From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Apr 8 13:24:56 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j38HOtW04678; Fri, 8 Apr 2005 13:24:56 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 13:24:56 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504081724.j38HOtW04678@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 V24 #151 TELECOM Digest Fri, 8 Apr 2005 13:25:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 151 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Internet Phone Service Looks Like Next Big Thing (Jack Decker) PSP Embraced by DIY Technicians | BBC NEWS | Technology (David Chessler) The Truth About Toothing (Monty Solomon) Alcatel's COO to Resign (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) Re: Telemarketing to Cellphones (DevilsPGD) Re: Telemarketing to Cellphones (Joseph) Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID (Justin Time) Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID (Sean Weintz) Re: Philly Reveals Wireless Plan (David B. Horvath, CCP) Re: USB to RJ-45 Console Cable? (Neal McLain) Re: Google Maps (Steve Sobol) Re: Sperm - Not so Mobile (T. Sean Weintz) Re: Question on Caller ID on Panasonic KX-TA624 (eljainc@ameritech.net) Re: VoIP Adapter With High REN? (Isaiah Beard) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 12:00:47 -0400 Subject: Internet Phone Service Looks Like Next Big Thing http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwendland8e_20050408.htm BY MIKE WENDLAND FREE PRESS COLUMNIST If there's any one tech trend that's marked this year so far, it has to be the use of the Internet to make and receive telephone calls. Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP (pronounced VOIP), is growing so fast that it's almost overwhelming. In fact, I think it's a safe bet to predict it's how a great many of us will soon be making most of our telephone calls from home -- and maybe work, too. The big news this week regarding VoIP was Thursday's announcement by America Online of its new Internet Phone Service, rolled out in 40 cities across the country, including Detroit. I've been testing it since midweek and will have a full review in Tuesday's Free Press. Full story at: http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwendland8e_20050408.htm How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 23:07:51 -0400 From: David Chessler Subject: PSP Embraced by DIY Technicians | BBC NEWS | Technology http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4420745.stm http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4420745.stm DIY software and hardware experts have been quick to embrace Sony's PlayStation Portable console. A glut of "homebrew" features for the device have already been released, many of which were not part of Sony's official plans for the machine. The PSP is a handheld console, which has wireless capabilities, and can play music as well as video games. Tools for web browsing and online chat are among the first to appear since the console launched in the US and Japan. The developments are not sanctioned by Sony but the firm has not commented on the homebrew tools. Messaging platform The $249 (=A3130) PSP handheld video game player went on sale in the United States on 24 March and within 24 hours one man had a working client for Internet Relay Chat (IRC), an older online messaging platform. "I was on IRC, and someone mentioned how cool it would be to use their PSP on wi-fi at Starbucks to talk to people over IRC. I said, 'I can do that', so I began working on it immediately," said Robert Balousek, creator of PSPIRC in an e-mail interview with news agency Reuters. Mr Balousek said about 100,000 people had visited the IRC client, and he is starting work on a new project that would let PSP users chat on the AOL Instant Messenger network. Hacking new video game hardware is not new but the speed at which people have started to produce their own applications for the PSP is impressive. Other "hacks" include a way to transfer TV shows recorded by the Tivo digital video recorder to the PSP, a program for reading e-books and a viewer for comics downloaded from the internet. Racing game While many of the tools are probably in development by Sony in an official sense, some PSP owners just could not wait to get started. Much of the new PSP functionality comes from using the web browser built into the racing game Wipeout Pure, which was meant to go to a Sony site. By changing some of the PSP's network settings, the browser can be pointed to an internet portal. A number of people have already set up such portals, formatted to fit in the PSP's screen and offering links and a place to enter web addresses. Other "hacks" include getting the PSP to play all games wirelessly over the internet and playing multiplayer games with only one copy of the game. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/4420745.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4378661.stm http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4378661.stm Sony PSP handheld console hits US The latest handheld gaming gadget, Sony's PlayStation Portable, goes on sale in the US on Thursday. The entertainment device, which also stores images, music and video, is intended to compete with Nintendo's DS, released earlier this month in the UK. Gamers have been queuing outside shops across the US to get their hands on the gadget, which costs $250 (about =A3132). The first million sold will come with the Spider-Man 2 film on UMD, Sony's own disc format for the device. The PSP can be linked up with others for multiplayer gaming, via a wireless connection. Sony has touted the machine as the Walkman of the 21st Century and has sold more than 800,000 units in Japan since its launch there last year. But it faces stiff competition from the Nintendo DS, which sold more than the GameCube in its first few days on release in Europe. It too allows for multiplayer gaming over the air. Nintendo dominates the handheld market, with more than a 90% share of the market in the US alone. The Gizmondo combined media player, phone and gaming gadget also went on sale in the UK last week. It hopes to take a share of the handheld gaming market too. 'Few months' for Europe "The story of the PSP is it's not a gaming device as much as it is a portable entertainment device," said Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities. He told the Reuters news agency that he expected Sony to sell about 10 million PSPs in enough time to rival Apple's iPod. There is no date for the PSP's release in Europe yet. Sony has promised to have a million units ready for its US launch, but there are fears demand may not be met. It also said it expected to ship three million PSPs worldwide by the end of its fiscal year ending 31 March. The machine's European launch was put back "a few months" last week in order to make sure enough of the devices were ready for its US launch, as well as satisfying the Japanese market. The PSP has almost as much processing power in it as the PlayStation 2 console. Hundreds of gamers gathered at US shops, some waiting for more than 36 hours, to be the first to get their hands on the gadget. A spokesman for one US shop said it expected the device to sell out on its first day. The 24 games for the mini console include Ape Academy, Formula One, Wipeout Pure and Fired Up. Movie studios, including Lions Gate Entertainment and Disney, have also announced forthcoming film titles that will be made available on the UMD format. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/4378661.stm NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, BBC News. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 08:59:08 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Truth About Toothing Jim Hanas "Toothy Toothing," aka Ste Curran (who says he was but "part" of Toothy, the other part apparently being Simon Byron), admits to duping Wired and the rest. In response to an email from me-and to the slashdotting of my earlier post-the source of all the toothing tales pointed me to this page, where he tells how it all began, explaining how he and others invented toothing and its pied piper. There, he writes: http://www.hanasiana.com/archives/000324.html What Ever Happened to Toothing? http://www.hanasiana.com/archives/000323.html UPDATE: The Anatomy of a Hoax http://www.hanasiana.com/archives/000327.html Toothing http://www.thetriforce.com/newblog/?p=53 To Clarify An Analogy http://www.thetriforce.com/newblog/?p=55 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 12:07:25 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Alcatel's COO to resign Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 8, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20681&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Alcatel's COO to resign BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Adelphia creditors agree to Time Warner, Comcast bid * Rural phone carriers team up to offer video * Report: Network, telecom gear market up 13% in '04 * Cablevision tells feds it will close Voom * Group formed to promote FTTH in Asia USTA SPOTLIGHT * In USTA's Telecom Bookstore: "Softswitch Architecture for VoIP" EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Broadband over power line: big opportunities, hurdles * Pornography goes wireless VOIP DOWNLOAD * Convenience seen as crucial to VoIP's future * Interactive Intelligence unveils new VoIP server * Siemens, Integra5 team up to bolster cable VoIP REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Philly announces Wi-Fi plan * U.S. broadband adoption falling behind Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20681&l=2017006 Legal and Privacy information at http://www.dailylead.com/about/privacy_legal.jsp SmartBrief, Inc. 1100 H ST NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20005 ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Telemarketing to Cellphones Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 04:45:40 -0600 Organization: Disorganized In message Joseph wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So what harm is there in adding your > cell phone and/or VOIP number to the list just to 'be safe'? PAT] The harm is that exempt companies can purchase the DNC list and use it as a list of people to annoy. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why, when by your presence on that list you have in effect stated 'do not bother me, I am not interested', would some 'exempt' company deliberatly call you anyway? Do they have money to waste just being malicious? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Telemarketing to Cellphones Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 05:20:24 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 17:41:49 -0700, Telecom Digest editor> noted in response to this writer: > You are being terribly irresponsible in circulating this untrue rumor > that telemarketers will receive cell phone numbers. > http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_cell_phone_directory.htm> > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So what harm is there in adding your > cell phone and/or VOIP number to the list just to 'be safe'? PAT] You don't get it. That's not the point of my message. This guy is spreading rumors that numbers are being released to telemarketers. If people would check things out before they post without checking things out they *need* to have their incorrect information refuted. If you want to give your number to the DNC list go for it! ------------------------------ From: Justin Time Subject: Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID Manager Date: 8 Apr 2005 05:24:18 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Not to say that this type of harassment doesn't occur. There are other remedies available that appear not to have been explored. If you had proof, then a court order to stop the harassment could have been obtained. Violation of the court order will have more impact on police action than the filing of a complaint. The question remains, other than complaining what have you done to protect yourself? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What I did to protect myself is switch to a different telephone company; one that knows what *77 is used for and how to implement it so it works correctly, and overall it is a lot less expensive as well ($25 per month for a large package of features _plus_ unlimited local calling, _plus_ a hundred minutes of long distance calling per month). Admittedly, that solution is not available to everyone: SBC (and many other Bell telcos) tell many customers they are 'not eligible' for porting elsewhere. And to get a 'court order', you generally have to have had the police involved first, to justify your need for a court order. The court does not hand them out willy-nilly to everyone who asks. PAT] ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID Manager Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 10:58:11 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Paratwa wrote: > For what its worth by sheer coincidence the idiot called from a pay > phone last night an left a message. He has probably figured out that > something isn't right since he could leave a message with the first > try on a pay phone and couldn't do it again, since I blocked it. Let's just hope he never has control of a PRI line. Way to easy to spoof CLID then. Or he could use one of those spoofing services that use their own PRI's to spoof for ya ... Be thankful this ex-boyfriend ain't to bright. You could always start a "www.psychoexboyfriend.com" website and put his messages up as MP3's for laughs ... Humiliate him publicly and he might stop. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 23:17:41 -0400 From: David B. Horvath, CCP Subject: Re: Philly Reveals Wireless Plan PAT -- please remove my email address as usual. This system will work until individuals start setting their personal wifi units to the city's channels (frequencies) either through stupidity (defaults) or malice (you can get one for $10 these days, if you don't like your neighbors who use the city system, you could easily block them). Remember that wifi is unlicensed (you don't need a license to have one nor or channels assigned by the government, you can use any of the legal ones at will). And since only the US Federal Government is allowed to regulate use of the radio waves. Or even worse, the ultimate in phising attacks -- setting up a local wifi AP that tracks keystrokes and then passes the data off to the Internet. Yuck! - David David B. Horvath, CCP Consultant, Author, International Lecturer, Adjunct Professor Member: ICCP Educational Foundation Board and ICCP Test Council; Chair of LPR&GC CMP ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 22:48:35 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: USB to RJ-45 Console Cable? JXM2119 wrote: > I would like to buy/make a cable that will have a USB > connector on one end and an RJ-45 on the other. I wrote: > If by "RJ-45" you mean an 8-position modular connector > wired to carry an Ethernet circuit, you'll need an > adapter such as Planet Technology Corp. Model PT9500. I > have two of these devices in service, connecting oldish > PCs (W98) to a Linksys router. They work great. James Carlson wrote: > RJ-45 connectors are also commonly used for all sorts of > serial links -- including async (using RS-232 levels), > sync (often RS-422), and even telecom (such as DS-1). > It's not just Ethernet. JXM2119 didn't tell us what kind signal s/he's using. I inferred Ethernet from the context of the question; if s/he has some other signal in mind, perhaps s/he should let us know. I agree that 8-position modular connectors can be wired for things other than Ethernet; that's why my response to the original question began with the word "if." But I don't agree with the use of the term "RJ-45" to identify a connector. RJ45 is a USOC (albeit apparently obsolete); not a connector. Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Google Maps Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 00:41:16 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com AES wrote: > I don't know how to solve the problem (the very real, serious, and > IMHO increasing) problem of corruption of many of our primary > information sources and media by advertising I'd willingly pay a > significant subscription fee for access to a Google equivalent that > was equally good and that I could be sure was and would remain truly > advertiser independent. There is no such thing. (No, not even public TV and radio, they have corporate sponsorships too, and have had them for quite some time.) JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Sperm - Not so Mobile Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 09:44:57 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com T. Sean Weintz wrote: > Damn. Now I need to take the cell phones away from my mice. How are > they supposed to call me at work to let me know when they are out of > cheese now? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Very clever retort, but my presumption > is the researchers would rather experiment with mice than with human > children, etc. PAT] Yes, of course. But what many folks don't realize is they use specially bred mice that are VERY susceptible to tumors for these types of experiments. Which means there is a very GOOD chance that the same exposure will have no effect whatsoever on a normal healthy human. ------------------------------ From: eljainc@ameritech.net Subject: Re: Question on Caller ID on Panasonic KX-TA624 Date: 8 Apr 2005 07:19:42 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com We never had the users manual for the TA624, only the installation manual. I did find it on-line late yesterday though. Thanks for the tip. Mike ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: VoIP Adapter With High REN? Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 10:32:14 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: > I am trying to switch two of three phone lines in a very large, very > old house over to VoIP. The house has quite literally twenty > extensions split between the three lines -- I think I need at least 4 > or 5 REN per line, plus the ability to drive all the wire leading to > those handsets (over 100' in some cases) without exploding the audio > output circuit in the ATA. The Linksys PAP2 supports 5 REN and seems pretty robust for such a small unit. The PAP2-NA version can be purchased separately and used on any VoIP provider that allows outside equipment, or you can get a Vonage-locked version at retail stores for around $50, usually free after mail-in rebate. E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #151 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Apr 8 18:24:30 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j38MOUe08423; Fri, 8 Apr 2005 18:24:30 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 18:24:30 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504082224.j38MOUe08423@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 V24 #152 TELECOM Digest Fri, 8 Apr 2005 18:20:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 152 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson More Spam! We Reach the 80 Percent Mark Here! (Lisa Minter) More Spam! Monday Morning Blues of an Office Worker (Lisa Minter) More Spam! It Really is Very Profitable (Lisa Minter) More Spam! Get Ready For Spam on Your VOIP/Cell Phone (Lisa Minter) More Spam! Judge Sentences Spammer to Nine Years (Lisa Minter) More Spam! Users To Blame For This Mess (Lisa Minter) More Spam! Spam Ain't Dead Yet, Not by a Long Shot (Lisa Minter) Telecom Update (Canada) #476 April 8, 2005 (John Riddell) Spammer Gets 9 Year Prison Sentence (Chris Farrar) Simultaneous Ring Problem With Cell Phone (Nathan Anderson) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:02:02 EDT From: Lisa Minter Subject: More Spam! We Reach the 80 Percent Mark Here! I have gathered up several articles dealing with the heartbreak of spam, and share several items with you today in this special report. I know PAT said maybe to respond to the bird whose email was published a couple days ago complaining that we here do not exercise enough 'editorial control over what goes out' we would simply open the gate and let it _all_ flow out in a flood at you, but Patrick decided against that. So, here are a few items hopefully of interest. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. Lisa Minter ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 14:21:15 -0400 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Monday Morning Blues of an Office Worker This link, is from http://www.HamptonRoads.com and http://www.PilotOnline.com about an office worker who found 624 items of spam in her inbox when she came to work on Monday morning. It could have been written here, except one of us usually flushes the toilet once or twice daily. The most I have ever seen was 310 in a single afternoon. http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=83188&ran=77296 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 14:18:06 EDT From: Lisa Minter Subject: Spam is Really Very Profitable For Spammers, Worm Turns a Profit By Brian Krebs For the first two weeks of October 2004, relentless waves of Internet t raffic swamped the Web site of Gaithersburg, Md.-based Harta Instruments, one of six companies worldwide that manufacture devices used to detect a vir us linked to genital warts and cervical cancer. John Lee, the company's owner, initially suspected a digital attack bent on destroying his mostly Internet-based business. Lee later learned that the flood of Web traffic came from more than 300,000 computers seeking softwar e updates at his site. The computers had been infected with the latest vers ion of the "Bagle" worm, one of last year's most prolific and insidious Int ernet viruses. The debilitating attacks have ceased now that his Web site is operating under a new name, but Lee still fumes over the incident, which he says cost his company tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales. "I don't know who was behind all of this, but they need to be caught and then shot," Lee grumbled. Barring a careless misstep by the virus author or authors, the prospects for any repercussions appear dim. The worm that targeted Lee's site was the 44th version of Bagle unleashed in 2004, a year in which teams of virus wri ters forged new alliances with junk e-mail artists to convert millions of home PCs into remote-controlled "zombies" used to fuel spam and phishing attacks. As a result of those alliances, junk e-mail and phishing attacks -- online scams that lure victims into giving up confidential information -- far out numbered legitimate e-mail communications last year. Roughly three-quarters of all e-mail in 2004 was spam or fraud-related, according to Postini, a Redwood City, Calif.-based anti-spam firm. Rent-a-Zombie Bagle was just one of countless e-mail worms unleashed onto the Internet in 2004, but the attack on Lee's site offered security experts a rare glimps e into the thriving economic and operational ties between Internet criminals and virus writers. In many ways, the Bagle virus is no different from other e-mail worms: it seizes control of a recipient's PC after they click on an e-mail attachment that harbors the virus. But Bagle also has outpaced its brethren in other areas. It would become one of 2004's most successful "multi-stage" viruses, in that it was designed to lie dormant for several days after infection, then instruct its host to download software updates from a pre-defined list of more than 130 Web sites. Bagle also was the first high-profile worm to disable the protective firewall that Microsoft Corp. enables in all distributions of Service Pack 2, a software security upgrade made available to Windows XP users in August. Symantec Corp., an Internet security firm based in Cupertino, Calif., intentionally infected some of its computers with the Bagle virus in order to monitor the worm's progress. In a 28-page report published in December, the company found that some of the PCs downloaded software that forced them to forward e-mails used in a pair of elaborate phishing scams targeting customers of SunTrust Banks. Other Bagle-infected PCs were used to spew junk e-mail. One piece of spam hawked cheap generic prescription drugs. Another advertised popular software titles -- including computer-security and anti-virus programs -- at fire-sale prices. Experts say most software sold through spam is pirated, and much of it is itself laced with viruses. Alfred Huger, senior director of security response at Symantec, said most of the infected computers were seeded with additional software over a period of several weeks. "That kind of activity suggests that the people behind the Bagle worm are either running a vast criminal enterprise or they are loaning out their network" of infected PCs to other scam artists and spammers , Huger said. It is common for attackers to sell or rent access to PCs they have compromised, according to Johannes Ullrich, chief technology officer for the SANS Internet Storm Center. In certain little-known underground chat rooms, a hacked computer in the United States can be rented for pennies per week. However, hijacked PCs in some foreign countries often fetch a higher value because they are considered harder for authorities to shutter, Ullrich added. "We've seen the asking price go as high as $25 for a single compromised home system." Recycling the Victim One reason Bagle and hundreds of other so-called "mass-mailer" worms are so prevalent is that virus authors typically reuse machines they have infected to help spawn future incarnations of their creations. Last year, hackers released new Bagle versions roughly once a week, each time using thousands of hijacked computers to "seed" the Internet with initial copies of the virus. Harta's Lee and many others responsible for maintaining the Web sites listed in Bagle's code acknowledged having inadvertently infected one or more of their personal or work computers with earlier versions of Bagle in the weeks leading up to the attacks on their sites. The attackers likely located the victims' Web sites by using one of Bagle' s built-in capabilities: eavesdropping on an infected computer's Internet c onnection for usernames and passwords that victims use to read e-mail, log in to bank sites or administer Web sites. Anthony Flanagan, a real estate development planner in San Francisco, owns a laptop that was infected with the Bagle worm in early September. Two weeks later his site buckled under the traffic of Bagle-infected PCs trying to download software that attackers had planted on his site and laptop. Flanagan's Internet service provider quickly pulled the plug on his Web site because it was crashing other sites operating on the same server. Flanagan said his site normally receives four or five visitors in a busy week, but when his ISP cut him off, the site was choking on more than 120 hits per second. "I didn't know I was infected, or that it was even possible for the virus to make its way over to my Web site," he said. Still, experts say many of the sites listed in Bagle's internal code never hosted any of the phishing or spamming software and were probably used as decoys to throw anti-virus researchers off their trail. Nevertheless, those sites were just as affected by the deluge of traffic from Bagle victims. The Web site for Union Hospital in Elkton, Md., appears to have been one such decoy. Hospital officials directed inquiries about the incident to the site's Internet service provider, Hunt Valley, Md.-based System Source. System Source co-owner Robert Roswell said the hospital's Web address, www.uhcc.com, received thousands of hits per second at the height of the attack, cutting off public access to the site for more than 24 hours. Roswell declined to say how much the attack cost, but said the company "put an enormous amount of defensive energy into keeping the site alive." "Let's just say we blew through about 10 years' worth of service contracts defending the hospital from this attack," he said. No Relief in Sight For the first three weeks of 2005, anti-virus companies saw only minor outbreaks of mass-mailing worms. But on Jan. 26, virus authors unleashed a major outbreak with several new versions of the Bagle worm. Within 24 hours, the amount of spam generated by Bagle-infected PCs increased from 140,000 junk e-mails to more than 1 million a day, according to Symantec, which recently acquired anti-spam company Brightmail. Experts say there are precious few signs that e-mail worms or the spam and scams they facilitate will fade away in the near future. The instructions for creating custom versions of Bagle and many of today's most successful e-mail worms now are freely available online. Virus authors also will continue to exploit weaknesses in commercial anti- virus software, most of which must be constantly updated with new "definitions" to be able to detect the latest viruses and worms. This allows the virus writers to stay a step ahead by releasing slightly different versions of their creations just hours apart. At the beginning of 2004, anti-virus companies took an average of 12 hours to release new definitions following a viral outbreak, according to MessageLabs, a British anti-spam company. By December 2004, that window of opportunity had shrunk by less than two hours, MessageLabs said. Still, the biggest contributor to the future success of such viruses will continue to be new, inexperienced Internet users, thousands of whom venture forth each day worldwide, said Mikko Hypponen, director of anti-virus research at F-Secure Corp. in Helsinki. "There are new users coming online all the time who know nothing about the risks of owning a computer and getting on the Internet," Hypponen said. "We're going to be fighting these e-mail worms for quite some time." Copyright 2004 The Washington Post Company NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, The Washington Post Company. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: 08 Apr 2005 11:14:27 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: More Spam! Get Ready for Spam on Your Net Phone It was hardly the big conversation topic at the VON conference in San Jose last week, where companies big and small were pitching their Voice over Internet Protocol technology and products. But when conversations at the show turned to security issues, the SPIT started flying. Not literally, of course. Jeffrey Citron, chairman and chief executive of Vonage, took questions after his keynote speech and was asked how he plans to address security issues with VoIP. Clearly, he wasn't going to share his security strategy so early. "The great thing about security is that you don't have to tell everyone what you're doing," he responded. "But we understand that SPIT is an issue." The issue is not only the potential for more telemarketing calls but also voicemail spam -- the thousands of unsolicited voice messages that a spammer could send to VoIP voicemail boxes with a simple click. So far, it's not a major problem. But as VoIP grows over the next few years, you can expect that 'spitters' will be ready. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Associated Press. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For those folks not yet familiar with the term 'SPIT', it is spam pushed over internet telephones, and it helps if you understand something about internet telephones and how they work. If I understand correctly, computers which act as switches for internet telephony have 'mailboxes' just like the email box you use for incoming/outgoing email. A piece of voicemail (or 'email') gets put in your slot, something triggers it to ring your net phone and the 'email' gets delivered to you, much like when you are using a Unix computer as I have here, new incoming 'email' triggers a message on my screen saying 'you have new mail'. Just as I can deliver this Digest en-masse to many readers using an 'exploder' style address, I presume spammers can use an 'exploder' address to send a single peice of 'email' to hundreds or thousands of users. And your voicemail box holds those pieces of 'email' which cannot get delivered right now because you are busy on some other 'email'. I am surprised the spammers (or Spitters) are not busy using them already to deliver their trash. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 08 Apr 2005 11:13:25 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: More Spam! Sometimes One Gets Caught: Judge Sentences Spammer By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer LEESBURG, Va. - A Virginia judge sentenced a spammer to nine years in prison Friday in the nation's first felony prosecution for sending junk e-mail, though the sentence was postponed while the case is appealed. Loudoun County Circuit Judge Thomas Horne said that because the law targeting bulk e-mail distribution is new and raises constitutional questions, it was appropriate to defer the prison time until appeals courts rule. A jury had recommended the nine-year prison term after convicting Jeremy Jaynes of pumping out at least 10 million e-mails a day with the help of 16 high-speed lines, the kind of Internet capacity a 1,000-employee company would need. Jaynes, of Raleigh, N.C., told the judge that regardless of how the appeal turns out, "I can guarantee the court I will not be involved in the e-mail marketing business again." The prosecutor, Lisa Hicks-Thomas, said she was pleased with the sentence and confident that the law would be upheld on appeal. "We're satisfied that the court upheld what 12 citizens of Virginia determined was an appropriate sentence; nine years in prison," Hicks-Thomas said. Defense attorney David Oblon argued in court that nine years was far too long given that Jaynes was charged as an out-of-state resident with violating a Virginia law that had taken effect just two weeks before. "We have no doubt that we will win on appeal," Oblon said outside court. "Therefore any sentence is somewhat moot. Still, the sentence is not what we recommended and we're disappointed." Jaynes declined to talk to reporters. He remains under $1 million bond. Though Oblon has never disputed that his client was a bulk e-mail distributor, he argued during the trial that the law was poorly crafted and that prosecutors never proved the e-mail was unsolicited. He also has said the law is an unconstitutional infringement of free speech. Under Virginia law, sending unsolicited bulk e-mail itself is not a crime unless the sender masks his identity. Prosecutors brought the case in Virginia because it is home to America Online Inc., the leading Internet service provider. Prosecutors have described Jaynes as among the top 10 spammers in the world at the time of his arrest, using the name "Gaven Stubberfield" and other aliases to peddle junk products and pornography. Prosecutors say he grossed up to $750,000 per month. The jury also convicted Jaynes's sister, Jessica DeGroot of Raleigh, but recommended only a $7,500 fine. Her conviction was later dismissed by the judge. A third defendant, Richard Rutkowski of Cary, N.C., was acquitted of all charges. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, The Associated Press. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: 08 Apr 2005 11:22:30 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: More Spam! Users To Blame For This Mess We have met the enemy and he is us. So says the Radicati Group, which Wednesday released preliminary results of a survey showing that it's bad behavior on the part of users -- us, in other words -- driving the spam and virus threat. And you thought it was spammers and hackers. "Frankly, it surprised us that users are still responding to 'spam' and opening 'unsolicited' mail," said Sarah Radicati, the chief executive of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based market research firm which conduced the online poll. According to Radicati's survey, 31 percent of those polled have clicked on embedded links within spam at one time or another. "Clicking on embedded links helps spammers determine 'live' accounts, which encourages repeated spam attacks," said Radicati. And enterprises can be compromised by a single miscreant. When an active account with a domain is identified, organizations are at greater risk of follow-up directory harvest attacks. Eighteen percent of users admitted that they'd clicked on the "unsubscribe" link in spam, another behavior that's exploited by spammers, who then know the address, and perhaps the entire domain, are active and so potential targets for follow-on spam campaigns. Even worse, spammers sell and trade lists with virus writers eager to accumulate bots, so by telling a spammer they're "live," users increase their risk of later receiving worms and viruses. But the most stunning statistic, said Radicati, was the last: more than 10 percent of the respondents have purchased products advertised in spam. "With the near-zero cost of sending out huge volumes of spam, the fact that more than one in ten users are purchasing products is clearly continuing to drive the economics of spam," said Radicati. "Although one person's spam may be another person's information," she said, "it's clear that education isn't working. Either the spam product offers are just too good to pass up, or users still have an enormous lack of awareness of the danger of clicking on e-mailed links." Companies need to do a much better job, she said, of educating their employees. "They're not," Radicati said. "They may say 'don't do this' and 'never do that,' but there's simply not much formal training." Our continued bad habits, she said, explains why e-mail security threats -- spam, worms, phishing -- continue to explode. "Anti-spam technology routinely achieves 90 percent plus catch-rates, yet no technology in the world can protect an organization if users exercise bad e-mail behavior." NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, The Associated Press. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: 08 Apr 2005 11:25:42 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: More Spam! It Ain't Dead Yet by Lance Ulanoff - PC Magazine In the past few weeks, I have heard reports that spam is finally dying. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. The reality at least according to companies tracking and stopping/catching spam for other major corporations and an unscientific survey of my own readers is that spam remains a major problem for both companies and individuals. Roughly 80-85 percent of the world's e-mail is spam. Thanks to the innovative technologies provided by McAfee, MailFrontier, FrontBridge, MessageLabs, and others, we're seeing less of it on our desktops and in our in-boxes. But we need to face facts. Spam hasn't disappeared. It's just being corralled briskly into holding pens for you and your company to evaluate, ignore, and eventually delete. On the whole, however, it still costs companies millions of dollars to manage spam. The CAN-SPAM Act has not been the panacea the U.S. government planned and has done little to stem the flow of spam onto desktops and corporate servers. More than a year after its passage, some companies, like enterprise antispam provider MX Logic, estimate that as little as 13 percent of spam mail complies with the law (by allowing recipients to opt out of getting any more spam from the same sender), down from a 16 percent compliance rate in September 2004. Perhaps the biggest development in the war against spam occurred late last year in a Virginia courtroom, when jurors voted to convict Jeremy Jaynes and his sister Jessica DeGroot for sending bulk e-mails under false e-mail addresses. These were no small-time mom-and-pop felons who did a little black-hat business. Jaynes and DeGroot were listed as number eight on the spam watchdog group Spamhaus's list of most-wanted spam purveyors. The conviction is potentially very good news. But the ruling did have its share of oddities. The trial took place in Virginia, but that's not where the spammers are from; it's simply where the servers they used were located. More interestingly, the jury seemed torn over the severity of DeGroot's and Jaynes's crime, recommending a nine-year prison term and just $7,500 in fines. I'd say they got that part backwards. I don't know what putting these kinds of criminals behind bars will do. Better to bar them from buying and using computers and the Internet for five to ten years. Likewise, spam-catching costs corporations around the world millions of dollars each year in software, servers, and other resources. So, $7,500 is little more than a nod toward the spammers' real fiscal responsibilities. If Jaynes did, as prosecutors charged, make $24 million from his enterprise, he should be fined at least that much. In Germany, they're now promising hefty fines for spammers. The U.S. government should hurry up and do the same. Still, the judicial victory should embolden prosecutors to go after other spammers on Spamhaus's list. Oddly, I have yet to hear about another spammer going to trial or jail, or even being arrested. I guess the next logical step is for companies to go after spammers themselves with civil lawsuits. In theory, some major corporations should be suing Jaynes and DeGroot. They should work with state and federal officials to time those civil suits to hit at the same time the spammers face criminal charges. It could be a hugely effective one-two punch. On the other hand, if those who believe spam is dying are right, we can sit back, do nothing and let CAN-SPAM take its course. With a 13 percent compliance rate, those death throes should continue for another 50 or 60 years. Copyright 2005 Ziff Davis Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Ziff-Davis. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #476, April 8, 2005 Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:32:50 -0400 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 476: April 8, 2005 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous=20 financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/en/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** UTC CANADA: www.canada.utc.org/ ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** VoIP Providers Given 90 Days to Implement 9-1-1 ** CRTC Promises VoIP Decision by May 12 ** Ottawa Sees No Need to Rewrite Telecom Act ** Union to Vote on Entourage Offer ** Resellers Can Now Use Bell Third-Party VoIP ** Bell Forms Small-Business IT Services Division ** Shaw to Increase Internet Access Speeds ** Telus to Extend High-Speed Access in Rural B.C. ** MCI Rejects Qwest Bid But Talks Continue ** RIM Adds 470,000 Subscribers ** Telecom Conference Calls for Papers VoIP PROVIDERS GIVEN 90 DAYS TO IMPLEMENT 9-1-1: The CRTC says that 9-1-1 service is not optional in Canada. Telecom Decision 2005-21 orders all providers of IP-based local telephone service to implement at least Basic 9-1-1 service by July 3. ** Basic 9-1-1 routes emergency calls to the correct Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). Enhanced 9-1-1 (E911) also delivers the caller's location, and gives the PSAP control of the call. ** Providers of fixed (non-nomadic) IP-based phone services, with a local number within the caller's PSAP serving area, must implement full 9-1-1/E911 service where it is available from the incumbent phone company. ** If the IP service uses "non-native" phone numbers, or is used nomadically, providers must implement an interim solution. The CRTC expresses a preference for solutions that route 9-1-1 calls to an intermediate call centre for screening and routing to the correct PSAP. ** IP telephony providers must obtain customers' express consent to 9-1-1 limitations, and must provide ongoing notification including warning stickers for customer phone sets. ** The CRTC Interconnection Steering Committee (CISC) has been given deadlines for recommending permanent solutions. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2005/dt2005-21.htm CRTC PROMISES VoIP DECISION BY MAY 12: This week the Canadian Cable Television Association, Quebecor, and Cogeco all wrote to the CRTC challenging Bell Canada's new "Digital Voice" IP telephony service, describing it as in violation of the Commission's rules and the Telecom Act. In response, the Commission says it will issue its final VoIP decision by May 12 and will rule on these three applications after that. (See Telecom Update #475) OTTAWA SEES NO NEED TO REWRITE TELECOM ACT: Responding to recommendations made last year by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, the federal Cabinet says it doesn't believe it is necessary to rewrite or combine the Telecommunications, Broadcasting, or CRTC Acts. The government also rejects the Committee's recommendation to create a unified Department of Communications responsible for telecom, broadcasting, and cultural industries. ** The Cabinet response also says it "is not prepared to modify foreign ownership limits on broadcasting or content," but that it expects that the pending telecom review "may be helpful in shedding new light on this important issue." www.pch.gc.ca/progs/ac-ca/progs/ri-bpi/index_e.cfm UNION TO VOTE ON ENTOURAGE OFFER: Bell Canada and Entourage Technology Solutions have given their striking employees what they say is a "final offer" to settle the contract dispute. The Communication, Energy, and Paperworkers Union has recommended rejection of the proposal in Ontario and acceptance in Quebec. RESELLERS CAN NOW USE BELL THIRD-PARTY VoIP: CRTC Telecom Order 2005-123 allows any registered service provider (not just carriers) to use Bell Canada's Internet Voice Access Service to connect a retail VoIP offering to the public switched telephone network. Providers must comply with the Commission's customer privacy rules. (see Telecom Update #455) www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2005/o2005-123.htm BELL FORMS SMALL-BUSINESS IT SERVICES DIVISION: Bell Canada has completed its purchase of Nexxlink Technologies. (See Telecom Update #466) It plans to merge Nexxlink and Charon Systems, another recently acquired IT company, in a new division, Bell Business Solutions, which will provide IT services to small and medium-sized businesses across Canada. SHAW TO INCREASE INTERNET ACCESS SPEEDS: Shaw Communications plans to increase download speed of its High-Speed Internet service to 5 Mbps from 3 Mbps in seven cities of western Canada. High-Speed Xtreme download speed will be increased to 7 Mbps. TELUS TO EXTEND HIGH-SPEED ACCESS IN RURAL B.C.: Telus has promised the B.C. government to spend $110 million by the end of 2006 to extend high-speed Internet access to 119 rural communities in the province. That will leave 32 communities unserved by high-speed access, which the government proposes to provide through a separate satellite initiative. ** The B.C. government also agreed to buy $245 million worth of telecom services from Telus over four years. MCI REJECTS QWEST BID BUT TALKS CONTINUE: MCI has rejected Qwest's acquisition bid of $27.50 a share, terming it "not superior" to Verizon's rival bid of $23.10. MCI/Qwest talks are continuing today. (See Telecom Update #475) RIM ADDS 470,000 SUBSCRIBERS: Research In Motion added 470,000 BlackBerry subscribers in the last three months of 2004, bringing its total to 2.5 million. Revenue of US$405 million was up 11% on the quarter and 92% on the year. RIM took a $294-million fourth-quarter charge to resolve its patent dispute with NTP; RIM's net loss was $2.6 million. TELECOM CONFERENCE CALLS FOR PAPERS: Telemanagement Live, Canada's premier business telecom and networking event, is asking for proposals for workshops and tutorials during its October 17-19 conference in Toronto. Submissions are due by May 6; go to www.telemanagementlive.com/callforclarity.html. HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE=20 Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2005 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 16:33:49 -0400 From: Chris Farrar Subject: Spammer Gets 9 Years North Carolina spammer gets nine years; Sentence postponed while appeal is heard. Jeremy Jaynes was among the top 10 spammers in the world when arrested, prosecutors say. ASSOCIATED PRESS LEESBURG, Va. A man convicted in the U.S.'s first felony prosecution for illegal spamming was sentenced to nine years in prison today, but the judge postponed the sentence while the case is appealed. Loudoun County Circuit Judge Thomas Horne said that because the law targeting bulk e-mail distribution is new and raises constitutional questions, it was appropriate to defer the prison time until appeals courts rule. Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., was convicted in November for using false Internet addresses to send mass e-mail ads through an AOL server in Loudoun. A jury had recommended the nine-year prison term. Prosecutors said Jaynes used the Internet to peddle sham products and services such as a 'FedEx refund processor.' Virginia, where AOL is based, prosecuted the case under a law that took effect in 2003 barring people from sending bulk e-mail that is unsolicited and masks its origin. Jaynes told the judge that regardless of how the appeal turns out, "I can guarantee the court I will not be involved in the e-mail marketing business again." Lisa Hicks-Thomas, the prosecutor, said she was pleased with the ruling and confident that the law would be upheld on appeal. "We're satisfied that the court upheld what 12 citizens of Virginia determined was an appropriate sentence =97 nine years in prison," said Hicks-Thomas. Defense attorney David Oblon argued that nine years was far too long given that Jaynes was charged as an out-of-state resident with violating a Virginia law that had taken effect just two weeks before. Prosecutors have said Jaynes was among the top 10 spammers in the world at the time of his arrest, using the name "Gaven Stubberfield" and other aliases to peddle junk products and pornography. The jury had also convicted Jaynes' sister, Jessica DeGroot of Raleigh, but recommended only a $7,500 fine. Her conviction was later dismissed by the judge. A third defendant, Richard Rutkowski of Cary, N.C., was acquitted of all charges. ------------------------------ From: Nathan Anderson Subject: Simultaneous Ring Problem With Cell Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 21:17:08 -0700 Organization: First Step Internet (www.fsr.net) Reply-To: Nathan Anderson (I posted a much more detailed version of this note earlier describing exactly what I want to accomplish, why I want to do it, what I had already tried, etc., but apparently it was too much information and thus it was rejected. Clarifications will have to come in the form of replies.) I have "simultaneous ring" call forwarding at home. I want to use this feature to forward to my cell phone which does not have voicemail. If I don't answer my home phone or my cell while it's on, then it goes to my home voicemail. However, if my cell phone is off or out of range, then my cell phone company "answers" the "simulring" call with a message stating that I am not available. This happens before my home voicemail has a chance to kick in. What's the best way to avoid the latter situation so that if my cell phone is off, my home voicemail gets the call? My cellular provider is willing to work with me and entertain suggestions from me, so if anyone has any creative solution, I'm all ears. Apparently, they cannot turn off the message on an account-by-account basis (or so they think). Thanks, Nathan Anderson "You can't appreciate Shakespeare until you've read him in the original Klingon." -- General Chang, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I will tell you how I handle the same problem here: Instead of simultaneous ring, my home phone is set up for 'transfer on busy/no answer' to my cell phone. If I do not answer my home phone (or am already on a conversation) then the incoming call forwards (after 3-4 rings) to my cellular phone, then the cellular phone 'transfers on busy/no answer' to voicemail. That way, if I am out, or not in the area, my home phone rings 3-4 times, switches to the cellular which rings 4-5 times, _then_ it goes to voicemail. In other words, your voicemail has to be at the end of the line (after the cell phone) and not in the middle (attached to Inland) as you have it now. Do not let anything 'get in the way' of the voicemail (such as the phone is out of area/not turned on' message people are getting now). And I would not do it on simultaneous ring simply because there is too great a risk of callers getting the inappropriate response they are getting now. I would say do it on 'transfer on busy/no answer' so the only time the cell phone gets the call is if the landline goes unanswered, which is what you would want anyway. And if your voicemail is on the Inland line, it is always going to jump in and intercept calls whether you want to or not. Have the voicemail on the cell phone line, so you in effect get 'two chances' to answer the call (once on home line, and once on cellular) before the call is lost. And if you are out of the area, or the cell phone is unable to get the call, then voicemail will get it rather than the messages people are getting now from it. In your original message which I have here, I think you said the cell phone was timing out with inappropriate responses, busy signals, etc after a certain period of time. Unless you have some objection to the voicemail from your cellular carrier, I would use that one to insure there was always some appropriate response if you did not get the call for some reason. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #152 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Apr 9 17:00:41 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j39L0eN19046; Sat, 9 Apr 2005 17:00:41 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 17:00:41 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504092100.j39L0eN19046@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 V24 #153 TELECOM Digest Sat, 9 Apr 2005 17:00:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 153 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Lingo Broadband Phone is a Scam (ME123) Touch Tone Blocking (Takoma Park Volunteer Fire Department Postmaster) Calif. PUC To Withdraw Appeal Of FCC's Vonage Order (Jack Decker) PPC Lawsuit: Search Engines Accused of Overcharge Advertisers (Skinner) Experts Please help (sffdsff) Re: Telemarketing to Cellphones (Joseph) Re: Telemarketing to Cellphones (DevilsPGD) Re: VoIP Adapter With High REN? (Kenneth P. Stox) Re: Google Maps (AES) Re: Sperm - Not so Mobile (John McHarry) Re: GSM-900 (jason) Re: Verizon FiOS Blocking Ports? (pvwebb) Re: Wired: Word From on High: Jam Cell Calls (Tony P.) Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID Mgr (Paratwa) Administrivia: URL Telecom-Digest.org Was Out of Order (Editor) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: ME123 Subject: Lingo Broadband Phone is a Scam Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 15:24:59 -0400 This is here to let anyone researching the Lingo broadband phone system know how a customer feels about their service. After signing up with Lingo I was unable to complete any faxes nor could I connect a work-related dialup device correctly. The line quality was terrible. Callers frequently complained about echoes and dropped signals. By dropped signals I mean that the person could hear everything you said except for the last word (before a pause). On top of that there were several times that there was not a dialtone. I had to reset the phone adapter numerous times just to get a dialtone. I also had several dropped calls similar to what a cell phone would do if you lost signal suddenly. When I contacted Lingo's customer support via their website e-mail (24hr response time according to website) it took them four days to get back to me. I followed the directions to allow for a configuration change on my phone adapter and was still having all of these problems and more. On top of that they wanted me to ping about ten sites to see if their routing was the problem. Sorry it's sure as hell not worth the hassle. On top of all this they charged me $39 to disconnect so you see they make more money in the short term to have you disconnected. My feeling is that they really don't care if it works right for me because they make their money anyway. It all sounds like a great deal in the beginning at $19.95, but it is all a scam in my opinion. My recommendation is to stay as far away from this company as is humanly possible. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If your sentences get cut off on the last word before a pause, then make the 'last word' in each sentence be 'pause'. i.e. your sentence, "How are you today pause" (then pause for reply), "I am doing fine, thank you pause" (then pause again for reply). So all you lose is the 'filler' word 'pause' each time. It is a crummy work-around I know, but it would do the job. I've never heard that particular complaint about VOIP before. I have heard that speech gets broken up sometimes, if the pipe is to full at the moment, unless you do like Vonage recommends, and use their router which tries to throttle other machines on the stream at the same time. But regards the $39 to disconnect, that's one reason that Vonage does _not_ have a current, usable credit card of mine. In the event I run out of 'next month free' coupons and have to start actually paying for the service and decide it is not worth it, then to hell with them getting any disconnect fee from me. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Takoma Park Volunteer Fire Department Subject: Touch Tone Blocking Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2005 00:23:27 GMT I need to devise a way to keep users from playing touch tones over the paging system. If you can suggest a way to prevent users from sounding touch tones over the paging amplifier circuit post it here or E-mail direct. Be advised that my ISP's anti Spam software will generate a service message to which you will have to respond in order for me to receive your e-mail. Tom H [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At least on the older Bell switchboards, there was a certain contact on the network (inside the switchboard) to mute your earpiece from the audio on touch tones while still playing them out over the phone. It was generally only done for switchboard operators to prevent them having to listen to the tones all the time as they placed calls. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 21:09:58 -0400 Subject: Calif. PUC To Withdraw Appeal Of FCC's Vonage Order http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=160503382&tid=5978 Voice over IP proponents on the California Public Utilities Commission made good on their pledge to withdraw the commission's original motion to appeal the FCC's Vonage Order, meaning that California's influential public utilities board no longer opposes the idea of federal-only regulation of Voice over IP. By Paul Kapustka Advanced IP Pipeline Voice over IP proponents on the California Public Utilities Commission made good on their pledge to withdraw the commission's original motion to appeal the FCC's Vonage Order, meaning that California's influential public utilities board no longer opposes the idea of federal-only regulation of Voice over IP. In a closed session during the CPUC's meeting Thursday, the commission decided to withdraw its appeal, according to a source close to the proceedings. The CPUC is expected to make a formal announcement of its decision soon, either today or early next week. How the California PUC's decision may affect other states' similar motions is unclear. But at the very least, it moves the influence of regulators from one of the country's largest telecommunications markets to the other side of the VoIP regulatory chessboard, the side in favor of national VoIP policymaking. Full story at: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=160503382&tid=5978 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Date: 9 Apr 2005 07:14:41 -0000 From: Greg Skinner Subject: PPC Lawsuit: search Engines Accused of Overcharging Advertisers See the article here: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050405/click_fraud_lawsuit.html?.v=1 ------------------------------ From: sffdsff Subject: Experts Please help Date: 8 Apr 2005 18:08:22 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi Guys, I am trying to develop an application which will connect to the telephone line and when I get an incoming line it shall send a voice data on the phone line and then look for key entries from the other side ... similar to a voice mail system. I have figured out that I would need a DAA to interface to the phone line (of course a one that would have a DTMF decoder so that I can get the key entries). Now my question is how do I send the voice data out (this voice will be pre-recorded on a flash). All the places I have looked say that I would need PCM data interfaced to a DSP. I do not want to complicate the matter -- I want to make it simple by using a PIC Microcontroller. So basically this is what I plan it would look like: RJ11 <---> DAA <---> Serial Interface <---> PIC Micro <-->Flash This should take care of both voice and key entries. I have looked into tons of options but cannot figure out a "simple" way to do this PLEASE HELP! -sffdsff ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Telemarketing to Cellphones Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 18:50:45 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 04:45:40 -0600, Telecom Digest Editor wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why, when by your presence on that list > you have in effect stated 'do not bother me, I am not interested', > would some 'exempt' company deliberatly call you anyway? Do they have > money to waste just being malicious? PAT] Well, spammers make a game out of trying to get to you even though you've made it pretty clear a lot of the time that you just *don't* want to be bothered with whatever scheme they happen to be peddling. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I dunno ... the 'legitimate' telemarketers I have seen (yes, I know, maybe none of them are legitimate; it is a dreadful occupation to be in) have too big of a work load to sit and play games with their telephones. To them, time is money, and they would _prefer_ -- if the answer from you is 'no' -- to get that 'no' early on so they can move on to the next call. Now if it is a 'spammer' (and yes, I know, you may be defining all telemarketers as 'spammers') they are not going to pay attention to any list of DNC people anyway. And none of the types you have named, either 'spammers' or 'telemarketers', are going to be 'exempt from DNC' type callers. The people who actually read and obey the list are legitimate users of the list. PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Telemarketing to Cellphones Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2005 01:36:10 -0600 Organization: Disorganized In message DevilsPGD wrote: > In message Joseph > wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So what harm is there in adding your >> cell phone and/or VOIP number to the list just to 'be safe'? PAT] > The harm is that exempt companies can purchase the DNC list and use it > as a list of people to annoy. