Independence, and the lady downstairs would call up to the technician on the second floor -- where the frames were at -- to get done whatever was needed. Gordon, when you now call the business office for some matter or another, do you also get the reps in San Antonio, Texas who know nothing at all about Chicago? I really think their customer service has deteriorated a lot. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jbl Subject: Re: Monty Solomon Postings (was My New Blog (Web log)) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 13:13:07 -0700 Organization: On the desert Reply-To: jbl@spamblocked.com In , msb@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote: > This is my feeling also. The one thing that does bother me when I come > across Monty's postings is that they're formatted as if he was claiming > to have written the excerpts he quotes. Interestingly, it never occurred to me that he was doing anything other than what he is doing. And I much prefer reading text without quote marks on each line, so since he's not actually quoting a posting in a response, I'd just as soon he left them off (as he does now). Perhaps a "[MEDIA]" tag in the subject line would make you happier. /JBL ------------------------------ From: lawrence.jones@ugsplm.com Subject: Re: The Virus Underground Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 23:13:01 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com PAT writes: > But don't you think that if the whole world started using *nix to > the extent they now use Windows the virus writers (like that snotty > teenage kid discussed about here in the Digest a couple weeks ago) > wouldn't shift gears and start writing things to mess with *nix like > they do Windows now? Of course, and we've already started to see that with Linux. But the simple fact of the matter is that Windows and it's related applications were explicitly designed to do things for you, automatically, so you don't have to know what you're doing. Unix-like systems and most of their applications, on the other hand, were designed to do exactly what you tell them and not one thing more, forcing you to know what you're doing in order to use them at all. It's far easier for a bad guy to co-opt the built-in mechanisms in Windows to do what he wants than it is to figure out how to break into a Unix system and get it to do what he want. Heck, even legitimate users have a hard time getting Unix systems to do what they want! :-) -Larry Jones It must be sad being a species with so little imagination. -- Calvin ------------------------------ From: William Robison Subject: Re: The Virus Underground Organization: University of Iowa Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 23:02:19 GMT > Pat: > Are we all asking the wrong question about virus software? > Why do we all keep using IE and Outlook? (kinda like > hitting your thumbe with a hammer, over and over). -or- > How many times do we have to be explotied before we realize > there has to be a better way (and there are, certainly, many > alternatives to IE/Outlook). > -Willy > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Very good point! When I now and > then use the Linux partition (on my otherwise Windows 2000 machine) > I use 'mail' to read stuff. Or I use 'ssh' to login here to massis > (where I also use 'mail' as a matter of course) and none of those > virus things seem to have any effect. But don't you think that if > the whole world started using *nix to the extent they now use > Windows the virus writers (like that snotty teenage kid discussed > about here in the Digest a couple weeks ago) wouldn't shift gears > and start writing things to mess with *nix like they do Windows > now? I suspect the only reason some mail programs are relatively > 'immune' at the present time is just a question of where to get > the biggest bang for the buck where the virus writers are > concerned. PAT] Pat: I'm sure the virus writers will shift to the most prevalent platform, when that shifts from Windows, but I suspect the job of making a virus becomes much more difficult. We went through a similar phase of attacks in the days of DECnet (in the space physics community, 20 years ago); when the network started to get hooked up to more machines, we bagan to see attacks on 'open' resources (I can't remember when the first major 'attack' occurred, but it was the fault of poor administrative planning, pure and simple). At least in those days, we seemd to have enough sense to shut the openings down and stop operating in such a casual manner. In the Windows world, however, we seem to go through the hammer-to- thumb scenario over and over (and over and over). Perhaps we should realize that the problem lies with the software, such as IE and Outlook, rather than with the hackers (who keep sending the auto- execute virus over and over again), and simply stop using it. Rather like driving down the Interstate with bald tires that you keep taking into the garage to get patches put on the most recent holes ... Regards -Willy ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Experts Warn of Microsoft 'Monoculture' Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 13:29:26 -0700 From: In message <> AES/newspost did ramble: > Such arguments may or may not be valid, and might or might not be > successful in the courts -- I'd sure like to think they might be. But > nonetheless, the amount of damage suffered by deep-pockets > organizations in the course of (or, if you like "as a direct result > of") using MS software has certainly been massive enough that one > would think someone would be suing. Yeah, we'd all get a $5 coupon for our next purchase of a Microsoft service pack (which they'd start charging for to cover the cost of the lawsuit) A cheap shot is a terrible thing to waste. ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Cardinal/Candela Phone Systems Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 18:44:26 -0500 Organization: Airnews.net! at Internet America On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:39:00 -0700, Daryl R Gibson wrote: > A friend of mine has purchased a small motel that is equipped with a > Cardinal (some parts are Candella) phone system. The system appears to > be 20 years old, and a recent power bump goofed up some of the > programming; among other things, it means one of the units is now unable > to call out, others try for local calls and get other rooms, etc. > My question is threefold: > 1. Is there anyone who specializes in this system? > 2. Does anyone on this list have any experience with them? > 3. Could someone recommend a suitable replacement (25-50 lines) > system for future use? 1. I used to carry it, but I sold all my stuff to ESI. 2. Yes, I actually might still have a manual but it's pretty intuitive. 