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why, when by your presence on that list > you have in effect stated 'do not bother me, I am not interested', > would some 'exempt' company deliberatly call you anyway? Do they have > money to waste just being malicious? PAT] Just because "Dave" added a number to the DNC list doesn't mean that they won't find "John" at that number that might buy their shit. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But they have been told, by the presence of a phone number on the list to _not_ connect with that phone number. The DNC list does not say 'do not call Dave at this number', it simply says _do not call this number_. In my opinion, the more phone numbers that can be loaded on that list, whether they are landline, residential, business, cell, VOIP or whatever, the better off the world will be. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Kenneth P. Stox Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks Subject: Re: VoIP Adapter With High REN? Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2005 18:36:49 GMT Do you need to have ringers on all of the phones? If not, simply disable the ringers as necessary. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And not just by mechanically turning the clapper down; there still is a bit of electricity _attempting_ to ring the disabled bell. Disconnect the wires to the bell inside the phone, or get little electronic chirps for your audio signal. PAT] ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Re: Google Maps Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 19:52:37 -0700 Organization: Stanford University In article , Steve Sobol wrote: > AES wrote: >> I don't know how to solve the problem (the very real, serious, and >> IMHO increasing) problem of corruption of many of our primary >> information sources and media by advertising I'd willingly pay a >> significant subscription fee for access to a Google equivalent that >> was equally good and that I could be sure was and would remain truly >> advertiser independent. > There is no such thing. (No, not even public TV and radio, they have > corporate sponsorships too, and have had them for quite some time.) I know. And the Business section of the NY Times reports today that GM has announced that it's terminating all its advertising in the Los Angeles Times "for an indefinite period" because it doesn't like the way the paper treats GM in its news and Auto sections. Think about that ... ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Sperm - Not so Mobile Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2005 03:06:18 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 09:44:57 -0400, T.Sean wrote: > Yes, of course. But what many folks don't realize is they use > specially bred mice that are VERY susceptible to tumors for these > types of experiments. > Which means there is a very GOOD chance that the same exposure will > have no effect whatsoever on a normal healthy human. Oh good, a volunteer! ------------------------------ From: Jason Subject: Re: GSM-900 Date: 9 Apr 2005 02:35:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi All, Thank you for the explanation you have spent time on. it is so good to see all of them here. Do give me some time to check it out. I was tied up with some other topic. I will reply here soon. Thank you so much for people who spend time and effort in this enquiry Thank you so much. rgds and thanks Jason ------------------------------ From: pvwebb Subject: Re: Verizon FiOS Blocking Ports? Date: 9 Apr 2005 09:27:32 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com You're probably having trouble with the firewall on your DLink router. You need to set it to pass through the ports from the Linux computer. andyrankin@gmail.com wrote: > I'm very lucky to be in an area where Verizon's FiOS fiber to the > premises service is available. I have the 15/2 Mbps service and it > works great. > I'm wondering if anyone knows if Verizon blocks are inbound ports > (80, etc.)? > Also, I'm using the Verizon provided DLink DI-604 router. I'm not > having any luck getting the router to forward WAN traffic through to > specific machines on the LAN. For example, I've tried passing traffic > on port 8080 to a linux box running Apache on that port and I think I > have the router configured properly but it doesn't seem to be letting > the traffic through. I'm a bit of a novice so I'm not sure how to > determine if this is something Verizon's blocking before it gets to my > router or if I just haven't figured the router out yet. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Wired: Word From on High: Jam Cell Calls Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:34:52 -0400 In article , tom.horsley@att.net says: >> Would those who so quickly hope for a lawsuit to arise from a jammer >> interfering with an emergency wireless telephone call also claim that >> a building so constructed would similarly be grounds for action? > Judging from the crowd of folks you always see walking back and forth > and talking on their cells in parking lots, most buildings are > apparently *already* constructed this way :-). Because they're all steel frame buildings with lots of double and triple layer glass. Does wonders for killing RF signals. ------------------------------ From: Paratwa Subject: Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID Manager Organization: UseNetServer Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 13:57:41 -0500 12 Gauge pump shotgun and a bedside 38 special the wife was taught to use. Noisy outdoor dog when strangers approach. We had changed the number once and had no problems for quite a while. Unfortunately he tricked the slow brother-in-law and got the new number. I spoke to a lawyer's secretary about the situation and she said I could make an appointment with the lawyer for $100. She couldn't even discuss whether he handles this type of situation. Heck I bought this device for $100 and got immediate results. I don't have much regard for the justice system in general anyway. When we made out a police report we learned that there was a warrant for his arrest. But the police didn't have his address. So we gave them the address and we were told it was in a different police district. Unless somebody has killed somebody or is in the process of doing so the police aren't interested. Yeah we could eventually get a restraining order but what is to stop him from calling on a pay phone at 2 am w/o leaving a message -- as he does frequently. He is pretty much scum of the earth without a life and addictions to booze and casinos -- a bad combo if you live on the MS gulf coast. Eventually he'll be picked up for DUI or kill somebody driving. I prefer the tech solution. On 8 Apr 2005 05:24:18 -0700, Justin Time wrote: > not to say that this type of harassment doesn't occur. There are > other remedies available that appear not to have been explored. If > you had proof, then a court order to stop the harassment could have > been obtained. Violation of the court order will have more impact on > police action than the filing of a complaint. The question remains, > other than complaining what have you done to protect yourself? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What I did to protect myself is switch > to a different telephone company; one that knows what *77 is used for > and how to implement it so it works correctly, and overall it is a lot > less expensive as well ($25 per month for a large package of features > _plus_ unlimited local calling, _plus_ a hundred minutes of long > distance calling per month). Admittedly, that solution is not > available to everyone: SBC (and many other Bell telcos) tell many > customers they are 'not eligible' for porting elsewhere. > And to get a 'court order', you generally have to have had the police > involved first, to justify your need for a court order. The court does > not hand them out willy-nilly to everyone who asks. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ptownson Subject: Administrivia: A Temporary Outage Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2005 15:00:00 EDT Sometime late Friday afternoon, the _alias name_ 'telecom-digest.org' went out of order. This alias is routed through John Levine's computer in New York. It came back on line Saturday late morning or early afternoon. When this happens, any netter who requests the URL http://telecom-digest.org simply draws a blank. But, anyone who uses the real name http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives does get through (unless massis also happens to go down). Although we would _prefer_ to be known as 'telecom-digest.org' to the internet world, we can go by 'massis.lcs.mit.edu' as needed. If you tried to reach this site Friday afternoon/evening/overnight into Saturday morning and kept 'drawing blanks', please remember this and use our alternate (but original) URL, and you should get through that way. Patrick ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V24 #153 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Apr 10 17:30:24 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3ALUM229275; Sun, 10 Apr 2005 17:30:24 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 17:30:24 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504102130.j3ALUM229275@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 V24 #154 TELECOM Digest Sun, 10 Apr 2005 17:30:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 154 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Question About SKYPE and Using Lingo; Will There be a Problem? (KOS) Wierd Telephone Problems (Gladiator) Fraud Work at Home Offers From Nigeria (NOTvalid@surplus4actors.INFO) Re: Experts Please Help (Robert Bonomi) Re: Touch Tone Blocking (William Warren) Re: Touch Tone Blocking (Robert Bonomi) Re: Touch Tone Blocking (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Touch Tone Blocking (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: VOIP Adapter With High REN (Robert Bonomi) Re: Administrivia: A Temporary Outage (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Packet8 Number Portability (John Harper) Warning! Virus Has Attacked Me! (Fred Atkinson) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: KOS Subject: Question About SKYPE and Using Lingo; Will There be a Problem? Date: 10 Apr 2005 11:21:48 -0700 Hi, I currently use Lingo; was wondering if I download Skype, will I still be able to use Lingo or will this cause some type of corruption? Thanks, KOS ------------------------------ From: Gladiator Subject: Wierd Telephone Problems Date: 9 Apr 2005 13:47:04 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello: I have this problem with my telephone at home. For incoming calls, sometimes, it would ring once then disconnect the caller. I thought it was my phone, but I bought a new one, and it was the same thing. I called my telephone company, and the technician came and said that this could be due to wiring inside the building. So, the telephone company thinks it's not their responsibility. The strangest thing is, outgoing calls seem to be fine. I can dial outside w/o problems. Anyone seen this before? Will [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I've seen it lots of times. And as often as not, it is in the wiring somewhere (either 'your' wiring or possibly telco's.) Chances are there is some _tiny_ bare spot where the two wires touch, or nearly so. The amount of current in the line when the phone rings is sufficient to 'bridge the gap' and complete the connection for a half second or so. What does the calling party receive under those circumstances? Usually they will hear one or two ringing signals, then it will change to busy, or maybe it will sound like the line went dead. When you place a call -- as opposed to receive a call -- there is much less voltage on the line because the phone is not ringing. Its the increase in voltage which causes this to occur. That is why you experience no problems when _you_ place a call; the 'current bridge' is not present. How do you prove it is telco's problem and not yours, or vice-versa? Take your telephone out to the demarc, or place where the telco says your wiring begins. Disconnect where they say yours starts. Use a cell phone (or some other third-party line) to dial into _your_ number. If you have your phone plugged directly into the demarc, and the problem is present, you should hear your phone ring once (a half ring, maybe) and then go dead. Note on the phone you are using to call in what happens, i.e. busy signal, fast busy, the line goes dead, or whatever. If this happens *and you have 'your' wires pulled or disconnected at the demarc, then the problem is telco's. If it rings through normally, and you can talk to yourself (or any confederate who is assisting you), then it is NOT telco's problem. Then, reattach the wires you took down at the demarc and try the test again. Does it occur this time? If the problem occurs when your wires are connected, but _not_ when you are connected direct to the demarc, then it is indeed your problem. Try this much first, then get back to us with the results. If it is indeed in your length of wire and not telco's, then we will discuss how you go about correcting it. You'll basically have two choices in that case: fix it yourself or with your own electrician hired, _or_ pay telco (or bribe the technician) and they will fix it for you. Typically it costs less to fix it yourself, but depending on the complexity of the wiring (and distance involved and the size of your complex) it may be faster and less grief to let telco handle it. We will discuss both approaches when you get back to us with your findings. Hoping to hear again from you soon. PAT] ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@surplus4actors.INFO Subject: Fraud Work at Home Offers From Nigeria Date: 9 Apr 2005 15:20:10 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com "Many American retailers don't ship online products overseas because of fraud. So organized crime groups overseas came up with a clever ruse. They order online goods using stolen or fake credit cards. Then, they have the packages sent to unwitting citizens in this country, who then rewrap and reship the items overseas." See http://www.fbi.gov/page2/april05/cyberthief040405.htm TO CATCH A CYBER THIEF FBI Agent Talks About His Travels to Distant Shores to Stop Internet Scams 04/04/05 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We talked about this the other day with the 'employment opportunity' I presented here which came to us from St. Petersburg, Russian Federation. Maybe it was a legitimate offer, or maybe not. I can't help but wonder though, what if the Russian crooks happened to unwittingly wind up doing business with some American crooks? The Russian (or Nigerian) crooks 'lured someone in' on their scheme to use fraud credit cards to drop ship to them via your 'company'. But the only thing is, the Americans don't actually do the drop shipping expected. The Russians/Nigerians do 'all the work' of stealing/abusing a credit card, talk to you to get the merchandise shipped to them, but then you don't actually ship. You abscond with the merchandise yourself, leaving the Russians/Nigerians holding an even bigger bag than before. Oooh, I bet that would really tick them off! I mean, what are _they_ going to do, call the FBI? You might call this routine 'when one con artist does business with another con artist by accident'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Experts Please Help Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 19:42:52 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , sffdsff wrote: > Hi Guys, > I am trying to develop an application which will connect to the > telephone line and when I get an incoming line it shall send a voice > data on the phone line and then look for key entries from the other > side ... similar to a voice mail system. I have figured out that I > would need a DAA to interface to the phone line (of course a one that > would have a DTMF decoder so that I can get the key entries). Now my > question is how do I send the voice data out (this voice will be > pre-recorded on a flash). All the places I have looked say that I > would need PCM data interfaced to a DSP. > I do not want to complicate the matter -- I want to make it simple by > using a PIC Microcontroller. > So basically this is what I plan it would look like: > RJ11 <---> DAA <---> Serial Interface <---> PIC Micro <-->Flash > This should take care of both voice and key entries. > I have looked into tons of options but cannot figure out a "simple" way > to do this. The 'simple' way is to buy it 'off the shelf'. It's called "IVR", aka "Interactive Voice Response". Inexpensive (even _free_) software to do this on a PC-type box is readily available. It may require a "voice/data" modem, or a dedicated phone-line interface card. If you insist on DIY, the answer to "how do i send the voice data out" is 'generate the analog wave-form and impress it on the phone line. If that isn't sufficient 'clue', you don't have the requisite skills to attempt such a project -- use the "simple" way, mentioned in the previous paragraph. For 'digitalized voice' stored anywhere, you have to have "something" to take that digital data, and convert it back to an _analog_ waveform, to send over the POTS circuit. DSP chips greatly simplify the process. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2005 21:57:50 -0400 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Touch Tone Blocking Takoma Park Volunteer Fire Department wrote: > I need to devise a way to keep users from playing touch tones over the > paging system. If you can suggest a way to prevent users from > sounding touch tones over the paging amplifier circuit post it here or > E-mail direct. Be advised that my ISP's anti Spam software will > generate a service message to which you will have to respond in order > for me to receive your e-mail. > Tom H > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At least on the older Bell > switchboards, there was a certain contact on the network (inside the > switchboard) to mute your earpiece from the audio on touch tones while > still playing them out over the phone. It was generally only done for > switchboard operators to prevent them having to listen to the tones > all the time as they placed calls. PAT] Pat, I think he's asking how to keep people from _deliberately_ playing touch-tones over the paging system when they dial the PA access code from their phone. In other words, they've probably got some pranksters in the fire station who like to pretend they're the organist for Deep Purple, using the PA as their amplifier and the Touch Tone keypad as ntheir organ. A ham radio operator would be the best guy to ask, since hams have been using Touch Tone on FM repeaters for a while now. The only question would be if Tom H is trying to hang up on any PA access call that has Touch Tone in it, or if he wants to just mute the tone and keep the call active. William [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe you are right. I used to see (or actually hear) this happen a lot in Chicago at the Transit Atrocity stations. The overhead loud speaker would come on, which was _supposed_ to be for an announcement from either one of the control tower operators, or some other employee. When the loud speaker came on, all you would hear was 'dee, dee, dee, doop' and then a hang up. Obviously someone had pressed the wrong key on his multiline phone or had started dialing without looking to see which line key was pressed down. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Touch Tone Blocking Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 19:31:59 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Takoma Park Volunteer Fire Department wrote: > I need to devise a way to keep users from playing touch tones over the > paging system. If you can suggest a way to prevent users from > sounding touch tones over the paging amplifier circuit post it here or > E-mail direct. Be advised that my ISP's anti Spam software will > generate a service message to which you will have to respond in order > for me to receive your e-mail. Please be advised that having been *spammed* too many times by said ISP's 'anti-spam' software, because my address was *forged* as the sender of messages being 'challenged', *ALL* such 'challenges' are blocked at time of transmission. You ask for a favor, and then expect people to jump through hoops to tell you about it. "Sorry, Charlie", that dog doesn't hunt. As for your 'problem', the real solution is "training". It is a 'personnel' problem, not a 'technical' one. Technology cannot _prevent_ the problem, although it can "ameliorate" it. a DTMF decoder chip, wired to interrupt the PA leads when tones are detected is about as close as you can come. Put the decoder _in_front_ of a 50-100ms 'delay line', and you can cut the PA off _before_ the tones propagate through the delay line. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 20:29:33 EDT Subject: Re: Touch Tone Blocking Pat wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At least on the older Bell > switchboards, there was a certain contact on the network (inside the > switchboard) to mute your earpiece from the audio on touch tones while > still playing them out over the phone. It was generally only done for > switchboard operators to prevent them having to listen to the tones > all the time as they placed calls. PAT] Are you sure that wasn't MF tones rather than Touch-Tone? Operators ordinarily used MF signaling, not Touch-Tome. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The *only time* I experienced this was when I filled in overnight two or three times for the regular switch- board operator at the 14 East Delaware Apartments in Chicago. A large building (20 stories, with about 150 apartments), they had a switchboard for tenants; that was about 1965 or so. Unlike most of those older high-rise buildings which had switchboards for the tenants with _rotary dials_ on them, this one had a little box built in with a touchtone pad. The tenants could hear the touch tones, but the operator could _not_. I have no idea how they wired it to do that. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 11:06:18 -0500 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Touch Tone Blocking Takoma Park Volunteer Fire Department wrote: > I need to devise a way to keep users from playing touch tones over the > paging system. If you can suggest a way to prevent users from > sounding touch tones over the paging amplifier circuit post it here or > E-mail direct. Use a DTMF receiver chip to detect the tones. Feed the PA audio input into the chip and connect the DV output to the PA Mute input. Probably a $5 investment in parts, or a minimal drain on your junkbox :-) You'll still get a brief burst of tone (20-50msec) at the beginning but the rest of the tone will be muted. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com Tragically, as many as 9625 out of every 10,000 individuals may be neurotypical ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: VoIP Adapter With High REN? Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 20:03:21 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: > I am trying to switch two of three phone lines in a very large, very > old house over to VoIP. The house has quite literally twenty > extensions split between the three lines -- I think I need at least 4 > or 5 REN per line, plus the ability to drive all the wire leading to > those handsets (over 100' in some cases) without exploding the audio > output circuit in the ATA. > Does anyone make equipment meant for this that I can use with a > mainstream VoIP provider? It's been suggested to me that Packet8 > might be my best chance since they build their own gear but I don't > see anything suitable on their web site. > I am basically looking for a Cisco ATA-186 (including the 2-line > capability) on steroids. Two possible solutions: 1) put in a small analog PBX. You can probably significantly reduce the number of sets, if each set can access all the lines. This also takes care of the issue of 'wire length'. Additional benefits: "intercom" calling between phones, as well as 'conference' capabilities (internal and external), without losing audio level. 2) Use a supplemental ring generator / ring extender. Viking Electronics is one of the better-known sources for such. Option 1 _is_ more expensive, but you get a *lot* more for the money. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Option 1 is exactly what I did here with my little 'TotalCom' PBX thing. And tiny little PBX/Line Sharing devices are not all that expensive these days. Two or three hundred dollars gets you a light-weight, all electronic device you mount on a wall somewhere and forget about it. Example http://sandman.com PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Administrivia: A Temporary Outage Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 07:01:41 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications ptownson wrote: > Sometime late Friday afternoon, the _alias name_ 'telecom-digest.org' > went out of order. This alias is routed through John Levine's computer > in New York. It came back on line Saturday late morning or early > afternoon. When this happens, any netter who requests the URL > http://telecom-digest.org simply draws a blank. But, anyone who uses > the real name http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives does get > through (unless massis also happens to go down). Although we would > _prefer_ to be known as 'telecom-digest.org' to the internet world, > we can go by 'massis.lcs.mit.edu' as needed. If you tried to reach > this site Friday afternoon/evening/overnight into Saturday morning > and kept 'drawing blanks', please remember this and use our alternate > (but original) URL, and you should get through that way. > Patrick Since you have the domain name you are already incurring that expense. For $19.95 a year you can have shared hosting at 24-7host.com. It's not the most reliable host in the world, but for the bucks it is value received. I have two of my domains hosted there, that I can accept having some outages. For my more demanding domain I have it hosted at Verio for $12 a month (used to be $24). [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for the offer, but I do not pay for any of my domain names. Either I get them as a gift from readers (as is the case with telecom-digest.org) or I otherwise find them around for free. If I had to pay for them, I probably would just quit doing this totally. PAT] ------------------------------ From: John Harper Subject: Re: Packet8 Number Portability Date: 10 Apr 2005 10:27:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com kwyet wrote: > Packet8 has been ok for me. Just one thing thats been irritating. The > claims on their website at times don't jive with reality. For one, > they claimed that virtual numbers were available for Canadian area > codes. That was simply a lie. They were aware of this contradiction but > chose to ignore it for a very long time. Finally they removed the > claim. > Secondly, they claim that it takes up to six weeks to have your number > ported. That may be true for some, but it hasn't been true for me. It > has been 9 weeks for me and still no "status updates" on my account. > Their standard reply when called on this matter is, "I'll pass this to > the LNP department". > On one call to support, I was led to believe it was stalled because of > my phone company. I entered a complaint with my States's PSC only to > receive a call from my phone company saying all they need is a PON and > that Packet8 would know exactly what that is. Well ... I called > support again. Same response as quoted above. Oh ... and he also said > that the website is incorrect ... that it hasn't been updated yet to > reflect that they are backed up and the time is actually more than 6 > weeks. Support told me that 10 days ago. Does it take 10 days to > update a sentence on a website? Naw it dutton. I live in McAllen, Texas, USA. Vonage and Lingo cannot yet offer a local toll free number, so it was important that my SBC number be ported. Packet8 could not only port my SBC number, but they offered a local temparary number that could be called from the McAllen area toll free. I ruled out RoadRunner (Time Warner Cable) by price alone ($39.95/month). I signed up with Packet8 on March 7, 2005 at $19.95/month. I faxed my application to have my SBC number ported to my Packet8 account on March 8, 2005. I received my Packet8 device, hooked it up, and activated it on March 17, 2005. My old SBC phone number was ported on April 8, 2005. The transfer was almost seamless (a phone call to Packet8) when my SBC service was terminated. So far, everything seems to be working as advertised. Call forwarding, Call waiting, Caller ID, Voicemail, Etc. Also, my use history is available on the Packet8 site and is impacted within 10 seconds of my hanging up the phone. Quality of the voice is as good as my experience with SBC. I wear hearing aids and voice quality is important. So far, so good. Time will tell. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Have you yet started receiving the 'we miss you and want you back' letters and promotions from SBC? They'll start out sort of modest at first (a few free services for a couple months; then one or two offers of a $50 VISA gift card and the freebies), then some perfectly outrageous offers for DSL at a very reduced price, etc ... They may place you with a collection agency claiming you left them still owing 20-25 dollars at some point; they have a bunch of tricks designed to get you back. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Warning! A Virus Attacked my System! Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 14:24:30 -0400 Hello, everyone, A worm came through my PC. If you get any attachments that appear to be from me, don't open them. From my research, it appears to be a work called Netsky. I haven't found a way to get it off yet, but I'm working on it. Regards, Fred ------------------------------ 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! 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Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V24 #154 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Apr 11 00:05:51 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3B45o902624; Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:05:51 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:05:51 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504110405.j3B45o902624@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 V24 #155 TELECOM Digest Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:06:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 155 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Homespun 'Podcasts' Explore a Universe of Topics (Lisa Minter) H-P Seen Pressuring Kodak's Lead in Online Photos (Lisa Minter) Clearing the Paper Trail to College (Monty Solomon) Airlines Try to Stem the Flow of 'Frequent Flyer' Loot Online (Solomon) Deal May Let Comcast Grow in State (Monty Solomon) Re: Wierd Telephone Problems (Al Dykes) Re: Wierd Telephone Problems (Michael Muderick) Re: Prison Cell Phone Scandal (John Levine) Re: Warning! A Virus Attacked my System! (Steve Sobol) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 10 Apr 2005 20:01:01 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Homespun 'Podcasts' Explore a Universe of Topics By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As millions of pilgrims streamed into Rome this past week, a Dutch priest led Internet listeners on an intimate audio tour that allowed them to pay one last visit to Pope John Paul II before he was laid to rest. Father Roderick Vonhogen brought the Catholic Church's ancient rites to life through a cutting-edge format: the podcast, a radio-style show that is distributed over the Internet. Podcasts have caught on like wildfire since they first emerged only nine months ago. Listeners can pick from roughly 10,000 shows on topics ranging from religion to wine to technology, and media companies and advertisers are taking note. For now, it's a cottage industry dominated by the likes of Father Roderick, a parish priest from the Netherlands whose low-key charm and you-are-there narratives bring the church's pomp and circumstance down to a human scale. On "Catholic Insider," listeners hear Father Roderick banter with students camped out in St. Peter's Square and describe the pope lying in state in the basilica. "It's beautiful, it really looks like he's sleeping," he whispers as a choir sings in the background. Thousands of podcasts can be found through directories like Podcast Alley http://podcastalley.com , while listeners can automatically download new shows as they become available using free software like iPodder http://www.ipodder.org . Listeners can transfer their podcasts to an Apple iPod or other portable MP3 player, and listen to them when and where they wish. A recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that one in three U.S. adults who own an MP3 player have listened to a podcast, though the survey's small sample size means that figure could be substantially lower. Analysts say podcasting could challenge the broadcast industry by giving consumers more control over what they hear, and when they hear it. "To radio it's a big threat, because people are fed up with radio," said digital-media analyst Phil Leigh. HOMESPUN CHARM Like the World Wide Web 10 years ago, many podcasts rely on homespun charm rather than slick presentation. Anybody with a computer and a microphone can set up their own show. "The Daily Download" is little more than a man describing his bowel movements as they happen. One of the most popular podcasts, "The Dawn and Drew Show," features the ramblings of a married couple on a Wisconsin farm. "Do we have anything to talk about? No? I guess that's the appeal, right?" Dawn said on a recent show. Several radio stations have developed podcasts of their own, typically condensed versions of their morning shows. Businesses from Newsweek to General Motors have set up podcasts, as has Democratic politician John Edwards, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. vice president last year. Some amateur podcasters hope to quit their day jobs. Todd Cochrane hopes to attract more advertising dollars for his twice-weekly technology show "Geek News Central" by setting up a network of podcasts that meet professional standards for sound quality and family-friendly language. "We're trying to build a brand out of many individual brands," Cochrane said of his fledgling Techpodcasts.com network. Music remains a hurdle. Because no licensing rules exist, podcasters must secure permission from individual artists and songwriters before playing their songs. Most stick to independent artists, rather than those signed to major record labels. For now, the greatest opportunity lies in spoken-word podcasts which can develop faithful if narrow audiences interested in a particular subject, said analyst Leigh. As big companies have jumped into podcasting, some pioneers have worried that they could be crowded out. That doesn't bother Ryan Ozawa, whose HawaiiUP podcast explores daily life on the Hawaiian Islands. "The easier it is to put yourself out there, and the more people that do it, the more likely we are to find the next Ed Murrow ... or the next Howard Stern," he wrote in an e-mail interview. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters Limited. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: 10 Apr 2005 20:05:12 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: H-P Seen Pressuring Kodak's Lead in Online Photos NEW YORK (Reuters) - Web sites that let consumers e-mail and print digital pictures have become a new battleground for companies like Kodak and Hewlett-Packard, which hope to use the growth of these sites as a conduit for selling highly profitable products like paper and printers. Eastman Kodak Co. may see its lead in the burgeoning market for online picture development -- which lets travelers, for example, share vacation pictures before they've even returned home -- pinched by recent moves at Hewlett-Packard Co. The threat comes even from retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. More than 1.3 billion pictures were transmitted, or "uploaded," to online systems from personal computers in 2004, as digital cameras and camera phones went mainstream. The lion's share of those images went to Kodak's Ofoto service, which was recently renamed Kodak EasyShare Gallery. But last month H-P, the leading maker of computer printers, purchased Snapfish, which was ranked third behind Ofoto and privately held Shutterfly in a market that includes sites like Photango, dotPhoto and Google Inc. Snapfish gives H-P a heartier online component, says Infotrends analyst Jill Aldort. H-P may woo photo enthusiasts, particularly those with H-P printers, to store their pictures, she said. It's possible that H-P may offer discounts on replacement ink cartridges. "H-P is certainly going to put more marketing muscle behind Snapfish, which already had a strong brand name," she said. "I think Kodak should be concerned, but I don't think they need to stay awake at night. It makes the market more competitive." KODAK SEES BIG GROWTH POTENTIAL Kodak, which is almost 18 months into a tough transition away from its flagging traditional film business, says it is not losing sleep over the consolidation, such as H-P's move and Yahoo Inc.'s recent purchase of online site Flikr. "There is a huge upside in the market, as evidenced by the deals," said David Rich, vice president of marketing at Ofoto, now known as Kodak EasyShare Gallery. "We have over 1 billion images under management and we will double that over the next year." That big number belies the online photofinishing market's relatively small size, which reached only $160 million in revenue in 2004 and is seen growing to $630 million in 2008, according to Infotrends. That's a drop in the bucket for H-P and Kodak. CATERING TO 'ONE-HOUR PHOTO' FANS Still, analysts say it is essential that these companies solidify an online strategy, since consumers adore taking pictures, even as methods change. Digital cameras will outsell film cameras this year. And young people are more apt to e-mail pictures than print and store them in albums. But it is printing where the money is made: high-quality paper and high margin ink and toner are profit drivers for Kodak, H-P, Canon Inc. and others. What's more, users and friends make repeat trips to the sites, giving each company another chance to showcase its brand, and sell other products. "They are set to face off against each other, whereas before this, H-P was undiversified. They had these home (systems) and that was about it," IDC analyst Chris Chute said. "Kodak has been pushing into H-P's space, so now H-P is saying 'We need to get into this."' In all, about 25.9 billion total prints are expected to be made in the United States in 2005, with digital prints growing 50 percent to about 7.7 billion from 2004, industry group Photo Marketing Association projects. But some habits die hard. More and more, consumers are coming back to retail stores for digital prints. PMA says the number of pictures printed at retail will nearly double to 3.1 billion in 2005. IDC's Chute said that the so-called Internet-to-retail market is going to double to about $1 billion in 2008 revenue. In Internet-to-retail, users upload pictures to, for example, Wal-Mart's or Ritz Cameras' Web sites, which are both powered by Kodak rival Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. They then go to local stores and pick up the pictures, days faster than a Web-only store could deliver. "The problem online is that I have to wait for my pictures, and this constituency is used to 'One-Hour-Photo.' This combines the best of both worlds," Chute said. Copyright 2005 Reuters, Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters Limited. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 22:57:21 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Clearing the Paper Trail to College By Alison O'Leary Murray, Globe Correspondent | April 10, 2005 When Natick resident Sean True looks at the college admissions process, he sees a problem -- too many envelopes being mailed to too many colleges. Too much paper. "For 35 years, we've heard this huge promise of a paperless future, but I just see us creating more," said True, who helped his son, Sam, a Natick High School senior, with his applications last fall. True, chief technical officer at an Internet company, is trying to cut the clutter. He has offered his expertise to the Transcript Project, the brainchild of Natick High guidance counselor Ron Miller, which seeks to transmit electronically students' grades and class standings to colleges. Sounds simple? It turns out it's not so easy. Transcripts, which document a student's academic career and can make or break an application, require special handling. Only certain members of the high school staff have access to them, and the documents must arrive at college admissions offices with assurance that they have not been tampered with or handled by any unauthorized individual. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/04/10/clearing_the_paper_trail_to_college/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 23:25:31 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Airlines Try to Stem the Trade of Frequent-Fliers' Loot Online By Jenn Abelson, Globe Staff | April 4, 2005 Airlines are stepping up scrutiny of Internet auction sites where savvy consumers and frequent business travelers are selling and bartering free vouchers, miles, and other airline awards. In recent months, hundreds of deals for airline vouchers have appeared on eBay and on Craigslist sites across the country, including Boston. Now, these tickets are being offered at even lower prices as some of the bigger promotions with American Airlines and United Airlines that promised free flights across the country or around the world are set to expire. "I travel a lot for work, have zillions of miles and vouchers, and I could never use them in my lifetime," said Tony Lito, a Worcester marketer who received two World Series tickets last fall from a couple who wanted the airline vouchers to honeymoon in Bali. "This is a perk you've earned. Why should you not benefit somehow?" The airlines don't agree. American Airlines and other carriers say they are increasingly monitoring Internet sites and handing out punishments for the sales of rewards that are explicitly prohibited. Facing stiff competition and high oil prices, financially struggling airlines say they cannot afford to have their own customers undermine award programs and profits. Although airlines often allow awards to be transferred for free to family members and friends, selling the tickets for cash or bartering them for other products, such as tickets to a U2 concert, is strictly forbidden. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2005/04/04/airlines_try_to_stem_the_trade_of_frequent_fliers_loot_online/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 23:29:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Deal May Let Comcast Grow in State Deal may let Comcast grow in state Firm expected to try to join its franchises with those of Adelphia By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff | April 9, 2005 An $18 billion bid for bankrupt Adelphia Communications Corp. by the nation's two biggest cable companies will likely lead to Comcast Corp. adding at least 26 more local cable franchises to the 212 it now owns in Massachusetts, industry analysts said yesterday. If they succeed in their bid for the nation's fifth-largest cable company, which serves 5 million subscribers, Comcast and Time Warner Inc. are likely to immediately execute a deal that trades Comcast's 21 percent stake in Time Warner -- a legacy of 1990s cable dealmaking -- back to Time Warner. In exchange, Comcast would get about 2 million current Adelphia or Time Warner customers to add to its current 21 million. As a way to maximize operating efficiencies and advertising reach, Comcast is likely to focus heavily on expanding existing clusters of cable franchises. Adelphia's local operations -- including Cape Ann, the South Shore, and Martha's Vineyard -- would fit hand-in-glove with Comcast's existing megacluster in Greater Boston and southern New England, making their 124,000 customers almost certain candidates for a swap. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/04/09/deal_may_let_comcast_grow_in_state/ ------------------------------ From: adykes@panix.com (Al Dykes) Subject: Re: Wierd Telephone Problems Date: 10 Apr 2005 17:36:01 -0400 Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. In article , Gladiator wrote: > Hello: I have this problem with my telephone at home. For incoming > calls, sometimes, it would ring once then disconnect the caller. I > thought it was my phone, but I bought a new one, and it was the same > thing. > I called my telephone company, and the technician came and said that > this could be due to wiring inside the building. So, the telephone > company thinks it's not their responsibility. > The strangest thing is, outgoing calls seem to be fine. I can dial > outside w/o problems. > Anyone seen this before? > Will > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I've seen it lots of times. And as > often as not, it is in the wiring somewhere (either 'your' wiring or > possibly telco's.) Chances are there is some _tiny_ bare spot where > the two wires touch, or nearly so. The amount of current in the line > when the phone rings is sufficient to 'bridge the gap' and complete > the connection for a half second or so. What does the calling party > receive under those circumstances? Usually they will hear one or two > ringing signals, then it will change to busy, or maybe it will sound > like the line went dead. When you place a call -- as opposed to > receive a call -- there is much less voltage on the line because the > phone is not ringing. Its the increase in voltage which causes this > to occur. That is why you experience no problems when _you_ place a > call; the 'current bridge' is not present. > How do you prove it is telco's problem and not yours, or vice-versa? > Take your telephone out to the demarc, or place where the telco says > your wiring begins. Disconnect where they say yours starts. Use a > cell phone (or some other third-party line) to dial into _your_ > number. If you have your phone plugged directly into the demarc, and > the problem is present, you should hear your phone ring once (a half > ring, maybe) and then go dead. Note on the phone you are using to > call in what happens, i.e. busy signal, fast busy, the line goes dead, > or whatever. If this happens *and you have 'your' wires pulled or > disconnected at the demarc, then the problem is telco's. If it rings > through normally, and you can talk to yourself (or any confederate who > is assisting you), then it is NOT telco's problem. > Then, reattach the wires you took down at the demarc and try the test > again. Does it occur this time? If the problem occurs when your wires > are connected, but _not_ when you are connected direct to the demarc, > then it is indeed your problem. Try this much first, then get back to > us with the results. If it is indeed in your length of wire and not > telco's, then we will discuss how you go about correcting it. You'll > basically have two choices in that case: fix it yourself or with your > own electrician hired, _or_ pay telco (or bribe the technician) and > they will fix it for you. Typically it costs less to fix it yourself, > but depending on the complexity of the wiring (and distance involved > and the size of your complex) it may be faster and less grief to let > telco handle it. We will discuss both approaches when you get back to > us with your findings. Hoping to hear again from you soon. PAT] When I was a kid we had this problem for a while. After days of troubleshooting it was discovered that the inside wire running in the rafters had sagged and come in contact with a hot water pipe. The insulation carbonized enough to short out the ring voltage put not affect calls. sh*t happens. a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 19:49:14 -0400 From: Michael Muderick Subject: Re: Wierd Telephone Problem I've seen the problem also occur with moisture in the line, or at a jack that at one point had moisture and now has oxidation- green_ across the pins. The ring voltage just jumps across that lower than air resistance. Michael Muderick> ****************************** ------------------------------ Date: 11 Apr 2005 02:34:37 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Prison Cell Phone Scandal Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> They should still be using public safety radio services/systems. > Hmm ... a few years ago I know many of the local police departments > back here used them. Dunno if that is still true. Our county is doing a rather expensive public safety radio upgrade system that's supposed to tie into an upgrade NY state is doing. Beyond the issue of competing with normal users in cell bands, public safety radios do some specialized tricks like having a button to put a bunch of firemen* something that acts like a party line or conference call. R's, John * - many of whom are female ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Warning! A Virus Attacked my System! Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 19:42:53 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Fred Atkinson wrote: > Hello, everyone, > A worm came through my PC. If you get any attachments that appear to > be from me, don't open them. From my research, it appears to be a > work called Netsky. I haven't found a way to get it off yet, but I'm > working on it. http://www.grisoft.com/ wonderful, wonderful AV package for windows http://www.clamav.net/ ditto, but for Linux and other POSIX-ish OS's (There is a port for Windows, too, though) And don't forget to update your virus defs every day ... JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have all the computers on my network using Grisoft AVG 7.0 all the time. And they all go to look for updates between 5-7 AM, then proceed to use those new definition files to examine each computer. Its the only way to run things these days. 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! 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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 V24 #155 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Apr 11 17:25:32 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3BLPV511163; Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:25:32 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:25:32 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504112125.j3BLPV511163@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 V24 #156 TELECOM Digest Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:25:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 156 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson States Scramble To Protect Data/Dozens of Privacy Bills (Monty Solomon) Reporters Get Credit for Simple ID Switch (Monty Solomon) Illinois May Require VoIP 9-1-1 (Jack Decker) Neustar Database (Herman Jones) Verizon Becomes Largest MCI Shareholder (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) Re: Wierd Telephone Problems (David) Re: Wierd Telephone Problems (Richard Crowley) Re: Clearing the Paper Trail to College (Lisa Hancock) Re: Prison Cell Phone Scandal (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: More Spam! Get Ready for Spam on Your Net Phone (Paul Vader) Last Laugh! was Re: Sperm - Not so Mobile (T. Sean Weintz) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:32:30 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: States Scramble To Protect Data / Dozens of Privacy Bills States Scramble To Protect Data Dozens of Privacy Bills Introduced After Spate of Security Breaches By Jonathan Krim Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, April 9, 2005; Page E01 Legislatures in more than two dozen states are considering ways to give consumers more control over personal information that is collected and sold by private firms, but many of the proposals are drawing fire from financial services companies. Bills are on the table in 28 states responding to a series of high-profile security breaches at information brokers, banks and universities that so far this year have resulted in more than 1 million Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, names and addresses falling into the hands of potential identity thieves. In the most recent case, a medical group in San Jose announced yesterday that records on roughly 185,000 current and former patients may have been exposed after two of its computers were stolen. The state activity is being closely tracked on Capitol Hill, where several House and Senate members have introduced or are preparing identity theft legislation. Generally, the various state bills do not target how thieves are obtaining data, through hacking, fraud or other means. But consumer groups and privacy advocates, who are championing many of the initiatives, say they would help shield consumers from the havoc and damage that identity theft can cause. One group of bills would allow consumers to "freeze" their credit reports so that sensitive data could not be given out to anyone without permission from the individual each time the data were requested. Identity thieves often strike by obtaining a piece of private information, such as a Social Security number, and then using it to establish credit and make purchases. Credit-freeze bills are moving through legislatures in about 20 states. In some cases, any consumer could order a freeze at any time. In other states, only people whose data have been breached would have that option. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38498-2005Apr8.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 12:43:51 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Reporters Get Credit For Simple ID Switch Sneaky ID thieves always one step ahead in schemes By Tom Mashberg/ Exclusive First of three parts Peter Kochansky knew he hadn't bought a Porsche, but there it was among his bills - a luxury car loan in his name for $40,000. That wasn't the half of it. As Kochansky, a lawyer from Somerville, soon learned, a notorious identity thief was racing around the country, running up credit charges and emptying bank accounts, all in Kochansky's name. The thief, Shawn Pelley, now in federal prison, always seemed a step ahead. When Kochansky canceled his credit cards, Pelley stole $7,000 from a Fleet account Kochansky shared with his wife, even though Pelley had no PIN number. http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=77741 Reporters get credit for simple ID switch By Thomas Caywood and Tom Mashberg Second in a three-part series on identity fraud. Identity theft ain't rocket science. Trust us. To test the retail credit industry's claims of tough new ID fraud protections, two Herald reporters swapped Social Security numbers and set out to steal each other's identities. Despite our lack of criminal expertise, within hours we had a $10,000 credit line at one store and a $1,300 account at another. The experiment began at Dana Ross Studios in the South End, where $60 buys a convincing-looking 'Massachusetts identification card' - complete with digital signature, holograms and a faux magnetic strip along the back. No questions asked. Cash only. We walked out with two fake IDs in 10 minutes. The cards showed one reporter's face and the other's name, Social Security number, address and age. http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=77875 Tricks of the trade from prolific prowler By Tom Mashberg Sunday, April 10, 2005 - Updated: 11:31 AM EST Shawn Pelley didn't like who he was, so he became almost anyone else. Starting in 2001, the crafty Cape Cod native used ID theft to take individuals, banks and retailers for $550,000. Loot and phony identities in hand, he led a flamboyant lifestyle and rubbed elbows with hotshots from L.A. to South Beach. Pelley, 29, finally was run to ground by U.S. marshals and is serving a 60-month sentence at a federal prison in Pennsylvania. But the skinny, 6-foot high school dropout ran up immense debts in the names of dozens of victims, many of them Massachusetts lawyers. US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan called Pelley "the most active identity theft perpetrator the major crimes unit has prosecuted." http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=77743 Scams turn victims' lives upside down By Tom Mashberg Monday, April 11, 2005 - Updated: 09:27 AM EST State Rep. Paul C. Casey is a man of the people -- the people victimized by identity theft. In 2003, he was one of a half-dozen Paul Caseys across New England defrauded by con artists who used his common name to pilfer gift cards and heaps of merchandise from area retailers. http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=77874 "You don't understand what it's like" By Thomas Caywood Monday, April 11, 2005 - Updated: 03:49 AM EST Paul K. Casey of Foxboro is the kind of guy who keeps only one or two credit cards and faithfully pays them off each month. So he knew something was fishy when he got a letter from Sears about the credit application he supposedly filled out at the chain's outlet in Kingston. http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=77873 Victim: Unsnarling fraud 'a second full-time job' By Tom Mashberg Sunday, April 10, 2005 Karen Leonard was an Army sergeant in two war zones, then braved the bar exam, but none of it matches having an identity thief run up huge bills in her name. http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=77745 Good Samaritan father, teen daughter targeted By Tom Mashberg Sunday, April 10, 2005 - Updated: 11:26 AM EST Not only did crooks steal Bill Loesch's identity, they did the same to his 12-year-old daughter. Five years ago, Loesch, a protestant minister and Codman Square health activist, rented apartments on the first and third floors of his Dorchester three-decker to tenants he thought he could trust. Instead, he said, one of them "would get home before me, steal my mail, get credit cards in my name by using my Social Security number and then go on big buying sprees. And this was a woman!" When the bills came in, the thief would intercept them and rip them up. Years went by before Loesch, 63, realized he'd been ripped off. http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=77744 Tough to recover once you're hacked By Tom Mashberg Sunday, April 10, 2005 - Updated: 11:25 AM EST The pet sitter did it. It took a while, but Sandra Pochapin of Southboro figured out how she became an ID fraud victim: The pet sitter went through her mail, pocketed a credit card and hit Lord & Taylor's for $1,200. "I didn't even know the card was going to arrive," Pochapin, a 48-year-old marketing director, said. "They sent me a card I didn't want for an account that I never used." Since 2002, Pochapin has been trying to undo the damage caused by one person with just one of her credit cards. The thief, who fled the state and was never arrested, opened false accounts from Boston to Brooklyn -- at Macy's, J.C. Penney and Cingular Wireless, and places Pochapin can only imagine. http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=77742 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In the early to middle 1960's, as VISA franchises were first getting started in Chicago, they were known as 'Bank Americard'; named after Bank of America which was then a one or two branch bank in San Francisco. First National Bank of Chicago were the idiots responsible for VISA (Bank Americard) taking such a dreadful hit from fraud in the first few years. How much is dreadful? Oh, about five or six million dollars in fraud the first year of the program. First National Bank of Chicago -- never known for having very smart employees (see my essay elsewhere on how I had to successfully sue them in Small Claims Court to get back refunds of checks they had no business cashing in the first place) -- was issuing credit cards willy-nilly to every name on their list of accounts; just sending out the plastics without regard to the context of the 'account holder' shown on their books. They sent out credit cards (in envelopes marked 'here is your new credit card enclosed', mind you) to such account depositors as tiny babies, estates of deceased persons, escrow accounts of the courts, etc. If there was a deposit account on the books of First National Bank of Chicago, the computer printed up and mailed out a BankAmericard credit card to it. You talk about dumb! And announcing your dumbness and stupidity right on the envelope yet! And recall please, those were the days when they used to print a weekly bulletin 'hot sheet' which they distributed to all the stores, and merchants were expected to check the 'hot sheet' before accepting the card. And there were 'floor limits' which the sales authorizers used to use in those times before sophisticated computers where sales 'under the floor limit' were automatically approved. How long do you think it took the general public -- at least the larcenous members of it -- to figure out the system, and how grocery stores and gasoline stations had one floor limit (almost infinite) while electronics stores, jewelers and liquor stores had another limit (almost none at all). Everyone, but everyone, it seems, tried to rip off First National Bank's BankAmericard program. It took several years of that kind of fraud before FNB-Chicago woke up and decided to (a) try and do at least a modicum of investigation before issuing cards to 'customers' and (b) to at least be a bit discreet in mailing out the damn things. Even the dishonest employees at the Post Office got in on the act. By simply holding an envelope in their fingers and running their thumb back and forth once or twice (and noting the return address being a suspicious PO Box the bank finally started using to disguise the contents of the mailing) postal workers made off with so many credit cards it would have shocked any hardened con-man. Millions and millions of dollars in fraud in the first few years of widespread VISA/MC use by the public. Maybe its worse now-days, with a more sophisticated public and a somewhat more sophisticated banking system. Is it? Anyone know? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 11:03:45 -0400 Subject: Illinois May Require VoIP 9-1-1 http://www.tmcnet.com/tmcnet/articles/2005/illinois-voip-911-governor-rod-blagojevich.htm By David Sims, TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is proposing legislation to get Internet-based phone providers to give customers the same kind of access to 911 operators as those who use regular telephone lines. In the back of everyone's mind is the incident this past February 3rd in Houston, where 17-year-old Joyce John called 911 using Internet phone provider Vonage to report that her parents had been shot by home intruders. She got a recording telling her that access to 911 service was unavailable. Help took more than 10 minutes to arrive. Both parents survived. It was later established that the Johns had multiple opportunities and reminders from Vonage to activate Vonage's 9-1-1 service but had not done so. In a blatantly emotional vote-troll, the Texas attorney general sued Vonage after the incident, probably since you don't win many votes suing registered voters who haven't followed Vonage's directions on how to activate their 9-1-1. The FCC warns on its Web site that it "may be difficult" for Internet phone customers to "seamlessly connect" with 911 dispatch centers. According to Blagojevich's office, that's because traditional phone companies have not given Internet phone providers access to more than 3,200 emergency call centers nationwide. Blagojevich spokesman Gerardo Cardenas said the governor said the companies need to figure out how to solve that problem. "We're not getting into that debate," he said. "What matters here is when you need police or an ambulance, it has to get there immediately." [Jack Decker Comment: Texas is a SBC state. Illinois is a SBC state (and we all know what they say about Illinois politics). Anyone notice a pattern here?] Full story at: http://www.tmcnet.com/tmcnet/articles/2005/illinois-voip-911-governor-rod-blagojevich.htm How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: blank777@web.de (Herman Jones) Subject: Neustar Database Date: 11 Apr 2005 10:13:40 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi folks, I wonder if it would be able to get access to the Neustar databases. Like, list all "Herman Jones" in "California". Herman Jones tel 323.852.1083 8383 WilshireBlvd Suite 355 BeverlyHills, CA 90211 Do some companies have interfaces to the databases? Somebody with experiences on that? Thanks, Herman ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 12:43:21 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Verizon Becomes Largest MCI Shareholder Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 11, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20725&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon becomes largest MCI shareholder BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Cablevision considers larger bid for Adelphia * CA moves into telecom market with Concord buy * AOL teams up with XM Satellite * Seven to buy SIS * Hurdles abound for cable when it comes to wireless USTA SPOTLIGHT * Newton's Telecom Dictionary -- 21st Edition, JUST RELEASED EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * VOIPSA chief warns of dire VoIP security threats REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Pay phones die hard in Maine Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20725&l=2017006 Legal and Privacy information at http://www.dailylead.com/about/privacy_legal.jsp SmartBrief, Inc. 1100 H ST NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20005 ------------------------------ Reply-To: David From: David Subject: Re: Wierd Telephone Problems Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 13:45:30 GMT Al Dykes wrote in message news:telecom24.155.6@telecom-digest.org: > In article , Gladiator > wrote: >> Hello: I have this problem with my telephone at home. For incoming >> calls, sometimes, it would ring once then disconnect the caller. I >> thought it was my phone, but I bought a new one, and it was the same >> thing. I had this problem once due to a stand-alone caller ID unit. I capacitor in the unit would intermittently break down from the ringing voltage. David ------------------------------ From: Richard Crowley Subject: Re: Wierd Telephone Problems Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 13:39:46 -0700 Organization: Intel Corporation Gladiator wrote: > Hello: I have this problem with my telephone at home. For incoming > calls, sometimes, it would ring once then disconnect the caller. I > thought it was my phone, but I bought a new one, and it was the same > thing. > I called my telephone company, and the technician came and said that > this could be due to wiring inside the building. So, the telephone > company thinks it's not their responsibility. > The strangest thing is, outgoing calls seem to be fine. I can dial > outside w/o problems. > Anyone seen this before? Get a dog? :-) I was pleasantly surprised that this old telco "shaggy-dog story" was available online: http://www.egreeley.com/messages/1872.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I've got no problems with 'pissing and moaning' but I happen to think that story -- and I have seen it many times -- is a terrible way to treat any animal. I cannot recommend the story, even if it is just an 'urban legend' as I suspect. Some of you have asked what happened with Buffy, the female cattle dog I had here. She learned how to jump over the fence :( and she ran off; has not been seen since. She is a *big* dog and could put her front paws on my four foot high wire fence around my yard. But she is also very muscular (like many big dogs) and learned to use her front legs to pull herself over the fence when she jumped in the air. I have sort of mixed emotions about it. I did miss her a little -- this is the dog which knocked me down on the sidewalk one day, skinning up my face and chipping my tooth and causing me to bleed -- but I know she did not mean it; now that she has been gone for more than a week I am almost certain the Independence Animal Shelter got her, and I am not going to take her back. She was just too much for me to try and deal with. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Clearing the Paper Trail to College Date: 11 Apr 2005 07:01:31 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Monty Solomon wrote: > By Alison O'Leary Murray, Globe Correspondent | April 10, 2005 > When Natick resident Sean True looks at the college admissions > process, he sees a problem -- too many envelopes being mailed to too > many colleges. Too much paper. Actually, many years ago two key aspects were computerized: 1) Financial aid: Students filled out a standard computer-scan questionnaire which was distributed accordingly. 2) SAT scores -- presumably now sent electronically to colleges. Different school districts have greatly varying ways of preparing transcripts of high school life. Some are not computerized at all, some are highly sophisticated. The information includes more than just courses and grades, it also includes evaluations, extra curricular, discipline, attendance, etc. I think schools vary on what info they send and colleges vary on what info they want. If I were a student today, I'd be quite nervous about hackers or others getting into the data. Also, I don't want to encourage large colleges from using computers to do basic application screening. I realize that in effect is done now manually due to high volume of applications -- a clerk does a quick scan looking for basic minimums, but having a computer do it is worse -- it removes important variables. Grades are very subjective and vary tremendously from school to school. A yuppie ambitious suburban community will have a very intense school district where an "A" really is an "A". In contrast, a weak area might give an "A" just for showing up every day and not causing any trouble. When I got to college a lot of my fellow freshmen were overwhelmed by the coursework. They got straight A's in high school easily but college was much harder. A "C" student from an intense high school would be more prepared than an "A" student from a mediorce high school. The point is that grades in themselves are not enough -- the kind of school is important as well, as well as other factors. Computer scanning is not good at that subjective sort of thing. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 10:05:29 EDT Subject: Re: Prison Cell Phone Scandal In a message dated 11 Apr 2005 02:34:37 -0000,John Levine writes: > Beyond the issue of competing with normal users in cell bands, public > safety radios do some specialized tricks like having a button to put a > bunch of firemen* something that acts like a party line or conference > call. > R's, > John > * - many of whom are female The politically correct tern now is "firefighter." Some publications now have software that automatically makes the change, which leads to such absurdities as "firefighter" substituted for "fireman" even when the person in question is a steam locomotive fireman, a fireman on an antique steam power vehicle such as a tractor, or a marine steam enginer. Their job is to maintain and foment the fire, rather than to fight it. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: More Spam! Get Ready for Spam on Your Net Phone Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 15:54:45 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Lisa Minter writes: > Jeffrey Citron, chairman and chief executive of Vonage, took questions > after his keynote speech and was asked how he plans to address > security issues with VoIP. Clearly, he wasn't going to share his > "The great thing about security is that you don't have to tell > everyone what you're doing," he responded. "But we understand that > SPIT is an issue." Security through obscurity is no security at all. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Last Laugh! was Re: Sperm - Not so Mobile Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 12:35:20 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com John McHarry wrote: > On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 09:44:57 -0400, T.Sean wrote: >> Yes, of course. But what many folks don't realize is they use >> specially bred mice that are VERY susceptible to tumors for these >> types of experiments. >> Which means there is a very GOOD chance that the same exposure will >> have no effect whatsoever on a normal healthy human. > Oh good, a volunteer! Not at all. Cell phones may not cause cancer or low sperm mobility, but it IS a well known fact that the goverment DOES use cell phones as relay points for their mind control beams. NO WAY you are gonna get me near a cell phone without my tin foil hat on. ------------------------------ 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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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 V24 #156 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Apr 12 06:17:51 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3CAHo517799; Tue, 12 Apr 2005 06:17:51 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 06:17:51 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504121017.j3CAHo517799@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 V24 #157 TELECOM Digest Tue, 12 Apr 2005 06:17:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 157 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Piercing the Peer-to-Peer Myths: Examination of Canadian (Monty Solomon) Computer-Aided Music Distribution: Future of Selection (Monty Solomon) Verizon Wireless Expands Availability of Ringback Tones (Monty Solomon) Verizon Agrees to Buy Stake Of MCI (Marcus Didius Falco) Report Critical of Philly's Wi-Fi Plan (Marcus Didius Falco) Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight (Marcus Didius Falco) Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Other Electronics? (curious) Re: Reporters Get Credit For Simple ID Switch (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Spammer Gets 9 Years (Ed Clarke) Re: Simultaneous Ring Problem With Cell (Nathan Anderson) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:03:39 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Piercing the Peer-to-Peer Myths: Examination of Canadian Piercing the peer-to-peer myths: An examination of the Canadian experience by Michael Geist Abstract Canada is in the midst of a contentious copyright reform with advocates for stronger copyright protection maintaining that the Internet has led to widespread infringement that has harmed the economic interests of Canadian artists. The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has emerged as the leading proponent of copyright reform, claiming that peer-to-peer file sharing has led to billions in lost sales in Canada. This article examines CRIA's claims by conducting an analysis of industry figures. It concludes that loss claims have been greatly exaggerated and challenges the contention that recent sales declines are primarily attributable to file-sharing activities. Moreover, the article assesses the financial impact of declining sales on Canadian artists, concluding that revenue collected through a private copying levy system already adequately compensates Canadian artists for the private copying that occurs on peer-to-peer networks. http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_4/geist/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:08:22 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Computer-Aided Music Distribution: The Future of Selection Computer-aided music distribution: The future of selection, retrieval and transmission by Nancy Bogucki Duncan and Mark A. Fox Abstract The Internet has made music more widely available and increased the convenience with which we can listen to music. We increasingly recognize that recorded music can take the form of digital files. The Internet and related technologies for music delivery have been made viable by advances in compression, data storage, and transmission technologies. To provide greater value to consumers, music labels need to make greater use of retrieval and selection technologies. Contents Introduction The product of music Why do we choose to experience music in different ways? Technology and the provision of value to consumers. Conclusions http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_4/duncan/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 21:05:34 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Wireless Expands Availability of Ringback Tones; Verizon Wireless Expands Availability of Ringback Tones; Customers Can Play Their Favorite Song, Soundtrack or Voice Track for Callers; New Service Now Available to More Verizon Wireless Customers - Apr 11, 2005 03:14 PM (BusinessWire) PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 11, 2005--Verizon Wireless, the first national carrier to offer Ringback Tones -- short clips of real music that replace the standard ring callers hear when they call the Verizon Wireless phone of a Ringback Tone subscriber -- has expanded the availability of the service to include Arizona. The service is now available in most western states. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48289993 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 20:49:16 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Verizon Agrees to Buy Stake Of MCI's http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40350-2005Apr9 washingtonpost.com Verizon Agrees to Buy Stake Of MCI's Biggest Shareholder $1.1 Billion Purchase an Attempt to Shut Out Qwest's Bids By Yuki Noguchi Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, April 10, 2005; Page A12 Verizon Communications Inc. said yesterday it agreed to pay $1.1 billion in cash to purchase the shares of MCI Inc.'s largest shareholder in an attempt to lock up its deal to buy MCI and shut out rival Qwest Communications International Inc. New York-based Verizon agreed to buy about 43.5 million shares -- or 13 percent of MCI's stock -- from Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim Helu. At $25.72 a share, MCI's market price at the time of the agreement, the price is higher than the $23.10 per share Verizon has offered to pay other MCI shareholders to acquire the company. It's the latest chess move between Verizon and Qwest, two regional phone companies locked in a two-month battle to acquire MCI of Ashburn. So far, MCI's board of directors has sided with Verizon, citing that company's greater resources and financial strength, even though Qwest is offering to pay substantially more. Analysts described Verizon's move as a significant development, but some said Qwest could still muster support for its offer. Qwest has sweetened its bid three times in its attempts to win the support of the MCI board, forcing Verizon to raise its original offer, but the MCI board spurned Qwest each time. For the past week, Qwest has been considering ways to pursue a hostile offer, including seeking the backing of MCI shareowners to vote down the proposed merger with Verizon. In buying Slim's shares, Verizon sought to reduce Qwest's maneuvering room. The deal "was an opportunity for us to purchase a block of shares under unique circumstances and is an important step forward in our acquisition of MCI," Verizon chairman and chief executive Ivan Seidenberg said yesterday in a statement. The purchase of Slim's shares, which must be approved by regulators, is expected to close in several weeks, the company said. Verizon will not be able to acquire more shares one block at a time from MCI investors because of a "poison pill" provision in MCI's charter that makes it prohibitively expensive for a single entity to accumulate more than 15 percent of the company's shares. Verizon's deal with Slim came after Denver-based Qwest said a survey it commissioned showed that a majority of MCI shareholders supported Qwest's most recent offer. The company declined to disclose details of that survey but said Slim was not among the investors it had been counting on to support the Qwest offer of $27.50 a share, or a total of $8.9 billion, in cash and stock. Verizon's offer totals $7.65 billion in cash and stock. "I don't think it's over for Qwest at all," said Martin Hyman, an independent telecommunications consultant. "It was a very clever move on Verizon's part. Obviously, it gives Verizon additional support, but this is a very, very critical acquisition from [Qwest's] standpoint." The company needs MCI's corporate customer base and its cash, he said. "It's do or die." Striking a deal with a single shareholder may create pressure for Verizon to increase its bid to the rest of MCI's shareholders, many of whom have spoken in favor of Qwest's offer or have demanded that MCI seek a better deal from Verizon. "Verizon has basically told the world what they think MCI shares are worth, and what they've said is that they're worth more than $23.10," said Patrick Comack, an analyst with Zachary Investment Research in Miami. If Verizon offers what it's paying to Slim to the rest of MCI's shareholders, that could put MCI out of Qwest's reach, Comack said. "I think today's move may make Qwest say, 'Uncle.' " Calls and e-mails requesting a comment from Slim were not returned yesterday, although his office released a statement confirming the deal. In a statement responding to Verizon's latest move, Qwest said Verizon was trying to drive a wedge between shareholders. "By entering into this deal with Mr. Slim, Verizon has both created two classes of shareholders and called into question the MCI board's previous determination that Verizon's lower offer to the other MCI shareholders was superior and fair," the statement said. Qwest spokesman Tyler Gronbach said the company previously had its own negotiations with Slim. Gronbach said Qwest is considering all of its options, including a higher bid for MCI. Verizon spokesman Peter Thonis declined to comment, as did MCI spokesman Peter Lucht. Copyright 2005 The Washington Post Company NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Washington Post Company. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 23:16:17 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Report Critical of Philly's Wi-Fi Plan http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.asp?layout=newsat2direct&starting=1&pubdate=04/11/05& www.wirelessweek.com Report Critical of Philly's Wi-Fi Plan By Mark Rockwell April 11, 2005 news@2 direct WASHINGTON -- A Bell company-supported think tank has issued a report that's highly critical of the City of Philadelphia's recently announced plans for a city-sponsored, city-wide Wi-Fi network. "My principal conclusion is that the analysis and financial projections contained in [the City of Philadelphia's Wi-Fi] business plan are simply not plausible," says Thomas Lenard, senior fellow and vice president of research at the Progress & Freedom Foundation. Last Thursday, the City of Philadelphia began asking for bids on the $10 million Wi-Fi project that would provide low-cost Wi-Fi access to all Philadelphia citizens across the city's 135 square miles of territory. The project's aim is to provide low-cost, high-bandwidth connections for all Philadelphia residents for about $16 to $20 a month. The winning bidder will install the network by next summer. The city's plans call for services on the network to be marketed, sold and billed by the 430 independent, private ISPs operating in the city. "The Business Plan projects that Wireless Philadelphia [the city's plan] will be able to offer wireless broadband access to everyone, everywhere in Philadelphia, at a lower cost than competitive broadband offerings such as DSL and cable modem," Lenard says. "Notwithstanding this rosy scenario, the Business Plan asserts that this service [Wi-Fi] will not be offered by the private sector. But there is no explanation as to why the private sector would pass up such a profit opportunity." The foundation also issued an accompanying essay questioning the wisdom of local governments' involvement with the rollout of high-speed networks. The Progress and Freedom Foundation is backed by many high-tech companies, including big local wireline phone companies such as BellSouth, SBC Communications and Verizon Communications, as well as big wireless companies like Nextel Communications and T-Mobile USA. The city of Philadelphia got an exemption last fall from a state law that restricted local governments from installing wireless Internet access networks. Verizon Wireless had backed the legislation that forced the city to accelerate its installation plans and forced the city to give Verizon Wireless "right of first refusal" on any other plans for wireless network services. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Wireless Week. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 23:19:39 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.asp?layout=3Ddocument&doc_id=3D1340004344 www.wirelessweek.com Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight By Susan Rush April 8, 2005 news@2 direct Worried about "air rage" and constant phone calls, 67 percent of air travelers would prefer current airborne cell phone restrictions remain in place, according to a new air passenger poll. The survey also found that 78 percent of respondents said cell phone use during flight could hamper passengers from hearing emergency instructions. As in the days when people could smoke on airplanes, 70 percent of respondents indicated if the ban is lifted, airlines should separate out cell phone users on flights. However, not everyone in the survey was against lifting the ban on in-flight cell phone use -- 21 percent supported allowing passengers to chat during flight. The Association of Flight Attendants and the National Consumers League sponsored the survey conducted with 702 air passengers. "This survey and the popularity of the Do Not Call Registry for telemarketing illustrate the growing desire of many consumers to put up the 'do not disturb' sign and have some peace and quiet," said Susan Grant, the National Consumers League vice president for public policy. The FCC is currently reviewing rules governing the use of cell phones on aircraft. In December 2004 the commission said it would make 4 MHz of 800 MHz spectrum available to providers through an auction process, but at the time of the announcement, it stressed that whether to give the green light to enable cell phone use on board flights is an issue the industry and consumers need to hammer out. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Wireless Week. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: curious@nospam.com Subject: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronic Devices? Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 02:02:56 -0400 I just got a 900 MHz DSS cordless phone, and I had the perfect spot for it, right on top of my tower computer case. But then I noticed that the manual says that the base unit must be placed away from all electronic equipment, including PCs, stereos, TVs, and microwaves. What is the reasoning for this? Could the magnetic fields generated by the speakers in the phone cause any problems? ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 20:02:19 EDT Subject: Re: Reporters Get Credit For Simple ID Switch Pat wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In the early to middle 1960's, as VISA > franchises were first getting started in Chicago, they were known as > 'Bank Americard'; named after Bank of America which was then a one or > two branch bank in San Francisco. First National Bank of Chicago were > the idiots responsible for VISA (Bank Americard) taking such a > dreadful hit from fraud in the first few years. I don't know about the First National Bank of Chicago, but Bank of America was not then a "one or two branch bank." It was a massive operation with branches all over the West, many through subsidiaries, until they were required to limit themselves to one state, and of course they limited themself to their largest state, also their home state, California. They had hundred of branches throughout California and were the prototype for today's banks that have branches on every street corner. At a about the time they launched BankAmericard, they were the largest bank in the world, surpassing any of the New York banks. As you know, in later years they fell on less prosperous times and were eventually acquired by NationsBank, formerly North Carolina National Bank (NCNB). NationsBank, upon acquiring Bank of America, changed its name from NationsBank to Bank of America and still has its headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I should have originally said BoA was not very common in the Chicago and other midwest areas. To Chicago people, BoA was considered a San Francisco operation. Our local branch of BoA here in Independence did not arrive until about 1990. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ed Clarke Subject: Re: Spammer Gets 9 Years Date: 12 Apr 2005 00:32:10 GMT Organization: Ciliophora Associates, Inc. Reply-To: clarke@cilia.org On 2005-04-08, Chris Farrar wrote: > North Carolina spammer gets nine years; Sentence postponed while > appeal is heard. Jeremy Jaynes was among the top 10 spammers in the > world when arrested, prosecutors say. > ASSOCIATED PRESS > LEESBURG, Va. A man convicted in the U.S.'s first felony prosecution > for illegal spamming was sentenced to nine years in prison today, but > the judge postponed the sentence while the case is appealed. Here's what he'll get if there's any justice: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050410 This signature left blank. ------------------------------ From: Nathan Anderson Reply-To: Nathan Anderson Subject: Re: Simultaneous Ring Problem With Cell Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:54:18 GMT > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I will tell you how I handle the same > problem here: Instead of simultaneous ring, my home phone is set > up for 'transfer on busy/no answer' to my cell phone. If I do not > answer my home phone (or am already on a conversation) then the > incoming call forwards (after 3-4 rings) to my cellular phone, then > the cellular phone 'transfers on busy/no answer' to voicemail. Thanks for the response, Pat. I had thought of that actually, and I suppose that this solution is the "lesser of two evils" (since at least people will not get the "wrong message"), but this solution has several disadvantages that I was hoping to avoid: 1) If my cell phone is off, then the caller hears the average 4 rings before voicemail kicks in. If my cell phone is ON (which is true most of the time), the caller is going to have to wait for 8 rings! This has confused people in the past who just give up before voicemail even comes on to take their message ("oh, I guess he's not home and doesn't have an answering machine"). I'm sure that the number of rings before my cell phone transfers to voicemail can be adjusted, but I don't want it ringing less than 4 times otherwise I don't have much time to answer the call if I want to. 2) If my cell phone provider's voicemail system takes the call, then my cool little "Message" indicator light on my Packet8 DTA won't tell me if I have a message or not because Packet8's system didn't take the message. I will also not have a "stutter" tone on my home phone anymore to alert me of the presence of a new message. Granted, if I don't use my cellular carrier's voicemail system, then my cell phone can't alert me about new messages either, but if the call is "simulring"-transferred to my phone, I at least have a record from the phone that someone called, I missed the call, and caller ID tells me who it was. At that point I can call Packet8 voicemail from my cell to see if I have any new messages. 3) Although it is a trivial charge, with the plan that I'm on with my cellular provider, voicemail is not "standard" unless I add it on for an extra fee. If I don't have to pay that fee, I don't want to. 4) Packet8's voicemail system has some cool features (such as the ability to e-mail myself a copy of a voicemail that I'd like to keep as a WAV file attachment) that I'm sure my cellular provider cannot replicate and which I don't wish to lose. This gent claims that he managed to find a way to solve this problem without using cellular voicemail; I wonder how he did it? (hit "Complete Thread" and look at his last response): http://groups.googlecom.com/groups?selm=telecom23.408.7%40telecom-digest.org Thanks again, -- Nathan Anderson "You can't appreciate Shakespeare until you've read him in the original Klingon." -- General Chang, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, as I see it, those are your two choices. But, bear in mind that after the first 3-4 rings (the ones going to your landline), there is a very brief pause in the ringing as the call is pulled away from your landline and switched over to your cellular. The regular people who call me at least understand that pause means the call is being shifted elsewhere. I don't think you can ever make everyone happy on this, short of spending a lot more money on a very sophisticated system. Understand, the above is relatively sophisticated for 'residential' service. And most people, in my experience, are willing to wait 7-8 rings for _something_ to kick in, although not much more than that. 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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Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 V24 #157 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Apr 12 19:30:42 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3CNUf924399; Tue, 12 Apr 2005 19:30:42 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 19:30:42 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504122330.j3CNUf924399@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 V24 #158 TELECOM Digest Tue, 12 Apr 2005 18:20:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 158 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Florida Wins First Injunction Against Spammers (Lisa Minter) Google Unveils Mobile Local Search (Lisa Minter) LexisNexis Uncovers More Consumer Data Breaches (Lisa Minter) Media Companies Target File Trading on Research Network (Lisa Minter) Cingular Sounds (Monty Solomon) Looking For Old Dialite Video (Jim) Verizon, MCI File S-4 With SEC (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) Harrassing Hangup Phone Calls From 555-555-1212 (Dale Showers) Re: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronics (GlowingBlueMist) Re: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronics (Lisa Hancock) Re: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronics (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Verizon Wireless Expands Availability of Ringback Tones (Joseph) Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID (Steve Stone) Re: Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight (AES) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 12 Apr 2005 14:46:31 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Florida Wins First Injunction Against Spammers MIAMI (Reuters) - The U.S. state of Florida won its first victory against "spam" electronic mail when a judge granted an injunction against two men accused of running mass emailing operations, the state prosecutor said on Tuesday. Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist said the injunction preventing the men from sending any more deceptive emails was part of his department's first prosecution under an anti-spam law passed by the state legislature last year. The men, Scott Filary, 25, and Donald Townsend, 34, both of Tampa, are accused of sending more than 65,000 emails, many with misleading subject lines and disguised origins. The emails took recipients to Web sites Crist said were engaged in fraudulent or illegal activities, such as selling pharmaceuticals and cigarettes online or providing a platform for the illegal downloading of copyrighted movies. The investigation was aided by software giant Microsoft Corp. whose Windows operating system runs more than 90 percent of the world's computers. The Florida anti-spam law allows for a fine of up to $500 per email, or $24 million in the case of the two accused spammers, Crist said in a statement. A national anti-spam law took effect at the start of 2004 but has done little to curb the flood of spam clogging email inboxes. Spam accounts for more than 80 percent of all email traffic, costing businesses billions a year in lost productivity and bandwidth. A court in Virginia jailed a North Carolina man this week to nine years in prison for sending millions of pieces of spam, although the judge postponed the sentence while the case was appealed. It was the nation's first felony prosecution of a spammer. 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ Date: 12 Apr 2005 14:47:31 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Google Unveils Mobile Local Search Google's local search service for mobile will be available in the United States and Canada at http://mobile.google.com/local, or from the main Google search page on mobile devices starting Tuesday morning. Yahoo Inc. in October rolled out its mobile search service, which included local search, amid a fierce rivalry. Google Local for mobile will enable users to see 10 local search results. The service, which integrates the location of the businesses in search results on a map, also provides addresses, phone numbers and driving directions. Google's mobile local search service does not currently carry ads. Web search companies have been keen to break into the local advertising market, which the Kelsey Group expects to reach $5.1 billion in the United States by 2009. The market research firm sees local search advertising accounting for about two-thirds of that total. Local search ad spending hit $162 million in 2004, the Kelsey Group said. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is a great way to get directory assistance at no charge. Send a text message from your cellular phone to the short-address '46645' (GOOGL) with the single word 'HELP' and you will get back a help file explaining how it works, including how to get directory assistance. Right now at least, it is all totally free. I've been using it on my Nokia phone via Cingular Wireless for a couple months now as part of the test. Now, you may have to pay your carrier for the cost of a text message, but still, it is much cheaper that Ripoff Bell directory assistance charges. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 12 Apr 2005 14:48:35 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: LexisNexis Uncovers More Consumer Data Breaches WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Data broker LexisNexis said on Tuesday that identity thieves have stolen information on 310,000 U.S. citizens from its computer systems, 10 times more than its initial estimate last month. Thieves have used stolen passwords to lift Social Security numbers and other information from LexisNexis databases 59 times over the past two years, the company said. Several similar incidents recently have prompted calls for greater regulation of companies that can create comprehensive profiles of nearly every adult in the United States. "When a company like LexisNexis so badly underestimates its own ID theft breaches, it is clear that things are totally out of hand," said New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer. Identity theft costs U.S. consumers and businesses $50 billion annually, according to government estimates. After sending out letters to 32,000 people in March, LexisNexis will notify an additional 278,000 individuals whose profiles were accessed. The company, which is owned by Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier (REL.L) (ELSN.AS), said it will improve its security measures and make sensitive information less freely available. The information accessed included names, addresses, Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers, but not credit histories, medical records or financial information, LexisNexis said. LexisNexis said it has found no instances of identity theft among the roughly 600 people who have asked it to check their credit records so far. A spokesman declined to elaborate on the breach, as the company and Secret Service are currently investigating. CIVIL-LIBERTIES CONCERNS Nearly all of the 59 incidents going back to January 2003 occurred at Seisint, a subsidiary based in Boca Raton, Florida that has drawn criticism from civil-liberties groups. One Seisint database called the Matrix allows state law enforcers to quickly zero in on criminal suspects by sifting through vast amounts personal information -- from the color of someone's eyes to the type of car they drive. LexisNexis bought Seisint in July 2004. Rival data broker ChoicePoint Inc. in February announced that identity thieves had gained access to some 145,000 consumer profiles, while Bank of America said that same month that it had lost a shipment containing sensitive details of 1.2 million U.S. government customers. LexisNexis CEO Kurt Sanford is scheduled to appear before the Senate Committee on Wednesday, along with ChoicePoint and Acxiom Corp., another data broker. "We need to examine how to ensure that security practices meet appropriate standards of care," said Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the committee's top Democrat. Also on Tuesday, Schumer and Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson introduced a bill that would require data brokers to tighten security measures and notify consumers when a security breach places them at risk for identity theft. The Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, said he is considering legislation that would make it illegal to sell Social Security numbers without an individual's permission. Reed Elsevier moved to soothe investors' fears by reaffirming its earnings forecasts, saying the financial implications of the breach were expected to be manageable within the context of LexisNexis's overall growth. Its shares closed down more than 1 percent in London and Amsterdam. (Additional reporting by Bill Rigby in New York, Adam Pasick in London and Theo Kolker in Amsterdam) Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ Date: 12 Apr 2005 14:49:13 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Media Companies Target File Trading on Research Network By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Record label and movie studio investigators said on Tuesday they plan to sue more than 400 college students who used a special high-speed network to copy songs and movies. Broadband networks made college campuses hotbeds of illegal copying, but students now use an even faster network known as Internet2, trade groups for the two industries said. Designed for academic research, Internet2's extremely fast speed allows users to download a movie in 5 minutes or a song in less than 20 seconds. Existing cable or DSL broadband networks usually take an hour to download a movie and 2 minutes to download a song. "Internet2 is increasingly becoming the network of choice for students looking to steal songs and other copyrighted works on a massive scale," said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America. Those targeted in the lawsuits made an average of 3,900 files available for copying over the network, Sherman said on a conference call. Users logged on to the network on Monday were sharing 99 terabytes of material, the equivalent of an entire video-rental store, said Dan Glickman, who heads the Motion Picture Association of America, on a separate conference call. The group said it sued 405 students at 18 schools. The MPAA declined to say how many lawsuits it had filed. Individuals were not named in the lawsuits, but their names will likely be uncovered as the cases move forward. Over the past two years, the RIAA has sued more than 9,000 individuals who distribute and copy their songs using "peer to peer" software like Grokster and Morpheus. The MPAA began to sue individuals in November. Media companies also have sued the software makers, but so far, courts have found they can't be held responsible for the actions of their users. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case by June. Those targeted in the latest round of lawsuits used software called i2hub, which was specifically designed for use over Internet2. The RIAA has not sued the makers of the software, Sherman said, adding "we are making no decision at this time about future action." Glickman said he had a message for the creators of the software: "We know who you are, and we strongly encourage you to stop what you are doing." Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Someone please correct me if I am wrong on this, but I thought that 'Internet2' was designed for use mostly by sites in the '.edu' domain as a way to get around, as much as possible, the mounds of spam and scam that has taken over so much of the 'regular internet'. I understand 'Internet2' is by and large not reachable from the 'regular internet' except through certain gateways, etc. Am I right on this? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 08:57:49 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cingular Sounds Multimedia News Release - Cingular Announces Innovative Music Program That Debuts New Singles on Wireless Phones Before They are Heard Anywhere Else 'Cingular Sounds' gives its customers a whole new way to enjoy music and the entertainment industry a powerful channel to reach tens of millions of potential listeners. Coldplay's 'Speed of Sound' will debut as a Cingular ringtone ATLANTA, April 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Cingular Wireless today announced Cingular Sounds (TM), an innovative music program that launches new singles as ringtones on wireless phones either before they are heard anywhere else, or simultaneous with their debut on radio. This will give Cingular customers a whole new way to enjoy music and the entertainment industry a powerful channel to reach tens of millions of potential listeners. To view the Multimedia News Release, go to: http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/cingular/21599 The company will kick off "Cingular Sounds" with an exclusive 30-second ringtone from Coldplay's "Speed of Sound," the lead single from the band's forthcoming album, X&Y, which will be released by Capitol Records on June 7. Other artists spanning a broad section of musical styles -- alternative/rock, hip-hop/R&B, pop, Latin, country, and more -- will become part of Cingular Sounds in the coming weeks and months. The program will include exclusive ringtone debuts and offer weekly text message updates from a wide range of participating artists. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48306350 ------------------------------ From: Jim Subject: Looking For Old Dialite Video Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 11:00:47 -0500 About 20+ years ago, when I worked for GTE, we had a list of video tapes we could request from GTE's main headquarters in Stamford, Conneticut. Most of the tapes were educational or safety tapes, meant to be shown for training and during employee meetings. But I remeber one tape I requested that was a short tongue in cheek video to "educate" the general public about where dial tone comes from. The tape started out showing a rock quarry, mining type operation. It went on to explain how "dialite" was extracted from the rocks and refined into dial tone. I don't know if dialite is the word used in the video, but it was something important sounding. Has anyone ever seen this, or know how I might get a copy of it again? Thanks. Jim ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 13:37:01 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Verizon, MCI file S-4 with SEC Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 12, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20756&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon, MCI file S-4 with SEC BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Report: China's mobile phone market poised for boom * Redback reaches out to rural telcos * Yipes gets another cash infusion USTA SPOTLIGHT * USTA VoIP 101 Webinar Series Now Includes IPTV EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * South Korea's bold mobile video experiment * Special Report: Me TV, the era of consumer choice REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Senate Commerce Committee hearing focuses on USF * Former Global Crossing execs pay fines in "capacity swap" probe Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20756&l=2017006 Legal and Privacy information at http://www.dailylead.com/about/privacy_legal.jsp SmartBrief, Inc. 1100 H ST NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20005 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 12:31:24 PDT From: Dale Showers Subject: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I received a phone call from Mr. Showers earlier today asking if I could be of any help on this. I had no specific answers for him, and suggested he put his problem before the readers. He is not telecom-literate, but was annoyed enough by this problem he took the trouble to look me up in a Google search and see if I could help him. PAT] Dear Mr. Townson: I have been receiving calls on my cell phone and the caller id is 15555551212 but there is no one on the phone when I pick up. I try to call back to that number and it is not a good number. There is no area code of 555. If any one knows what this and how to stop it please let me know at mindlesspugs@yahoo.com . Thank you very much! Dale [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Dale said to me on the phone that he has had his number about three years and his _current cellular phone_ for a couple months. I told him I suspect he is the victim of a fax machine or a telemarketer machine. I know he is getting sort of desparate since he used Google to look up the number (found nothing) and then called me and sent me email. Anyone with ideas or suggestions please get in touch with him at mindlesspugs@yahoo.com and you wish, share your correspondence with us here. PAT] ------------------------------ From: GlowingBlueMist Subject: Re: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronic Devices? Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 09:55:47 -0500 Organization: SunSITE.dk - Supporting Open source wrote in message news:telecom24.157.7@telecom-digest.org: > I just got a 900 MHz DSS cordless phone, and I had the perfect spot > for it, right on top of my tower computer case. But then I noticed > that the manual says that the base unit must be placed away from all > electronic equipment, including PCs, stereos, TVs, and microwaves. > What is the reasoning for this? Could the magnetic fields generated > by the speakers in the phone cause any problems? Usually the problem is nothing more than radio frequency interferrence. Much like you get if you take a portable radio and get it too close to your computer or monitor. I have run into some cases where routers or even computers rebooted when a portable phone transmitter is placed too close to them due to the RFI. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronic Devices? Date: 12 Apr 2005 10:44:33 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com curious@nospam.com wrote: > I just got a 900 MHz DSS cordless phone.. > that the manual says that the base unit must be placed away from all > electronic equipment... All I know is that when anyone talks to me over their cordless phone, there is loud annoying "buzzing" interference when they take their phone too close to any power source. Even holding the phone near a lamp or light switch gets noise. My recommendation is to comply with the manufacturer's directives for best operation. Understandably, that is cumbersome in today's complex world where we have electronis everywhere, even in doorbells. I'll let other electronic wizards explain the technical details, but my own _guess_ is that modern electronics are so small, light, and sensitive (using very low currents), that they become very sensitive to more power "stray" signals from other sources, especially older electronics that use more powerful internal currents. To keep the cost down of consumer products, there is no shielding. I know of a hobbyist who has built extensive equipment in his garage. He took a lightning strike. His newest modern-day components were fried, but his old heavy-duty components weren't damaged at all. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 09:48:23 EDT Subject: Re: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronic Devices? In a message dated Tue, 12 Apr 2005 02:02:56 -0400, curious@nospam.com writes: > I just got a 900 MHz DSS cordless phone, and I had the perfect spot > for it, right on top of my tower computer case. But then I noticed > that the manual says that the base unit must be placed away from all > electronic equipment, including PCs, stereos, TVs, and microwaves. > What is the reasoning for this? Could the magnetic fields generated > by the speakers in the phone cause any problems? It will do no harm to the computer. But the other electronic equipment may interfere with the cordless phone transmission and reception. We had a 900 mHz cordless that sat right under a TV and had no problem. But when it finally gave up the ghost we replaced it with another cordless, which turned out to be 2.4 gHz. We then found out that 2.4 gHz is much more seriously affected to the point that it was unusable. We returned it, since that was exactly where we wanted the cordless. It is reported than 4.8 gHz is even more badly impaired by other electronic equipment. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Verizon Wireless Expands Availability of Ringback Tones; Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 07:02:33 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 21:05:34 -0400, Monty Solomon wrote: > PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 11, 2005--Verizon Wireless, the first > national carrier to offer Ringback Tones -- short clips of real music > that replace the standard ring callers hear when they call the Verizon > Wireless phone of a Ringback Tone subscriber -- has expanded the > availability of the service to include Arizona. The service is now > available in most western states. Sorry. Verizon was not the first. T-Mobile UK had this service literally *months* before Verizon or T-Mobile US had this service. And unlike Verizon, T-Mobile USA has this service available throughout its system. ------------------------------ From: Steve Stone Subject: Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID Manager Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 19:16:55 GMT Phonetray free works for me in these situations. A nice addition to my 'always on' home file server. All you need is an old voice modem that does callerid decode. http://phonetray.traysoft.com/freecalleridsoftware_features.htm [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Exactly how does Phonetray work? Can you explain your experience with it in more detail for us? PAT] ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Re: Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 13:58:55 -0700 Organization: Stanford University In article , Marcus Didius Falco wrote: http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.asp?layout=3Ddocument&doc_id=3D1340004344 > www.wirelessweek.com > Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight > By Susan Rush > April 8, 2005 > news@2 direct > Worried about "air rage" and constant phone calls, 67 percent of air > travelers would prefer current airborne cell phone restrictions remain > in place, according to a new air passenger poll. > For more information go to: > http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml I don't know whether I'd have the guts (or the rudeness) to carry through on this, but if I found myself on a long flight forced to listen to endless cell phone conversations from all around me, I'd be greatly tempted to pull out a "boom-box" tape player and switch it on with some possibly unpleasant music or audio at similar volume in retaliation. Flying, which used to be a moderately pleasant occasion to relax, read, work, or just sleep, has become a more than sufficiently unpleasant experience in recent years. If cell phone users are going to pollute the audio environment in the cabin sufficiently to make it even more unpleasant for others, surely so can we music lovers ... ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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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 V24 #158 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Apr 13 03:01:01 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3D710O27706; Wed, 13 Apr 2005 03:01:01 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 03:01:01 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504130701.j3D710O27706@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 V24 #159 TELECOM Digest Wed, 13 Apr 2005 02:55:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 159 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: Goodbye to Privacy (Marcus Didius Falco) VoicePulse Introduces Competitive Upgrade Offer to VoIP Users (J Decker) Walkie Talkie (jason) Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' (Steve Sobol) Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID Manager (-mhd) Re: Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight (Marcus Didius Falco) Re: Warning! A Virus Attacked my System! (William Warren) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 23:47:48 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Book Review: Goodbye to Privacy http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/books/review/10COVERSAFIRE.html?8bu&emc=bu&oref=login Goodbye to Privacy By WILLIAM SAFIRE NO PLACE TO HIDE By Robert O'Harrow Jr. 348 pp. The Free Press. $26. CHATTER Dispatches From the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping. By Patrick Radden Keefe. 300 pp. Random House. $24.95. OUR mother's maiden name is not the secret you think it is. That sort of 'personal identifier' being used by banks, credit agencies, doctors, insurers and retailers -- supposedly to protect you against the theft of your identity -- can be found out in a flash from a member of the new security-industrial complex. There goes the 'personal identifier' that you presume a stranger would not know, along with your Social Security number and soon your face and DNA. In the past five years, what most of us only recently thought of as 'nobody's business' has become the big business of everybody's business. Perhaps you are one of the 30 million Americans who pay for what you think is an unlisted telephone number to protect your privacy. But when you order an item using an 800 number, your own number may become fair game for any retailer who subscribes to one of the booming corporate data-collection services. In turn, those services may be -- and some have been -- penetrated by identity thieves. The computer's ability to collect an infinity of data about individuals -- tracking every movement and purchase, assembling facts and traits in a personal dossier, forgetting nothing -- was in place before 9/11. But among the unremarked casualties of that day was a value that Americans once treasured: personal privacy. The first civil-liberty fire wall to fall was the one within government that separated the domestic security powers of the F.B.I. from the more intrusive foreign surveillance powers of the C.I.A. The 9/11 commission successfully mobilized public opinion to put dot-connection first and privacy protection last. But the second fire wall crumbled with far less public notice or approval: that was the separation between law enforcement recordkeeping and commercial market research. Almost overnight, the law's suspect list married the corporations' prospect list. The hasty, troubling merger of these two increasingly powerful forces capable of encroaching on the personal freedom of American citizens is the subject of two new books. Robert O'Harrow Jr.'s "No Place to Hide" might just do for privacy protection what Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" did for environmental protection nearly a half-century ago. The author, a reporter for The Washington Post, does not write in anger. Sputtering outrage, which characterizes the writing of many of us in the anti-snooping minority, is not O'Harrow's style. His is the work of a careful, thorough, enterprising reporter, possibly the only one assigned to the privacy beat by a major American newspaper. He has interviewed many of the major, and largely unknown, players in the world of surveillance and dossier assembly, and provides extensive source notes in the back of his book. He not only reports their professions of patriotism and plausible arguments about the necessity of screening to security, but explains the profitability to modern business of 'consumer relationship management.' "No Place to Hide" -- its title taken from George W. Bush's post-9/11 warning to terrorists -- is all the more damning because of its fair-mindedness. O'Harrow notes that many consumers find it convenient to be in a marketing dossier that knows their personal preferences, habits, income, professional and sexual activity, entertainment and travel interests and foibles. These intimately profiled people are untroubled by the device placed in the car they rent that records their speed and location, the keystroke logger that reads the characters they type, the plastic hotel key that transmits the frequency and time of entries and exits or the hidden camera that takes their picture at a Super Bowl or tourist attraction. They fill out cards revealing personal data to get a warranty, unaware that the warranties are already provided by law. "Even as people fret about corporate intrusiveness," O'Harrow writes about a searching survey of subscribers taken by Conde Nast Publications, "they often willingly, even eagerly, part with intimate details about their lives." Such acquiescence ends -- for a while -- when snoopers get caught spilling their data to thieves or exposing the extent of their operations. The industry took some heat when a young New Hampshire woman was murdered by a stalker who bought her Social Security number and address from an online information service. But its lobbyists managed to extract the teeth from Senator Judd Gregg's proposed legislation, and the intercorporate trading of supposedly confidential Social Security numbers has mushroomed. When an article in The New York Times by John Markoff, followed by another in The Washington Post by O'Harrow, revealed the Pentagon's intensely invasive Total Information Awareness program headed by Vice Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra infamy, a conservative scandalmonger took umbrage. ("Safire's column was like a blowtorch on dry tinder," O'Harrow writes in the book's only colorful simile.) The Poindexter program's slogan, 'Knowledge Is Power,' struck many as Orwellian. Senators Ron Wyden and Russell D. Feingold were able to limit funding for the government-sponsored data mining, and Poindexter soon resigned. A Pentagon group later found that 'T.I.A. was a flawed effort to achieve worthwhile ends' and called for 'clear rules and policy guidance, adopted through an open and credible political process.' But O'Harrow reports in "No Place to Hide" that a former Poindexter colleague at T.I.A. "said government interest in the program's research actually broadened after it was apparently killed by Congress." The author devotes chapters to the techniques of commercial data gatherers and sellers like Acxiom, Seisint and the British-owned LexisNexis, not household names themselves, but boasting computers stuffed with the names and pictures of each member of the nation's households as well as hundreds of millions of their credit cards. He quotes Ole Poulsen, chief technology officer of Seisint, on its digital identity system: "We have created a unique identifier on everybody in the United States. Data that belongs together is already linked together." Soon after 9/11, having seen the system that was to become the public-private surveillance engine called Matrix (in computer naming, life follows film art), Michael Mullaney, a counterterrorism official at the Justice Department, told O'Harrow: "I sat down and said, 'These guys have the computer that every American is afraid of.' " Of all the companies in the security-industrial complex, none is more dominant or acquisitive than ChoicePoint of Alpharetta, Ga. This data giant collects, stores, analyzes and sells literally billions of demographic, marketing and criminal records to police departments and government agencies that might otherwise be criticized (or de-funded) for building a national identity base to make American citizens prove they are who they say they are. With its employee-screening, shoplifter-blacklisting and credit-reporting arms, ChoicePoint is also, in the author's words, "a National Nanny that for a fee could watch or assess the background of virtually anybody." From sales brochures that ChoicePoint distributed to its corporate and government customers -- as well as from interviews with its C.E.O., Derek V. Smith, the doyen of dossiers, who claims "this incredible passion to make a safer world" -- The Post's privacy reporter has assembled a coherent narrative that provides a profile of a profiler. As if to lend a news peg to the book, ChoicePoint has just thrust itself into the nation's consciousness as a conglomerate hoist by its own petard. The outfit that sells the ability to anticipate suspicious activity; that provides security to the nation's security services; that claims it protects people from identity theft -- has been easily penetrated by a gang that stole its dossiers on at least 145,000 people across the country. On top of that revelation, the company had to admit it first became suspicious last September that phony companies were downloading its supposedly confidential electronic records on individual citizens. Not only is the Federal Trade Commission inquiring into the company's compliance with consumer-information security laws, but the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating prearranged sales of ChoicePoint stock by Smith and another top official that netted a profit of $17 million before the penetration was publicly disclosed and the stock price plunged. 