3. Easiest is a Mitel SX-200. In a cabinet at that line size you'd be in the $2500 range. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: Melon Subject: Re: Cingular to Acquire AT&T Wireless, Nation's Premier Carrier Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 18:22:57 -0600 Organization: Cox Communications Monty Solomon wrote: > $41 billion deal to create number one wireless carrier, bring greater > network coverage, improved service quality, new advanced data services > to customers > ATLANTA, Feb. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cingular Wireless LLC, a > joint venture between SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC) and BellSouth > Corp. (NYSE:BLS), announced today an agreement to acquire AT&T > Wireless (NYSE:AWE), creating the premier wireless carrier in the > United States. Today, the combined company would have 46 million > customers and one of the most advanced digital networks in the U.S., > with spectrum in 49 states and coverage in 97 of the top 100 > markets. The combined 2003 annual revenues of the two companies would > have exceeded $32 billion. > Under the terms of the agreement approved by the boards of directors > of Cingular and AT&T Wireless, shareholders of AT&T Wireless will > receive $15 cash per common share or approximately $41 billion. The > acquisition, which is subject to the approvals of AT&T Wireless > shareholders and federal regulatory authorities, and to other > customary closing conditions, is expected to be completed as soon as > late 2004. > - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40612728 Now will the FCC approve it? ------------------------------ From: spaceygum@hotpop.com (Spacey Spade) Subject: Honesty from Earthlink Date: 17 Feb 2004 16:24:53 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I was getting spam from Earthlink even though I had "opted out". By the way, AFAIK, I recommend Earthlink. Below a transcription of chat tech support: Welcome to Earthlink LiveChat. Your chat session will begin shortly. Tired of Spam? With Earthlink's free spamBlocker you can customize your settings to eliminate all of your unwanted email! 'name_protected' says: Thank you for contacting EarthLink LiveChat, how may I help you today? myemail@addy.com:I am getting advertising email from earthlink, even though I have settings off in "my account" myemail@addy.com:The email starts like this: myemail@addy.com:Share and store all your pictures online for FREE with theEarthLink Photo Center, powered by Snapfish.Now you can share your pictures, get digital camera prints,process your film, and order inexpensive, high-quality name_protected:Let me know if you want me to opt out your email address from the advertising list. myemail@addy.com:I want to be opted out ... I have everything unchecked at the earthlink control console or whatever you call it. name_protected:Let me know the password of your primary account for verification. myemail@addy.com:************ name_protected:Thank you for the information. name_protected:Kindly hold on. I will opt out your email address. myemail@addy.com:This is what I see: myemail@addy.com:Email: Opted Out Opt In Telephone: Opted Out Opt In U.S. Postal Mail: Opted Out Opt In In order to improve our services, EarthLink may purchase general demographic information about our members. Let us know if we may include general information about you. Information Gathering: Opted Out Opt In name_protected:Kindly hold on. myemail@addy.com:k name_protected:I have opted out your email address. name_protected:From now onwards you will not receive these emails. myemail@addy.com:what did you do different than what I did? myemail@addy.com:How could I have opted myself out? myemail@addy.com:I'm not letting you off easy ;) name_protected:I have separate Tool to opt out your email address. myemail@addy.com:So people get spam unless they contact tech support? name_protected:This will completely opt out your email address from mailing list. myemail@addy.com:Should I publish this about Earthlink? name_protected:You can enable Spam Blocker to highest level of protection in Webmail. myemail@addy.com:I'd like to know if this is a bug or intentional name_protected:Then you will receive only those emails whose addresses are listed in your Webmail address book. name_protected:It is not a bug. myemail@addy.com:Please don't try and play stupid. myemail@addy.com:You know what I am getting at ... no form responses please, myemail@addy.com:I had opted out already. Why did I need to contact you to not receive Earthlink spam? name_protected:I see that you were not able to opt opt properly from the opt out option given to you. name_protected:This is the reason I have reset it from an advanced tool. myemail@addy.com:Shall I upload an image of the opt out window, configured as I have it myemail@addy.com:I believe I have it configured properly ... it is plain as day. name_protected:Okay, Let me know the steps you have followed to opt out. name_protected:This will help me. myemail@addy.com:http://home.earthlink.net/~storageplace/opted_out.jpg myemail@addy.com:This is how I had it before you did anything to it. name_protected:Yes, I see that you have done the steps correctly You have to go to my account page and opt out of the emails. myemail@addy.com:Ok ... so is this a bug or intentional? name_protected:I saw that you are still receiving the emails. This is the reason I had to reset your account again. myemail@addy.com:So is it a bug? name_protected:It looks like a temporary glitch at server end. name_protected:So I had to reset it again. name_protected:I am sure this will help you. myemail@addy.com:Thank you for some respectful level of honesty. myemail@addy.com:goodbye name_protected:You're welcome and thank you for using EarthLink LiveChat. Should you need further assistance, please feel free to contact us again. name_protected:Bye. Good Night. ------------------------------ 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'. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #77 *****************************