'ChoicePoint Data Cache Became a Powder Keg' was The Washington Post headline, with the subhead 'Identity Thief's Ability to Get Information Puts Heat on Firm.' This was followed by the account a week later of another breach of faith at a competing data mine: 'ID Thieves Breach LexisNexis, Obtain Information on 32,000.' Now that a flat rock has been flipped over, much more scurrying about will be observed. This will cause embarrassment to lobbyists for, and advisers to, the major players in the security-industrial complex. "No Place to Hide" names famous names, revealing associations with Howard Safir, former New York City police commissioner; Gen. Wesley Clark, former NATO commander; and former Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas. (If you hear, 'This is not about the money' -- it's about the money.) More of the press has been showing interest, especially since Congressional hearings have begun and data is being disseminated about the data collectors. A second book -- not as eye-opening as O'Harrow's original reporting but a short course in what little we know of international government surveillance -- is "Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping," by Patrick Radden Keefe. This third-year student at Yale Law School dares to make his first book an examination of what he calls the liberty-security matrix. Chatter, he notes, is a once innocuous word meaning 'gossip ... the babble of a child' that in the world of electronic intelligence has gained the sinister sense of 'telltale metabolic rhythm: chatter; silence; attack.' The flurry of 'sigint' -- signals intelligence, picked up by the secret listening devices of our National Security Agency -- sometimes precedes a terrorist attack, and almost always precedes an elevation of our color-coded security alerts. Keefe does what a brilliant, persevering law student with no inside sources or a prestigious press pass should do: he surveys much of what has been written about sigint and pores over the public hearing transcripts. He visits worried scientists and some former spooks who have written critical books, and poses questions to which he would like to get answers. He doesn't get them, but his account of unclimbable walls and unanswered calls invites further attempts from media bigfeet to do better. Keefe is a researcher adept at compiling intriguing bits and pieces dug out or leaked in the past; the most useful part of the book is the notes at the end about written, public sources that point to some breaks in the fog. "Chatter" focuses on government, not commercial, surveillance, and thereby misses the danger inherent in the sinister synergism of the two. Moreover, the book lacks a point of view: at 28, Keefe has formulated neither a feel for individual privacy nor a zeal for government security. It may be, as Roman solons said, Inter arma silent leges -- in wartime, the laws fall silent -- but the privacy-security debate needs to be both informed and joined. This is no time for agnostics. For example, what to do about Echelon? That is supposedly an ultrasecret surveillance network, conducted by the United States and four other English-speaking nations, to overhear and oversee signals. "We don't know whether Echelon exists," Keefe writes, "and, if it does exist, how the shadowy network operates. It all remains an enigma." Though he cannot light a candle, he at least calls attention to, without cursing, the darkness. Keefe's useful research primer on today's surveillance society, and especially O'Harrow's breakthrough reporting on the noxious nexus of government and commercial snooping, open the way for the creation of privacy beats for journalism's coming generation of search engineers. A small furor is growing about the abuse of security that leads to identity theft. We'll see how long the furor lasts before the commercial-public security combine again slams privacy against the wall of secrecy, but at least Poindexter's slogan is being made clear: knowledge is indeed power, and more than a little power in unknowable hands is a dangerous thing. William Safire writes the On Language column for The Times Magazine. These book reviews from Sunday, April 10, 2005 issue of the Times Magazine, copyright 2005 The New York Times Company. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily, also http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, the New York Times Company. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 20:52:21 -0400 Subject: VoicePulse Introduces Competitive Upgrade Offer to VoIP Users http://press.arrivenet.com/bus/article.php/618753.html VoicePulse Introduces Competitive Upgrade Offer to VoIP Users Company Offers Cash Rewards to Consumers Switching from Competing VoIP Services JAMESBURG, N.J., April 12, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- VoicePulse Inc. announced today the launch of its new Competitive Upgrade Offer. Current and former customers of competing VoIP services will be eligible to receive a $50 cash reward in addition to the 25-plus basic and advanced features they will receive for free as part of the VoicePulse service. "We believe the experience we bring to the customer and the quality we provide in all aspects of our service -- features, call quality, price and especially customer service -- will leave a lasting impression on the customer that will make this offer very successful," says Ravi Sakaria, VoicePulse President & CEO. "Our goal has always been to provide the best customer experience. Fortunately, since many of our competitors are more focused on acquiring as many customers as quickly as possible, usually at the cost of service quality and customer satisfaction, it gives us the opportunity to demonstrate why we are the top customer-rated provider in the industry." Having won awards from highly regarded technical journals and trade magazines such as PC Magazine, PC World, and DesignTechnica, VoicePulse also boasts having the top award from Broadband Reports, which is based solely on customer reviews. More information about the offer can be found on the VoicePulse website at: http://www.voicepulse.com/plans/CompetitiveUpgrade.aspx ABOUT VOICEPULSE VoicePulse is a New Jersey-based communications company that uses its VoIP network to deliver advanced features and high-quality phone service to residential and small-business consumers. The company leads the industry in delivering innovative features and excellent customer service. CONTACT: VoicePulse Rima Vaghasiya 732-339-5100 rima@voicepulse.com How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jason Subject: Walkie Talkie Date: 12 Apr 2005 22:01:31 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello All, Anyone has any idea why we only have 4 channels for a simple walkie talkie? The engineering and physics reason for this 4 channels? Kindly enlighten. Thank you, Jason [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Jason, please begin by defining for me your use of the term 'walkie talkie'. Do you refer to a Citizen's Band walkie talkie? In the USA, those have 40 channels, _not_ 4 channels. But maybe you were speaking of some different kind of instrument. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 22:14:12 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Dale Showers wrote: > I have been receiving calls on my cell phone and the caller id is > 15555551212 but there is no one on the phone when I pick up. Considering that 555 isn't a valid area code and xxx-555-1212 is Directory Assistance, why do you even bother answering that number? JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Because, if I understood Dale correctly in our phone call mid-day Tuesday, his phone just keeps on ringing until he _does_ answer. PAT] ------------------------------ From: -mhd Subject: Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID Manager Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 20:43:50 -0400 Steve Stone wrote: > Phonetray free works for me in these situations. A nice addition to > my 'always on' home file server. All you need is an old voice modem > that does callerid decode. > http://phonetray.traysoft.com/freecalleridsoftware_features.htm > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Exactly how does Phonetray work? Can > you explain your experience with it in more detail for us? PAT] There are tons of similar programs such as Identafone. Just Google for 'caller id software'. -mhd [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe you, or someone can explain to me how to use Google search on multiple word expressions. For example, if I Google for 'Patrick Townson' I get a jillion entries, but not all of them for that entire name: I get many entries for 'Patrick' this and 'Patrick' that; ditto for various Townson(s), only occassionally in the desired context of 'Patrick Townson'. Either single or double quoting the entire expression does not seem to help and with clusters of numbers it seems to act like a calculator. What are the rules on Google Searches and where can I find them? Anyone? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 23:44:00 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Re: Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight AES responded to Marcus Didius Falco who quoted a Wireless Week article: > In article , Marcus Didius Falco > wrote: > http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.asp?layout=3Ddocument&doc_id=3D1340004344 >> www.wirelessweek.com >> Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight >> By Susan Rush >> April 8, 2005 >> news@2 direct >> Worried about "air rage" and constant phone calls, 67 percent of air >> travelers would prefer current airborne cell phone restrictions remain >> in place, according to a new air passenger poll. >> For more information go to: >> http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml > I don't know whether I'd have the guts (or the rudeness) to carry > through on this, but if I found myself on a long flight forced to > listen to endless cell phone conversations from all around me, I'd be > greatly tempted to pull out a "boom-box" tape player and switch it on > with some possibly unpleasant music or audio at similar volume in > retaliation. Another solution is to get a pair of noise-reducing headphones. There are several types, including one, designed for drummers in rock bands, that gives 29 decibels of passive noise reduction. Others use "active" noise reduction, which is tuned to reduce jet noise, but not necessarily conversation. These have inputs so you can listen to the movie, your iPod or tape player, or whatever (your white noise machine?). > Flying, which used to be a moderately pleasant occasion to relax, > read, work, or just sleep, has become a more than sufficiently > unpleasant experience in recent years. If cell phone users are going > to pollute the audio environment in the cabin sufficiently to make it > even more unpleasant for others, surely so can we music lovers ... Frankly, flying has never been pleasant. But, if you really are a music lover, check out the headphones. There is a long series of articles and tests at: http://www.thetravelinsider.info/2005/email0211.htm http://www.thetravelinsider.info/roadwarriorcontent/solitudeheadset.htm I've seen some of the noise-cancelling headphones at Walmart and Target. Also some are in the Brookstone catalog. http://www.virginpulse.com/popup/press-2004071901.htm The ones for session drummers, which are big and bulky, but may be what you want are at: http://www.protravelgear.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=134 There is also a Peltor "Racetunes" sold by American Optical that has about 22 dB in noise blocking. (The similar and slightly cheaper "Worktunes" model [which is much more widely available, including many large hardware stores] has an AM-FM radio but no provision for an input from other devices.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I _used to_ find flying sort of enjoyable. Back in the 1960's I flew on various occassions to New York City for weekends (leave ORD on Friday night, return on Sunday afternoon or evening. To me, it was a lot of fun to be at 20-30 thousand feet, staring out the window at night in black nothingness, with a scotch and soda, and listening on the in-flight sound system to Beethoven or Bach or whatever classical stuff American Airlines was playing. The steaks and dinner salads they served were always good, and they always had plenty of wine. One flight I took from ORD to San Francisco in 1968 I think, I traveled in a 'double decker' (the best word I can think of for it) United Airlines flight with a bar on the upper level, but you could also eat dinner sitting up there at the bar instead of in your seat on the lower level if you wished. On the trip back from San Francisco late Sunday night, I remember it was very cold and damp, and the cab _just barely_ got me to the airport in time for the flight home as it was starting to rain sort of hard. That night, the stewardess pushed a little cart full of very fancy sandwhiches and drinks back and forth in the aisle all the way home, and I gorged myself, since I had not had time to eat dinner first. And the airlines -- at least United and American -- always gave you all the food and drinks you wanted with their compliments, and free headphones to listen to music which you were expected to return to the stewardess when you departed. I don't think it is nearly as nice these days, with people being herded like cattle through checkpoints; having your stuff dumped out all over a conveyor belt to be searched, etc. And I think the stewardesses are sort of rude now, aren't they? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 19:30:57 -0400 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Warning! A Virus Attacked my System! Steve Sobol wrote: > Fred Atkinson wrote: >> Hello, everyone, >> A worm came through my PC. If you get any attachments that appear to >> be from me, don't open them. From my research, it appears to be a >> work called Netsky. I haven't found a way to get it off yet, but I'm >> working on it. > http://www.grisoft.com/ wonderful, wonderful AV package for windows FWIW, the free version of AVG Anti-Virus is really hard to find on the GRISOFT site: they're pushing a "Professional" version for $33. However, the free version can be downloaded from a variety of Internet sites, and still works fine. William ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #159 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Apr 13 15:11:05 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3DJB4A04686; Wed, 13 Apr 2005 15:11:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 15:11:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504131911.j3DJB4A04686@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 V24 #160 TELECOM Digest Wed, 13 Apr 2005 15:10:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 160 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Comcast Digital Voice - Boston and Hartford (Monty Solomon) Trade Groups to Sue People Who Share Files (Telecom DailyLead from USTA) Re: Book Review: Echelon (Charles G Gray) Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID (Dave Garland) Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID (-mhd) Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID (M. Sullivan) Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID (R. Bonomi) Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' (Joseph) Re: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronic Devices? (UK) Re: Walkie Talkie (Justin Time) Re: Looking For Old Dialite Video (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight (Paul Coxwell) Re: Warning! A Virus Attacked my System! (Dave Garland) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:57:43 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Comcast Digital Voice - Boston and Hartford Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts Unveils Boston and Hartford Comcast Digital Voice Rollout Plans - Apr 13, 2005 10:35 AM (PR Newswire) BOSTON, April 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Comcast Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Brian L. Roberts today announced that Boston and Hartford, CT are two of the next markets to launch Comcast Digital Voice. Roberts unveiled the company's plan to begin rolling out the service next month during a speech before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. Boston and Hartford are two of the 20 markets where the product will be available this year. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48337586 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 12:22:53 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Trade Groups to Sue Students Who Swap Files on Internet2 Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 13, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20790&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Trade groups to sue students who swap files on Internet2 BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * America Online in talks to sell service over cable lines * Cingular to offer latest music downloads * Qwest outfits Denver development with FTTH technology * Vonage expected to lose grip on VoIP market * China on pace to take broadband access top spot USTA SPOTLIGHT * USTA VoIP 101: "How to Deploy IPTV" Webinar Tomorrow at 1 p.m. EST EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Unmanned plane could provide broadband, mobile service * Mobile sports services kick into high gear * Special Report: Part III, the digital trailblazers REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Rep. Barton urges Telecom Act update Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20790&l=2017006 ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Book Review: Re: Echelon From: Charles G Gray Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 08:25:58 -0500 In his review of "Chatter", by Patrick Radden Keefe, Mr. Saffire says "What to do about Echelon?" Quoting Keefe, he says '"We don't know whether Echelon exists"'. I call your attention to a 194 page report prepared by the European Parliament, entitled "Report on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system)". In addition, a Google search for "Echelon NSA" will turn up over 93,000 entries. The European Parliament report can be found at: http://www2.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade2?PUBREF=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&L=EN&LEVEL=2&NAV=S&LSTDOC=Y You can see photographs of the Menwith Hill (UK) monitoring station at www.fas.org/irp/facility/menwith.htm. Regards, Charles G. Gray Senior Lecturer, Telecommunications Oklahoma State University - Tulsa (918)594-8433 ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID Manager Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:12:55 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when PAT wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe you, or someone can explain to me > how to use Google search on multiple word expressions... single or double > quoting the entire expression does not seem to help and with clusters > of numbers it seems to act like a calculator. What are the rules on > Google Searches and where can I find them? Anyone? PAT] Double quoting *should* work. Or click on "Advanced search" and put it in the "exact phrase" box. Lots more info at: http://www.google.com/help/ ------------------------------ From: -mhd Subject: Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID Manager Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 12:13:20 -0400 TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to -mhd : > For example, if I Google for 'Patrick Townson' I get a jillion > entries, but not all of them for that entire name: I get many > entries for 'Patrick' this and 'Patrick' that; ditto for various > Townson(s), only occassionally in the desired context of 'Patrick > Townson'. Either single or double quoting the entire expression does > not seem to help and with clusters of numbers it seems to act like a > calculator. What are the rules on Google Searches and where can I > find them? Anyone? PAT] I think matching pairs in quotes get higher ranking then Google includes other results in case someone had a web page that mentioned a "Townson who goes by the name Patrick". -mhd ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID Manager Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:16:20 GMT -mhd wrote: > Steve Stone wrote: >> Phonetray free works for me in these situations. A nice addition to >> my 'always on' home file server. All you need is an old voice modem >> that does callerid decode. >> http://phonetray.traysoft.com/freecalleridsoftware_features.htm >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Exactly how does Phonetray work? Can >> you explain your experience with it in more detail for us? PAT] > There are tons of similar programs such as Identafone. Just Google for > 'caller id software'. > -mhd > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe you, or someone can explain to me > how to use Google search on multiple word expressions. For example, if > I Google for 'Patrick Townson' I get a jillion entries, but not all of > them for that entire name: I get many entries for 'Patrick' this and > 'Patrick' that; ditto for various Townson(s), only occassionally in > the desired context of 'Patrick Townson'. Either single or double > quoting the entire expression does not seem to help and with clusters > of numbers it seems to act like a calculator. What are the rules on > Google Searches and where can I find them? Anyone? PAT] Put it in double quotes: "Patrick Townson". Otherwise, Google will assume you mean Patrick AND Townson. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD (USA) (Replace "example.invalid" with "com" in my address.) ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Harrasing Annoying Ex Boyfriend Phone Calls CALLER ID Manager Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 07:15:09 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe you, or someone can explain to me > how to use Google search on multiple word expressions. For example, if > I Google for 'Patrick Townson' I get a jillion entries, but not all of > them for that entire name: I get many entries for 'Patrick' this and > 'Patrick' that; ditto for various Townson(s), only occassionally in > the desired context of 'Patrick Townson'. Either single or double > quoting the entire expression does not seem to help and with clusters > of numbers it seems to act like a calculator. What are the rules on > Google Searches and where can I find them? Anyone? PAT] See that button that says "advanced search"? *USE*IT* Then "read and follow label directions". The "help" button also has useful information. If all else fails, ask the neighborhood 6-year old. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 05:55:15 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' In an ongoing effort to TRY to eliminate or at least reduce $pam, please REMOVE my email address from display in the "from" line, AS WELL AS in the "reply to" line. Dale Showers first wrote: > I have been receiving calls on my cell phone and the caller id is > 15555551212 but there is no one on the phone when I pick up. Steve Sobol replied: > Considering that 555 isn't a valid area code and xxx-555-1212 is > Directory Assistance, why do you even bother answering that number? And then Pat rang in with: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Because, if I understood Dale > correctly in our phone call mid-day Tuesday, his phone just keeps > on ringing until he _does_ answer. PAT] I don't remember Dale mentioning that his (cellular) phone "just keeps on ringing until he does answer". And I looked at the original and full message that he sent to see if he specifically said that, at least in the post. (I do remember you mentioning that he also called and spoke with you on the phone as well). So, here is the remainder of Dale's post as it previously appeared in Telecom Digest: > I try to call back to that number and it is not a good number. > There is no area code of 555. If any one knows what this and how > to stop it please let me know at [address suppressed]. > Thank you very much! Unfortunately, it does appear that the harrassing caller does "keep CALLING BACK", but that's not the same as the (cellular) phone "just keeps on ringing until he answers". Also, considering that Dale is on a CELLULAR phone as stated in the original subject line, most of us SHOULD already know that if one doesn't answer their cellular phone within a relatively short period of time (3-5 standard ring cycles in most cases, approximately 30 seconds), the calling party is then transferred to either VOICEMAIL, or else a "subscriber not available or is out of the area" message from the serving cellular switch. Also, unfortuantely, as Pat has stated several times in the past regarding Caller-ID and Privacy options from SBC, the serving telephone company on the called party's end doesn't really "block" incoming calls from KNOWN BOGUS area and/or office codes, or known bogus "formats" of same codes. - Anthony ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 07:37:19 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Tue, 12 Apr 2005 22:14:12 -0700, Steve Sobol wrote: >> I have been receiving calls on my cell phone and the caller id is >> 15555551212 but there is no one on the phone when I pick up. > Considering that 555 isn't a valid area code and xxx-555-1212 is > Directory Assistance, why do you even bother answering that number? Unless he's turned off his voicemail why would it continue to ring? After 4 to 6 rings at the most it should roll to voicemail. Most cell phones will let you press the "end" key to immediately silence the phone's ringer or send it to voicemail. ------------------------------ From: Alan Burkitt-Gray Subject: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronic Devices? Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:29:04 +0100 news:telecom24.157.7@telecom-digest.org: > I just got a 900 MHz DSS cordless phone, and I had the perfect spot > for it, right on top of my tower computer case. But then I noticed > that the manual says that the base unit must be placed away from all > electronic equipment, including PCs, stereos, TVs, and microwaves. > What is the reasoning for this? Could the magnetic fields generated > by the speakers in the phone cause any problems? I have a DAB radio (digital audio broadcasting, works on the old TV band III) next to my PC at home. When I turn the PC off, the radio switches itself on. Alan B-G Alan Burkitt-Gray, Editor, Global Telecoms Business http://www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com email aburkitt@euromoneyplc.com; tel +44 20 7779 8518 or +1 212 224 3880; fax +44 20 7779 8248. ------------------------------ From: Justin Time Subject: Re: Walkie Talkie Date: 13 Apr 2005 05:19:08 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Pat, I see two things in Jason's post. The first was the statement it was a simple walkie-talkie while the second had to do with engineering and physics. The reason is also two-fold; one - to keep it simple, and second; because not physics, but cost drove the engineering. Rodgers Platt ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Looking For Old Dialite Video Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 05:20:48 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Jim wrote: > About 20+ years ago, when I worked for GTE, we had a list of video > tapes we could request from GTE's main headquarters in Stamford, > Conneticut. Most of the tapes were educational or safety tapes, meant > to be shown for training and during employee meetings. > But I remeber one tape I requested that was a short tongue in cheek > video to "educate" the general public about where dial tone comes > from. The tape started out showing a rock quarry, mining type > operation. It went on to explain how "dialite" was extracted from the > rocks and refined into dial tone. I don't know if dialite is the word > used in the video, but it was something important sounding. > Has anyone ever seen this, or know how I might get a copy of it again? > Thanks. > Jim As bad as those GTE steppers got in the LA outer areas in the 1960s and 1970s they could have just as well mined dial tone out of a rock quarry. ;-) Back then when I'd see a GTE service truck on the road, I would comment, "Ah, another search for the missing dial tone." ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 16:09:54 +0100 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I _used to_ find flying sort of > enjoyable. Back in the 1960's I flew on various occassions to New York > City for weekends (leave ORD on Friday night, return on Sunday > afternoon or evening. To me, it was a lot of fun to be at 20-30 > thousand feet, staring out the window at night in black nothingness, > with a scotch and soda, and listening on the in-flight sound system to > {.......} > I don't think it is nearly as nice these days, with people being > herded like cattle through checkpoints; having your stuff dumped out > all over a conveyor belt to be searched, etc. And I think the > stewardesses are sort of rude now, aren't they? PAT] Pat, I haven't flown for several years, but I always enjoyed the actual flight. One little story which being ex-Chicago you might appreciate happened about 1993 when I had to change planes at O'Hare Airport. We'd had a very good flight from London, no hitches at all, and landed at O'Hare right on time. Then we sat waiting for the retractible walkway to be extended. After about 15 minutes the captain made an announcement that they were having technical problems and the city engineer had been called. There were audible groans from around the cabin, and a fellow passenger in the next seat said something like "That'll fix it, we'll be here for hours." Turns out he he could actually see his house from the runway and was all too familiar with the problems in the city engineer's dept. I don't know if you might have some tales of the Chicago City Engineering, but I gather from your previous posts that Chicago government doesn't always run smoothly. I think it took nearly an hour in the end. Why they couldn't have wheeled up some steps and let everybody just walk down onto the asphalt and into the terminal building, I don't know. - Paul. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think they were allowed to do that (wheel up some stairs) because of the labor union to which they belong. I know that if you go to any convention or trade show at McCormick Place, you are _not_ allowed to carry in any tools to possibly be used to set up your exhibit. For example, a light bulb, an electrical extension cord, a connecting cord for a printer or monitor, etc. All that stuff is verbotin. You have to put in a work order (and Lord only knows when it will be done) to get those things attached in your exhibition booth. If they catch you with a light bulb or a multiple outlet cord, etc, the union workers take it away from you. Regards the City Engineering Department, like everything else in Chicago, it is so full of corruption. The Great Flood, back in about 1991 is a good example: Do you recall when one of the several underground tunnels (one of them which crosses under the Chicago River) sprang a leak? A city inspector, whose job it is (or was, he got fired afterward, then rehired when he appealed to the union) to walk through the tunnels frequently looking for water leakage, etc at the various points where the tunnels cross under the river, noted strenuously in a written report that someone had bored a hole in the tunnel wall, and a _small_ drip at that point was leaking, and it needed to be patched up _immediatly, ASAP_. His report was totally ignored; in fact he was humiliated when the 'authorities' (his supervisors, etc) questioned his credentials to know anything about anything. That's how they do things in Chicago; they never act on advice from experts, they always make the expert out to be a damn fool with an axe of some kind to grind instead. Anyway, three or four days later the tiny leak in the wall had turned into a major flood as the Chicago River started draining itself and much of Lake Michigan into the tunnel system and the basements and sub-basements of every single downtown building. (The old tunnel system years ago had been used to carry coal around to the furnaces in the buildings, etc, and carry garbage out; a tiny, narrow guage old fashioned railroad going past every older building downtown had a sub-basement entrance to the tunnel system for that reason.) At street level you could see nothing, of course, but all those buildings had much water (eight to ten feet high) in their basements and many of them had underground, sealed electrical transformer units supplying electric to themselves and other nearby buildings. It took the city several days to find out _exactly where_ the leak was coming from (all they knew for sure was all the underground tunnels [which are _not_ open to the public at all] were eight to ten feet under rushing water going into basements everywhere), meanwhile the water kept rushing in. Every building downtown had to be evacuated, even City Hall; all the stores had to close to protect their customers and employees. Phone service all over downtown was disrupted for three days; most electrical service was out; the banks and financial places all had to evacuate all their workers, their attornies, etc. City Hall completely lost their phone service for a few hours until they were able to set up an emergency outpost for the fire department dispatchers and other 'essential' workers (such as the centrex operators) a block down the street at the Chicago Temple Building. Finally, the _source_ of the 'leak' was discovered by a reporter for the Chicago Tribune who was crossing the river on the Clark Street bridge. He noticed something he thought 'very odd'; at one point below in the water, there was a 'whirlpool' effect, much like a bathtub would empty into a drain. He notified the City Engineering Department; after they, and Mayor Daley had properly abused and vilified him, like they do anyone who knows nothing about anything, they went to look for themselves. Their maps showed them there was a branch on the old tunnel system there, and an underwater diver confirmed that was the spot where the river and the lake were emptying out into the basements and sub-basements of downtown Chicago. With several tons of concrete powder mix poured over the Clark Street bridge into the water below at the point where the 'whirlpool' was seen, they managed to block the leak, or at least slow it down considerably, so that underwater divers could go through the tunnel to that spot and do the job right. Mayor Daley went on television later that Sunday about noon to announce to everyone 'we found the leak, and have stopped the flood.' For the next few days, everywhere downtown was an uproar, as the office workers came back from their unexpected week long holiday. Any place you walked on the sidewalk you had to navigate these huge hoses snaking out of office buildings attached to very noisy gasoline driven pumps sitting on the sidewalks disgorging their filthy river/lake water into street sewers. The office buildings were able to get maybe one or two out of their bank of elevators running; all the downtown restaurants had to stay closed for a couple of days until the Board of Health could inspect their utensils, drinking water, etc. The subway trains were only partially operating; over all it was a terrible mess. Mayor Daley promptly fired the Engineering Department employee he said had 'caused the problem' and a few maintainence people he said were 'lazy' and 'corrupt' and had ignored the Engineering Department memo. All the fired city workers appealed and got their jobs back except the one who it was alleged had bored the hole in the tunnel wall that got the whole mess started and he got his job back a few years later when the city was unable to prove who did what, despite a one year-long inquiry by the city council which found several individuals in contempt of city council for refusing to testify as to who did what, etc. Eventually they all became friends once again; that's how it goes in Chicago. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Warning! A Virus Attacked my System! Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:02:34 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when William Warren wrote: > FWIW, the free version of AVG Anti-Virus is really hard to find on the > GRISOFT site That is true. Fortunately, once you find it, the url is straightforward: http://free.grisoft.com ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #160 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Apr 13 17:03:45 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3DL3i006096; Wed, 13 Apr 2005 17:03:45 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 17:03:45 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504132103.j3DL3i006096@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 V24 #161 TELECOM Digest Wed, 13 Apr 2005 17:03:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 161 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson MusicNet Sold to Private Equity Firm (Lisa Minter) Concerns Over ID Theft Mount / LexisNexis Breach Widens (Monty Solomon) Tougher Laws, Penalties Will Help Protect us (Monty Solomon) Not A Telemarketing Call? (Fred Atkinson) Re: Book Review: Goodbye to Privacy (Lisa Hancock) Google Searching - Advanced (jwillis@drlogick.com) Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' (Jon Gauthier) Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' (T. Sean Weintz) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 13 Apr 2005 12:53:04 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: MusicNet Sold to Private Equity Firm Terms were not disclosed but a source familiar with the matter put the deal's value at $20 million to $30 million. RealNetworks, which owned about 40 percent of MusicNet, said it received proceeds of $7.3 million and expects another $2.7 million after escrow arrangements expire. MusicNet provides the technology to run services for other brand name digital music providers like AOL Music and Virgin Digital, rather than offering downloads and subscription services directly to the public itself. MusicNet, formed in 1999 by RealNetworks, Bertelsmann AG, EMI Group Plc Sony Corp and Time Warner Inc., which then owned Warner Music, has said it serves more than 500,000 subscribers, mostly AOL customers. Since its inception it has faced increasing competition from companies like Apple Computer Inc., which has led the market with its popular iPod player and iTunes service, and MusicMatch, which Yahoo Inc. bought for $160 million. The MusicNet sale was not unexpected since RealNetworks, which had been MusicNet's main stakeholder, bought rival Listen and its Rhapsody subscription service in August 2003. RealNetworks posted MusicNet-related losses of more than $4 million in 2004, a RealNetwork spokesman said. The company said in a statement late on Tuesday that it would provide more details about the deal during its earnings call on May 4. "RealNetworks had already indicated it was not going to put any more money into MusicNet, and to the extent they needed capital, the company was either going to have to be sold or get capital from the other partners," said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media, a market research company. Experts said MusicNet has struggled because its profit margins are much lower than those of direct retailers. Other MusicNet partners include Virgin Digital, HMV Group and Trans World Entertainment. MusicNet said it will be capitalized with the funds necessary to expand the scale of its operations. "This is a natural evolution for the company," said MusicNet CEO Alan McGlade. "We've progressed nicely since the inception. Our partners' interest was not so much a big return on MusicNet, but in creating a legitimate marketplace. We have a good reputation in the industry." McGlade said there would be no major changes as result of the sale. MusicNet employs nearly 100 people, he said. (additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York) Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:05:46 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Concerns Over ID Theft Mount / LexisNexis Breach Widens Concerns over ID theft mount LexisNexis breach widens; GM credit accounts at risk By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff | April 13, 2005 Identity theft concerns mounted yesterday as LexisNexis said a security breach at one of its subsidiaries may have been 10 times more severe than an earlier estimate, and GM MasterCard rushed to replace the credit cards of customers affected by a breach at an unidentified national retailer. GM MasterCard sent letters to customers late last week telling them that "a national retailer's computer system has had a security breach and your credit card account number may be among those that were compromised." A copy of the letter was provided to the Globe by one local GM MasterCard customer. Officials at General Motors had no immediate comment and referred questions to Household Bank, which issues the GM card. Household Bank could not be reached for comment. The GM MasterCard letter said the company had not been informed of the merchant involved and probably would not be informed. "Due to the serious nature of this situation," the letter said, GM MasterCard was advising customers to have their credit cards replaced as soon as possible. LexisNexis, a provider of legal and business news, said yesterday that a review of data search activity at its Accurint subsidiary over the past two years has indicated that 59 times unauthorized persons had gained access to such personal-identifying information as Social Security numbers or driver's license numbers. Last month the Dayton, Ohio, company had said it was notifying 30,000 individuals whose personal information may have been improperly acquired. Yesterday, the company increased that number to 310,000. Of the 310,000 individuals, 6,078 reside in Massachusetts. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/04/13/concerns_over_id_theft_mount/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:02:47 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Tougher Laws, Penalties Will Help Protect us By Tom Mashberg/ Identity Fraud Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - Updated: Apr. 13, 2005 12:31 AM EST Last of a three-part series on identity fraud. After just four days as a data entry clerk at a members' club in Philadelphia, Stephanie Mobley knew scores of Social Security numbers. She used the data, Massachusetts officials allege, to commit 12 counts of identity theft against a half-dozen Bay Staters. But if Mobley is found guilty, she faces no more than 30 months in prison. Now, officials want to toughen the penalties for identity theft to deter and punish one of the state's fastest-growing crimes. http://www.bostonherald.com/identityFraud/view.bg?articleid=78050 Life's been hell and thief still has her SS number! By Tom Mashberg/ Identity Fraud Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - Updated: 03:54 PM EST The woman who stole Cathy Caverly's identity has a lot of nerve. She still lives near Caverly's longtime residence in Stoughton. She never paid restitution -- despite promising to do so as a condition of her probation. She called a credit card firm to complain after Caverly shut off a card she was using illegally. And now, Caverly has been forced to take on the disruptive and difficult task of getting a new Social Security because the thief knows her old one. http://www.bostonherald.com/identityFraud/view.bg?articleid=78049 LexisNexis cyber goof exposed data on 310,000: Initial number doubled By Tom Mashberg and Jennifer Rosinski/ Identity Fraud Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - Updated: 12:53 PM EST Sensitive information on 10,000 Bay Staters was compromised during a security breach at a nationwide data broker -- more than twice the number initially reported -- the company said yesterday. LexisNexis announced that nationally, 310,000 people were affected by the breach, 280,000 more than was reported in March. http://www.bostonherald.com/identityFraud/view.bg?articleid=78230 ------------------------------ From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Not A Telemarketing Call? Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 12:51:02 -0400 Earlier today, I got a phone call from a caller that said I was chosen in a Vegas contest by one of my credit card companies. I immediately asked if this was a telemarketing call. She said no. She started asking questions. The first one was if I was married or single. I told her I wasn't sure that I wanted to give out information over the phone. I immediately heard a busy signal in my ear. She did not call back. I pulled up the call records on my Vonage Account. This is interesting since it is a toll-free number: 1-866-221-3437. I called that number back and got a busy when I called it. My number is on the National Do-Not-Call-list. I therefore should not have received this call at all. I suspect it was some kind of telephone scam. And they are obviously saavy enough to forge a telephone number on caller ID. So I don't think it was just some individual working alone. I could report it to FTC, but that's kind of redundant since I don't have a good number on them. Regards, Fred ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Book Review: Goodbye to Privacy Date: 13 Apr 2005 09:45:35 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Marcus Didius Falco wrote quoting the book review: > Goodbye to Privacy > By WILLIAM SAFIRE > NO PLACE TO HIDE > By Robert O'Harrow Jr. > CHATTER > Dispatches From the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping. > By Patrick Radden Keefe. > In the past five years, what most of us only recently thought of as > 'nobody's business' has become the big business of everybody's > business. This has been going on much longer than merely "five years" -- more like at least 30 years. The big three credit bureaus have been around a long time. > The computer's ability to collect an infinity of data about > individuals -- tracking every movement and purchase, assembling facts > and traits in a personal dossier, forgetting nothing -- was in place > before 9/11. But among the unremarked casualties of that day was a > value that Americans once treasured: personal privacy. That statement is greatly inaccurate. Yes, things changed on 9/11, but those changes must be reviewed carefully in context. Other incidents like Columbine have affected our privacy just as much. > The first civil-liberty fire wall to fall was the one within > government that separated the domestic security powers of the > F.B.I. from the more intrusive foreign surveillance powers of the > C.I.A. That change did not really affect personal privacy. From a national security point of view, that change was needed. The wall between the CIA and FBI was relatively recent, put in because of dislike of Nixon and Hoover and in disregard of the bigger picture. It is known now that so-called "political dissent" of the 1960s was not merely speech, but planned and coordinated revolutionary activity purposely designed to disrupt the country as much as possible -- for the goal of disruption. A number of former activists in that movement have admitted this in their memoirs, collaborated by former FBI agents and long time news correspondants. I personally heard activists of those days squirm out of tough questions about their goals and lash out at anyone questioning the "party line" they espoused. > But the second fire wall crumbled with far less public notice or > approval: that was the separation between law enforcement > recordkeeping and commercial market research. Almost overnight, the > law's suspect list married the corporations' prospect list. Interesting. Whenever the subject of "privacy" comes up, most people think of "big brother" as the govt, not the private sector. The govt really doesn't care much about you and has enough trouble linking up its own collections of data. The real threat is from the private sector. > Robert O'Harrow Jr.'s "No Place to Hide" might just do for privacy > protection what Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" did for environmental > protection nearly a half-century ago. ABC talked about this book and it sounds like a good one. > O'Harrow notes that many consumers find it convenient to be in a > marketing dossier that knows their personal preferences, habits, > income, professional and sexual activity, entertainment and travel > interests and foibles. These intimately profiled people are > untroubled by the device placed in the car they rent that records > their speed and location, the keystroke logger that reads the > characters they type, the plastic hotel key that transmits the > frequency and time of entries and exits or the hidden camera that > takes their picture at a Super Bowl or tourist attraction. I don't agree. People do like the convenience of having their preferences ready for convenience. However, almost everyone is NOT aware of rental car monitors, keystroke loggers, or hidden cameras everywhere. If people really knew how much of their life was tracked in detail and readilly available, they would be quite upset. What is disturbing is that the data collection industry fights hard and won all sorts of exemptions from laws trying to regulate their activities. Don't forget the news media is inherently anti-privacy and thus not too supportive of regulations. They make use of such data for their news stories. From the point of view of a newspaper, a person has no privacy whatsoever -- it's all "the public's right to know". An adverse story about you in a major newspaper would do far more damage to you than an obscure entry in some big database, and there's nothing you can do about it -- even if the story was wrong. (It is extremely hard to prove libel against the news media, and even if you could, the story is still out there, stored in libraries and computers, while a correction is buried.) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:32:30 -0400 From: jwillis@drlogick.com Subject: Google Searching - Advanced Pat Here is the link to the advanced search features of Google. Hope this helps a bit ... http://www.google.ca/help/refinesearch.html Regards, Jim Willis [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for passing that along; it should be helpful. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' Date: 13 Apr 2005 09:53:20 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Dale Showers wrote: > I have been receiving calls on my cell phone and the caller id is > 15555551212 but there is no one on the phone when I pick up. I would contact your cell phone carrier and request their assistance. You might want to speak to the tech-support unit rather than merely customer service. Keep a log of your calls to them and their response. It may be necessary to write them a written complaint. Use postal certified mail with receipt, not email; this way you have a hard record. Certified letters -- which they have to sign for -- tend to get more attention. Earlier in this newsgroup it was reported that mass market calls were originating out of VOIP lines and giving nonsensical caller id numbers like 111-111-1111. (I got such marketing calls during the political campaign -- the Dems were so desperate they called repeatedly all day long with recorded pitches. It was a nightmare.) Anyway, maybe hackers on VOIP are able to slur callerID. It's strange that a number 555-1212 would be used since that's directory assistance, and I can't help but wonder the originator purposely set that number up to be seen. That is troubling. ------------------------------ From: Jon Gauthier Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:59:26 -0400 Organization: The MITRE Organization Dale, You should be able to hit the "No"/"Hangup" button when you get a call from that number. Some phones allow you to disable calls from certain numbers. Some wireless providers may offer a "Deny list" capability that you edit on their website ... Jon Steve Sobol wrote: > Dale Showers wrote: >> I have been receiving calls on my cell phone and the caller id is >> 15555551212 but there is no one on the phone when I pick up. > Considering that 555 isn't a valid area code and xxx-555-1212 is Directory > Assistance, why do you even bother answering that number? > JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) > Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED > "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" > --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Because, if I understood Dale correctly > in our phone call mid-day Tuesday, his phone just keeps on ringing > until he _does_ answer. PAT] ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 15:11:33 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Dale Showers wrote: > Dear Mr. Townson: > I have been receiving calls on my cell phone and the caller id is > 15555551212 but there is no one on the phone when I pick up. I try to > call back to that number and it is not a good number. There is no > area code of 555. If any one knows what this and how to stop it > please let me know at mindlesspugs@yahoo.com . > Thank you very much! > Dale This is almost definitely a scofflaw telemarketer calling from a PRI line. By using a PRI line, can set the caller ID to be whatever he wants. You answer and get no-one on the other end because he is using a predictive dialer -- a computer dials the numbers, and connects the calls to people in the telemarketing call center only when the call is answered on your end. If no one is available in the call center to take the call, when you answer you get the classic "no one there when I answer" effect -- you just hear dead air. Unfortunately, short of having the cell provider put a trap on the line, you are NOT going to be able to track this down. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #161 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Apr 13 23:00:36 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3E30ZP09041; Wed, 13 Apr 2005 23:00:36 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 23:00:36 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504140300.j3E30ZP09041@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 V24 #162 TELECOM Digest Wed, 13 Apr 2005 23:00:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 162 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson MCI Keeps Ownership Cap (Marcus Didius Falco) Lennon Telephone Chooses Joint net.com/Pannaway (Jack Decker) Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' (T. Sean Weintz) Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' (No Spam) Re: Google Searching - Advanced (LB@notmine.com) Re: Concerns Over ID Theft Mount / LexisNexis Breach Widens (Wesrock) Re: Book Review: Goodbye to Privacy (Marcus Didius Falco) Last Laugh! When Marketing Surveys Get Off-Track (Linc Madison) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 19:02:33 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: MCI Keeps Ownership Cap http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45476-2005Apr11.html washingtonpost.com Tuesday, April 12, 2005; Page E02 MCI's board of directors said it would not remove the "poison pill" provision that blocks a shareholder from owning more than 15 percent of the company's stock. The announcement came after New York-based Verizon Communications agreed to purchase 13.4 percent of MCI's shares from Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim Helu for $1.1 billion in cash. The provision prevents Verizon from being able to buy all of MCI by negotiating deals with other major shareholders. Verizon is trying to block Denver-based Qwest Communications International from getting enough shareholder support for a rival deal. Qwest released a statement saying that MCI's rejection of its latest offer is not consistent with shareholders' best interests. <> Compiled from reports by the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, Dow Jones News Service and Washington Post staff writers. Copyright 2005 The Washington Post Company NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Washington Post Company. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 19:41:16 -0400 Subject: Press Release: Lennon Telephone Chooses Joint net.com/Pannaway http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-13-2005/0003389813&EDATE= Lennon Telephone Chooses Joint net.com/Pannaway Solution for Delivery of Feature-Rich VoIP Services http://www.net.com SHOUT2500 Helps Deliver Complete Business and Residential Voice Over IP Over Hybrid Fiber-Coaxial Cable in Central Michigan FREMONT, Calif. and PORTSMOUTH, N.H., April 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- net.com (NYSE: NWK), a global supplier of adaptive broadband technology, and Pannaway Technologies, Inc., designers and developers of converged broadband voice, video and data platforms, jointly announced today that Lennon Telephone Company, established in 1918 and under its current ownership since 1946, has selected net.com's SHOUT2500, a highly integrated IP telephony provisioning platform delivering unprecedented cost-performance metrics, for delivery of Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services to business and residential customers within their local exchange. Lennon Telephone and its subsidiaries will use the SHOUT2500 as a VoIP delivery platform to deliver low cost SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) based telephone features and services to its business and residential customers. SIP is the Internet signaling standard that enables carriers to deliver a wide variety of services through the Internet, such as telephone service, instant messaging, IP conferencing, and presence management. Additionally, Lennon Telephone will be able to use SHOUT to convert Internet-based calls to the public telephone network (VoIP to PSTN) and vice versa, as well as interconnect with legacy H.323 IP networks. Pannaway's Service Convergence Network (SCN(TM)) is a highly manageable end-to-end all IP solution that enables telcos to deliver high quality voice, video and data services over a single broadband connection. At the heart of the SCN, is Pannaway's Call Control Manager (CCM(TM)) which is a SIP registration server, proxy server, feature server and billing mediation platform that routes all calls, provides advanced CLASS features and delivers billing information for the SCN. "The Pannaway-net.com solution enables significant and immediate cost savings through the use of IP technology, as well as rapid development of new features and services. For example, with this solution in place, we are in a position to deliver traditional voice services via our hybrid fiber-coax system," said Tom Bowden, Vice President of Lennon Telephone. "Additionally, the integration of SIP and legacy signaling protocols like H.323 and SS7 in a single platform, along with the SHOUT platform's enhanced GUI based network configuration and management tools, will allow us to quickly deliver these services to our customers." About Pannaway Pannaway Technologies designs the industry's first carrier-class end-to-end IP solution for converged voice, video and data service delivery. Pannaway's innovative technology enables telecommunications companies worldwide to deliver unified services to homes and businesses at a fraction of their historical costs. The privately held company was founded in April 2002 and is headquartered in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Its founding management team, with over 90 years of collective experience in the industry, has played a pioneering role in the telecommunications equipment sector. For more information, visit http://www.pannaway.com. About net.com Network Equipment Technologies, doing business as net.com, is a leading provider of networking equipment that enables enterprises, governments and carriers to adapt to a broadband future. An architect of the networking industry, net.com has been supplying service providers, governments and enterprises around the world with bulletproof networking technology for more than 20 years. net performance. net results. net.com. Visit http://www.net.com for more information. NOTE: net.com and SHOUT are trademarks of Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. SOURCE Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. Web Site: http://www.net.com How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' Date: 13 Apr 2005 14:08:21 -0700 T. Sean Weintz wrote: > This is almost definitely a scofflaw telemarketer calling from a PRI > line. By using a PRI line, can set the caller ID to be whatever he wants. Could you explain what is a "PRI" line, and characteristicss give it the power to change caller ID? Why would any subscriber have access to such a line? > You answer and get no-one on the other end because he is using a > predictive dialer -- a computer dials the numbers, and connects the calls > to people in the telemarketing call center only when the call is > answered on your end. If no one is available in the call center to take > the call, when you answer you get the classic "no one there when I > answer" effect -- you just hear dead air. I don't understand that when the fellow answers the call, why someone doesn't come on on the other end and make their sales pitch. There is usually a brief 1-2 second, but someone does come on. Obviously they don't want live people to miss their sales pitches. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The hassle is the 'predictive dialer' (which is what they call the device which 'dials ahead' and gets suckers on the line works too fast for the human beings doing the talking/selling. It thinks, based on formulas built in, that by the time it gets a sucker on the phone, an agent will be ready to talk to them. That's when the predictive dialer plays a pre-recorded message saying 'please hold, we have an important message for you' or something similar. That's when I usually hang up, and you should also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 17:25:02 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Earlier in this newsgroup it was reported that mass market calls were > originating out of VOIP lines and giving nonsensical caller id numbers > like 111-111-1111. (I got such marketing calls during the political > campaign -- the Dems were so desperate they called repeatedly all day > long with recorded pitches. It was a nightmare.) Anyway, maybe > hackers on VOIP are able to slur callerID. It's strange that a number > 555-1212 would be used since that's directory assistance, and I can't > help but wonder the originator purposely set that number up to be > seen. That is troubling. Don't need VOIP to spoof caller ID at all. a standard ISDN PRI line, which most outbound call centers have, can do it easily. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Lisa just asked a question; she wants an explanation of an ISDN PRI line. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 17:47:30 -0400 From: No Spam Subject: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' Lisa Hancock wrote to say: (stuff snipped) > Earlier in this newsgroup it was reported that mass market calls were > originating out of VOIP lines and giving nonsensical caller id numbers > like 111-111-1111. (I got such marketing calls during the political > campaign -- the Dems were so desperate they called repeatedly all day > long with recorded pitches. It was a nightmare.) Anyway, maybe > hackers on VOIP are able to slur callerID. It's strange that a number > 555-1212 would be used since that's directory assistance, and I can't > help but wonder the originator purposely set that number up to be > seen. That is troubling. Funny; all of the (pre recorded) calls I got (except for one) were from George W Bush, Laura Bush, or the local Republican candidates. (I did get one call from the Dems, but they identified themselves as the state office of the party.). The calls I got from the Dems gave their valid phone number in Washington DC, but the calls from the Republicans showed callerID of either 000-000-0000, or restricted. Too bad that the politicians exempted themselves from the do not call list. I had opportunity to visit local offices of both parties during the 2004 campaign, and both of them were using VoIP services provided via a Lynksys wireless router (I could see phone cords running from the Linksys box to the cheap phones on the conference tables), but I don't know provider they were using. Joshua (my opinions are my own and not necessarily those of my employer, but sometimes we agree.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My experiences were rather similar to yours. In addition to a call from George and Laura, a call came from a Kansas Republican. And recall please, the two documented examples of telephone mischief we heard about (and reported here in the Digest) were Republicans playing tricks on Democrats. PAT] ------------------------------ From: LB@notmine.com Subject: Re: Google Searching - Advanced Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 17:24:37 -0400 Organization: Optimum Online jwillis@drlogick.com wrote: > Pat > Here is the link to the advanced search features of Google. Hope this > helps a bit ... > http://www.google.ca/help/refinesearch.html > Regards, > Jim Willis > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for passing that along; it > should be helpful. PAT] " You can reach this page by clicking (no surprise) the "Advanced Search" link on the Google home page." LB ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 20:31:22 EDT Subject: Concerns Over ID Theft Mount / LexisNexis Breach Widens In a message dated Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:05:46 -0400, Monty Solomon writes: > Concerns over ID theft mount LexisNexis breach widens; GM credit > accounts at risk > By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff | April 13, 2005 > Identity theft concerns mounted yesterday as LexisNexis said a > security breach at one of its subsidiaries may have been 10 times more > severe than an earlier estimate, and GM MasterCard rushed to replace > the credit cards of customers affected by a breach at an unidentified > national retailer. > GM MasterCard sent letters to customers late last week telling them > that "a national retailer's computer system has had a security breach > and your credit card account number may be among those that were > compromised." A copy of the letter was provided to the Globe by one > local GM MasterCard customer. > Officials at General Motors had no immediate comment and referred > questions to Household Bank, which issues the GM card. Household Bank > could not be reached for comment. > The GM MasterCard letter said the company had not been informed of the > merchant involved and probably would not be informed. "Due to the > serious nature of this situation," the letter said, GM MasterCard was > advising customers to have their credit cards replaced as soon as > possible. I have a GM MasterCard and I have received no such letter. Nor have I received any e-mail them on the subject, although they have my e-mail address and sent me a notice a couple of days ago that my monthly bill was avilable for viewing on their web site. The web site has no warnings or advices on the subject. No unusual transactions appear on my account. As to Household Bank, notices in the last month or so have noted that the GM MasterCard is now issued by HSBC (formerly Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation). While the notice is not explicit, it appears HSBC has purchased some or all of Household Bank or its operations. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 20:33:29 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Re: Book Review: Goodbye to Privacy Lisa Hancock responded to Re: Book Review: Goodbye to Privacy on 13 Apr 2005 09:45:35 -0700: > Marcus Didius Falco wrote quoting the book review: >> Goodbye to Privacy >> By WILLIAM SAFIRE >> NO PLACE TO HIDE >> By Robert O'Harrow Jr. >> CHATTER >> Dispatches From the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping. >> By Patrick Radden Keefe. >> In the past five years, what most of us only recently thought of as >> 'nobody's business' has become the big business of everybody's >> business. > This has been going on much longer than merely "five years" -- more > like at least 30 years. The big three credit bureaus have been around > a long time. The credit bureaus have been around a long time. The data brokers are new. All or almost all the recent breaches have been with these data brokers. There is some thought to regulating them as credit bureaus, subject to increased safeguards. I think it's in Pennsylvania. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, the brokers are not absolutely 'new'; they have been around a few years also, but no where near as long as the credit bureaus. The brokers got their start by selling the unprotected data on credit bureau reports. The stuff above the perforated line (the address history, the social security number and certain other information has never been protected; only the 'trades' -- the creditors' experience -- has ever been protected information. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Last Laugh! When Marketing Surveys Get Off-Track Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 18:04:11 -0700 From: Linc Madison Reply-To: lincmad@suespammers.org Organization: California resident; nospam; no unsolicited e-mail allowed My cellular phone carrier called me (on my landline) the other day to do a marketing survey. They asked me if I had any plans to add another line to my account. I told them no, I live alone, I hardly use the one cellphone, so I can't imagine adding a line at any point in the foreseeable future. The survey person persisted, though, wanting to ask me to rate on a 1-to-10 scale various offers relating to adding a line (e.g., 3 months free, or various other perks). I begged off, but it occurred to me that, had I been bored enough to sit through the whole list, my data would have been meaningless at best. I therefore came up with my own revised questionnaire. On a 1-to-10 scale, with 1 being "no way!" and 10 being "where do I sign up?!," rate the following circumstances for the degree to which they would make you more likely to add a second line to your cellular service. A. Martians invade Earth. B. You suddenly discover 27 previously unknown offspring. C. You are diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. You need a second line to talk to the voices in your head. "Can you hear me now?" D. Both of your arms fall off. E. Both of your legs fall off. F. Both arms AND both legs fall off. G. Costa Rica declares war on Vanuatu. H. You simultaneously win every state lotto jackpot in the U.S. I. The widow of an African dictator gives you $27,500,000.00 (twenty-seven million, five hundred thousand United States dollars) to launch a new charity to PROTECT THE CHILDREN from accidental Tupperware-related injuries. J. Breakthrough scientific research reveals that telephone area code maps are the most powerful aphrodisiac ever discovered. ("Oh, baby, wrap your arms around me like 801 around 385!!") I think, in my circumstances, those are equally realistic hypothetical situations, compared to being offered 3 months free for a second line for which I have neither need nor desire. Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * lincmad@suespammers.org * primary e-mail: Telecom at LincMad dot com All U.S. and California anti-spam laws apply, incl. CA BPC 17538.45(c) This text constitutes actual notice as required in BPC 17538.45(f)(3). DO NOT SEND UNSOLICITED E-MAIL TO THIS ADDRESS. You have been warned. ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #162 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Apr 14 19:36:23 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3ENaMY18969; Thu, 14 Apr 2005 19:36:23 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 19:36:23 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504142336.j3ENaMY18969@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 V24 #163 TELECOM Digest Thu, 14 Apr 2005 19:28:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 163 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Spam Hits Us Bad Today - Message Losses (TELECOM Digest Editor) Comcast Sued for Disclosing Customer Information (Lisa Minter) U.N. Expert Says Firms Should Do More Vs Child Porn (Lisa Minter) Cell Phone Wearing Out? (Choreboy) Is RocketVoIP Deceiving Customers Regarding Unlimited VoIP (Jack Decker) Can I Port an 800 Number Without the Old Carrier's OK? (william) Tradtional Mail Discouraged (Lisa Hancock) Re: Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight (Paul Coxwell) Bell Operating Company Employees/Retirees (sbctech) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 17:49:02 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses Ordinarily either Lisa Minter or myself get in here and flush the spam queue a few times daily. Then we go through the 'regular' file of 'good' incoming mail and sort through it, since about 80-90 percent of the stuff in the 'good' mail file is also spam which managed to not trip the Spam Assassin rules. Then we move the 'good' stuff into a protected area where it is stored until the next issue comes out. But from the last issue of the Digest on Wednesday through the present time, neither of us came in to do the usual flush, consequently there were several hundred spams in the so- called 'good' file today. And in the middle of them, here and there, the legitimate emails. Unfortunatly, the good stuff got flushed with the volumes of spam today by accident. What you see in this issue is _all we have left_ of the good stuff. If you wrote to the Digest anytime since Wednesday night; you got an autoack and _do not_ see your email in this issue, then please resubmit it. There *has to be* a better way of sorting out the spam. I have the trigger set now at 2 (according to Spam Assassin, 5 is average for most users), but I just do not feel I can go any lower than 2; there is too much stuff otherwise hitting the spam bucket; I use the very old 'mail' from 1993 with Unix here; I wish there were someway to see entire screens full of stuff and be able to dismiss it with a single keystroke instead of the 3-4 keystrokes needed at present. Anyway, if your message from (probably during the day) Thursday is not shown here, then sorry, I don't have it. Resubmit it please. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ Date: 14 Apr 2005 14:25:46 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Comcast Sued for Disclosing Customer Information Comcast Corp. the top U.S. cable television network operator, is being sued by a Seattle-area woman for disclosing her name and contact information, court records showed on Thursday. In a lawsuit filed in King County, Washington, Dawnell Leadbetter said that she was contacted by a debt collection agency in January and told to pay a $4,500 for downloading copyright-protected music or face a lawsuit for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Leadbetter, a mother of two teenage children, was a customer of Comcast's high-speed Internet access service. The company, Settlement Support Center LLC, based in Washington state, was using information that the Recording Industry of Association of America had obtained in a Philadelphia lawsuit over the illegal sharing of digital music files, said Lory Lybeck, the lawyer representing Leadbetter. But no court authorized Comcast to release names and addresses of its customers, or notified his client that her information had been given to an outside party, Lybeck said. "Comcast should respect the rights of privacy who pay them monthly bills," Lybeck said. Representatives from Comcast said they could not immediately comment on the lawsuit. The RIAA has filed thousands of lawsuits since September and settled several hundred for about $3,000 each. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If, in fact, Comcast was legally subpoened for the information, then they _had_ to give it out, or face penalties themselves. I assume that is the case, but you'd think they would have told their customer about it. When the attorney stated that 'no court had authorized the release', I suppose that's what the subpoena did: the subpoena acts as the limited authorization does it not? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 14 Apr 2005 14:26:58 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: U.N. Expert Says Firms Should Do More Vs Child Porn By Thomas Atkins Credit card companies and technology firms should do more to combat child pornography on the Internet, a United Nations expert said Wednesday. Credit card firms may unwittingly process illegal Web transactions, Juan Miguel Petit, U.N. special rapporteur on child pornography said. "Credit card companies shouldn't wait for the problem to arrive," Petit said at a news briefing. "The international credit card companies and also the manufacturers of hardware and software ... surely know more than NGOs or governments about these problems and how to fight them." Petit also wants to force Internet service providers to remove or block access to illegal material when they see it and to oblige them to monitor their services to prevent it. Child pornography on the Internet has become one of the biggest areas of cybercrime in recent years with police forces around the world rounding up thousands of web users accused of accessing illegal sites. Credit card firm Visa International says it has already taken the battle to the enemy and pursues illegal operators. However, David Masters, spokesman for Visa, said tech-savvy operators made it a difficult problem to handle. "It's a horrific industry and we do everything we can against it," he said. "It's business we don't want and we're only too pleased to help where we can. We work very closely with law enforcement across the world." Illegal operators hide behind business fronts, meaning the only way to track them down is to troll the Web for possible abusers using high- tech search engines, he said by telephone. Horacio Gutierrez, head of Microsoft's legal and corporate department for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, said his company had engineered programs to aide police. Microsoft is also a partner of the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "Technology companies have a critical role to play in making the Internet safe for children," Gutierrez said by telephone. "It's a multifaceted issue which really has worldwide implications." International crime-fighting body Interpol will hold a meeting in Lyon, France, Thursday with the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, credit card companies and tech firms such as Microsoft. Gutierrez said companies, police and non-governmental organizations would explore the role of technology and the Internet industry in the growth of child pornography. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ From: Choreboy Subject: Cell Phone Wearing Out? Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:27:58 -0400 A relative complained to Verizon that she had trouble making calls on a trip through Georgia. Her phone is six years old. The saleswoman gave the phone to a technician who a said the transmitter was wearing out and she needed to buy a new phone. The saleswoman offered her a choice of second-hand phones. In this area the phone works as well as ever, so my relative decided not to replace it until she takes another long trip. Do cellphone transmitters normally get weak as they age? Wouldn't that cause a problem in normal use? My neighbor has two relatives who switched providers because both found Verizon's coverage unsatisfactory on trips through Georgia. Does it sound as if Verizon is conning my relative? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At first blush, I would say your relative got a con job. The cellphone transmitter has no idea where it is at; its job is just to radiate RF. If the phone works okay at your house, it should work as well in Georgia; I cannot imagine that Georgia has cellphone towers any further apart than cellphone towers are in your area of the country, and all that should really matter in the case of a 'transmitter getting weak from age' is how far it has to look for a tower. If it can find a tower, that should end the problem of 'old age'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:09:58 -0400 Subject: Is RocketVoIP Deceiving Customers Regarding "Unlimited" VoIP A disturbing post just appeared on BroadbandReports.com -- I have removed references to RocketVoIP from the Resources for Michigan Telephone Users web site until and unless this issue is resolved. "Hi all ... I have a problem with RocketVoip (www.rocketvoip.com) They said their service is unlimited ($24.95) and suddenly they sent me an email about a week ago, telling me that I'm not qualified as a residential user and they asked me to switch to business plan. Please read the attached email. ..." http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,13170575 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This sounds a lot like our friend Sprint's old "Friday Free" plan doesn't it? Remember that one? Sprint tricked people into signing up for long distance by lying to them saying their Friday traffic would always be free to _residential_ customers. Soon thereafter we started hearing from folks who said Sprint had written them a letter saying they were not a 'qualified' residential account, so they would have to pay for their Friday calls. Sprint signed the letters with some phone name (I forget off hand what it was), and many folks, including myself tried time after time to reach the person to ask him what it was about, and what made persons 'qualified'. I don't think anyone ever did reach that person, and as to be expected, no one in Sprint customer service ever had any idea what it was about. If the original writer wants to send along the email saying they were not 'qualified', and assuming it has a good name on it, we will try to reach that person and ask them what it is all about, and to explain the qualifications required. PAT] ------------------------------ From: william@withheld_on_request Subject: Can I Port an 800 Number Without the Old Carrier's Permission? Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 23:07:00 -0400 Pat, Please strip my email address and name; TIA. Here's a question about 800 number portability which I hope you or the other readers can answer. I have switched to a small CLEC for my service -- call them ma-pa-telco. I told ma-pa-telco that I was unsatisfied with the service I was getting from my old carrier -- let's call them "Cloacal" -- so I asked ma-pa-telco to take over my 800 line. I signed a "Letter of Agency", and thought it was all done. Today, however, ma-pa-telco tells me that after seven or eight false starts, Cloacal refuses to transfer my 800 line, saying that my signature on the letter of agency is "Unauthorized" and that they won't tell me who is "authorized" to sign it. So, some questions: 1. Can ma-pa-telco force a switch? I mean, can they tell the company-in-charge-of-the-800-number-portability-database to just move the number over? 2. Can I force Cloacal to release my 800 number even though they say I'm not the "authorized" person? It's my number, right? They've certainly got plenty of signatures to check: I've been paying the bill for this ever since I bought the company. Can I just tell Cloacal to grow up and consider me as authorized? 3. Is there a procedure in place to resolve this kind of issue? When they set up the 800 portability database, someone must have thought of things like a CEO retiring or a company like Cloacal refusing to play nice with the other children. This has been going on for over a week, and now it's just silly: as far as I'm concerned, Cloacal is dragging their feet just because I got tired of them acting like Ma Bell's idiot baby bell brother and I said so to their face. At this point, the FCC should spank them and tell them to get over it. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For starters, problems like this are often times handled very satisfactorily by Judith Oppenheimer, a reader here with several excellent web sites (begin your review of her work at http://judithoppenheimer.com which is the ICB Consultancy home page.) She has successfully cleared up things like this now and then. Generally, yes, the _owner_ of an 800 number can take it where he wants. One caveat: *who is the owner*? Signing a letter of agency does not an owner make, if the true owner has a sticky widget. Think back to when you first got the number ... did you sign any papers telling Cloacal they were the owner? Did you originally get the number from them? Who told _you_ that you are the owner of the number (not the user of the number, but the _owner_ of it?) Another caveat: do you owe any money to Cloacal on your bill with them? Telcos have a right under the rules pertaining to number portability to hold a number hostage if you do owe money. Under the law, telco has protection to assure they get paid. Still a third caveat: Is the number 'popular' or easy to remember, dial, etc? If it is -1212 or -2345 or -1234, etc and etched on people's minds and quite 'easy to remember or use', if Cloacal otherwise has any rights to the number, they are going to fight more than ever. Genuine 800 numbers (as opposed to 888, 877, 866 and yes! even 855) are not usually given up by their 'owners' without some effort. Ms. Oppenheimer will need to know all that in order to help you. But she seems to know her stuff and _who_ to talk to. Good luck with your problem. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Traditional Mail Discouraged? Date: 14 Apr 2005 12:35:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I get the feeling organizations no longer want the public to contact them via traditional postal mail. (No more "Keep those cards and letters coming in"). I suspect this is largely due to the antrax attacks of Sept 11, but possibly other factors as well (perhaps fear of walk-in attacks.) I base this on: 1) Magazines traditionally have a "masthead" where the editors and senior staff are listed. Traditionally, the addresses of the magazine were clearly listed there as well (letters to the editor, subscriptions, ads, etc.) I notice now no addresses are shown, and maybe some are shown elsewhere in very fine print. 2) Film studios used to have their addresses listed but some no longer do. Particuarly, the WB TV network refuses postal mail and has everything returned to the sender. Some organizations -- but by no means all -- offer email or web comment screens. But these have limitations: a) A certain percentage of mail is "crank" -- obvious nonsense, etc. But writing a traditional letter still requires some effort and postage. Email is easy and one can generate a great many crank emails at the push of a button. Thus, recipients are flooded with much more crank mail than in the past, which they have to weed through. There's a greater chance a legitimate letter will be bypassed. b) Lost in the shuffle: There's a far higher response rate to traditional mail than email/web comments. Sometimes electronic means never get delivered. Other times it's lost at the recipient's site. Sometimes it's sent to someone incompetent to deal with it. (On a number of occassions I've emailed an organization with a specific question that was not addressed on their web page. Their answer was to check the web page which of course was of no help.) c) Lost with spam: Legitimate letters get mixed up with spam. d) A piece of paper is durable: A paper letter or postcard is a tangible item. An email is a fleeting image on a screen. If 10,000 people write a TV network urging to keep a TV show, they'll have bags of mail sitting on the floor and that will say something to them. If 10,000 people email them, the server will probably crash and most will never even make it through. For places with less volumes, that piece of paper sits on someone's desk and calls for attention. It's a lot easier psychologically to DEL an email than throw out a piece of paper. ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 20:11:35 +0100 TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to my query: > Regards the City Engineering Department, like everything else in > Chicago, it is so full of corruption. The Great Flood, back in about > 1991 is a good example: Do you recall when one of the several > underground tunnels (one of them which crosses under the Chicago > River) sprang a leak? A city inspector, whose job it is (or was, he > got fired afterward, then rehired when he appealed to the union) to > walk through the tunnels frequently looking for water leakage, etc Pat, That story certainly seems like a case of the "big wigs" being too arrogant to take notice of what they are told, then trying to pass the blame afterward. I'm not at all familiar with Chicago. The longest I've ever spent there was a couple of hours one Sunday afternoon waiting for a connecting train at Union Station to go west. I just wandered around downtown a little, and looking at the map I guess I must have been close to some of the spots you mentioned. The union issue has been a huge problem in the past in Britain. I have a friend who worked for London Transport on the buses at one time, and he says he almost caused a strike one day by doing a little servicing. It seems he was "allowed" to change a filter in his job, but to get at one of them meant removing a small access panel in the wooden floor. A union boss spotted this and kicked up a fuss. Apprently he was expected to call the fitter/carpenter to come out and remove the panel, a procedure which could involve a wait of several hours. After changing the filter, he was then supposed to request the fitter to come out again to replace the cover. A half-hour job would suddenly take all day to complete. Apparently the rules also required a bus to go out on an hour-long test drive after _any_ service work was done on it, even just replacing a blown bulb. The unions sure had that lot wrapped up tightly. > attached in your exhibition booth. If they catch you with a light bulb > or a multiple outlet cord, etc, the union workers take it away from you Isn't that called theft? What happens if somebody refuses to give it up? ;-) - Paul [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't know that they literally 'take it away from you'; just that you'll be very pressured to go along with their plans, just like you mentioned on your busses. PAT] ------------------------------ From: sbctech Subject: Bell Operating Company Employees/Retirees Date: 14 Apr 2005 11:38:33 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello Fellow Coworkers, Many of us have lost contact with good friends. Divestiture, retirement and other circumstances have played a roll in our loss. This is our new searchable Bell Operating Company Employee database. It is hosted on the sbceic.com website which is operated by SBC/Bell Operating Company Employees/Retirees. We invite all Bell Operating Company Employees/ Former Employees/Retirees to join our community for chats, forums, projects at sbceic.com sbceic.com Your Fellow Coworkers [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for sending this message along. Between divestiture, layoffs, retirements, etc the ranks have really been decimated have they not? I hope this message helps you pull your ranks together just a little. And the rest of you, don't forget: Our good friend King Spam really did a number on my mailboxes today. What you see here today is what you get. I'll go back to my hourly flushing of the spam box tomorrow and try to take better care of real, legitmate messages. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #163 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Apr 15 15:32:27 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3FJWRL28876; Fri, 15 Apr 2005 15:32:27 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 15:32:27 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504151932.j3FJWRL28876@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 V24 #164 TELECOM Digest Fri, 15 Apr 2005 15:22:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 164 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Lisa Minter) India Moves to Silence Cellphone Spam (Lisa Minter) Congress Aims to Thwart Identity Theft (Lisa Minter) Web Censors In China Find Success (Marcus Didius Falco) Packet8 Joins 'Unfee' Trend (Jack Decker) Texting is Slower Than Morse (Colin) Re: Traditional Mail Discouraged? (FrazNor@gmail.com) Re: Traditional Mail Discouraged? (Henry) Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses (Supak Lailert) Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses (Lisa Hancock) Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses (John Schmerold) Re: Comcast Sued for Disclosing Customer Information (Barry Margolin) Re: Can I Port an 800 Number Without the Old Carrier's Permission? (Tim) Re: Walkie Talkie (Jason) Last Laugh! Passenger Found Dead After Plane Lands at O'Hare (M Falco) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 11:29:57 -0400 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Getting Serious About the War on Spam http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0414/p02s01-usju.html Byline: Patrik Jonsson Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor (RALEIGH, N.C.) From the outside, it was just another middle-class tract house with a fountain in the front yard. Inside, it was anything but homey. Instead of family pictures on the mantle, computer servers were stacked in closets, 12 high-speed wires snaked into the house, and monitors were stacked on top of one another. Welcome to Exhibit A in the nation's intensifying fight against spam. From here, Jeremy Jaynes, a Raleigh businessman who rose to No. 8 on a list of "spam kingpins," broke the nation's toughest spam law by churning out more than 100,000 unsolicited e-mails a month. In fact, he was moving closer to 10 million a day. He was sentenced late last week in Leesburg, Va., to the stiffest penalty ever given to a spammer: Nine years in a state prison. 'They're no longer ghosts' In part, it underscores Americans' changing attitudes about the sanctity of the inbox. And even as the unsolicited e-mail flows on, experts say the case sends a potent message to would-be Internet solicitors: We know where you live. "If there's ever going to be a deterrent effect, it's not in the potential for [a long] jail sentence, but the fact that spammers can in fact be found, that they're no longer ghosts," says Anne Mitchell, director of the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy in San Jose, Calif. Still, the junk keeps coming. In 2001, only 8 percent of e-mail was junk; today, that number hovers near 75 percent, and could jump to 95 percent, thanks to new methods where "spam gangs" hijack servers to churn out huge amounts of e-mail at one time. The consequences are dramatic. One study from Nucleus Research, a technology-research company in Wellesley, Mass., figures companies lose around $1,934 per year per employee on spam. Even David Oblon, Jaynes's lawyer, admits his firm had to hire an outside company to sift through the thousands of daily spam messages. A change in public attitudes. Still, new spam-sifting programs, a slew of civil lawsuits, and antispam activists are having an impact -- if not on the volume of spam, on the stakes. Michigan and Utah, for instance, will launch statewide registries this summer that put children on "Do not spam" lists; a similar proposal is on the table in Illinois. And attitudes toward the Internet are changing, as revealed by a new Pew Internet and American Life Project study that finds that fewer Americans today are suspicious of the Internet because of spam than a year ago. One reason: fewer pornographic messages. Though critics say the federal CAN-SPAM law, signed into effect on January 1, 2004, simply legitimized the practice by regulating it, the law has helped dramatically curb the number of pornographic messages being sent. Spam filters, which have become a competitive edge for the big Internet-service providers, are vacuuming up a large chunk of unwanted ads. Marketers, too, have grown more concerned about a consumer backlash. "There's been a huge paradigm shift in the direct-marketing community when they finally got that there was a real spam problem, and that if they didn't police themselves, their own business model would just go away," says Ms. Mitchell. The loss of anonymity -- and innocence. At the same time, anonymity seems a little harder to maintain as spammers appear in handcuffs on the evening news -- or, like Jaynes, in squinty-eyed mug shots. In Raleigh, he was just another young businessman riding a rising tide of technology investments. Millions knew him -- though they didn't know it -- because they'd seen his his web alias, Gaven Stubberfield, in their inbox. A former restaurateur and direct mailer, he earned $750,000 a month as a spam magnate. His lawyer insists his services were legitimate -- and claims that the government broke interstate commerce agreements and trampled on his First Amendment rights to speak freely. The judge in the case allowed Jaynes to stay out of jail until the appeals courts can sift through the case. One caveat: Jaynes has to go back to using paper and stamps if he wants to write a note to someone. "Without warning or a cease and desist letter, the government swept in and wanted to make a statement," says Oblon. "This prosecution is going to have no effect on email advertising around the world." Much of the focus is on the Virginia case, because the state claimed jurisdiction based on the fact that more than half of all Internet commerce flows through servers in the Old Dominion. Florida just filed a case against a spam house registered with 350 domains and 75 websites hawking cigarettes and pharmaceuticals. The two men were caught by a Microsoft "trap" set up to identify and isolate spam messages. Earlier this year, Microsoft sued 213 alleged spammers, many of them anonymous "John Does," in 97 separate lawsuits -- all while a growing number of spammers are getting in touch with their lawyers. Oblon says the Jaynes case is about a loss of innocence -- with plenty of blame to go around. "There was a time, when e-mail first started being used, that there shouldn't be any commercial activity, that it was all about exchanging ideas, and let's all smell the roses," says Oblon. "Now it's all commercial." (c) Copyright 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor -- an independent daily newspaper providing context and clarity on national and international news, peoples and cultures, and social trends. Online at http://www.csmonitor.com NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, the Christian Science Publishing Society. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 11:26:16 -0400 From: Lisa Minter Subject: India Moves to Silence Cellphone Spam http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0414/p06s01-wosc.html byline: Vir Singh Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor (NEW DELHI) Harsh Pathak was thrilled to get a cellphone. The young corporate lawyer could stay in touch with friends and family while on the move. And he found it easier to schedule meetings. Then he started getting calls from a lot of people he did not know. His number, it turns out, had been acquired by telemarketers -- thanks to a highly organized network devoted to collecting personal information -- who peppered him with calls. Banks wanted him to take out loans. Insurers wanted to send out sales representatives. Ironically, even cellphone companies called, asking him to switch to their service. "They would call in the middle of a meeting when you were trying to explain something to someone," he says. "Then, after the call, you lost your thought and had to start explaining the thing all over again." What made these intrusions even more irritating were the steep "roaming" charges he incurred for receiving calls outside his local network. As India's economy booms, the rising ranks of cellphone users find it hard to enjoy something already rare in this country of 1 billion people: privacy. But that may change after a landmark action by the Supreme Court in February, based on a complaint Mr. Pathak filed. That court asked the government and a clutch of major telephone companies and financial institutions named as defendants in the suit to take steps to protect cellphone users from unsolicited calls. The suit called for a new law and asked that financial institutions and telephone companies protect their clients from an "endemic invasion of privacy." In his petition, Pathak suggested that India consider adopting privacy-protection measures similar to those in other countries, including the federal do-not-call registry in the United States. The Supreme Court can only advise the government on the need for legislation, but India's parliament responds often to these requests. Before it can, however, the government agencies and private parties named as defendants will have to provide an official response to the Supreme Court. That means a cellphone privacy law is at least two years away. For now, though, the court's action is compelling executives to consider the consequences of actions that have long been a standard practice in the financial-services industry. According to Vivek Tankha, the attorney who argued the case for Pathak, one defendant, a cellphone service provider, has placed full-page ads in newspapers assuring customers that it would help them to block unwanted calls. "I have never been thanked so much in my life as I have for this case," he says. Cellphone companies say they support customer privacy. The Cellular Operators' Association of India said it is "in full support of the Supreme Court's notice and will offer all cooperation." The case received major media coverage in one of the world's fastest-growing cellphone markets, where unwanted calls and text messages are a nuisance for tens of millions of subscribers. Cellphone users here in India's capital say the number of calls from telemarketers has fallen a bit during the past year to about two or three a week. But Reva Singh, a magazine editor, still finds them "inexcusable." "I don't know who gives them the right to claim my time," she says, adding that she felt "obliged to listen and be polite" before saying no to sales pitches. In the absence of a law, privacy advocates say, there can be no effective controls on telemarketers. Cellphone users risk having their numbers leaked from the moment they sign up with a provider. Banks deny that they share information about clients, yet they can hardly be accused of going out of their way to protect privacy. One of Mr. Tankha's encounters with a sales agent reveals just how serious this problem can be. "I was shocked when I got calls from a company stating that I should invest in mutual funds, as I had excess funds in my bank account," he says. Some users don't allow themselves to get upset by the calls. "I'm sort of indifferent, but I try to be polite," says Gitanjali Sethi, a law student. "I'm not going to buy anything over the phone." Ms. Sethi knows a thing or two about telemarketers, having worked for one part-time. She says numbers are culled from forms filled out by customers. For example, someone opening a bank account provides a lot of personal information. Often, there is a box the person can check so as not to receive sales calls and promotions by mail. "But this is not always mentioned or displayed prominently." She says even "respected companies" share information with one another. Businesses with complementary products -- such as a cellphone service provider and a cellphone maker -- often do this, because both firms gain from reaching each other's clients. Stopping such practices will require a huge effort, even with the Supreme Court's backing, and even if India adopts a law, acknowledge Pathak and Tankha. But for now, they are happy that the top court has set the ball rolling. "At least the debate has started," said Tankha. "Once we start a debate, the solutions also start to emerge." (c) Copyright 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor-- an independent daily newspaper providing context and clarity on national and international news, peoples and cultures, and social trends. Online at http://www.csmonitor.com NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, The Christian Science Publishing Society. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: 14 Apr 2005 18:23:50 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Congress Aims to Thwart Identity Theft By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer Responding to outrage from consumers whose personal information has been stolen from companies, Congress is primed to pass new laws to try to prevent break-ins and to require businesses to confess to customers when private data is taken. The government's new interest in requiring such embarrassing disclosures reverses years of efforts by the FBI and U.S. prosecutors to shield corporations that have been victims of hackers from bad publicity by keeping such crimes out of headlines. But now, consumers want to know if their private information has been stolen. The Senate is considering at least two proposals to crack down on companies suffering breaches of private customer information. The Federal Trade Commission's chairwoman has endorsed the idea and the Senate Judiciary Committee's chairman hinted this week that a new law might be inevitable. "We may well face a necessity for some really tough legislation," said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. The new push for government action responds to frustrated constituents who are among more than 10 million victims of identity theft each year, some of them twice or three times. It comes after years of reluctance by most companies to voluntarily report break-ins that put customers' financial information at risk. "Congress is primed to take a very serious look at this and pass comprehensive legislation," said Sen. Charles Schumer , D-N.Y., sponsor for one bill. "Nobody has given this problem the focus it deserves. This is a high priority." A California law already requires disclosures to victimized consumers who live there, and roughly 30 states are looking at similar laws. "The last thing a merchant wants to do is tell all his longtime customers he's been hacked and lost all their information," said Keath Nupuf, chief technology officer for CardCops Inc. of Malibu, Calif. The company monitors Internet chat rooms and other hacker communications for stolen credit card numbers, then notifies merchants and consumers to block bad purchases. CardCops contacted 80 consumers earlier this week to report their card numbers and other personal details were circulating among Internet thieves, Nupuf said. The card numbers were pilfered from merchants that range from mom-and-pop shops to Fifth Avenue retailers. "One guy was blowing a blood vessel," he said. "He was going to drive across country and kill the merchant." Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, a computer expert who consulted for the White House during the Bush and Clinton administrations, often is hired by companies to tighten security and clean up the digital mess after a data breach. Zatko said victim companies "almost never" tell the FBI or customers when sensitive data is stolen. "Maybe they have a government contract and it would look bad," Zatko said. "Maybe they're trying to keep it quiet so they don't scare the financial markets." Sometimes companies warn customers. Howard Schmidt, a former White House adviser, said thieves took a computer this year from the store where he buys eyeglasses. The computer contained his credit and medical information, Schmidt said, but the owner contacted his customers and encouraged them to watch for fraudulent purchases. "That was a good thing," Schmidt said. "I want to do business with these guys." In a twist, the FBI and Justice Department have worked aggressively to shield the identities of corporations that have been hacking victims. To encourage businesses to contact them after such break-ins, U.S. investigators and prosecutors have publicly promised to seal court records, keep top executives off witness stands and use protective orders to keep details of these crimes out of the headlines. "There is still some reluctance to call law enforcement, some hesitancy because of the negative impact on reputation," said Amit Yoran, the Bush administration's former top cyber-security official. He said requiring companies to acknowledge a break-in "may be of value, but it should not be done as a knee-jerk reaction to the handful of high-profile and significant disclosures of the past few weeks." The FTC chairwoman, Deborah Majoras, estimated consumers lost $5 billion and businesses lost $48 billion because of identity theft in 2003. The FTC is studying how it can use existing banking statutes and laws against consumer fraud to prosecute companies that fail to report serious breaches. Majoras said government should consider requiring companies to tell customers about break-ins when thefts put them at financial risk. She also endorsed minimum security requirements for businesses that collect sensitive personal information. "The challenge is to come up with a way of defining when notice should be sent and when it doesn't make sense," said Joel Winston, associate director at the FTC's division for financial practices. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 23:08:04 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Web Censors In China Find Success http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51712-2005Apr13.html Web Censors In China Find Success; Falun Gong, Dalai Lama Among Blocked Topics By Jonathan Krim Washington Post Staff Writer The Chinese government is succeeding in broadly censoring what its citizens can read on the Internet, surprising many experts and denting U.S. government hopes that online access would be a quick catalyst for democratic political reform. Internet users in the world's most populous country are routinely blocked from sites featuring information on subjects such as Taiwanese independence, the Falun Gong movement, the Dalai Lama and the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989, according to a study to be released today by a consortium of researchers from Harvard University, the University of Toronto and Cambridge University in England. The study, which evaluated China's Internet practices over the past year, found the government employed an aggressive array of tactics, including blocking certain keyword searches and whole Web sites, and forcing cyber-cafes to keep records of users and the Web pages they visit. "China operates the most extensive, technologically sophisticated and broad-reaching system of Internet filtering in the world," the study said. Researchers said they worry that China's censorship system could become a model for other countries looking to keep the lid on Internet use. China's success at censorship is even more remarkable to researchers because the country is promoting economic growth using technology. An estimated 100 million Chinese use the Internet, nearly half of whom who have high-speed connections. "The Chinese are successfully developing a market economy at the same time they are continuing to accomplish control over the Internet and the media," said C. Richard D'Amato, chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which monitors and promotes economic progress in China. D'Amato said the jury "is not only out, it's way out" on whether the Internet is playing the democratizing role the United States had hoped. The study also undermines the popular notion that the Internet is an organism that is difficult to tame. "The Internet is wildly misunderstood," said Rafal Rohozinski, director of the Advanced Network Research Group at Cambridge, who participated in the study. "It is built around very specific chokepoints" that can be controlled. Using tests conducted inside and outside China, researchers were able to identify censorship at many of those points. Filters are placed on the main "backbone" networks that carry Internet traffic, the study said. A handful of licensed Internet providers also perform their own filtering. Major Chinese search engines filter out or block keywords that would enable surfers to see certain sites. Providers of Web log, or blogging, services block certain posts. Text messaging software has built-in forbidden lists of keywords, which halt service temporarily if used. Chinese authorities perform these tasks largely using U.S. hardware and software. For example, Cisco Systems Inc. routers, machines that move Internet traffic around, are capable of recognizing individual portions of data, a technology that helps battle worms and viruses. That same technology can be used to distinguish certain content. Companies such as Cisco and Google Inc. have been accused of aiding China's censorship by tailoring their products to suit the government's needs. The study did not confirm those allegations, which the companies have denied. Some reports on Chinese censorship also claim that the country has as many as 30,000 "Internet police" dedicated to the task, but the study did not confirm that estimate. Still, it identified 11 government agencies that share responsibility for controlling Internet use in the country. Despite wholesale blocking of Web sites dedicated to news on Taiwan or Tibet, for example, Chinese surfers still can get access to many Western news and culture sites. Researchers said the filtering efforts seem to shift regularly, so that at certain times a CNN site on Tiananmen Square was accessible, for example. Rohozinski said the censorship efforts seem to primarily target sites written in Chinese. Copyright 2005 The Washington Post Company NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Washington Post Company. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wonder why it would not be feasible to route all our internet traffic _through China_ and have them adjust their filter mechanisms to censor out all spam. It would be a good way for Americans and Chinese people to work together on a very worthwhile, useful project. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:54:28 -0400 Subject: Packet8 Joins 'Unfee' Trend http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/62523 Packet8 Joins 'Unfee' Trend; $1.50 'Regulatory Recovery Fee' in May Like the wireless companies and landline incumbents before them, the VoIP industry has slowly succumbed to adding "regulatory recovery fees" to their bills. These aren't official government mandated fees, they're simply rate hikes disguised as fees so you'll blame Uncle Sam instead of the company responsible. Packet8 is the latest to employ this tactic, and will begin adding a $1.50 regulatory recovery fee on your bills effective May 1. [Comment: As many of you know, I think this is a particularly sleazy tactic that allows companies to advertise one price but actually charge another. I think it is absolutely wrong and constitutes deceptive advertising, and I wish that the attorney generals of some of the states would get together and sue the companies that engage in this practice. If you want to raise your rates, then raise your rates, but don't just make up bogus fees that you are not required to charge and tack them on to get a defacto rate increase, while still advertising the lower price.] Article + reader comments at: http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/62523 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 23:33:07 +1000 From: Colin Subject: Texting is Slower Than Morse The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a challenge between 93 year old telegraph operator transmitting morse code to an 82 year old with a manual typewriter, and youngsters sending a text message. The text message was received 18 seconds after the message was already on paper. http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/04/14/1113251739401.html Regards, Colin Sutton ------------------------------ From: FrazNor@gmail.com Subject: Re: Traditional Mail Discouraged? Date: 14 Apr 2005 19:25:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > 2) Film studios used to have their addresses listed but some no longer > do. Particuarly, the WB TV network refuses postal mail and has > everything returned to the sender. Actors sending in pictures and resumes to film/TV studios often send them in clear plastic envelopes. Associated Bag makes a nice plastic envelope/bag that I have used instead of #10 envelopes. I fold over open end and use the mailing label and self-adhesive stamp to seal it closed. ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: Traditional Mail Discouraged? Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 08:45:29 +0300 Organization: Elisa Internet customer wrote: > I get the feeling organizations no longer want the public to contact > them via traditional postal mail. (No more "Keep those cards and > letters coming in"). > I suspect this is largely due to the antrax attacks of Sept 11 ... 'Largely'? I think that's silly. It is obviously an economic decision, pure and simple. Cheers, Henry ------------------------------ From: Supak Lailert Subject: Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:56:57 +0700 Hi Pat, I don't know about your current SpamAssassin set up but have you updated the latest rules from http://www.rulesemporium.com/ regularly? From my SpamAssassin installation I found that the spams "evolve" to get around SpamAssassin and only the latest rules will be able to catch those advance spam messages. Cheers, Supak ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses Date: 15 Apr 2005 07:38:20 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > There *has to be* a better way of sorting out the spam. There have been several efforts to outlaw it, but none have passed. Do the 'spam interest groups' have that powerful of a lobby to keep such bills from passing? Or are there other Internet activists who, for their own reasons, are opposed to such laws and regulation? Are there technical reasons of the Internet itself that prevents restricting spam? P.S. The real "Spam" is a pork luncheon meat made by the Hormell Company. Been around for years. During the WW II it was given to soldiers who complained about it. The problem was not with the food itself -- people liked it -- but rather than monotony of the same food served over and over again. We take long lasting packaged food for granted these days, but during WW II it was a difficult challenge for the army Quartermaster Corp to preserve food made in the U.S. to withstand long sea voyage to Europe or Asia, keep in all sorts of climatic conditions, and be tasty. The official US Army history series ('green books') admit it was tough for them to do. Cooking stoves used gasoline, but required unleaded because the lead would clog the gear. BUT, leaded gas was needed for vehicles and they didn't want to have to ship both leaded and unleaded gasoline. The logistics of supplying millions of men overseas were incredible. Take a look at the Quartermaster Corp WW II history 'green book'. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To address your postscript first, even the Hormell Company likes to poke fun at what happened to their product 'Spam' when the internet people got done with it. Have you seen those various commercials playing on TVLand? There are variations on the theme but always with the same results. In one, a houseguest is complimenting the family cook on the meal which has been served, which consists of some spam. As the cook describes how she prepared the meal, each time she speaks the word 'spam' we see her mouth up close, speaking the word deliberatly. The houseguest asks if a second serving might be available, whereupon the cook says. "oh certainly, we always have more _spam_"; a very large delivery truck crashes through the wall and dumps thousands of cans of the canned meat product all over the table where they sit eating. In a second one, the family is sitting at the table eating dinner, but one family member is sitting at the family computer typing something (appears to be the 'erase' key) with an angry, hateful look on his face as he brays loud enough for everyone to hear him, "**M O R E S P A M!!**, and the very same truck crashes the wall of the house and dumps its load (several thousand cans of spam) all over the table and the computer, completely burying the computer and the man who had been doing the complaining. A very brief message at the end of both tells us it came from Hormell Company. Now the first part of your message, summed up thusly: Can't *they* do anything about it? I can tell you that much of the software used in email was constructed thirty years ago when spam was unheard of; it is not easily adaptable for modern times. I can also tell you there was a time many years ago when the very notion of censoring email and/or Usenet messages was unthinkable. And some of us, myself at least, put messages on Usenet saying, "when it eventually gets to the point that the cesspool has to be cleaned out and censoring of email and Usenet news becomes 'thinkable' by then it will be too late." And just think, in the middle/late 1980's around here, we were shocked and offended by that guy on Staten Island who sold magazine subscriptions on the net posing as a foreign exchange female college student, and then 'Spam King' if anyone still remembers him. But ... as offended as we were, the idea of 'outing' them and violating _their_ privacy was still considered 'unthinkable'. And for those of us who had all our wits about us (yes, I used to be that way prior to the advent of my diseased brain) to say it was 'thinkable' and proceeded to do everything in our power to expose those a==holes with highly personal messages giving their home addresses, home phone numbers, Social Security Numbers and even (in one instance) their State of New York Driver's Records (and yes, unnamed reader, I _do_ remember when you graciously forwarded me the files on the internet magazine salesman) all _we_ got for our efforts to expose these creatures was grief. The magazine salesman and Spam King put tremendous heat on the Trustees of Northwestern University, and in their horror that the unthinkable had occurred, and one of the creatures had been (a) censored and (b) had their 'privacy invaded' in turn put the heat on the sysadmin at Northwestern to get my Unix accounts killed. Trouble with that was, that like any good pre-ISP-days netter, I was a 'university Unix system account collector', between Boston University, MIT, Harvard, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of California at Berkeley and a few other places, I had more unix accounts than you could number -- and still have a couple of them around, even despite my brain disease, so the loss of Northwestern only put a slight crimp in my schedule. The magazine salesman and his friend Spam King did not put TELECOM Digest out of business as they claimed. So Lisa, to further elaborate on your question "can't anything be done", there are some politics involved with spam even today. There are still some netters, that though they bitch and moan about all the spam still don't want to get down to the real business of putting them all to sleep once and for all. Thankfully, more and more people on the net are getting to the point of 'thinking' about it. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 18:54:22 -0500 From: John Schmerold Subject: Re: Spam Hits Us Bad Today - Message Losses Pat, We'd be happy to filter it for you. Our filter has been doing an excellent job of cleaning up spam. We see what you see. On week-ends 10% of all mail is ham, 5% maybe spam (lunchmeat), rest is spam. During the week ham goes to 20%. There would be no charge, however, we may end up putting a "Scanned by Katy Computer & Wireless" banner at bottom of scanned messages. All I need you to do is point your mx record for your domain to mx1.schmerold.com In addition, I need to know where you want me to send your mail, I assume that would be: mail2.iecc.com One more thing, when we do this for you, your SPAM is deleted, we only send ham & lunchmeat. John Schmerold Katy Computer & Wireless 20 Meramec Station Rd Valley Park MO 63088 636-861-6900 v 775-227-6947 f ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Comcast Sued for Disclosing Customer Information Organization: Symantec Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 21:22:55 -0400 In article , Lisa Minter wrote: > But no court authorized Comcast to release names and addresses of its > customers, or notified his client that her information had been given > to an outside party, Lybeck said. "Comcast should respect the > rights of privacy who pay them monthly bills," Lybeck said. > Representatives from Comcast said they could not immediately comment > on the lawsuit. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If, in fact, Comcast was legally subpoened > for the information, then they _had_ to give it out, or face penalties > themselves. I assume that is the case, Why do you assume that, when the article clearly says "But no court authorized Comcast to release names and addresses"? Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The reason I assume that, Barry, is because otherwise there are inconsistencies in the report. We know that the recording industry is very fond of blind lawsuits; i.e. John Doe 1 through John Doe 1^19 and every John Doe in between. They say that is needed since ISP's will not help them without _first suing and obtaining a subpoena_. I believe they did the same thing in this case. If they didn't, how did they arrive at her name, by asking Comcast 'pretty please'? I know what the article said, but somehow I feel the reporter was misinformed by the lady's lawyer and did not investigate further. After all, the recording people had no way of knowing that Comcast would just turn over; no other ISP's to date have cooperated. And once the subpoena is there, that's all the 'authorization' Comcast needed, right? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Can I Port an 800 Number Without the Old Carrier's Permission? Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 05:40:13 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Indeed it's all about ownership. And, some folks who have transferred vanity numbers to Vonage might be in for an unpleasant surprise when they try to transfer that number from Vonage. ------------------------------ From: Jason Subject: Re: Walkie Talkie Date: 15 Apr 2005 07:07:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I refer to walkie talkie that being use in private company and just within the company itself. Any idea? Thank you, Jason [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Chances are likely that the radio you refer to by its generic name 'walkie talkie' was actually a UHF radio operating in something other than the traditional citizen's band frequency. My clue is your reference to 'private company' and 'within the company itself'. Maybe like a radio a security service would use in its work. Those will typically have two or four 'channels' which is all they seem to need. I don't know why they don't have more channels in them; probably they don't need more, and more would make the unit too cumbersome. Any other ideas, anyone? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:13:42 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Last Laugh! Passenger Found Dead Hour After Plane Lands at O'Hare Nice to see they're alert in Chicago. I guess they wanted to make sure he had time to vote. http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-dead14.html www.suntimes.com Passenger found dead hour after plane lands at O'Hare A passenger was discovered dead aboard American Airlines Flight 154 from Tokyo to Chicago on Wednesday afternoon, police said. The man apparently suffered a heart attack and was found by a cleaning crew about 5 p.m., an hour after the aircraft landed at O'Hare Airport, said Chicago Police Officer Matt Jackson. Authorities were notified and the man was pronounced dead at the scene, a detective said. An autopsy is set for today. The name of the 66-year-old man, whose passport shows he was a U.S. citizen, was not being released by authorities pending notification of his family. The passenger had been scheduled to get on another flight to Indianapolis, his final destination, said Tim Smith, American Airlines spokesman. After the plane had been moved from Terminal 5 to another terminal for cleaning, a crew found the man in a bathroom, Smith said. Lisa Donovan Copyright 2005 The Sun-Times Company ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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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 V24 #164 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Apr 15 16:53:00 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3FKr0Y29779; Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:53:00 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:53:00 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504152053.j3FKr0Y29779@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 V24 #165 TELECOM Digest Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:53:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 165 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Skype Adds New Services for Internet Phoning (Lisa Minter) Telecom Update (Canada) #477, April 15, 2005 (John Riddell) FCC to TV/Radio Stations: Identify 3rd Party VNRs (Danny Burstein) Verizon to Carry Starz Movie Channels (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) Re: Cell Phone Wearing Out? (ron@oakes.net) Re: Cell Phone Wearing Out? (GlowingBlueMist) Re: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronics (Hudson Leighton) Re: Is RocketVoIP Deceiving Customers Regarding Unlimited (Isaiah Beard) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Danny Burstein) Re: Bell Operating Company Employees/Retirees (sbctech) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 15 Apr 2005 12:40:03 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Skype Adds New Services for Internet Phoning Skype, the fast-growing Internet telephony company, launched on Friday a voice mail and phone access service in eight countries including the United States, stepping up competitive pressure on incumbent operators. Skype, whose software allows people to make free phone calls over the Internet, said users could now get up to three phone numbers which will allow them to be reached by phone from any ordinary handset, fixed or mobile. Previously Skype users could only be reached from a computer connected to the Internet. "This makes Skype much more ubiquitous," Skype Chief Executive and co-founder Niklas Zennstrom told Reuters. Skype, which launched its Internet software only 20 months ago and never advertised it once, counts 34 million registered users -- a little more than the population of Canada. The company's growth is driven largely by the global migration of consumers toward Internet-routed communications which cost significantly less than cable, satellite and radio telephony. Internet-based telephony was, until recently, mainly used by corporations. Skype said its Internet telephony software passed the mark of 100 million downloads on Friday. The company said its new voice mail and call-in service, called SkypeIn, would cost 10 euros ($13) for three months or 30 euros ($39) for 12 months. Voice mail only costs 5 euros ($7) for three months and 15 euros ($19) for a year. "The new services represent an important new source of revenue for the company," Zennstrom said. The Luxembourg-based business said its existing pre-pay service which enables users to make calls from their computer to ordinary phones at low prices around the world, already counted 1.2 million registered users. The company, however, declined to say how much revenue the pre-pay service, called SkpeOut, had generated since it was launched in August 2004. Zennstrom said he expected about half those subscribing to SkypeOut would want to get the new SkypeIn service. Skype said subscribers to SkypeIn would be able to get a personal phone number in the United States, Hong Kong, Britain, France, Sweden, Norway, Finland or Denmark. However, in some countries such as France, an address will be needed to obtain a phone number. "Anyone may call the user at their SkypeIn number wherever the user travels, providing huge cost savings compared to mobile roaming rates and flexibility for Skype users to receive calls at home, at the office, hotel or anywhere," the Luxemburg-based company said in a statement. Skype said it was seeking to roll out its new SkypeIn service in other countries soon. The company announced in February an agreement with Motorola to preload Skype software on Motorola handsets, boosting its access to the wireless market. Zennstrom said he was expecting the first Skype pre-loaded handsets -- designed by i-Mate, a small Dubai based company, to come to market as early as this month but he did not say in what countries. Zennstrom co-founded Kazaa, the computer peer-to-peer file-sharing software that enabled millions to download music from the Internet for free and caused much pain to record companies. Skype now threatens to do the same to incumbent telecom operators. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #477, April 15, 2005 Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 15:17:18 -0400 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 477: April 15, 2005 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/en/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** UTC CANADA: www.canada.utc.org/ ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Ottawa Announces Telecom Review Panel ** Rogers, Bell to Launch Cellphone TV ** Two New CRTC Commissioners Named ** Businesses Urged to Begin 10-Digit Conversion ** Bell Offers Accelerated Dialup ** Aurora Cable to Launch Phone Service ** Global Telecom Spending Up 9.4% ** CRTC Okays Bell "Dry Copper" DSL Offering ** Telus-Shaw Dispute on Hold Until VoIP Decision ** Cisco Buys Server Switch Maker ** Verizon Gets 13% of MCI ** European Businesses Offered Flat-Rate IP Calling ** Nortel to Miss 1Q Reports Deadline ** RIM Lines Up Suppliers in Israel ** Telecom Coalition Launches Website ** Cogeco Revenue, Profit Rise ** Shaw Net Income Up 87% ** Wireless Industry Leaders to Address Calgary Conference OTTAWA ANNOUNCES TELECOM REVIEW PANEL: Industry Minister David Emerson this week confirmed the appointment of a three-person Telecom Policy Review Panel, to report by the end of 2005. As we reported in Telecom Update #475, the panel members are Gerri Sinclair, former head of Microsoft's MSN.ca; Hank Intven, former Executive Director Telecom at the CRTC, now a partner at McCarthy Tetrault; and Andre Tremblay, former CEO of Microcell Telecommunications. ** The panel has been asked to make recommendations that will improve Canada's competitiveness, including the telecom regulatory framework, access to advanced telecom services (including high-speed connectivity), and adoption of information and communications technology. ** The panel will receive submissions from interested parties, hold public consultation, and commission reports on some specific issues. ** Industry Canada says it is already addressing several policy issues that can be fixed in the shorter term, including telemarketing, wireless number portability, and giving the CRTC fining authority. www.ic.gc.ca/cmb/welcomeic.nsf/261ce500dfcd7259852564820068dc6d/85256a5d 006b972085256fe0005b8149!OpenDocument ROGERS, BELL TO LAUNCH CELLPHONE TV: Rogers Wireless and Bell Mobility are preparing to launch television service over their cellular networks. Both will use MobiTV, a Java application that has already been deployed by some U.S. cellular carriers. ** Rogers Mobile Television will offer eight to ten channels by the end of June for a promotional price of $9 a month plus data charges. ** Bell says it will launch in early May with about a dozen channels for $10 a month plus data charges. TWO NEW CRTC COMMISSIONERS NAMED: Heritage Minister Liza Frulla this week announced the appointment of two new CRTC commissioners: Elizabeth Duncan, an accountant and former cable industry executive in Nova Scotia, and Helen Ray del Val, a former senior counsel with BC Tel. They will represent the Atlantic and Pacific regions, respectively. www.news.gc.ca/cfmx/CCP/view/en/index.cfm?articleid=3D137559 ** Denis Carmel, CRTC Director General Communications, will be leaving the Commission staff this spring or summer to take a post elsewhere in the civil service. He will stay at the CRTC until a replacement is named. BUSINESSES URGED TO BEGIN 10-DIGIT CONVERSION: Ten-digit local dialing will officially begin in Area Codes 519, 613, 450, 514, and 819 in June 2006, but a coalition of carriers in the affected areas says that in most cases 10-digit dialing works now. They are urging businesses to begin reprogramming equipment now. See www.dial10.ca for details. BELL OFFERS ACCELERATED DIALUP: Bell Canada now offers a free service, Dial-Up Accelerator, that it says makes dialup access speeds up to five times faster. The technology is from Waterloo, Ontario-based SlipStream Data. AURORA CABLE TO LAUNCH PHONE SERVICE: Aurora Cable Internet plans to provide "full-service standard-feature" phone service by July 1 in its serving area north of Toronto. Aurora will resell PSTN local loops provided by FCI Broadband and is also working with FCI to develop a Voice over IP service. GLOBAL TELECOM SPENDING UP 9.4%: Dublin-based Research and Markets says that worldwide telecommunications revenue totaled US$2.1 trillion in 2004, up 9.4% from 2003. The U.S. market accounted for over one-third of global telecom spending. CRTC OKAYS BELL "DRY COPPER" DSL OFFERING: In Telecom Order 2005-144, the CRTC approves an amendment to Bell Canada's Gateway Access tariff that will allow competitors to use Bell unbundled loops to provide high-speed access to end customers who don't subscribe to any voice service over the loop. Bell says it has had "many requests for this capability." www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2005/o2005-144.htm TELUS-SHAW DISPUTE ON HOLD UNTIL VOIP DECISION: The CRTC says that it will deal with Telus's complaint against Shaw (that the cableco's telephone service does not comply with its CLEC obligations -- see Telecom Update #475) after the Commission releases its VoIP decision, due by May 12. CISCO BUYS SERVER SWITCH MAKER: Cisco Systems has agreed to buy Topspin Communications, a five-year-old maker of high- performance "server fabric switches" used in grid computing, for US$250 million in cash and share options. When the deal is completed, Topspin will become part of Cisco's Data Center, Switching, and Wireless Technology Group. VERIZON GETS 13% OF MCI: Verizon Communications has purchased the 13.4% stake in MCI held by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu, paying $2 more per share than it is offering other MCI shareholders in a public takeover bid. Verizon has also filed a registration statement confirming its plan to buy all of the long distance carrier for US$7.6 billion. EUROPEAN BUSINESSES OFFERED FLAT-RATE IP CALLING: Colt Telecom Group plc has launched IP telephony service for businesses in Austria, Belgium, France, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and UK. It offers unlimited local, national, and international calls within those countries for a flat rate of 24.50 euros per user, per month. NORTEL TO MISS 1Q REPORTS DEADLINE: Nortel Networks says it will file its first-quarter financial report by the end of May, missing the deadline set by Canadian and U.S. security regulators. The 2004 annual report is to be filed in April. RIM LINES UP SUPPLIERS IN ISRAEL: Continuing its run of BlackBerry marketing agreements, Research In Motion announced deals April 14 with Cellcom Israel and Partner Communications, which together have 4.7 million subscribers in Israel. TELECOM COALITION LAUNCHES WEBSITE: The Coalition for Competitive Telecommunications has launched a website to provide information on its policy initiatives and activities. ** The site provides details on the previously announced Business Telecom Networking Dinners the Coalition will hold in conjunction the 2005 Canadian Telecom Summit (May 30) and the Telemanagement Live 2005 conference and trade show (October 18). www.telecomcoalition.ca COGECO REVENUE, PROFIT RISE: Cogeco Cable reports sales for the three months ending February 28 of $55.3 million, 9.7% more than a year earlier. Net income was $5.6 million, up from $0.6 million. Cogeco added a net 12,781 Internet customers. ** CEO Louis Audet says Cogeco's forthcoming Internet phone service will not match Videotron's pricing ($16-$30 a month), which he calls "needlessly low." SHAW NET INCOME UP 87%: Shaw Communications' profit for the three months ended February 28 was $32.1 million, an 87% increase over the same period a year ago. Service revenue of $550 million was up 7.1%. Shaw gained 32,539 Internet customers, a 3% increase. WIRELESS INDUSTRY LEADERS TO ADDRESS CALGARY CONFERENCE: Wireless Communications 2005, to be held in Calgary May 17-18, will feature addresses by noted U.S. analyst Andrew Seybold and executives of Virgin Mobile Canada, Vonage Canada, Rogers Wireless, and Research In Motion. For information: www.wirelessconnections2005.com. TO SUBMIT AN ITEM TO TELECOM UPDATE=20 E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2005 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: FCC to TV/Radio Stations: Identify 3rd Party VNRs Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 17:57:14 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC (VNR = Video News Release) This came to a head in the past few weeks when various folk got all upset about the Bush associates producing video clips which tv stations ran as "news" without identifying the source. Despite people suddenly discovering this annoyance, VNRs have actually been around for decades. You think that five minute clip about car safety (prominently showing a specific car's side impact airbags ...) was put together by your local station? Hah. I laugh at your kung fu. Now that they were jogged, the FCC sent a reminder to stations that they're supposed to identify the producers/distributers ... "With this Public Notice, the Commission reminds broadcast licensees and cable operators that air VNRs, as well as all entities and individuals involved in the production and provision of the material at issue here, of their respective disclosure responsibilities under the Commission's sponsorship identification rules ... http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-84A1.txt [a] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-84A1.doc [b] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-84A1.pdf [c] [a] messed up ascii [b] Word [c] pdf (most FCC material is available all three ways. URLs are identical except for the trailing extension) _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 13:13:56 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Verizon to Carry Starz Movie Channels Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 15, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20835&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon to carry Starz movie channels BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * P. Diddy sees gold in mobile phone music * Comcast's Internet service experiences technical problems USTA SPOTLIGHT * SUPERCOMM: TIA's and USTA's premiere event EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Sorting out the Wi-Fi shuffle * MSOs embrace faster modem technology VOIP DOWNLOAD * VeriSign targets financial companies with new VoIP service * VoIP challenges regulators * VoIP facilitates recording phone calls * Vonage in marketing deal to sell VoIP to college students REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * California PUC backs off VoIP appeal * Florida Senate OKs municipal telecom networks Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20835&l=2017006 Legal and Privacy information at http://www.dailylead.com/about/privacy_legal.jsp SmartBrief, Inc. 1100 H ST NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20005 ------------------------------ From: ron@oakes.net Subject: Re: Cell Phone Wearing Out? Date: 15 Apr 2005 11:33:41 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Choreboy wrote: > A relative complained to Verizon that she had trouble making calls on > a trip through Georgia. Her phone is six years old. The saleswoman > gave the phone to a technician who a said the transmitter was wearing > out and she needed to buy a new phone. The saleswoman offered her a > choice of second-hand phones. One possibility is that the six-year-old phone is an analog (AMPS) only phone. Six years ago, 1999, CDMA was just starting to roll out and relatively few manufacturer had phones out (Qualcomm, Sony and towards the end of the year Motorola and Samsung, IIRC). Right now Verizon Wireless is in the process of reducing their analog coverage to the minimum that they can get away with in preparation to shutting down the analog system once they are allowed. Therefore, it is possible that the trouble making calls was that the area being visited had poor analog coverage, but Choreboy's relative's home area still as good analog coverage. If this is case the technician still made an incorrect statement; either due to ignorance, or because of some policy that blames analog coverage woes on the phone rather than a business decision. If the phone is an analog only phone, upgrading it will eventually become a necessity as the FCC is eventually going to allow the carriers to turn analog off. Ron Oakes ------------------------------ From: GlowingBlueMist Subject: Re: Cell Phone Wearing Out? Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 13:36:21 -0500 Organization: Octanews Choreboy wrote in message news:telecom24.163.4@telecom-digest.org: > A relative complained to Verizon that she had trouble making calls on > a trip through Georgia. Her phone is six years old. The saleswoman > gave the phone to a technician who a said the transmitter was wearing > out and she needed to buy a new phone. The saleswoman offered her a > choice of second-hand phones. > In this area the phone works as well as ever, so my relative decided > not to replace it until she takes another long trip. > Do cellphone transmitters normally get weak as they age? Wouldn't > that cause a problem in normal use? My neighbor has two relatives who > switched providers because both found Verizon's coverage unsatisfactory > on trips through Georgia. Does it sound as if Verizon is conning my > relative? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At first blush, I would say your > relative got a con job. The cellphone transmitter has no idea where it > is at; its job is just to radiate RF. If the phone works okay at your > house, it should work as well in Georgia; I cannot imagine that Georgia > has cellphone towers any further apart than cellphone towers are in > your area of the country, and all that should really matter in the > case of a 'transmitter getting weak from age' is how far it has to > look for a tower. If it can find a tower, that should end the problem > of 'old age'. PAT] As the cell phone continues to work just fine in her local area I agree totally that there most likely was nothing wrong with the phone itself. I would be more inclined to suspect that either she was out of range of cell towers during parts of the trip or due to the age of the phone hers might have an analog style transmitter versus a digital one. Quite a few of the new towers being built only support the newer digital style phone as they can support more than one call at a time in the same bandwidth a single analog phone call would use. If she likes her present phone and does not want to "upgrade" she might want to consider purchasing a TracPhone or other type of prepaid phone for traveling. The model I use will first try to make a digital connection and then switch to analog if that is all that is available, making it compatible with the older towers as well as the new ones. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 12:54:58 -0500 From: hudsonl@skypoint.com (Hudson Leighton) Subject: Re: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronic Devices? Organization: MRRP In article , GlowingBlueMist wrote: > wrote in message > news:telecom24.157.7@telecom-digest.org: >> I just got a 900 MHz DSS cordless phone, and I had the perfect spot >> for it, right on top of my tower computer case. But then I noticed >> that the manual says that the base unit must be placed away from all >> electronic equipment, including PCs, stereos, TVs, and microwaves. >> What is the reasoning for this? Could the magnetic fields generated >> by the speakers in the phone cause any problems? > Usually the problem is nothing more than radio frequency > interferrence. Much like you get if you take a portable radio and get > it too close to your computer or monitor. > I have run into some cases where routers or even computers rebooted > when a portable phone transmitter is placed too close to them due to > the RFI. I know of several server rooms that do not allow any cordless phones, cellphones, bluetooth, etc. in the room, you can't even bring them in if they are turned off, one room has old Ma Bell 2500 phone on very long cords for you to use of you need to talk to tech support while working on a machine. -Hudson -- http://www.skypoint.com/~hudsonl ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: Is RocketVoIP Deceiving Customers Regarding "Unlimited" VoIP Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 15:11:28 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Jack Decker wrote: > A disturbing post just appeared on BroadbandReports.com -- I have > removed references to RocketVoIP from the Resources for Michigan > Telephone Users web site until and unless this issue is resolved. > "Hi all ... I have a problem with RocketVoip (www.rocketvoip.com) They > said their service is unlimited ($24.95) and suddenly they sent me an > email about a week ago, telling me that I'm not qualified as a > residential user and they asked me to switch to business plan. Please > read the attached email. ..." > http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,13170575 FWIW, Packet8 does the same thing to it's customers: http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,12942543 It's unfortuante that these guys are redefining the word "unlimited." E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 19:25:48 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Lisa Minter writes: [ lots snipped ] > http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0414/p02s01-usju.html > (RALEIGH, N.C.) From the outside, it was just another middle-class > tract house with a fountain in the front yard. Inside, it was anything > but homey. Instead of family pictures on the mantle, computer servers > were stacked in closets, 12 high-speed wires snaked into the house, > and monitors were stacked on top of one another. > From here, Jeremy Jaynes, a Raleigh businessman who rose to No. 8 on > a list of "spam kingpins," broke the nation's toughest spam law by > churning out more than 100,000 unsolicited e-mails a month. In fact, > he was moving closer to 10 million a day. Ok, this guy contracted for high speed internet connectivity from someone or another. Why did anyone else accept any packets from this organization? Let the spammer continue to pay the local company. And let the two of them send all the garbage they want to each other. There's no requirement (barring a few unique circumstances) for anyone else to answer the doorbell when they ring. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: sbctech Subject: Re: Bell Operating Company Employees/Retirees Date: 15 Apr 2005 11:28:13 -0700 PAT, We would like to thank you for your support. Yes, our ranks have suffered along with many other telecommunications brothers and sisters. The sbceic.com website is our effort to stay in touch and stay informed. We enjoy Telecom Digest, keep up the good work. The sbceic community [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are quite welcome. I am wondering if I should add you to our page of telecom links, where it will be permanently noted by interested parties. In your wildest imagination, did you ever think, 25 years ago, telecommunications would change as much as it has? I know I didn't think so. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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! 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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #165 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Apr 15 21:20:30 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3G1KTp02698; Fri, 15 Apr 2005 21:20:30 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 21:20:30 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504160120.j3G1KTp02698@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 V24 #166 TELECOM Digest Fri, 15 Apr 2005 21:20:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 166 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson South Korea Cracks Down on Online Porn (Lisa Minter) AS5350, TCL and DTMF Tone (Victor Cappuccio) VoicePulse Lowers Startup Costs and Drops Tax (Jack Decker) Internet Pioneer: VoIP is NOT Telephony (Jack Decker) Mitigating Identity Theft (Dave Garland) Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse (Pete Romfh) Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' (spam trap) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (John Levine) Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses (Lisa Hancock) Re: Walkie Talkie (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Clearwire May Block VoIP Competitors (cphipps@gmail.com) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 15 Apr 2005 16:42:41 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: South Korea Cracks Down on Online Porn South Korea Cracks Down on Online Porn By BURT HERMAN, Associated Press Writer The world's most wired country is raiding cyberspace's red-light district in a campaign pitting Confucian morals against modern technology. Since January, the main prosecutor's office in Seoul has issued arrest warrants for about 100 people charged with spreading obscene material under South Korea's telecommunications law, a crime carrying penalties of up to a year in jail or a nearly $10,000 fine. In a highly publicized case last month, police in the southern city of Busan arrested the operator of a Web site that offers a forum to arrange swaps of sex partners. The 36-year-old man, whose name hasn't been released, is charged with spreading obscene material and remains jailed while the investigation continues, said Busan police officer Lee Nam-sik, who is heading the probe. The campaign comes amid a wider moral crackdown starting last year, when penalties for prostitution-related crimes also were doubled. Korea has an active sex trade both online and off. According to the Korean Institute of Criminology, the amount spent on prostitution alone amounted to $23.6 billion in 2002, the last year for which figures were available. At a recent Cabinet meeting, where the campaign against prostitution was discussed, President Roh Moo-hyun stressed the need for establishing a "healthy consumption culture," implying money should be spent on things other than the sex trade. In a country where more than 70 percent of homes have high-speed Internet connections, access to cyberporn is easy. That means traditional taboos in Korea's conservative, Confucian-based society have quickly shattered, said Lee Mee-sook, a sociology professor at Paichai University in the central city of Daejeon. "The code of ethics became weak, and people started satisfying their sexual desires through the Internet anonymously," she said. On a busy street in the center of the South Korean capital Seoul, "adult" Internet cafes aren't hard to find. In the cafes, customers can surf the Web in private booths, as opposed to the open rows of computers found in typical cybercafes. Authorities "can't really control it because it's the Internet, it's impossible," said Lee, 28, a worker at the Red Box adult Internet cafe, who gave only his last name. "We should have the freedom to see whatever we want." Web operators insist that adult content appearing on mainstream sites has been rated by the Korea Media Rating Board, the agency responsible for setting age recommendations for everything from films to computer games, and complain that prosecutors have overstepped their authority. "The portal sites are being accused for what they thought was legal," said Lee Yeun-woo of Kinternet, an organization that represents popular portals such Yahoo Korea, Daum and Naver. "The fine actually isn't that much. But we want to prove what those sites did wasn't illegal and want the prosecutors to prove what was wrong." To get around laws regulating Web site content, some sex sites are based on Web servers outside South Korea. The Ministry of Information and Communications is asking Internet providers to block access to them as well. Many Korean Web sites require users to enter their national identification card numbers to confirm their age to access adult content. But tech-savvy children can use programs to create false numbers or simply use their parents' IDs instead. South Korea's constitution guarantees freedom of speech, but contains the caveat that such expression should neither "violate the honor or rights of other persons nor undermine public morals or social ethics." The law doesn't define obscenity, but Jun Ji-yun, a law professor at Seoul's Yonsei University, said it was understood to be something that "brings sexual disgrace to people." Given the sheer volume of Internet pornography, prosecutors realize they face an uphill battle. They are focusing on larger Web portals and other well-known sites first, in hopes that their investigation will draw attention to the issue and serve as a warning, said Kim Dae-hyun, a Seoul prosecutor. "There are so many crimes and so many pornography sites out there," he said. "We cannot deal with all of them with such a limited amount of people here." AP reporter In-young Bang contributed to this report. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Associated Press. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, take the word of someone who knows what pornographic spam is all about: I get literally tons of it everyday from South Korea, always in those ascii-attempts-to-translate Korean into English, you know, the '@@@@@@@@' characters. But I have installed a Korean language pack from Microsoft I think, and been able to see the _real thing_ as they put it out, and some of it will indeed curl your hair. They are downright weird, even in their porn. Now, an issue or two ago, I suggest a 'good neighbor policy' where we Americans route all our email/Usenet stuff through China for handling and I suggest we include South Korea in that. Now you know how the Chinese government feels about South Korea; they won't listen for a minute to any of that stuff; they'd just as soon nuke them and be done with it. Imagine the Chinese government having to hire a couple million more censors to sit there and trash that stuff all day before they sent our email and news back to us here in the USA. PAT] ------------------------------ From: vcappuccio@gmail.com (Victor Cappuccio) Subject: AS5350, TCL and DTMF Tone. Date: 15 Apr 2005 14:07:22 -0700 Hola a todos, I was wondering if I can do this: Can a AS5350 running a TCL Script, detect when the call is completed and generate a DTMF Tone (like a #) and send it to a Billing Call Control System? Thanks in advance, Saludos, Victor ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 18:31:57 -0400 Subject: VoicePulse Lowers Startup Costs and Drops Tax A VoicePulse press release some of you might find interesting. VoicePulse offers service in as many or more Michigan ratecenters than any of the other major VoIP providers, and seems to receive far more positive comments than other providers on the BroadbandReports.com VoIP forum. Note, if any members of the press are reading this, an e-mail that came to me with this release said that Ravi Sakaria, the President & CEO of VoicePulse, is available for comment - contact Chris Liu, VoicePulse Public Relations, at 732-339-5106 to arrange an interview. Personally, I'd like to see the VoIP companies that actually offer numbers in all of Michigan's area codes (rather than just rateceters in the Detroit and Grand Rapids areas) get some publicity in the major media, and VoicePulse is in my opinion the top company in that regard, especially after this announcement. http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/?d=76351 VoicePulse Lowers Startup Costs and Drops Tax Company lowers first month cost by $50 and drops unwanted tax JAMESBURG, NJ (April 15, 2005) - VoicePulse Inc. announced today a promotion that reduces the startup costs of their most popular nationwide calling plan, the America Unlimited Special Offer, by $50. The America Unlimited Special Offer allows consumers to make the jump to Voice-over-IP (VoIP) for only $24.99/month for unlimited local & US long distance calling. "We've been able to build and maintain an efficient operation without sacrificing customer satisfaction or service quality," says Ravi Sakaria, VoicePulse President & CEO. "Combined with our increased scale, this translates into lower costs for VoicePulse and savings for our customers." In addition, VoicePulse has stopped charging Federal Excise Tax (FET), saving customers an additional 3% each month. VoicePulse is now the only broadband phone service provider that does not charge any unnecessary taxes or regulatory fees other than common sales tax. "There is no clarity regarding whether or not the Federal Excise Tax applies to VoIP service, so we have decided to err in favor of the consumer," says Sakaria. VoicePulse continues to pay Federal Excise Tax to its underlying telecommunications providers, as those services are still regulated and subject to taxes and tariffs. VoicePulse has won awards from highly regarded technical journals and trade magazines such as PC Magazine, PC World, and DesignTechnica. VoicePulse also boasts having the top award from Broadband Reports, which is based solely on customer reviews. ABOUT VOICEPULSE VoicePulse is a New Jersey based communications company that uses its VoIP network to deliver advanced features and high-quality phone service to residential and small-business consumers. The company leads the industry in delivering innovative features and excellent customer service. For more information about VoicePulse, please contact: Rima Vaghasiya 732-339-5100 rima @ voicepulse.com How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 18:28:16 -0400 Subject: Internet Pioneer: VoIP is NOT Telephony http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=354 4/15/2005 Internet pioneer: VoIP is NOT telephony -Posted by Russell Shaw @ 2:32 am My colleague Renai LeMay at ZDNet Australia has just had the professional privilege of hearing remarks by one of the technology world's smartest men. Vint Cerf. The Vint Cerf that developed the TCP/IP protocol that makes the Internet work. And more than 30 years after that singular (hey, I just realized how Cingular got its name) feat of innovation, there Cerf was yesterday, addressing an Internet governance forum in Sydney. Vint Cerf does not want VoIP to be regulated. His fear, though -- one that I share, is because VoIP "looks like telephony," regulatory bodies all over the world will knee-jerk assume that it needs to be governed. "My concern here is the fact that VoIP looks like, and sounds like telephony," Cerf told the group. "This is horribly misleading. To leap to that conclusion is extremely dangerous. VoIP is really just another application on the Internet. Nothing special about it." Oh, boy. This is a fitting statement for April 15, but how I wish that revenue-hungry state and local governments in the U.S. got it. But they haven't. Here in the U.S., too many jurisdictions are going to keep longingly looking at VoIP as a cash cow -- and will keep trying to figure out ways to glean money from it. The above is from: http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=354 ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Mitigating Identity Theft Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 19:50:27 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information excerpted from Bruce Schneir's CryptoGram http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0504.html Bruce Schneir is an important figure in the field of computer and systems security. Mitigating Identity Theft Unfortunately, the solutions being proposed in Congress won't help. To see why, we need to start with the basics. The very term "identity theft" is an oxymoron. Identity is not a possession that can be acquired or lost; it's not a thing at all. Someone's identity is the one thing about a person that cannot be stolen. The real crime here is fraud; more specifically, impersonation leading to fraud. Impersonation is an ancient crime, but the rise of information-based credentials gives it a modern spin ... The crime involves two very separate issues. The first is the privacy of personal data. Personal privacy is important for many reasons, one of which is impersonation and fraud ... The second issue is the ease with which a criminal can use personal data to commit fraud. It doesn't take much personal information to apply for a credit card in someone else's name. It doesn't take much to submit fraudulent bank transactions in someone else's name. It's surprisingly easy to get an identification card in someone else's name. Our current culture, where identity is verified simply and sloppily, makes it easier for a criminal to impersonate his victim. Proposed fixes tend to concentrate on the first issue -- making personal data harder to steal -- whereas the real problem is the second. If we're ever going to manage the risks and effects of electronic impersonation, we must concentrate on preventing and detecting fraudulent transactions. Fraudulent transactions have nothing to do with the legitimate account holders. Criminals impersonate legitimate users to financial institutions. That means that any solution can't involve the account holders. That leaves only one reasonable answer: financial institutions need to be liable for fraudulent transactions. They need to be liable for sending erroneous information to credit bureaus based on fraudulent transactions. They can't claim that the user must keep his password secure or his machine virus free. They can't require the user to monitor his accounts for fraudulent activity, or his credit reports for fraudulently obtained credit cards. Those aren't reasonable requirements for most users. The bank must be made responsible, regardless of what the user does. If you think this won't work, look at credit cards. Credit card companies are liable for all but the first $50 of fraudulent transactions. They're not hurting for business; and they're not drowning in fraud, either. They've developed and fielded an array of security technologies designed to detect and prevent fraudulent transactions. They've pushed most of the actual costs onto the merchants. And almost no security centers around trying to authenticate the cardholder ... That's an important lesson. Identity theft solutions focus much too much on authenticating the person ... once you understand that the problem is fraudulent transactions, you quickly realize that authenticating the person isn't the way to proceed. Again, think about credit cards. Store clerks barely verify signatures when people use cards. People can use credit cards to buy things by mail, phone, or Internet, where no one verifies the signature or even that you have possession of the card. Even worse, no credit card company mandates secure storage requirements for credit cards. They don't demand that cardholders secure their wallets in any particular way. Credit card companies simply don't worry about verifying the cardholder or putting requirements on what he does. They concentrate on verifying the transaction. This same sort of thinking needs to be applied to other areas where criminals use impersonation to commit fraud. I don't know what the final solutions will look like, but I do know that once financial institutions are liable for losses due to these types of fraud, they will find solutions ... Right now, the economic incentives result in financial institutions that are so eager to allow transactions -- new credit cards, cash transfers, whatever -- that they're not paying enough attention to fraudulent transactions. They've pushed the costs for fraud onto the merchants. But if they're liable for losses and damages to legitimate users, they'll pay more attention. And they'll mitigate the risks. Security can do all sorts of things, once the economic incentives to apply them are there ... Doing anything less simply won't work. ------------------------------ From: Pete Romfh Subject: Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 17:17:10 -0500 Organization: Not Organized Colin wrote: > The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a challenge between > 93 year old telegraph operator transmitting morse code to > an 82 year old with a manual typewriter, and youngsters > sending a text message. The text message was received 18 > seconds after the message was already on paper. > http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/04/14/1113251739401.html > Regards, > Colin Sutton And telegraph operators can spell also. No silly abbreviations. I'm forwarding this (by email not morse code) to all the young whippersnappers around the office. They probably say I'm a crochety old fart. And they're exactly correct. =;) Pete Romfh, Telecom Geek & Amateur Gourmet. promfh at hal dash pc dot org ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 19:40:14 EDT Subject: Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse In a message dated Fri, 15 Apr 2005 23:33:07 +1000, Colin writes: > The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a challenge between 93 year old > telegraph operator transmitting morse code to an 82 year old with a > manual typewriter, and youngsters sending a text message. The text > message was received 18 seconds after the message was already on > paper. > http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/04/14/1113251739401.html > Regards, > Colin Sutton This is not surprising to anyone who has worked with capable Morse operators. My first experience with them when I was writing the play-by-play for University of Oklahoma football games with a Morse operator beside me sending the copy as I wrote it. (Newspapers carried play-by-play accounts in their early editions up to the deadline for that edition in the days before there was television coverage of everything. Later editions, of course, would carry a regular story.) Later, when I was a newsman for United Press in Dallas, which had responsibility for many college football games throughout the Southwest, we were always delighted when a Morse operator showed up with this key and sounder. For most of the games Western Union used teletypewriters with just ordinary key punchers, not usually very skilled. But the Morse operators they sometimes sent were always skilled press operators -- even at that time, in the early and middle 1950s, declining in numbers. In the very competitive news business, their usuable output was well ahead of Western Union teletypewriter operators. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: spam trap Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Harassment from '555-555-1212' Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 17:07:05 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Lisa Hancock wrote: > T. Sean Weintz wrote: >> This is almost definitely a scofflaw telemarketer calling from a PRI >> line. By using a PRI line, can set the caller ID to be whatever he wants. > Could you explain what is a "PRI" line, and characteristicss give it the > power to change caller ID? PRI = Primary Rate Interface. It's a standard High Capacity ISDN line, with 23 B channels and 1 D channel. Generally attached to a PBX system. The "B" channels function as phone lines, while the D channel is iused for signalling. The caller ID info is (I believe) passed back to the CO via the D channel. > Why would any subscriber have access to such a line? Well, where I work we have it beacuse a) it's cheaper than 23 individual business lines, and 2) Much more flexible. I have about 50 or so DID numbers pointed at our two PRI lines -- when someone calls in, the CO passes the DNIS info (eg - what number did the person dial to get us?) to our PBX, and it uses that info to route the call to the correct extension. I also set the outgoing caller ID for calls made to individual extensions to whatever number I have set up to be the DID for that extension. When an outgoing call is made, the system grabs whatever of the 46 B channels I have happens to be free - the caller ID will always be set to the DID number of the extension making the call. I depend on our ability to set the outgoing caller ID. >> You answer and get no-one on the other end because he is using a >> predictive dialer -- a computer dials the numbers, and connects the calls >> to people in the telemarketing call center only when the call is >> answered on your end. If no one is available in the call center to take >> the call, when you answer you get the classic "no one there when I >> answer" effect -- you just hear dead air. > I don't understand that when the fellow answers the call, why someone > doesn't come on on the other end and make their sales pitch. There is > usually a brief 1-2 second, but someone does come on. Obviously they > don't want live people to miss their sales pitches. Yes, but it would seem they have more outgoing lines than they have salespeople to answer them. Common enough -- we all get those hang up sales calls from time to time I think. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The hassle is the 'predictive dialer' > (which is what they call the device which 'dials ahead' and gets > suckers on the line works too fast for the human beings doing the > talking/selling. It thinks, based on formulas built in, that by the > time it gets a sucker on the phone, an agent will be ready to talk to > them. That's when the predictive dialer plays a pre-recorded message > saying 'please hold, we have an important message for you' or > something similar. That's when I usually hang up, and you should also. > PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 15 Apr 2005 21:09:10 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Ok, this guy contracted for high speed internet connectivity from > someone or another. That would be MCI. > Why did anyone else accept any packets from this organization? Good question. They're consistently #1 on the Spamhaus hit parade. R's, John [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Then why are they not getting cut off from the rest of the world until they make an effort to get rid of their spam traffic? Is it possibly because your superiors at ICANN and their mouthpiece Vint Cerf are so well funded by MCI that they do not allow (by heavy pressure or otherwise) anyone to put a permanent halt on MCI's traffic? Why is ICANN so silent on the volumes of spam the rest of the net has to endure day after day? Is it because ICANN and Vint Cerf are actually more interested in appeasing the spammers and commercial interests rather than the vast majority of the netizens? John, instead of answering a question with the statement 'good question' why is no one (in authority on the net) actuall, physically cutting off MCI by refusing to accept any or all of their traffic until the spam stops? PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses Date: 15 Apr 2005 14:10:55 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: ... Have you seen those various > commercials playing on TVLand? As an aside, I don't watch TV Land much anymore. I liked them and Nick originally when they showed a lot of classics from the 1950s and early 1960s -- great shows that hadn't been seen for years. But now it's mostly 1980s/1990s stuff and just another station running syndicated reruns. I don't need a specialty cable network to watch "Cheers". > Now the first part of your message, summed up thusly: Can't *they* do > anything about it? I can tell you that much of the software used in > email was constructed thirty years ago when spam was unheard of; it is > not easily adaptable for modern times. IMHO, that is a major weakness of the Internet. I don't know the technical details, but the idea of "anonymous" relay sites is foolish on a public network. When the Internet was a tightly closed community, it could get away with no security (although I'm surprised college kids didn't try pranks with it even way back.) But what works in a closed community simply will not work in an open one. It is ridiculous to me that we spend so much money on anti-virus software and other protections when the network itself should be hardened to protect the bad stuff from getting out on it. Despite all the protection and savvy people, my employer was knocked out of commission on several occasions from 'worms' and the like that flooded the emails. That kind of weakness is scary. Adding locks on the door will not prevent crime in the streets from entering -- we must clean up the crime in the first place. > I can also tell you there was a time many years ago when the very > notion of censoring email and/or Usenet messages was unthinkable. I remember that controversy well. Again, once the Internet became a public network rather than a private one the rules needed to change. I never bought into that early "anything goes" philosophy -- because that philosophy never existed anywhere else. Contrary to myth, college campus conversation never was as freewheeling, open, or as wideranging as educators want us to believe -- there was always some sort of constraint AND moderation of them. In the 1960s it was trendy in some places to use foul language or explicit sex talk on campus. Most kids participated because it was fun to break the rules and they enjoyed doing something in class that they're parents would freak out over. But such talk also made a lot of people uncomfortable (even if they didn't say so at the time), and such people avoided from such discussions. So, what was supposedly a _wider_ discourse was actually a _narrower_ one. In normal society, there are social and legal rules that normally prevent things from getting out of hand. Freedom of speech is protected, but someone who attempts to monopolize it and prevent others from speaking will eventually get knocked day. The overall society isn't perfect but it usually works out. On the other hand, the Internet being technical rather than face-to-face presents a completely different set of challenges. The old social norms and enforceability don't work. I have seen several Usenet groups become worthless because of high volume abusive postings that drown out legitimate discourse. Further, there's something about email that lets people say nasty things they otherwise wouldn't say in other media. Maybe because it's so easy to type it fast and send it without proofing as we once did when we typed or handwrote letters, or when speaking to someone face to face. And then of course there's anonymous email that is often used to harass and intimidate or worse. > So Lisa, to further elaborate on your question "can't anything be > done", there are some politics involved with spam even today. There > are still some netters, that though they bitch and moan about all the > spam still don't want to get down to the real business of putting them > all to sleep once and for all. Thankfully, more and more people on the > net are getting to the point of 'thinking' about it. PAT] Is it still the pioneer "netters" who fight efforts to block spam, or are corporate interests involved somewhat? IIRC, some spam fighting techiques were opposed by mainstream corporations because they can send out mass emails, too. (Sears fought against automated computer phone messages because it uses them to set up service call appts. I think they should spring to hire real people to do that.) Thanks for your observations. What scares me is that the pendulum might swing far in the other direction and draconian steps will be taken to "protect us". [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What you term 'pioneer netters' are the only ones who know anything about the system at all. Corporate interests don't know beans about it. All they know is that when Gore invented the internet, he included 'cheap email' with it. If the 'pioneer netters' decided to shut the whole thing down -- bring it all to a sreaming halt for a couple days -- my feeling is ICANN and their mouthpiece Vint Cerf would soil their pants, right, John??? They take our registration money (paid for the domain names) and went off to Argentina in South America last week for a convention, where they could kiss each other's backsides and compliment each other on the fine job they are doing on the net. As has been said many times in the past, ICANN hopes to rip off the net entirely from most of us and give it to commercial interests, and MCI is one of the principals in the scheme. What I do not understand is why ICANN does not cut to the chase and declare this to be all one big SpamNet, where the rest of us innocent bystanders is 'allowed to send messages if we wish'. Instead of using Spam Assassin and the like, the rule will just just toss it all out except for persons X, Y and Z provided _we_ have paid fees to use it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 19:54:18 EDT Subject: Re: Walkie Talkie In a message dated 4/15/05 2:37:59 PM Central Daylight Time, editor@telecom-digest.org writes: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Chances are likely that the radio you > refer to by its generic name 'walkie talkie' was actually a UHF radio > operating in something other than the traditional citizen's band > frequency. My clue is your reference to 'private company' and 'within > the company itself'. Maybe like a radio a security service would use > in its work. Those will typically have two or four 'channels' which > is all they seem to need. I don't know why they don't have more channels > in them; probably they don't need more, and more would make the unit > too cumbersome. Any other ideas, anyone? PAT] The General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) and Family Radio Service (FRS) have many, many channels,some of them shared and interoperable between the two services, and multiple identifying tones available on each channel to mute the receiver unless its tones are received to avoid having to listen to all the other transmissions on that channel. There are also many business services, some for itinerant use, some for fixed use, some designated for particular types of business, that all serve as walkie talkies. Not only security people, but many store people (stockers, managers, checkers, the cleaning and maintenance staffs and many other store employees) use to communicate with each other, usually with the receive volume turned up so high that all the customers are annoyed as they shop. Many people find it interesting to monitor all the walkie talkie communications at athletic events, car races, parades, etc., as part of their enjoyment of the sport. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: cphipps@gmail.com Subject: Re: Clearwire May Block VoIP Competitors Date: 15 Apr 2005 16:54:23 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jack Decker wrote: http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailyarchives.jhtml?articleId=159905955 > Clearwire May Block VoIP Competitors > Vonage says it's been blocked; Company's terms of service "prohibits" > use of certain high-bandwidth applications. > By Paul Kapustka, > Advanced IP Pipeline 2:32 AM EST Fri. Mar. 25, 2005 > Someday, customers of wireless broadband provider Clearwire Corp. may > be able to use Voice over IP services. But right now, Craig McCaw's > newest company is giving its customers the silent treatment by > apparently blocking outside VoIP providers from its network. > In what the company claims is an effort to preserve the performance of > its pre-standard WiMAX network, Clearwire says it reserves the right > to prohibit the use of a wide range of bandwidth-hungry applications, > a list that apparently includes VoIP as well as the uploading or > downloading of streaming video or audio, and high-traffic Web site > hosting. According to the company's terms of service, Clearwire > reserves the right to restrict access or terminate service to > customers who don't comply with its rules. > While a company executive claimed the restrictions were necessary to > ensure network performance reliability, Clearwire could not explain > how that issue would be resolved when it offers its own VoIP services > in the near future. Earlier this month, Clearwire signed an agreement > with Bell Canada under which Bell Canada will provide VoIP systems and > services for Clearwire, at a date and price yet to be announced. > Full story at: http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailyarchives.jhtml?articleId=159905955 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Aren't there, in most communities a > choice of other highspeed data services, such as AOL? 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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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 V24 #166 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Apr 16 16:24:42 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3GKOfF13564; Sat, 16 Apr 2005 16:24:42 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 16:24:42 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504162024.j3GKOfF13564@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 V24 #167 TELECOM Digest Sat, 16 Apr 2005 16:25:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 167 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Tufts Warns Alumni on Breach / Computer Attack Exposed Names (M Solomon) Retailer Knew Last Fall About Security Breach (Monty Solomon) Battle Against Spam Shifts to Containment (Monty Solomon) New Technology Poses Peril: VOIP Not Handling Emergency (Jack Decker) Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses (Tom Lynn) Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses (shlichter1@aol.com) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (John Schmerold) Re: Cell Phone Wearing Out? (Joseph) Re: Internet Pioneer: VoIP is NOT Telephony (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Can I Port 800 Number Without Old Carrier's Permission? (DevilsPGD) Re: Web Censors In China Find Success (Kaminsky) Re: Is RocketVoIP Deceiving Customers Regarding Unlimited (Tom Lynn) Re: Mitigating Identity Theft (mc) Re: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronic Devices (Tony P.) Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse (Tony P.) Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse (mc) Re: Last Laugh! Passenger Found Dead Hour After Plane Lands (Tim) Re: Last Laugh! Passenger Found Dead Hour After Plane Lands (Joseph) Last Laugh! Honesty on the Internet (TELECOM Digest Editor) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 22:12:07 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Tufts Warns Alumni on Breach / Computer Attack Exposed Names Tufts warns alumni on breach Computer attack exposed names, numbers to theft By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | April 12, 2005 For the second time in a month, a Boston-area college is warning thousands of alumni that their personal information may have been stolen from a computer system used for fund-raising. Tufts University last week began sending letters to 106,000 alumni, warning of 'abnormal activity' on a computer that contained names, addresses, phone numbers, and, in some cases, Social Security and credit card numbers. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/04/12/tufts_warns_alumni_on_breach/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 22:14:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Retailer Knew Last Fall about Security Breach Retailer knew last fall about security breach that recently roiled credit card companies By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | April 15, 2005 A computer security breach at Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. that has recently roiled two major credit card companies actually occurred last fall. But Polo only made the problem public yesterday. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2005/04/15/retailer_knew_last_fall_about_security_breach_that_recently_roiled_credit_card_companies/ Breach in security reaches 2d credit firm MasterCard, Visa refuse to identify retailer whose computer system was hit By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff | April 14, 2005 The scope of a computer system breach at a national retailer widened yesterday to involve the customers of a second major credit card firm, but those companies refused to divulge the name of the retailer. The existence of the security breach first surfaced this week when HSBC North America began notifying 180,000 of its GM MasterCard customers that their credit card information had potentially been compromised. HSBC, which issues the GM cards, urged each customer to replace their card as quickly as possible. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/04/14/breach_in_security_reaches_2d_credit_firm/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 21:41:57 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Battle Against Spam Shifts to Containment By ANICK JESDANUN AP Internet Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- There's a new strategy in the spam battle: Call it containment. Filters for blocking junk e-mail from inboxes have improved to the point that doing much more will needlessly kill legitimate e-mail, said Carl Hutzler, America Online Inc.'s anti-spam coordinator. So e-mail gatekeepers are shifting gears. Now they're getting more aggressive at keeping spam from leaving their systems in the first place. EarthLink Inc., for instance, is phasing in a requirement that customers' mail programs submit passwords before it will send out their e-mail. Like most Internet providers, EarthLink previously made sure only that a computer was associated with a legitimate account. Now that viruses can co-opt computers and use them to send spam, that's no longer secure enough. So Earthlink sent out new software, made automated tools available for download and walked customers through manually changing their mail settings when they called tech support for other reasons. A year into the initiative, EarthLink has 80 percent of its customers converted. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48398343 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 13:19:51 -0400 Subject: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency System My commentary follows the excerpts ... http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1113646231312020.xml New technology poses 911 peril Voice over Internet Protocol lines not part of emergency system Saturday, April 16, 2005 BY ART AISNER News Staff Reporter Joe Lawrence had no idea what was causing the delay. His friend, who had turned ashen just minutes before while they sat together at a meeting at the VFW post in Ypsilanti, was now doubled over a chair having difficulty breathing. Panicked that it might be a heart attack or stroke in progress, Lawrence, an Ypsilanti attorney, called 911 from the organization's house phone. A police dispatcher responded, but crucial minutes passed as Lawrence and the dispatcher tried to determine the exact location because the phone line Lawrence used was no longer part of the 911 system. "If it wasn't the silliest thing, but the hang-up was I couldn't give them an exact address, and he was in trouble," said Lawrence, who ultimately had to run across Michigan Avenue to the Ypsilanti Fire Department before help arrived. After Lawrence complained to Ypsilanti Police Chief George Basar, authorities determined that the call went to a private line in the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Department instead of going to 911 dispatch. The reason? The VFW post was using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a new technology that transmits phone calls through broadband Internet connections rather than traditional phone lines. As it turned out, Lawrence's friend recovered after being hospitalized for several days with an undetermined ailment. But, Basar said, the incident illustrates a serious flaw in the technology that more and more residents and businesses are using to save money on phone service. [.....] [Vonage Representative] Schulz said E-911 is still only built to work on local phone lines, but users in Rhode Island have had little trouble in the six months since Vonage offered it to subscribers there. Rhode Island is the only place where Vonage offers the service because the state owns the phone lines, she said. In other states, Michigan included, phone companies are barring access for competitive reasons, she charged. There's some truth to it, Stofega said. But ultimately, it's up to the providers to meet their customers' demands or either the market or the regulators will prevail. [COMMENT: Okay, if there is some truth to it, then why does almost everyone in the press play toady for the big phone companies and try to lay all the blame on the VoIP companies alone? It sure appears that the incumbents are making interconnection difficult solely for competitive reasons, and that where the incumbents don't control the 911 system (as in Rhode Island), VoIP companies find it is much easier to make the proper connections. I will just point out that if a life is ever lost because someone cannot reach 911, and it turns out that the incumbent phone company attempted to limit access to the 911 system for competitive reasons, and the matter goes to court in a civil trial, I don't think the big phone company involved will be able to evade responsibility for their part in creating the situation - the lawyers will surely dig much deeper into the mess than most reporters do. Please understand what I am saying here -- if an ILEC is making access to the 911 system difficult for VoIP providers because they think it gives them a competitive edge, they are creating a condition where someone might die, solely to enhance their bottom line. Since most ILEC's have much deeper pockets than VoIP providers (always a consideration in a lawsuit) and since there is a good probability that any jury of twelve people will include at least one or two that have had bad experiences with the phone company at some time in the past (even if they don't remember those experiences consciously), I think the ILEC's are playing with fire here. And as I say, lawyers are not going to make the sort of shallow investigations that most newspaper reporters do, nor are they going to buy into the ILEC-produced propaganda funneled through astroturf public interest groups. Now having said all that, the other side of the coin is that 911 access might in fact be available in Michigan. For example, John Lodden has informed me that his company (Telesthetic/Local Exchange Carriers of Michigan) has access to all the 911 centers in Michigan and could provide access to VoIP companies, however at present none of the large VoIP companies are utilizing that access (I hope I am saying that accurately -- I'm working from memory here and apologize to John if I'm mis-stating that in any way). I can understand that most VoIP companies would probably like some sort of nationwide standard for interconnection to 911 centers, and are hoping for some type of FCC action that will establish a nationwide standard, so they don't have to do something different in each of the 50 states, and that costs might be prohibitive if they have to use a different means of access in each of the states. Ultimately I think the FCC is probably going to have to mandate some sort of national standard for 911 interconnection that will force the ILEC's to open up their systems whether they want to or not. For those who whine that this unjustly takes what the phone companies have built, I again remind you that the foundation for 911 was built while the ILEC's were MONOPOLY providers that enjoyed government-protected profit margins (even today that's still essentially the case for some smaller ILEC's), and that in many cases the existing 911 system was foisted upon the public in a sweetheart deal between the ILEC's and local units of government, who loved the idea that they could force people to pay for the system via phone bills instead of doing it the proper way, which was to go to the voters and ask for funding via the normal tax mechanisms already in place. So now the 911 centers are stuck with technology that only works really well with the existing wireline network, and yet nobody in the press seems to want to blame the real culprits, which are the ILEC's that set up such technologically-mediocre systems, and their co-conspirators in local governments who saw an opportunity to bypass the voters in the decision making process. No, it's much easier to lay all the blame on the VoIP companies, which have only been in business for less than a couple of years (in most cases) and who had no say at all into how the existing 911 system was designed. It doesn't make sense to me, and my hope is that the FCC and the courts (should the matter ever wind up in the courts) will see the issue with much greater clarity than most of the toady reporters that have been writing these stories, apparently based solely on press releases and other ILEC propaganda.] Full story at: http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1113646231312020.xml [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here in Independence, where we are a little more backward in our telecom, it seems, the city has a phone in the telecom area which is specifically designated for the job of 'emergency, but not 911 equipped calls'. It is not some 'private line in a back office somewhere' as seems to be the case in Ypsilanti or Brooklyn, NY. The phone terminates in a place where experienced professionals can deal with the calls, even though said calls do not come through the equipment looking like 'regular' 911 calls. VOIP carriers _have to take the word of the various agencies_ that a call is being terminated where it can be best handled. Should the VOIP carriers have to personally audit each community to assure this? Vonage, at least, apparently tries to confirm these things *before* they send email to the subscriber telling them that 911 has been turned on. If you combine the often-times careless and casual, public- be-damned attitudes of our government employees with the propoganda coming out of Bell, you are bound to get these problems at times. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tom Lynn Subject: Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 18:31:21 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Pat, Check out http://popfile.sourceforge.net Popfile is an e-mail proxy that filters spam based on how you train it. It takes some initial effort to get it over the hump, but it achieves over 99% accuracy over the long term. I believe they also have an nntp proxy for filtering usenet, too. You won't be sorry. Tom Lynn On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 17:49:02 EDT, TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > Ordinarily either Lisa Minter or myself get in here and flush the spam > queue a few times daily. Then we go through the 'regular' file of > 'good' incoming mail and sort through it, since about 80-90 percent of > the stuff in the 'good' mail file is also spam which managed to not > trip the Spam Assassin rules. Then we move the 'good' stuff into a > protected area where it is stored until the next issue comes out. But > from the last issue of the Digest on Wednesday through the present > time, neither of us came in to do the usual flush, consequently there > were several hundred spams in the so- called 'good' file today. And in > the middle of them, here and there, the legitimate emails. Unfortunatly, > the good stuff got flushed with the volumes of spam today by accident. > What you see in this issue is _all we have left_ of the good stuff. > If you wrote to the Digest anytime since Wednesday night; you got an > autoack and _do not_ see your email in this issue, then please > resubmit it. > There *has to be* a better way of sorting out the spam. I have the > trigger set now at 2 (according to Spam Assassin, 5 is average for > most users), but I just do not feel I can go any lower than 2; there > is too much stuff otherwise hitting the spam bucket; I use the very > old 'mail' from 1993 with Unix here; I wish there were someway to > see entire screens full of stuff and be able to dismiss it with a > single keystroke instead of the 3-4 keystrokes needed at present. > Anyway, if your message from (probably during the day) Thursday is > not shown here, then sorry, I don't have it. Resubmit it please. > Patrick Townson ------------------------------ From: shlichter1@aol.com Subject: Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses Date: 16 Apr 2005 07:42:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com That court in Virgina had the right idea, but I would have given him more then 8 years. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 10:54:34 -0500 From: John Schmerold Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam No one likes spam, however, there are great solutions they are all available without cost due to the opensource movement. Looking at my own statistics, since 4/1, I've received 5,607 emails, of which 1,177 were forwarded to my inbox, of these 169 were SPAM. All of the 169 could have been eliminated if I chose to use TDMA which whitelists good senders. So, long story short, quit belly aching and do something about your spam problem. John Schmerold [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I cannot run a white list here unless I want to turn this Digest/newsgroup into a very exclusive place for _me and my friends_ . I like to get _legitimate_ mail from legitimate users. I do not like the idea of excluding new users just because they have not met some arbitrary standard on the messages I will accept. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Cell Phone Wearing Out? Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 20:55:56 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 15 Apr 2005 11:33:41 -0700, ron@oakes.net wrote: > One possibility is that the six-year-old phone is an analog (AMPS) > only phone. Six years ago, 1999, CDMA was just starting to roll out > and relatively few manufacturer had phones out (Qualcomm, Sony and > towards the end of the year Motorola and Samsung, IIRC). Right now > Verizon Wireless is in the process of reducing their analog coverage > to the minimum that they can get away with in preparation to shutting > down the analog system once they are allowed. I don't know about "just rolling out." CDMA was accepted as a standard in 1993 and went into operation in 1996. > Therefore, it is possible that the trouble making calls was that the > area being visited had poor analog coverage, but Choreboy's relative's > home area still as good analog coverage. > If this is case the technician still made an incorrect statement; > either due to ignorance, or because of some policy that blames analog > coverage woes on the phone rather than a business decision. > If the phone is an analog only phone, upgrading it will eventually > become a necessity as the FCC is eventually going to allow the > carriers to turn analog off. Analog is not scheduled to be turned off til 2008. It could possibly be that the vendor had a desire to make someone convert from an earlier digital standard (such as TDMA IS-136 that both AT&T Wireless and cingular wireless run but want people to convert to GSM so they can devote more of their network resources to GSM rather than the dead end technology of TDMA which will not have any further new development.) On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 13:36:21 -0500, GlowingBlueMist wrote: > If she likes her present phone and does not want to "upgrade" she > might want to consider purchasing a TracPhone or other type of prepaid > phone for traveling. The model I use will first try to make a digital > connection and then switch to analog if that is all that is available, > making it compatible with the older towers as well as the new ones. Newer TracFone (note the F) uses GSM so they do not have the fallback to analog AMPS. ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Internet Pioneer: VoIP is NOT Telephony Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 01:55:20 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Jack Decker wrote: > http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=354 > 4/15/2005 > Internet pioneer: VoIP is NOT telephony > -Posted by Russell Shaw @ 2:32 am > My colleague Renai LeMay at ZDNet Australia has just had the > professional privilege of hearing remarks by one of the technology > world's smartest men. > Vint Cerf. The Vint Cerf that developed the TCP/IP protocol that makes > the Internet work. And more than 30 years after that singular (hey, I > just realized how Cingular got its name) feat of innovation, there > Cerf was yesterday, addressing an Internet governance forum in Sydney. > Vint Cerf does not want VoIP to be regulated. His fear, though -- one > that I share, is because VoIP "looks like telephony," regulatory > bodies all over the world will knee-jerk assume that it needs to be > governed. > "My concern here is the fact that VoIP looks like, and sounds like > telephony," Cerf told the group. "This is horribly misleading. To leap > to that conclusion is extremely dangerous. VoIP is really just another > application on the Internet. Nothing special about it." Interestingly, the California PUC decided to abandon its attempts to regulate VoIP and voted to endorse whatever oversight the FCC chooses to exercise in this arena. Having said that, my view is that Cerf is correct only until a VoIP provider connects with the switched public telephone network, at which time it becomes telephony. Only where two VoIP users connect directly over the Internet is it not telephony. And, in that case they should not have 10-digit telephony numbers assigned under the North American Dialing Plan for the switched public telephone network. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How would you then deal with 'phone patches', the little devices which allow VHF/UHF radios to link into the public phone network? Should they also be subject to the rules of the public switched telephone network? PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Can I Port an 800 Number Without the Old Carrier's Permission? Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 03:00:09 -0600 Organization: Disorganized In message Tim@Backhome.org wrote: > Indeed it's all about ownership. > And, some folks who have transferred vanity numbers to Vonage might be > in for an unpleasant surprise when they try to transfer that number > from Vonage. Going from memory, Vonage won't port a tollfree number will they? Even if they do, my understanding is that tollfree numbers are pulled by the new telco, no action is required on the part of the losing telco, so if you do transfer away, unless Vonage actively fights you it shouldn't be a problem. Neither the FCC nor the CRTC takes kindly to a company blocking porting of tollfree numbers. Like a lot of husbands throughout history, Mr. Webster would sit down and try to talk to his wife. As soon as he'd say something though, she'd fire back with, "And just what the hell is THAT supposed to mean?" Thus, Webster's Dictionary was born. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No, Vonage will not port tollfree numbers *either way*, in or out. Vonage claims to own the tollfree numbers they offer out for assignment. Nor will they port numbers which started out with themselves. The only thing you can _possibly_ do is take back a number you ported in to them to start with. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Subject: Re: Web Censors In China Find Success Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 11:48:46 -0500 >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wonder why it would not be feasible >> to route all our internet traffic _through China_ and have them >> adjust their filter mechanisms to censor out all spam. It would be a >> good way for Americans and Chinese people to work together on a very >> worthwhile, useful project. PAT] > Perhaps you are not seeing the same spam I am. Here in California, > we are inundated by Chinese spam. It's not just me - on my ISP's > internal anti-spam newsgroup, I have seen many complaints about > Chinese spam (and South Korean spam, too, for that matter). For > myself, I notice many messages from addresses in the "cn" domain > showing up with unreadable subjects in my greymail (the SpamAssassain > rejects). > On the other hand, we are also inundated with Chinese products. > I've given up shopping for toys for the grandchildren - everything > (and I do mean EVERYTHING) in the stores is made in China! It's > gotten to the point that the grocery stores are actually carrying > some garlic from China -- with Gilroy ("the garlic capital of the > world") only twenty miles away in the south end of Santa Clara > County. > Take care. > Mark [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't know what I am reading some days when I take time to study that stuff. One oriental, eastern language and its script looks like another to me. F'r instance, I cannot tell the difference between Chinese (and its various dialects) and Japanese (and its various dialects) and Korean, although I know there are as many as there are variations on English with its American accents. But I see the little squiggles and markings and say "oh, it comes from _over there, somewhere_". So maybe I get Chinese spam as well, and just don't know which is which. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tom Lynn Subject: Re: Is RocketVoIP Deceiving Customers Regarding "Unlimited" VoIP Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 18:39:25 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Pat, Are you descended from Don Quixote? :-) On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:09:58 -0400, Jack Decker wrote: > A disturbing post just appeared on BroadbandReports.com -- I have > removed references to RocketVoIP from the Resources for Michigan > Telephone Users web site until and unless this issue is resolved. > "Hi all ... I have a problem with RocketVoip (www.rocketvoip.com) They > said their service is unlimited ($24.95) and suddenly they sent me an > email about a week ago, telling me that I'm not qualified as a > residential user and they asked me to switch to business plan. Please > read the attached email. ..." > http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,13170575 > How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: > http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html > If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This sounds a lot like our friend > Sprint's old "Friday Free" plan doesn't it? Remember that one? Sprint > tricked people into signing up for long distance by lying to them > saying their Friday traffic would always be free to _residential_ > customers. Soon thereafter we started hearing from folks who said > Sprint had written them a letter saying they were not a 'qualified' > residential account, so they would have to pay for their Friday > calls. Sprint signed the letters with some phone name (I forget off > hand what it was), and many folks, including myself tried time after > time to reach the person to ask him what it was about, and what made > persons 'qualified'. I don't think anyone ever did reach that person, > and as to be expected, no one in Sprint customer service ever had any > idea what it was about. > If the original writer wants to send along the email saying they were > not 'qualified', and assuming it has a good name on it, we will try > to reach that person and ask them what it is all about, and to explain > the qualifications required. PAT] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not know about Don Quixote, but I do know that I was distantly related to Will Rogers. My paternal grandmother's mother, in other words my great-grandmother, had the maiden name of Rogers prior to her marriage to Mr. Martin. (My paternal grandmother's maiden name was 'Martin'). Anyway, great-grandmother Rogers-Martin was a cousin of Will's father, down in Oklahoma somewhere, so I guess that would make me a third or fourth cousin, once or twice (or even thrice) removed. My great-grandmother Rogers was born in Tulsa, Indian Territory about 1860, as was her daughter (my paternal grandmother Susie Martin in 1881, who then married Patrick Townson, my grandfather in 1915 (? I think). Now, the Townson side of the family, they were something else. Patrick Townson's father was Thomas Townson, who was killed at a picnic about 1910 when he attempted to break up a fight between two teenage boys who had been drinking at the picnic. (Where have we heard that before?) Thomas Townson's father was Edward Townsend who himself was a heavy drinker; he killed a man it was claimed in self defense about 1880 and wound up going to (and dying in) the penitentiary in Georgia for several years. It left his family in disgrace and they moved up to Oklahoma where great-grandfather Thomas, and his mother changed the spelling of their last name and began to raise their family anew, before he, himself was gunned down at the picnic when grandfather Patrick was just a teenager, about the same age Thomas had been when his own father shot and killed the man. Thomas Townson was a stage coach driver by occupation; he drove between Tulsa and Coffeyville; on the route that was the forerunner to today's Greyhound/Jefferson Lines Bus route. He married the woman who was the stagecoach ticket agent at Bartlesville, Indian Territory. Besides selling the stage coach tickets she also ran the telegraph machine and cooked the food for passengers and the drivers, when the stagecoach pulled in every afternoon at 2 PM. Her brother would come out and unhitch the horses and lead them to their water and food while she served the humans their dinner. When a fresh team of horses was hitched up, Tom would tell the passengers to finish their dinner so they could get back on the road. Anyway, he married that woman; before long they were the proud parents of baby Patrick, my grandfather. When Patrick was a teenager, he saw his own father get gunned down at the picnic. Much, much violence it seems from that side of the family. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Mitigating Identity Theft Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 10:46:15 -0400 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) Well said. I have felt for a long time that the term "identity theft" is Orwellian Newspeak, designed to spread fear and obscure the real situation. Someone who "steals my identity" is not (per se) stealing anything from me at all. He is impersonating me, and this is not a newly invented crime. > Fraudulent transactions have nothing to do with the legitimate account > holders. Criminals impersonate legitimate users to financial > institutions. That means that any solution can't involve the account > holders. That leaves only one reasonable answer: financial > institutions need to be liable for fraudulent transactions. Toucheé ... I think the Orwellian term is being spread by the financial institutions who want the impersonated people to feel that it's their fault. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: While it is true the crime is not your fault, you are required, under the law to attempt to mitigate the damage as much as possible. If something bad happens, you cannot just sit there and let it go on; that is where the 'fifty dollars or until we are notified' rule comes in. I don't think that is a bad rule, atually. Fifty dollars is a drop in the bucket compared to the damage that _could_ be caused, and if you are lucky, you can call on the phone before any damage is done at all. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Why Must a Cordless Phone be Away From Electronic Devices? Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 13:37:38 -0400 In article , Wesrock@aol.com says: > In a message dated Tue, 12 Apr 2005 02:02:56 -0400, curious@nospam.com > writes: >> I just got a 900 MHz DSS cordless phone, and I had the perfect spot >> for it, right on top of my tower computer case. But then I noticed >> that the manual says that the base unit must be placed away from all >> electronic equipment, including PCs, stereos, TVs, and microwaves. >> What is the reasoning for this? Could the magnetic fields generated >> by the speakers in the phone cause any problems? > It will do no harm to the computer. But the other electronic > equipment may interfere with the cordless phone transmission and > reception. > We had a 900 mHz cordless that sat right under a TV and had no > problem. But when it finally gave up the ghost we replaced it with > another cordless, which turned out to be 2.4 gHz. We then found out > that 2.4 gHz is much more seriously affected to the point that it was > unusable. We returned it, since that was exactly where we wanted the > cordless. > It is reported than 4.8 gHz is even more badly impaired by other > electronic equipment. In the case of a computer, even with the metal cases there are some serious harmonics radiating from the machine that could potentially interfere with the cordless phone. That being said, all consumer electronic devices are Part 15 devices: § 15.5 General conditions of operation. (b) Operation of an intentional, unintentional, or incidental radiator is subject to the conditions that no harmful interference is caused and that interference must be accepted that may be caused by the operation of an authorized radio station, by another intentional or unintentional radiator, by industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) equipment, or by an incidental radiator. In other words, consumer electronic gears is a magnet for interference. In your case though I bet the problems you're having with a 2.4GHz phone have more to do with the more likely 802.11 gear, and somewhat less likely from wireless devices and controllers. For example, my Pelican Spirit wireless game controller is absolutely worth crap around here. Too many wireless networks. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 13:44:02 -0400 In article , colin@sutton.wow.aust.com says: > The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a challenge between 93 year old > telegraph operator transmitting morse code to an 82 year old with a > manual typewriter, and youngsters sending a text message. The text > message was received 18 seconds after the message was already on > paper. > http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/04/14/1113251739401.html They've obviously not heard of T9 mode in text messaging. The biggest issue I have with texting is that the keypad is too damned small. ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 11:06:12 -0400 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) > And telegraph operators can spell also. No silly abbreviations. U R SO RITE ! :) Seriously ... my high-school daughter tells me there is now a substantial problem with youngsters who supposedly can *only* write in text-message abbreviations or "l33tsp33k" and have developed some kind of mental block against producing plain English. She, a skilled writer, is annoyed with them, of course. Accompaying this is an inability to think about language. At one point she was trying to refer to the band "U2" but her interlocutor (in a chat room) could only see "U2" as "you too" and communication failed. ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Passenger Found Dead Hour After Plane Lands Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 02:00:34 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Marcus Didius Falco wrote: > Nice to see they're alert in Chicago. I guess they wanted to make sure > he had time to vote. > http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-dead14.html > www.suntimes.com > Passenger found dead hour after plane lands at O'Hare > A passenger was discovered dead aboard American Airlines Flight 154 from > Tokyo to Chicago on Wednesday afternoon, police said. > The man apparently suffered a heart attack and was found by a cleaning > crew about 5 p.m., an hour after the aircraft landed at O'Hare > Airport, said Chicago Police Officer Matt Jackson. Authorities were > notified and the man was pronounced dead at the scene, a detective > said. > An autopsy is set for today. > The name of the 66-year-old man, whose passport shows he was a U.S. > citizen, was not being released by authorities pending notification of > his family. The passenger had been scheduled to get on another flight > to Indianapolis, his final destination, said Tim Smith, American > Airlines spokesman. > After the plane had been moved from Terminal 5 to another terminal for > cleaning, a crew found the man in a bathroom, Smith said. > Lisa Donovan > Copyright 2005 The Sun-Times Company When I was in the airline biz, circa 1964-90, the flight attendants were required to check all the lavs and block them from further use during the final prep for landing check. The primary reason for that check is to assure that all passengers have returned to their seats and are buckled in for landing. The responsible flight attendants should be disciplined for irresponible failure to carry out a fundamental safety duty. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think they are still supposed to check the manifest on take off and landing and make sure it balances. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Passenger Found Dead Hour After Plane Lands Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 20:25:24 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:13:42 -0400, Marcus Didius Falco wrote: > Nice to see they're alert in Chicago. I guess they wanted to make sure > he had time to vote. > http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-dead14.html Glad you found someone's death a bit of humor to turn your boring day into something special. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 01:08:22 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Last Laugh! Honesty on the Internet Two editorial cartoons you may enjoy, and perhaps relate to personally. http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/honesty.html 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #167 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Apr 17 17:50:30 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3HLoTk24922; Sun, 17 Apr 2005 17:50:30 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 17:50:30 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504172150.j3HLoTk24922@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 V24 #168 TELECOM Digest Sun, 17 Apr 2005 17:50:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 168 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AOL Monitor Accused of Luring 15-Year-Old (Lisa Minter) Intel to Release First Chip for Broadband Wireless (Lisa Minter) Web Search Revenue Seen Strong for Google, Yahoo (Lisa Minter) PPC Advertising, Click Fraud; Effect on Search Engines (Greg Skinner) Can I Substitute NiMH Battery for NiCd in Cordless Phone? (curious) Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse (DevilsPGD) Re: Congress Aims to Thwart Identity Theft (Thomas A. Horsley) Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not in Emergency System (Tim) Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not in Emergency System (Wilber) Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses (Scott Dorsey) Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses (Tony P.) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Scott Dorsey) Re: Last Laugh! Honesty on the Internet (Barry Margolin) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 16 Apr 2005 14:51:37 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: AOL Monitor Accused of Luring 15-Year-Old An Internet chat room monitor hired to keep children safe from sexual predators seduced a California girl online and was about to meet her for sex when he was found out by a co-worker, a lawsuit charges. According to documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, the online relationship began when the girl was 15. She met the AOL employee in a children's chat room and confided in him. Their conversations online and by phone became increasingly explicit, the lawsuit says. They were preparing to meet on the girl's 17th birthday when one of the monitor's co-workers became suspicious and prevented the encounter. The lawsuit charges AOL and its parent company, Time Warner Inc., with failing to supervise the employee and of falsely advertising that its online service was safe for children. It also charges the monitor with inflicting emotional distress. America Online spokesman Nicholas Graham said the company fired the monitor and contacted authorities after learning of the situation in April 2003. The man, who was 23 when he met the girl online, has not been charged with a crime. Graham said AOL puts its chat room monitors through "rigorous screening and training procedures," including a criminal background check. The teenager, who is now 19 and living in Los Angeles, waited two years to bring legal action because it was "a very confusing and painful time for her," said her lawyer, Olivier Taillieu. There was no immediate indication what the lawsuit seeks; Taillieu did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment Saturday. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Apr 2005 12:56:40 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Intel to Release First Chip for Broadband Wireless As telecommunications carriers around the globe experiment with a wireless replacement for cable and DSL modems, Intel Corp. plans on Monday to release its first chip for the technology, known as Wimax. The world's largest chip maker sees in Wimax a potential profit source that it hopes will become as popular as its shorter-range cousin, Wi-Fi. Intel also believes it will stimulate computer sales in emerging markets where high-speed Internet access is unavailable or prohibitively expensive. Wimax is not a guaranteed hit, as telecommunication carriers invest in wireless broadband networks based on cellular technology as well as WiFi hot-spots. Intel's chip, formerly given the code name Rosedale, costs around $45 and is designed to power devices that will receive Wimax signals in users' homes. Major networking equipment makers, including Siemens AG of Germany and Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (HWT.UL) of China, will also announce products built on Rosedale, Intel said. Intel also will highlight as many as 18 current or upcoming trials of Wimax technology around the world, run by the likes of BT Group Plc (BT.L) of Britain. Plans for trials, of various scopes, are also to be announced in India, the Philippines, Japan, South Africa and Russia. Scott Richardson, general manager of Intel's broadband wireless business, said Wimax equipment was probably too expensive now for wide adoption, but that Intel and networking equipment makers were working to push equipment costs below $200 from the $300 to $500 level. "It's our vision and our strategy to really drive that price point down," Richardson said. Unlike Wi-Fi, whose ad hoc networks can be set up by anyone to connect a single house or office, Wimax is engineered to cover an entire city via base stations dispersed around a metropolitan area. So-called client devices, akin to a cable or DSL modem and built with a Wimax chip like Intel's, then pick the signal up. When connected to a PC, the signal becomes a high-speed wireless connection. Intel and other Wimax backers are working to ratify a new Wimax standard designed for use in mobile products. That technology is seen as a potential threat to cellular networks, although some consider it a long shot. Intel's support for Wi-Fi in its Centrino brand of notebook computer chips made the short-range wireless technology into a global standard popular in cafes, homes, offices and other public spaces. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Apr 2005 12:58:07 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Web Search Revenue Seen Strong for Google, Yahoo By Lisa Baertlein Strong search advertising revenues are expected to drive profits at Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. when they report earnings next week. Some financial analysts and research firms flagged a decline in "keyword" pricing during the holiday hangover months of January and February, compared with prior months when pricing on retail-related terms rose. But several analysts who cover search companies are skeptical, saying discerning trends is notoriously difficult because of the large number of keywords available and variability within the group. Web search advertisers set the prices on keywords through auction-style bidding. They pay each time a Web search user clicks on their ad, which links to their site. For their parts, executives at Google and Yahoo each repeatedly have said their growth has resulted from greater search volume rather than price increases. "People should be careful about extrapolating too much from a small sample" of keyword prices, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said on the sidelines of a recent cable industry conference in San Francisco. Yahoo is scheduled to release earnings on April 19 and Google is due to announce on April 21. "Although there has been significant controversy over search trends this quarter, the numerous data points we compiled indicate to us continued strong momentum," American Technology Research analyst Mark Mahaney said in a client note this week. "We believe Google will outpace the industry," added Mahaney, who does not own Google shares and whose firm does not provide investment banking services. Mahaney expects Google to beat analysts' consensus estimates when it reports its first-quarter results. He sees Google posting a profit, excluding items, of 99 cents a share. The average targets compiled by Reuters Estimates call for Google to post earnings excluding items of 91 cents a share. Jeffrey Herzog, chairman and chief executive of iCrossing, a search engine marketing company that helps advertisers create and manage campaigns, said keyword prices are up from a year ago. Analysts pegged their Google optimism on the company's international growth, the expansion of its network of Web sites that carry Google ads pegged to editorial content, and recent efforts to make Web search ads more relevant to users. "We would expect Google to again grow faster as it is much further along in the monetization process, has a stronger international presence, and is benefiting from expansion of its contextual advertising network," Lehman Brothers analyst Douglas Anmuth wrote in a client note last week. Lehman Brothers was one of the underwriters on Google's IPO. Anmuth's target calls for Google to post first-quarter net revenue of $739 million, up 13 percent from the prior quarter, and earnings, excluding items, of 91 cents a share. He projected 12 percent quarter-over-quarter search revenue growth for Yahoo during the first quarter of 2005. Mahaney sees Yahoo posting 13 percent growth in the same time frame -- largely driven by volume growth -- and net income of 11 cents a share, matching analysts' average target. "Our belief in continued strong search growth was reinforced by public comments by Yahoo and Google executives, as well as by numerous conversations we've had with other public and private search companies," Mahaney said. Copyright 2005 Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 21:18:34 +0000 From: Greg Skinner Subject: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines By now, many if not most of you have probably read, or at least heard, about the lawsuit filed against several search engines, accusing them of conspiring to overcharge for advertisements. More information here: http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?cat=USMARKET&src=704&feed=dji§ion=news&news_id=dji-00001320050405&date=20050405&alias=/alias/money/cm/nw The WSJ recently featured a front-page story on the issue of click fraud as well. I have always been skeptical of the pay-per-click (PPC) method of charging for advertisements. I have always felt it was a poor business model, because of its susceptibility to fraud. I have never understood the search industry's fascination with PPC, especially since there are other methods of selling advertising, such as fixed fees, which provide no means (and thus, no incentive) to game the system by merely clicking on ads. Furthermore, the money that is spent both by the advertisers and publishers (including the search engines) implementing complex fraud detection systems can be put to more productive uses. Just about everyone I have spoken to with a technical background in Internet protocols and architecture seems to realize this, but the message doesn't get through to business people who feel that despite click fraud, PPC is a superior advertising model to any others. Perhaps there is something I have overlooked in my assessment of the risks vs. rewards of PPC advertising. It seems that PPC advertising is going to be a fixture in web advertising. Given that PPC makes click fraud easy, we can expect to see more of it in the future. This should be a serious concern to anyone who invests in search engines or other companies that do PPC advertising, or is a customer of such companies. At the very least, the companies need to disclose the criteria they use for determining that fraud has taken place, and the rights their customers (advertisers) have with regards to getting refunds for fraudulent clicks. I'd also like to know if there are any technical groups that are studying the issue and proposing solutions. From a standpoint of detecting fraud at its inception, I thought I might find some interest among the intrusion detection community, but I haven't yet. The types of intrusion detection done at the packet level don't seem to scale to the types of attacks I've witnessed, which suggests that the detection might be better done at the web server and/or web log processing level. I checked the Apache documentation to see if any work of that type had been done, and outside of some basic configuration options for blocking certain types of sites and requests, there wasn't any. Also, based on what I've read about some of the tools people are using to analyze web logs, they can detect certain types of fraud, but don't necessarily provide alerts of impending fraud, especially if the site receives a considerable amount of traffic. (This is especially the case for the largest search engines.) --gregbo gds at best dot com ------------------------------ From: curious@nospam.com Subject: Can I Substitute a NiMH Battery for NiCd in a Cordless Phone? Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 00:06:07 -0400 I recently bought a cordless phone, which came with a NiCd battery. In the manual it says: "To reduce the risk of fire, use only 3.6V 850mAh Nickel Cadmium (Ni-Cad) cordless telephone replacement battery pack." I've heard about the dreaded "memory effect" with NiCd batteries, so I'm interested in replacing it with a NiMH one. Someone who is selling a 3.6V 1000mAH NiMH battery on Ebay claims it works with my phone, but will it really be safe? Wouldn't want to install a NiMH battery and have the house burn down. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 3.6 at 850 is _close enough_ to 3.6 at 1000 that I think it should work. The difficulty with swapping batteries around randomly however is not so much that your house would burn down as it is that differences in those batteries could possibly cause some slow degredation on your electronics unit and cause it to fry out prematurely. Your voltage (3.6) is critical; you want to avoid increasing _low voltages_ very much. A device which calls for 3.6 should pretty much be confined to 3.6. You can play around with the amperage a bit however; 1000 will work fine with something rated for 850. But make certain the battery contacts line up correctly and do not cause a short circuit accidentally. It would be a shame to waste that new battery as soon as you got it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 16:41:55 -0600 Organization: Disorganized In message Colin wrote: > The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a challenge between 93 year old > telegraph operator transmitting morse code to an 82 year old with a > manual typewriter, and youngsters sending a text message. The text > message was received 18 seconds after the message was already on > paper. > http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/04/14/1113251739401.html Sure, but much of that 18 seconds was in network transmission time, but the telegraph has a (by comparison) severely limited "network" Let's try another test; let's send the same message to each of five different recipients randomly selected out of a possible thousand recipients, then travel to a randomly selected location within two city blocks and send a new message to those five people again. Anybody want to bet that by the time the telegraph operator gets his system reconnected to send to the second recipient, the phone user will have finished walking to the randomly selected location (sending the first batch of five messages while walking?) In message Tony P. wrote: > They've obviously not heard of T9 mode in text messaging. The biggest > issue I have with texting is that the keypad is too damned small. How large a phone are you willing to carry? ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Congress Aims to Thwart Identity Theft From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 23:02:00 GMT > ...and to require businesses to confess to customers > when private data is taken. This is that part that cracks me up. For every piece of stolen data the data brokers find out about, there are probably more than 100 other pieces they aren't even aware of (only clumsy data thieves leave fingerprints :-). >>==>> The *Best* political site >>==+ email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics <<==+ ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 10:53:01 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications I don't understand where local governmental public safety managers are hiding out on this one. I cannot imagine of a public safety jurisdiction that doesn't own the E911 database, as well as pay the LEC for the ANI trunks that go to the emergency center dispatchers. I guess they have all supped too often with the LEC folks. ------------------------------ From: Charles.B.Wilber@Dartmouth.EDU Date: 17 Apr 2005 13:50:45 EDT Subject: Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mr. Wilber gets in a discussion with Jack Decker, moderator of VOIP News. References in the following to 'moderator' are referring to Jack Decker. PAT] Jack Decker writes: > [COMMENT: Okay, if there is some truth to it, then why does almost > everyone in the press play toady for the big phone companies and try > to lay all the blame on the VoIP companies alone? --- end of quote --- Wilber replies: In your diatribe against "toady journalists" and "big phone companies" I saw no mention of the fact that the ILECs are bound by regulations and hampered by "universal service fees" and "E-911 fees" from which the VoIP providers are -- and demand to be -- exempt from. It is these fees that financed much of the telecommunications infrastructure and much, if not all, of the nationwide E-911 system. [Moderator's comment: I'm not sure what "Universal Service Fees" have to do with this discussion, but I have said on several occasions that they amount to "corporate welfare", especially for the smaller (and often highly profitable) rural telephone companies, and they ought to be abolished across the board. I'd rather see the fact that VoIP companies don't pay them used as leverage to abolish these hidden taxes/handouts, rather than trying to put VoIP companies under this same rotten system. As for E-911 fees, I have been saying for many months now that the only fair way to finance E-911 centers is through the same mechanism used to finance every other emergency service in the community (such as fire and police), be that property taxes, local sales taxes, or whatever. There is nothing remotely fair about billing these fees on people's phone bills, because it deprives them of the ability to vote on whether they want these enhanced systems, and when people have multiple phone numbers (as is more and more common) they pay multiple E-911 fees even though their household may be the same size as before, and isn't using 911 any more frequently - meanwhile a large industrial facility with only a handful of phone numbers may not be paying its fair share at all!] Wilber notes further: Furthermore, most of the E-911 systems currently in place cannot easily handle the processing of 911 calls from VoIP origins. Who should bear the burden of converting, modifying, upgrading or replacing those local systems? Wireline users or providers who have already been paying into the system for years to make it work while VoIP users remain exempt? [Moderator's comment #2: In an ideal world, the phone companies that sold the 911 centers these technologically obsolete systems would be forced to pay. However, I suspect that if there were more sources for these systems -- that is, if 911 center operators didn't run to their partners in crime at the phone companies to purchase these systems at top dollar -- I suspect they could get far more advanced systems for far less money. In other words, I believe the phone companies may be DELIBERATELY selling systems to 911 centers that only work really well with wireline services. There is a conflict of interest there, but as I more or less said before, I think the 911 center administrators so love it that they can put one over on the taxpayers and voters (by not seeking their permission before installing a new system) that they don't really question what sort of deal the phone companies are giving them, nor whether the equipment they are being sold is expandable to handle communications from newer forms of technology. Again, I think 911 systems should be funded by taxpayers through normal taxation mechanisms, NOT through a surcharge on any type of communications, and if that were done the 911 center administrators might not feel so beholden to the phone companies and might shop around to get systems that are more easily upgradeable.] Wilber again: Providers such as Vonage and others are quick to yell "foul" when they are taken to task for rushing a product to market without assuring that it provides the same level of safety the public already enjoys. They are even quicker to yell "unfair" when someone suggests that they be subject to the same regulation and fees that critical public communications providers have had to deal with for decades. It must be nice to have your cake and eat it too but few of us are able to pull it off. [Moderator's comment #3: You conveniently ignore the fact that for many years cell phones were unable to complete calls to 911. Perhaps you feel that all new forms of communication should be hamstrung until they can fit into the wireline telephone companies' ways of doing things, but I for one do not. NO ONE is forced to buy VoIP service, but dammit, I think people should have the CHOICE to buy a product with a greater or lesser level of safety. This is supposed to be a free county (well, at least that is the lie we were brainwashed with in school) and if that were the least bit true, we'd give people the freedom to buy any product and let them make the decision whether any risks are acceptable, and that applies not only to telecommunications products but also to certain types of medicines and cancer cures that have been banned by the FDA (don't even get me started on that). Anyway, no industry has been better at having their cake and eating it too than the traditional telcos. For example, they built their networks using money taken from the ratepayers when people had no choice as to providers, and they set their poles on public rights-of-way, and then they have the unmitigated gall to claim it's all theirs and they shouldn't have to share it with competitors. Of course had they not had their government-enforced monopoly all these years, there would have probably been viable competition 50 years ago and no one would have monopoly bottleneck control on the pair of phone wires coming into a home. VoIP, which still has a minuscule share of the market at the moment, is the one thing that can and will break that monopoly, and that is why we are getting all the telco-inspired propaganda crap being fed to the press right now. But it will only happen if customers can freely choose VoIP, and that is why the incumbents are using every dirty trick at their disposal to try and eliminate or delay that choice. As for my "diatribe", no one is forcing you to read anything I write and if you don't like what I write you can unsubscribe from VoIP News anytime. I apologize if it sounds like I'm being short, but I really have lost my patience with people who cannot see that the incumbent telcos are staging a massive effort, probably via their public relations firms and their "astroturf" consumer groups (and PLEASE educate yourself on what an astroturf group is!), to make VoIP look bad and even dangerous. But VoIP is no worse than cell phone service was in the early years, and the only reason you didn't see this sort of propaganda against cell phones was because the big phone companies were in that from the beginning. Now it comes out (in some European studies) that cell phone radiation may be dangerous to the brain, but do you hear a peep out of anyone about that in this country? No, we can make a big deal out of the fact that some guy in Texas couldn't be bothered to activate his 911 service, but there is zero concern for all the teenagers that are possibly going to develop brain tumors in 20 or 30 years because of their extensive cell phone use today. As soon as the big phone companies think they are competitive in the VoIP market, suddenly VoIP will be the best thing since sliced bread. -Jack] Charlie Wilber New Hampshire How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses Date: 17 Apr 2005 14:12:39 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) wrote: > Do the 'spam interest groups' have that powerful of a lobby to keep > such bills from passing? Or are there other Internet activists who, > for their own reasons, are opposed to such laws and regulation? For the most part, if backbone sites had taken spam seriously a decade ago, it would never have become a problem. The reason we have spam today is mostly because major backbone sites are not willing to disconnect customers who provide service to spammers. Just refusing service from the two largest Korean ISPs would probably cut down spam by half. But there are plenty of backbone sites peering with them. The vast majority of spam comes from a fairly small number of people. If everyone here went out and shot someone on the ROKSO list, there would be no spam problem at all. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 15:35:33 -0400 In article , tom@tomlynn.com says: > Pat, > Check out http://popfile.sourceforge.net > Popfile is an e-mail proxy that filters spam based on how you train > it. It takes some initial effort to get it over the hump, but it > achieves over 99% accuracy over the long term. > I believe they also have an nntp proxy for filtering usenet, too. > You won't be sorry. I will second the endorsement of Popfile. I've been using it for over a year now and it works very well. Every once in a great while it misclassified something as spam, but it's seriously easy to reclassify through their web interface. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: 17 Apr 2005 14:18:25 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Danny Burstein wrote: > In Lisa Minter writes: >> From here, Jeremy Jaynes, a Raleigh businessman who rose to No. 8 on >> a list of "spam kingpins," broke the nation's toughest spam law by >> churning out more than 100,000 unsolicited e-mails a month. In fact, >> he was moving closer to 10 million a day. > Ok, this guy contracted for high speed internet connectivity from someone > or another. I believe it was uunet. > Why did anyone else accept any packets from this organization? Because uunet is very large. They provide service to a lot of spammers. They do not disconnect spammers. But they are large enough that we cannot just refuse all service from them. Note that Jaynes also used a lot of offshore servers in China and Korea as well. > Let the spammer continue to pay the local company. And let the two of > them send all the garbage they want to each other. There's no > requirement (barring a few unique circumstances) for anyone else to > answer the doorbell when they ring. The problem is that very large backbone sites are providing service to spammers, or peering with other large backbone providers who do. When uunet and sprintlink take spam problems seriously, spam will be reduced dramatically. As long as uunet and sprintlink ignore complaints about their spamming users, as long as they continue to peer with Kornet and Hananet spam factories, then we will have spam. As long as verio and he.net hang up on people asking for the abuse desk on the phone, we will have spam. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sure you can cut off UUNET the same way you can cut of MCI. Just do it ... call their bluff ... let _them_ deal with their legitimate customers who are no longer able to get through. Yes, they both have lots of legitimate customers, but in any kind of serious medical procedure, for example, we don't think about how long the patient will be in the operating room or how long they will be in intensive care recovering. We concern ourselves with what their life will be like when they are fully recovered and back to normal. And our net has some very serious, I suspect deadly cancerous growths that have been going of for years. So what if cutting off UUNET and MCI leaves a shambles of email and the net _for a few days_. Things are pretty much a shambles now anyway, aren't they? Oh, I know that MCI (and probably Vint Cerf) will scream and carry on about it, as will UUNET and others similarly situated. But it is time _we_ took the net back over, and my belief is it would not take too many days of simply refusing to handle _any_ of their traffic until things began to change for the better. Just cut them, and be done with it, and hope they are back with us sometime soon under more reasonable terms. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Honesty on the Internet Organization: Symantec Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 21:49:36 -0400 In article , TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > Two editorial cartoons you may enjoy, and perhaps relate to personally. http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/honesty.html I prefer the class "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog". Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At least with 'no one knows you are a dog', probably no one asked, so no one volunteered, therefore no one should be surprised or disappointed. But with the chat rooms, many of them like Yahoo and AOL seem to be predicated on the all-important questions of life: 'm or f, how old', and the trouble and the deceit only gets worse from there. A couple months ago, a kid named Eric, a friend of Lisa and her husband, was over here day after day; he wanted to always 'check his email' and do a little chatting on Yahoo Messenger. It was cool with Lisa, so I let him sit here for an hour or so at a time doing his thing. The payoff came this weekend, when all eager, he came around and told me his 'new friend' was coming down from Wichita for the weekend. It turns out his new friend was at least twenty years older than the Yahoo Profile would indicate, and a bit more plump, etc. Poor Eric was crushed :( and _he_ had sent reasonably recent and accurate photos of himself, etc. I told him, trying to be courteous and polite about it, "welcome to the real world of honesty and the internet". 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #168 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Apr 17 23:55:17 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3I3tHU27978; Sun, 17 Apr 2005 23:55:17 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 23:55:17 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504180355.j3I3tHU27978@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 V24 #169 TELECOM Digest Sun, 17 Apr 2005 23:55:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 169 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Surveillance Cameras More Common Everyday (Lisa Minter) Packet8 Imposes $1.50 Regulatory Recovery Fee (Jack Decker) Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse (Tony P.) Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse (Robert Bonomi) Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Can I Substitute a NiMH Battery for NiCd in a Cordless Phone? (mc) Re: Can I Substitute a NiMH Battery for NiCd in a Cordless Phone? (Wes) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Robert Bonomi) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Tony P.) Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud; Its Effect on Search Engines (Wesrock) Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril (Charles B. Wilber) Auction: Sierra Wireless Aircard 555: Telus Bell Verizon (Philoushka) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 17 Apr 2005 17:06:21 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Surveillance Cameras More Common Everyday By SIOBHAN McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer It's there when you ride an elevator and make a purchase in a store. There's no escaping it in a museum. Look up at the stoplight and a camera may be watching you. Being lens-shy just doesn't cut it in today's camera-crazed world. Chances are, during a good part of your day, there's a camera nudging into your private space. There's no doubt surveillance cameras can aid police and protect property. Videos showing crimes are played routinely on news programs to help catch perpetrators. But those same cameras can make people feel violated and uneasy. Their broad sweep makes no distinction between revelers at a parade and wrongdoers at a riot. And they never blink. "I don't like to be watched," said K. Ann Largie, 29, of Laurel, Md. "It makes me feel uncomfortable." Nikki Barnett, 31, of Burtonsville, Md., stopped showcasing her "happy dance" in elevators after learning many of them are monitored by cameras. "I stopped doing silly things," she says. "I don't want to portray myself in a certain light." Closed-circuit cameras are spreading in cities, a trend hastened by concerns about terrorist attacks but by other reasons, too, including the mere availability of the technology. "If I'm mugged at an ATM, I'm glad the bank has cameras so the person can be tracked down," said Justine Stevens, 32, of Arlington, Va. "But cameras in elevators monitoring behavior seems weird." Indeed, for every videotaped image of a crime that leads to an arrest there are dozens of perfectly innocent moments captured. "Cameras used for specific suspects and at specific times, that's good law enforcement," said Peter Swire, professor of law at Ohio State University. "But I don't want it part of my permanent record every time I scratch myself on a public street." In Nashville, Tenn., a middle school installed cameras that parents, in a $4.2 million lawsuit, said captured their kids in various stages of locker-room undress. School officials say the cameras were put up in plain view to watch an outside door and hallway. Perhaps nowhere are cameras more ubiquitous than in the nation's capital: federal buildings, museums, parks, traffic lights. Some are discreetly placed in elevator ceilings and lamp posts. Others are more obvious, such as one fixed near an American flag adorning the Justice Department. Some closed-circuit cameras run around-the-clock. Others come on for specific events. In Washington, 14 police cameras roll during parades, demonstrations and when the city goes on high alert. They are turned on a half-dozen or so times a year, and the police department publicizes it. Kevin Morison, the department's spokesman, said there was a lot of hyperbole when the cameras were introduced. Critics claimed police were watching people leave home to go to work, then come home at night. "Frankly, we have no interest in doing that, or capacity to do that," he said. That system is part of a larger one. At a police command center, feeds from those cameras are watched along with those from the city's subway system, transportation department and more. Critics contend the camera lies or at least misleads. An innocent conversation can appear conspiratorial, depending on the angle, the lighting or many other factors. But Paul Rosenzweig, senior legal research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said today's world demands that people be more open to the use of cameras. "You can't sweep back the tide of technological development and you can't blink your eyes to necessity," he said. "We are in a changed circumstance today. For us, September 11 brings it home." Chicago is working on plans to link more than 2,000 public surveillance cameras in a network that would use sophisticated software to alert authorities to potential crimes. In Los Angeles, the police department recently deployed a remote camera surveillance system that is used to identify, track and record criminal activity in some parts of the city. The system is equipped with "intelligent" video capabilities and facial recognition software. New Orleans is installing a sophisticated crime-fighting system of bulletproof cameras, each capable of eyeing an eight-block area. So far, about 240 of the proposed 1,000 cameras are in operation. New Orleans officials say their system has plenty of safeguards against abuse. Cameras are not routinely monitored and video is stored for a brief period, to be watched if a crime is reported. Only a few officers have access to the video and they look at it only in response to a specific report, officials said. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. Please note _two new features added today: _Consumer Reports_ regards telecom equipment and a scan of the better quality blogs on the net. Both are now part of Telecom Digest Extra, and updated daily. ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 17:26:36 -0400 Subject: Packet8 Imposes $1.50 Regulatory Recovery Fee - Chance to Cancel For those of you that have tried Packet8's VoIP service and are less than thrilled with it, but don't want to pay a cancellation fee, you may find this thread at BroadbandReports.com quite interesting: http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,13183857 As user "Minglewood" posted: "Does P8's Price Increase Avoid the Cancel Fee? I think it does, as long as cancelation occurs before using the phone on May 1. Anyone try this yet? This result is implied in P8's new TOS. In addtion, it follows naturally from P8 changing the TOS unilaterally. The customer can't be held to its promise (one year of service) if P8 doesn't hold to its promises ($19.99 per month). There is no doubt this fee is a price increase. Thoughts?" Now I doubt that "Minglewood" is a lawyer, and I know I'm not, but what he's saying does seem to make sense. I wouldn't normally mention this but it seems to me that Packet8 does a lot of things that might cause people not to like them, apparently including trying to force high-usage residential customers off an "Unlimited" plan and onto a Business service plan (until they complain in a very public forum, anyway). My belief is that if you advertise unlimited service, that's what you have to provide, and if you don't you aren't going to be listed on the Resources for Michigan Telephone Users web site, and that plus the fact that they utilize network marketing companies (a.k.a. Multi-Level Marketing) to market their service is enough against them for me to not list them. This bogus Regulatory Recovery Fee is just another reason for me to not like them. Anyway, I don't expect that everyone will jump ship solely because of this, but if anyone has been wanting a way to get out from under their service without paying the cancellation fee, this just may be an out. And, though I doubt they had any idea that Packet8 would do this, a few days ago VoicePulse introduced a competitive upgrade offer for those switching from another provider, where current and former customers of competing VoIP services are eligible to receive a $50 cash reward (details at http://www.voicepulse.com/plans/CompetitiveUpgrade.aspx ) so for those wanting to quit Packet8 but not VoIP, there is an option for you. I truly believe that companies should not be permitted to tack on these fees, because they are not mandated by the government (Packet8''s new Terms of Service even state that "This fee is not a tax or charge required or assessed by any government"), so in effect what they are doing is advertising one price but charging a higher one. I have no idea why consumer protection agencies and regulators are willing to look the other way when VoIP companies do this, but they shouldn't. Just a warning, I am seriously considering pulling the listing of all companies that charge this bogus fee off the web site. Why should I help send any business their way, when there are other companies that don't do this? The only thing that has stopped me so far is the fact that some of them offer some unique international plans that may be beneficial to some customers even with the fee, and on the site I do mention this added fee when I know about it, so people are warned. But I still think it's a very, very sleazy practice and I have no respect for the companies that add such fees. How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 19:18:11 -0400 In article , ihatespam@crazyhat.net says: > In message Colin > wrote: >> The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a challenge between 93 year old >> telegraph operator transmitting morse code to an 82 year old with a >> manual typewriter, and youngsters sending a text message. The text >> message was received 18 seconds after the message was already on >> paper. >> http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/04/14/1113251739401.html > Sure, but much of that 18 seconds was in network transmission time, > but the telegraph has a (by comparison) severely limited "network" > Let's try another test; let's send the same message to each of five > different recipients randomly selected out of a possible thousand > recipients, then travel to a randomly selected location within two > city blocks and send a new message to those five people again. > Anybody want to bet that by the time the telegraph operator gets his > system reconnected to send to the second recipient, the phone user > will have finished walking to the randomly selected location (sending > the first batch of five messages while walking?) > In message Tony P. > wrote: >> They've obviously not heard of T9 mode in text messaging. The biggest >> issue I have with texting is that the keypad is too damned small. > How large a phone are you willing to carry? Something with a keypad approximately the size of the one found on a WE 2500 set. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 00:00:50 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , mc wrote: >> And telegraph operators can spell also. No silly abbreviations. Yup. Like almost everyone else of that 'day and age', they had been *taught* properly. On the other hand, telegraphers, and later radio-telegraphers, *did* make _heavy_ use of abbreviations, and other short-hand 'codes', for operational management 'stuff'. Sometimes they were used when passing "customer" message traffic, where what went across the wire was "not exactly" what the customer had said/written -- effectively a limited form of 'data compression', in addition to the "run-length limited" encoding methodology. As one example, consider the antecedents of the radio-telegraphy "Is anybody out there?"/"Can anybody hear me?" inquiry. Or the infamous "Q-codes". > U R SO RITE ! :) Anybody else remember: A B C D Goldfish? L M N O Goldfish! or C D B ? Entire illustrated _books_ full of of this nonsense. > Seriously ... my high-school daughter tells me there is now a > substantial problem with youngsters who supposedly can *only* write in > text-message abbreviations or "l33tsp33k" and have developed some kind > of mental block against producing plain English. She, a skilled > writer, is annoyed with them, of course. > Accompaying this is an inability to think about language. At one > point she was trying to refer to the band "U2" but her interlocutor > (in a chat room) could only see "U2" as "you too" and communication > failed. 'context' and 'frame of reference' are _everything_. e.g., a pre-occupied graphics-programmer friend was going down the soft-drinks isle at the local grocery store, when a label caught his eye. "Hi Res", that's a funny name for a soft-drink, he thought. Then realized it was the brand of root-beer. And, as a youngster, I was _firmly_convinced_ that coyotes could fly. After all, I heard it repeatedly from my father, reading from one of my favorite 'read aloud to children' books, And _he_ wouldn't lie to me about such things, would he? What I _heard_: The blackbird cried: "I see a coyote! I see a coyote! And then he flew away." What was _in_print_: The blackbird cried, "I see a coyote! I see a coyote!", and then he flew away. Lastly, please consider the difference between 'unionized', and "unionized". What? You don't see any difference? But, the first word describes the presence of a collective bargaining unit, while the other one describes the absence of ionization. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 20:26:14 EDT Subject: Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse In a message dated Sat, 16 Apr 2005 16:41:55 -0600, DevilsPGD < ihatespam@crazyhat.net> writes: > In message Colin > wrote: >> The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a challenge between 93 year old >> telegraph operator transmitting morse code to an 82 year old with a >> manual typewriter, and youngsters sending a text message. The text >> message was received 18 seconds after the message was already on >> paper. >> http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/04/14/1113251739401.html > Sure, but much of that 18 seconds was in network transmission time, > but the telegraph has a (by comparison) severely limited "network" > Let's try another test; let's send the same message to each of five > different recipients randomly selected out of a possible thousand > recipients, then travel to a randomly selected location within two > city blocks and send a new message to those five people again. > Anybody want to bet that by the time the telegraph operator gets his > system reconnected to send to the second recipient, the phone user > will have finished walking to the randomly selected location (sending > the first batch of five messages while walking?) Press wires and railroad wires were routinely set up to send to multiple locations. Many Western Union and other telegraph wires were set up the say way. They were largely replaced by teletypewriter because of the costs involved in having a receiving operator in each of perhaps hundreds of locations. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Can I Substitute a NiMH Battery for NiCd in a Cordless Phone? Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 20:00:58 -0400 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) The "memory effect" is not what it's claimed to be, but you can certainly substitute an NiMH battery for NiCd. Match the voltage. The mAH will be greater, so allow proportionately more time for a full charge. I have done many NiMH for NiCd substitutions. Electrically, an NiMH is simply an NiCd with more capacity. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 20:19:06 EDT Subject: Re: Can I Substitute a NiMH Battery for NiCd in a Cordless Phone? In a message dated Sun, 17 Apr 2005 00:06:07 -0400, curious@nospam.com writes: > I recently bought a cordless phone, which came with a NiCd battery. > In the manual it says: > "To reduce the risk of fire, use only 3.6V 850mAh Nickel Cadmium > (Ni-Cad) cordless telephone replacement battery pack." > I've heard about the dreaded "memory effect" with NiCd batteries, so > I'm interested in replacing it with a NiMH one. Someone who is > selling a 3.6V 1000mAH NiMH battery on Ebay claims it works with my > phone, but will it really be safe? Wouldn't want to install a NiMH > battery and have the house burn down. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 3.6 at 850 is _close enough_ to 3.6 at > 1000 that I think it should work. The difficulty with swapping > batteries around randomly however is not so much that your house would > burn down as it is that differences in those batteries could possibly > cause some slow degredation on your electronics unit and cause it to > fry out prematurely. Your voltage (3.6) is critical; you want to avoid > increasing _low voltages_ very much. A device which calls for 3.6 > should pretty much be confined to 3.6. You can play around with the > amperage a bit however; 1000 will work fine with something rated for > 850. But make certain the battery contacts line up correctly and do > not cause a short circuit accidentally. It would be a shame to waste > that new battery as soon as you got it. PAT] Many places sell batteries for cordless phones and have cross-reference guides by model number, also by size, shape, voltage and type of connector used. The battery packages have a list of cordless phone model numbers they are designed for. Wal-Mart carries a pretty extensive line of cordless phone batteries at competitive prices, probably not much more than the shipping costs charged by an eBay seller.. The ones I have seen in Wal-Mart are GE/Sanyo brand. I have also seen cordless phone batteries in many other places; Walgreen's for one, I believe. Make sure the connector matches. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 22:01:04 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , John Levine wrote: >> Ok, this guy contracted for high speed internet connectivity from >> someone or another. > That would be MCI. >> Why did anyone else accept any packets from this organization? > Good question. They're consistently #1 on the Spamhaus hit parade. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Then why are they not getting cut off > from the rest of the world until they make an effort to get rid of > their spam traffic? Is it possibly because your superiors at ICANN > and their mouthpiece Vint Cerf are so well funded by MCI that they do > not allow (by heavy pressure or otherwise) anyone to put a permanent > halt on MCI's traffic? Why is ICANN so silent on the volumes of spam > the rest of the net has to endure day after day? Is it because ICANN > and Vint Cerf are actually more interested in appeasing the spammers > and commercial interests rather than the vast majority of the netizens? Nope. it's because it is, quite simply, *NOT* ICANN's job to do so. Of the various organizations (ICANN, IAB, IETF, etc.) that are the 'authority' for specific functionalities of the greater Internet, _none_ of them have any authority with regard to the 'content' of packets. And *nobody* on the 'net wants it any other way. (Well, except for folks like the government of mainland China, that is.) Not to mention that there is _nothing_ that ICANN can actually _do_ that would affect matters. They can't revoke the IP addresses MCI uses, those addresses were issued by ICANN to ARIN. They can't revoke the domain-name(s) MCI uses, those names are part of properly-executed _contracts_ between MCI and the domain registry operator. And the operator's contract (with ICANN, or the appropriate 'national' authorizing authority) requires _them_ (the registry operator) to publish *all* properly contracted domains. Those are the *only* aspects of the Internet that fall under ICANN's 'area of responsibility'. > John, instead of answering a question with the statement 'good question' > why is no one (in authority on the net) actually, physically cutting > off MCI by refusing to accept any or all of their traffic until the > spam stops? PAT] Because: (a) there is *NO*ONE* 'in authority'. The net runs by anarchy. (b) some people _do_ block all MCI traffic. Unfortunately they are personal/'vanity' networks. (c) last I knew, MCI had something like a _40%_ share of the U.S. Internet market. It simply isn't practical for any 'significant' player to write off that big a chunk of the potential customer base. (d) in general, anybody doing 'broad brush' blocking of MCI ends up hurting *themselves* worse than they hurt MCI. Unfortunate, but _true_. This is reality. One can "wish" that things were different, but you still have to deal with reality. In article , John Schmerold wrote: > No one likes spam, however, there are great solutions they are all > available without cost due to the opensource movement. Looking at my > own statistics, since 4/1, I've received 5,607 emails, of which 1,177 > were forwarded to my inbox, of these 169 were SPAM. All of the 169 > could have been eliminated if I chose to use TDMA which whitelists > good senders. > So, long story short, quit belly aching and do something about your > spam problem. > John Schmerold > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I cannot run a white list here > unless I want to turn this Digest/newsgroup into a very exclusive > place for _me and my friends_ . I like to get _legitimate_ mail from > legitimate users. I do not like the idea of excluding new users just > because they have not met some arbitrary standard on the messages I > will accept. PAT] There are various ways of "coping" effectively: You can use _different_ e-mail addresses for different functions (e.g., one for the newsgroup moderator 'submission' address, a different one for submission "acks", another one for outgoing Telecom-Digest mailings, and yet another one for "personal" communications.) You can then apply _different_ rules for each address. e.g.: You can whitelist everybody that is subscribed to Digest mailing-list. You can auto-accept any message that is a "reply" to a newsgroup posting. You can whitelist other "known" correspondents. You can auto-accept any message that has a certain "magic word" at the beginning of the subject line. You can then, fairly safely, _reject_ messages that lack the 'magic word' in the subject line, *with* a notice telling the sender that the magic word (and what it is) is required for message acceptance. Doing these things 'right' requires some fairly close integration with the mail-server itself. BUT, when done right, can be _very_ effective. I've been running a custom-developed system (along the above lines) for roughly the last year. In that time, I've had mail from _three_ people get "erroneously" rejected (one required filter revisions -- *too* paranoid;, one was a family member with multiple accounts, including one at Netscape, and got their mail-client "confused", so that it was sending messages with a from of "@netscape.net", but going through the cable-company's mail- server to do so; the third was somebody I haven't heard from in years, who apparently found my address from USENET postings, and tried to mail -- and apparently couldn't read the error message telling them how to send mail that would go through, no real loss), and a grand total of _eight_ pieces of spam get to my inbox. I have a few domains (e.g., AOL, Yahoo, HotMail) for which I accept mail _only_ from servers in their domain. I have a few (right now 3) overseas freemail providers that are totally blocked -- they account for less than 1% of (pre-rejection) message volume, however I have one address-range blocked -- A space allocated to Nigeria. I have one persistent spammer blocked by domain-name. they _do_ send consistently from their own server, and identify properly, so it's effective against this particular idjiot. I have several forms of remote mail-server identity 'forgery' blocked (e.g. if they HELO with _my_ IP address as _their_ identity. :) I have blocks for headers indicating a couple of specific mail-sending programs that are routinely abused by spammers, and that do not provide enough information to back-track. I have a _handful_ of content-based filters that catch things: HTML-only email is not allowed messages in character-sets I can't deal with -- most notably Pacific Rim ones -- are not allowed. I have a batch of body-content filters (about 50), *NONE* of which have caught anything in the last 6 months. Anything with what even "looks like" an MS-executable or 'zipfile' attachment is not allowed, except by special arrangement. (This one is permanent -- eliminates any need for the overhead of Any of various URLs or mention of a few specific drugs, etc. NOTE: I see a fair number of virus-delivery attempts _every_ day, but they all fail earlier checks _before_ getting to the 'executable' detector. The situation is probably similar with the other body- check filters, but it's much harder to tell. I'm probably going to remove all those 'non-executable' checks, cuz they don't seem to do any good -- no sense wasting CPU cycles. I 'whitelist' some mailing-lists I'm on, and the 'moderator' address of some moderated newsgroups. Now, admittedly, the rulesets here are tailored for the needs of _my_ users, but they *are* effective. I post to this newsgroup (and a number of others) with an valid,_unmunged_, "reply-able" address. Not a _single_ piece of spam has been delivered to that address in the last year. For those who remember Dave Hayes, I may not have a psychic newsreader; but I've got the next best thing to a 'psychic mail-server'! :) It can tell -- with _very_high_ reliability -- whether a mail message was composed inside a newsreader or not. It's not absolutely perfect -- a couple of people who were curious _how_ it worked, did some experimenting and figured it out. Regardless, it's demonstrably "good enough" for the real world. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is far, far too much stated above to even begin responding. I will just address one point of yours, which was 'how cutting off MCI would really hurt the rest of the net.' Oh, boo hoo, let me cry about it tomorrow or whenever I get more time. And you say, a net that is presently 80-85 percent spam is going to be irreparibly damaged by calling their bluff and cutting them off until they are willing to talk seriously about the spam issue? Gee, that's really something. Seems to me if nothing else it would clean up the spam problem a lot. Let's test it out and see: John Levine, since you run the telecom-digest.org alias, do me a favor please. Block any and all traffic via MCI coming here. Let's see if tomorrow and the next day I don't have just as many messages as I do now, but far less spam to deal with. Just cut it all, return to sender or whatever you wish. People also told me regards the bunch of crooks in New Jersey I should not tell people to withhold their monthly payments, 'that by doing so I would cause the people to get sued'; remember that? That was a big laugh also; no one got sued and the Attornies General in many states made the leasing companies back off. So my suggestion this month is do yourself and the rest of the net a big favor: start refusing traffic from MCI, as I just now above asked John Levine to do for me. Check with me in a few days and I will let you know how much I miss getting all those fabulous offers in Spam and all those viruses. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 19:23:43 -0400 In article , kludge@panix.com says: C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sure you can cut off UUNET the same way > you can cut of MCI. Just do it ... call their bluff ... let _them_ > deal with their legitimate customers who are no longer able to get > through. Yes, they both have lots of legitimate customers, but in any > kind of serious medical procedure, for example, we don't think about > how long the patient will be in the operating room or how long they > will be in intensive care recovering. We concern ourselves with what > their life will be like when they are fully recovered and back to > normal. And our net has some very serious, I suspect deadly cancerous > growths that have been going of for years. So what if cutting off > UUNET and MCI leaves a shambles of email and the net _for a few days_. > Things are pretty much a shambles now anyway, aren't they? Oh, I know > that MCI (and probably Vint Cerf) will scream and carry on about it, > as will UUNET and others similarly situated. But it is time _we_ took > the net back over, and my belief is it would not take too many days > of simply refusing to handle _any_ of their traffic until things began > to change for the better. Just cut them, and be done with it, and hope > they are back with us sometime soon under more reasonable terms. PAT] I've said the very same thing many times but in a slightly different perspective. Instead of cutting off anything coming from UUNET registered address ranges, why not just disconnect China, North Korea, etc. from the net in its entirety. Better yet -- every piece of spam tries to sell something. Just follow the money trail and arrest and imprison the seller. Suddenly it won't be as attractive to market via spam when you're facing a 15 year sentence. But those companies that produce the products have a cozy relationship with our legislators, and he who writes the biggest check wins. Until we first hold our legislators fully accountable we won't get anywhere. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah, and we also have these guys who claim they speak for the entire net and 'nobody' would go for that. Just cut off MCI and UUNET totally for a few days and see if it makes any difference, as I think it will. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 20:11:06 EDT Subject: Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines In a message dated Sat, 16 Apr 2005 21:18:34 +0000, Greg Skinner < gds@best.com> writes: > By now, many if not most of you have probably read, or at least heard, > about the lawsuit filed against several search engines, accusing them > of conspiring to overcharge for advertisements. More information > here: > http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?cat=USMARKET&src=704&feed=dji& > section=news&news_id=dji-00001320050405&date=20050405&alias=/alias/money/cm/nw > The WSJ recently featured a front-page story on the issue of click > fraud as well. > I have always been skeptical of the pay-per-click (PPC) method of > charging for advertisements. I have always felt it was a poor > business model, because of its susceptibility to fraud. I have never > understood the search industry's fascination with PPC, especially > since there are other methods of selling advertising, such as fixed > fees, which provide no means (and thus, no incentive) to game the > system by merely clicking on ads. Furthermore, the money that is > spent both by the advertisers and publishers. Per-inquiry advertising, that is, advertising that is charged for at a rate per inquiry, goes back to the 18th century in newspapers and magazines. It migrated to radio when that medium became commercially viable, and then to television. Its further migration to the internet seems inevitable and predictable. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: 17 Apr 2005 19:51:19 EDT From: Charles.B.Wilber@Dartmouth.EDU (Charles B. Wilber) Subject: Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The debate over on VOIP News continues between Mr. Wilber and Jack Decker. PAT] --- Jack Decker [Moderator] wrote: As for E-911 fees, I have been saying for many months now that the only fair way to finance E-911 centers is through the same mechanism used to finance every other emergency service in the community (such as fire and police), be that property taxes, local sales taxes, or whatever. --- end of quote --- I would like to know how that could be administered. In New Hampshire, local communities determine how their emergency services are funded while the stae determines how E-911 is financed. In my state, there is just a single PSAP but even that would be an adminstratrive and political challenge of huge proportions. I can only imagine it would be completely unmanageable in a large state such as New York or California. --- Jack Decker [Moderator] wrote: In an ideal world, the phone companies that sold the 911 centers these technologically obsolete systems would be forced to pay. However, I suspect that if there were more sources for these systems -- that is, if 911 center operators didn't run to their partners in crime at the phone companies to purchase these systems at top dollar -- I suspect they could get far more advanced systems for far less money. --- end of quote --- My primary experience has been in the state of New Hampshire. In that state, when the legislature mandated that all municipalities implement E-911 within a certain period of time, the contract for providing E-911 was put out for bid as it should be. All legitimate vendors were welcome to submit bids on the contract. --- Jack Decker [Moderator] wrote: ... I think the 911 center administrators so love it that they can put one over on the taxpayers and voters (by not seeking their permission before installing a new system) that they don't really question what sort of deal the phone companies are giving them, nor whether the equipment they are being sold is expandable to handle communications from newer forms of technology. --- end of quote --- Apparently Mr. Decker is privy to some inside information here. Any dispatch center members I have spoken with - and virtually all I am aware of who have commented in various listservs on the matter -- are seriously concerned about how to make E-911 work with VoIP. In my experience, they are true professionals, concerned with the welfare of the public they are charged with protecting. Maligning them as you did in your reply to my posting suggests that you have proof to the contrary. Perhaps you would share that with the readers of this listserv. --- Jack Decker [Moderator] wrote: You conveniently ignore the fact that for many years cell phones were unable to complete calls to 911. Perhaps you feel that all new forms of communication should be hamstrung until they can fit into the wireline telephone companies' ways of doing things, but I for one do not. --- end of quote --- Mr. Decker conveniently ignores the fact that cellular carriers are currently under federal mandate to provide Automatic Location Information capability within certain parameters of accuracy by certain dates. It is common knowledge that the carriers have been unable to meet these deadlines in many cases but they are still subject to those mandates and are liable for fines if they don't meet those deadlines. As for my feelings about new forms of communication, the Moderator presumes to put words in my mouth and ascribe motives to my postings by stooping to an ad hominem attack on me that does nothing to advance this discussion in a reasoned and mature manner. If he had bothered to ask he would have learned that my job and my hobbies all revolve around encouraging, advancing, supporting and implementing new forms of communication. Charlie Wilber Hanover, New Hampshire ------------------------------ From: Philoushka Subject: Auction Item: Sierra Wireless Aircard 555 - Telus Bell Verizon Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 02:14:23 GMT http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5767383884 Cellular internet access for your laptop! ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #169 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Apr 18 16:33:07 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3IKX7706945; Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:33:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:33:07 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504182033.j3IKX7706945@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 V24 #170 TELECOM Digest Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:33:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 170 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Crown Castle Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVB-H) (Monty Solomon) Verizon Wireless Ringback Tones: The Newest Stage (Monty Solomon) VOIP Cautions (Lisa Hancock) Journalist Seeking Source, Mobile Phone Cracker; Related (geermeister) SprintPCS Lousy Web Interface (D. M. Hendricks) Intel to Launch WiMAX Chip (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) Recieve a Call in One Country and Transfer it Over Internet (Stiki) XO Communications Lauches Business VOIP (Jack Decker) Re: Can I Substitute NiMH Battery for NiCd in Cordless Phone (R Bonomi) Re: Can I Substitute NiMH Battery for NiCd in Cordless Phone (Sullivan) Re: Can I Substitute NiMH Battery for NiCd in Cordless Phone (Berkowitz) Re: Can I Substitute NiMH Battery for NiCd in Cordless Phone (S Dorsey) Re: Can I Substitute NiMH Battery for NiCd in Cordless Phone (P Vader) Re: Surveillance Cameras More Common Everyday (FrazNor@gmail.com) Re: Internet Pioneer: VoIP is NOT Telephony (Scott Dorsey) Re: Internet Pioneer: VoIP is NOT Telephony (Justin Time) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Henry) Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Effect on Search Engine (R Bonomi) For Sale on E-Bay: Clarisys VOIP USB Phone (Yammie) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 00:33:34 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Crown Castle Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVB-H) Crown Castle Mobile Media Selects Windows Media and Windows Media DRM 10 to Deliver Live Television to Mobile Devices - Apr 18, 2005 12:01 AM (PR Newswire) It Accelerates the Deployment of Windows Media-Based Digital Entertainment Services for Cell Phones, PDAs and Portable Media Devices HOUSTON and LAS VEGAS, April 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Crown Castle Mobile Media, a subsidiary of Crown Castle International Corp., and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced that Crown Castle Mobile Media has selected Windows Media(R) Audio, Windows Media Video 9 and Windows Media Digital Rights Management (DRM) 10 for its Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVB-H) broadcast service deployment. As a preview of the exciting possibilities this relationship will deliver, Crown Castle Mobile Media will be demonstrating with Microsoft live mobile TV on Windows Mobile(TM)-based devices at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas from April 16 to April 21, 2005. Windows Media helps enable the secure delivery of high-quality digital entertainment services over IP and other digital networks. The components of the Windows Media 9 Series platform are available from Microsoft in source code format, may be ported to mobile devices based on any operating system, and are licensed under published terms that provide significant commercial advantages for device manufacturers compared with alternative solutions. Windows Media Video 9 is Microsoft's implementation of VC-1, the proposed Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) standard. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48423061 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 09:15:58 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Wireless Ringback Tones: The Newest Stage Verizon Wireless Ringback Tones: The Newest Stage for Universal Music Group Artists - Apr 18, 2005 08:31 AM (PR Newswire) Verizon Wireless Customers Can Express Their Individuality With a Choice of Popular Universal Music Group Artists BEDMINSTER, N.J., April 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Wireless, the nation's leading wireless service provider, announced it has entered into an agreement with Universal Music Group, the world's leading music company, to bring new Ringback Tones from the company's extensive catalog of chart-topping artists to Verizon Wireless Ringback Tone customers. With an extensive collection of 500 hot Ringback Tones, Universal Music Group is the newest resource for Verizon Wireless customers looking for the perfect Ringback Tone to replace the standard ring callers hear while they wait for their call to be answered. Verizon Wireless became the first national carrier to offer Ringback Tones when it introduced the service in Southern California and Sacramento last year. With an entire catalog of popular music choices, Universal Music Group makes it easy for Verizon Wireless customers to select the Ringback Tone that best fits their personal style. By browsing through categories such as Rap, Hip-Hop, Soundtracks, Metal/Alternative, R&B/Soul, 80's, Classic Rock, Pop/Rock, Country, Club Hits, 70's, Oldies, 60's and Holiday, customers can set up their Ringback Tones to include a standard Ringback Tone (including the Verizon Wireless standard Ringback Tone), or choose different Ringback Tones for each caller based on the Caller ID, Group List or the time of day. Universal Music Group fans will find it easy to choose the perfect Ringback Tone by simply visiting the Ringback Tones Web site at http://www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/ringbacktones where they can register, browse and preview the latest Ringback Tones from the biggest names in the music industry today. Customers can also sign up to receive a TXT Alert whenever their selected artists release new Ringback Tones by visiting the My Alerts section of the site and selecting TXT notifications. Standard text messaging rates apply to TXT Alerts. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48430368 ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: VOIP Cautions Date: 18 Apr 2005 10:13:26 -0700 1010news radio reported that consumers need to be careful before signing up for VOIP service. Some people think the service is as reliable as landline when it is still experimental and bugs are being worked out. service still shaky http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/V/VOICE_OVER_PANIC?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=TECHNOLOGY&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Risks http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/V/VOIP_ATTACKS?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=TECHNOLOGY&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Issues http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/V/VOIPS_GROWING_PAINS?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=TECHNOLOGY&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT "A hacker might trick a phone into obtaining a software update from a rogue server, or toss a fake "hang up" command into the data flow - perhaps as a caller is trying to land an important job interview. Some services let you take phones on vacation, and hackers might decided to trick the system and redirect your calls to them instead. All kinds of mischief is possible: A rival might try to capture your business sales lead. Or a snoop might listen in on a neighbor's secret calls to a lover. Though these attacks would be difficult to perform today, security experts believe that as such phones get more popular, hackers will have greater incentive to develop tools for automating such attacks - just as they have with viruses and other computer threats today. As for reliability, phone providers are still trying to make their systems fully compatible with 911. In some cases, phones might ring a non-emergency number or fail to provide caller ID details like location - crucial when a caller can't speak. And during blackouts, traditional phones can draw upon electricity in the phone lines, but an Internet modem will fail without backup power." ------------------------------ From: geermeister@gmail.com Subject: Journalist Seeking Source, Mobile Phone Cracker or Related Expert Date: 18 Apr 2005 08:05:30 -0700 Following the Paris Hilton Sidekick II story, I am writing about how to "hack" (in a good way) your own mobile phone in order to make it more secure. This is for a technical hobby magazine for engineers and others who like to tinker. Of course, I don't want to print anything that would lead someone to do something in violation of the law. If you might be a source, feel free to respond to this e-mail address. Regards, David ------------------------------ From: D. M. Hendricks Subject: SprintPCS Lousy Web Interface Date: 18 Apr 2005 10:14:34 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Ok, so I received a fraudulent call on my SprintPCS phone this weekend. Someone claiming to be a SBC Representative and stating that I have an account balance due of $117 and I can pay now with check or credit. I quickly hung up and called SBC, who confirmed this was not the case and that they did not make the call. Being a good citizen, I'd like to report the fraud incident with the phone number. Unfortunately, the caller ID was blocked on my Sprint phone. I called Sprint to get the number, but they said my billing cycle ended yesterday (a day after I received the call) and that they could not pull up calling history from that period (!!). She said I could either wait for my invoice in the mail or look it up online. Not wanting to wait for snail mail to report a phone number that will likely disappear in days, I tried to go online to check where the call originated from. Their MyPCS is an UNHOLY PILE OF HORSE MANURE. It's quite possibly the slowest interface I've ever used, taking ~10 minutes to load each page. Before I can get to my latest invoice, it usually times out and requires me to login again, and I get to start all over. I've been trying for hours to view my damn invoice online. It's good to know that Sprint cares so much about fraud prevention. Why is it so terribly difficult to find out who called me? "SprintPCS - The clear alternative to cellular" ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:49:40 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Intel to Launch WiMAX Chip Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 18, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20898&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Intel to launch WiMAX chip BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Alcatel taps insider for COO position * Interview with Cisco's John Chambers * Egyptian telecom mogul close to buying Italy's Wind * Coaxsys helps telco deploy IPTV USTA SPOTLIGHT * Newton's Telecom Dictionary -- 21st Edition, JUST RELEASED EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Disney, TWC target toddlers with mobile video content * Web, TV will merge, despite cable, programmer concerns REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Qwest, Colorado PUC close to deal on phone regulations Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20898&l=2017006 NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ From: stiki101@gmail.com (Stiki) Subject: Recieve a Call in One Country and Transfer it Over Internet Date: 18 Apr 2005 11:14:57 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I would like to recieve a call in one country and transfer it over internet (using something like Skype) to another country. Is that possible? stiki101 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:18:47 -0400 Subject: XO Communications Launches Business VoIP Services Bundle Nationwide http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-18-2005/0003432165&STORY&EDATE= XO Communications Launches Business VoIP Services Bundle Nationwide http://www.xo.com Now Available in 45 Major Markets, Including More Than 1,000 Cities Nationwide Combines Unlimited Local and Long Distance Calling with Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation for a Flat Monthly Rate RESTON, Va., April 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- XO Communications, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: XOCM.OB) today announced the nationwide rollout of XOptions(R) Flex, its industry-leading Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services bundle for businesses. XOptions Flex is now available in 45 major metropolitan markets, which includes more than 1,000 cities nationwide. XOptions Flex is an integrated VoIP services solution that gives business customers enhanced features, functionality and value for their voice and Internet services, all in one simple package. It is the industry's first VoIP services bundle for businesses that combines unlimited local and long distance calling, dedicated Internet access and web hosting services for a flat monthly price. "XOptions Flex offers businesses across the country the most comprehensive and flexible VoIP services bundle," said Craig Collins, vice president of product management at XO Communications. "VoIP is truly revolutionizing the telecommunications industry, and XOptions Flex leverages the power of the Internet to provide a high quality and reliable communications solution that integrates voice and data over a single broadband connection with more valuable features for small and medium-sized businesses that save them time and money." The service leverages the latest in VoIP technology to provide customers with next generation communications capabilities, such as unlimited voice calling, dynamic bandwidth allocation, voice virtual private networking (VPN), and a simple Administrative Web Portal. With a broadband connection on the XO IP network, it utilizes XO's award-winning national IP network and softswitch technology to carry customers' voice calls more efficiently and cost-effectively than traditional services that rely on the public switched telephone network. In addition, businesses can take full advantage of all of these IP-enabled capabilities and features without having to replace their existing analog phone systems. "Businesses are ready to adopt VoIP and take advantage of its ability to more cost-effectively improve communications with customers and among employees," said William Stofega, Research Manager with IDC's Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Services Program. "The providers that will differentiate themselves are those that offer more features with the flexibility to deliver true business benefits. XOptions Flex provides that flexibility with a simple, integrated VoIP solution that can expand as businesses' voice and data needs grow." "We are very pleased with the features, performance and value of XOptions Flex," said Wendi Westbrook, office manager of Alpha Biosciences, a Baltimore-based business specializing in the production of culture media for the biological sciences industries. "The quality of our phone calls is excellent and, with unlimited local and long distance calling, dynamic bandwidth allocation and a toll free number at no additional charge, we are getting more capabilities and value for our telecommunications budget. As a business that expects to grow substantially over the next two years, XOptions Flex has the flexibility to grow with us as our business needs expand." Features: XOptions Flex includes more than twenty standard voice features for each phone line including call forward, three-way calling, and voice mail. Key features of the service include: -- Dedicated Internet Access up to 3 Mbps -- Dynamic bandwidth allocation -- Unlimited local calling -- Unlimited inbound and outbound domestic long distance calling -- An easy-to-use Administrative Web Portal for making real-time changes to services -- Web Basic Hosting Package -- Additional voice lines, hosting and other applications can also be added on an a la carte basis. XOptions Flex is now available in major metropolitan areas across the United States, including Akron, Allentown, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Worth, Harrisburg, Houston, Jersey City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Memphis, Nashville, New York, Newark, Oakland, Orange County, CA, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, St. Louis, St. Petersburg, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Scranton, Seattle, Spokane, Tampa, Trenton, Washington, DC, West Palm Beach, and Wilmington, DE. To support the national rollout of XOptions Flex, XO plans a national print advertising campaign that will highlight how businesses will benefit from the service. For more information about XOptions Flex visit http://www.xo.com/flex or contact an XO sales representative by calling (866) 963-9696. About XO Communications XO Communications is a leading provider of national and local telecommunications services to businesses, large enterprises and telecommunications companies. XO offers a complete portfolio of services, including local and long distance voice, dedicated Internet access, private networking, data transport, and Web hosting services as well as bundled voice and Internet solutions. XO provides these services over an advanced, national facilities-based IP network and serves more than 70 metropolitan markets across the United States. For more information, visit http://www.xo.com. SOURCE XO Communications Web Site: http://www.xo.com How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Can I Substitute a NiMH Battery for NiCd in a Cordless Phone? Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 03:05:39 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > I recently bought a cordless phone, which came with a NiCd battery. > In the manual it says: > "To reduce the risk of fire, use only 3.6V 850mAh Nickel Cadmium > (Ni-Cad) cordless telephone replacement battery pack." > I've heard about the dreaded "memory effect" with NiCd batteries, so > I'm interested in replacing it with a NiMH one. Someone who is > selling a 3.6V 1000mAH NiMH battery on Ebay claims it works with my > phone, but will it really be safe? Wouldn't want to install a NiMH > battery and have the house burn down. *BELIEVE* the manufacturer's statements. They know how the phone is designed/built. Different _types_ of batteries require different kinds of re-charging circuitry. Using "type b" batteries in a "type a" charger -- *whatever* 'a' and 'b' are, is asking for trouble, unless you know enough about the charger circuitry to _know_ that it is not going to be a problem. Some chargers have 'smarts' enough to handle mixed types of batteries, many others *do*not*. Just because a battery "fits" (physically) the device, does not mean that it is advisable, or even sensible, to do use it in that device. Comment: If you get a new battery charger, as well as the batteries, and the batteries have to be removed from the phone to be charged, then the issue above is moot. If the batteries are automatically recharged when the phone is in the base station (typical), the above *does* apply. Note: "memory effect" in NiCD batteries is mostly a thing of the past; newer designs have all but eliminated the issue. ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Can I Substitute a NiMH Battery for NiCd in a Cordless Phone? Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 03:07:59 GMT curious@nospam.com wrote: > I recently bought a cordless phone, which came with a NiCd battery. > In the manual it says: > "To reduce the risk of fire, use only 3.6V 850mAh Nickel Cadmium > (Ni-Cad) cordless telephone replacement battery pack." > I've heard about the dreaded "memory effect" with NiCd batteries, so > I'm interested in replacing it with a NiMH one. Someone who is > selling a 3.6V 1000mAH NiMH battery on Ebay claims it works with my > phone, but will it really be safe? Wouldn't want to install a NiMH > battery and have the house burn down. The NiMH battery will power the phone just fine, once it's charged. But you need to have a charger designed for NiMH batteries. Some Ni-Cad chargers also are designed to charge NiMH batteries, but some are not. (I assume there is a difference in charging current or something.) Don't use NiMH batteries in a charger designed only for Ni-Cads. Since you will undoubtedly be charging the batteries in the phone, not swapping them out into a charger, you shouldn't use NiMH batteries in a phone that says to only use Ni-Cads. The only exception I would make to this is if the phone vendor sells a NiMH replacement battery specifically intended to be used in the phone in question. And I would go with the vendor's battery, in that case. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD (USA) (Replace "example.invalid" with "com" in my address.) ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Can I Substitute a NiMH Battery for NiCd in a Cordless Phone? Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 23:25:36 -0400 In article , curious@nospam.com says: > I recently bought a cordless phone, which came with a NiCd battery. > In the manual it says: > "To reduce the risk of fire, use only 3.6V 850mAh Nickel Cadmium > (Ni-Cad) cordless telephone replacement battery pack." > I've heard about the dreaded "memory effect" with NiCd batteries, so > I'm interested in replacing it with a NiMH one. Someone who is > selling a 3.6V 1000mAH NiMH battery on Ebay claims it works with my > phone, but will it really be safe? Wouldn't want to install a NiMH > battery and have the house burn down. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 3.6 at 850 is _close enough_ to 3.6 at > 1000 that I think it should work. The difficulty with swapping > batteries around randomly however is not so much that your house would > burn down as it is that differences in those batteries could possibly > cause some slow degredation on your electronics unit and cause it to > fry out prematurely. Your voltage (3.6) is critical; you want to avoid > increasing _low voltages_ very much. A device which calls for 3.6 > should pretty much be confined to 3.6. You can play around with the > amperage a bit however; 1000 will work fine with something rated for > 850. But make certain the battery contacts line up correctly and do > not cause a short circuit accidentally. It would be a shame to waste > that new battery as soon as you got it. PAT] There has been a rash of "exploding" cell phone batteries, primarily caused by bootleg Asian import batteries that lack thermal protection devices. Also, the charging characteristics for NiCd are different than NiMH. The charger could cause a NiMH battery to overheat, or at least reduce its useful life. --Gene ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Can I Substitute a NiMH Battery for NiCd in a Cordless Phone? Date: 18 Apr 2005 13:42:03 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) In article , wrote: > I recently bought a cordless phone, which came with a NiCd battery. > In the manual it says: > "To reduce the risk of fire, use only 3.6V 850mAh Nickel Cadmium > (Ni-Cad) cordless telephone replacement battery pack." > I've heard about the dreaded "memory effect" with NiCd batteries, so > I'm interested in replacing it with a NiMH one. Someone who is > selling a 3.6V 1000mAH NiMH battery on Ebay claims it works with my > phone, but will it really be safe? Wouldn't want to install a NiMH > battery and have the house burn down. Memory effect basically has not existed for many years now. It used to be a serious problem, but today most NiCd failures are caused by people reverse-charging cells as they overdischarge packs in an an attempt to avoid nonexistent memory problems. If you put a NiMH pack into the thing, you will get more capacity at first because the energy density of the pack is higher. But because the charger is not designed for NiMH cells, you will find that the battery pack doesn't last very long before it fails. If the phone works, why screw with it? --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Can I Substitute a NiMH Battery for NiCd in a Cordless Phone? Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:54:34 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations curious@nospam.com writes: > I've heard about the dreaded "memory effect" with NiCd batteries, so > I'm interested in replacing it with a NiMH one. Someone who is > selling a 3.6V 1000mAH NiMH battery on Ebay claims it works with my > phone, but will it really be safe? Wouldn't want to install a NiMH > battery and have the house burn down. NiCd and NiMH use very different chargers. You can not successfully charge an NiMH battery in a phone designed only for NiCd. It's quite possible that the new battery will vent itself if you install it. Not exactly a fire or explosion (both of which are pretty unlikely), but your phone will probably be wrecked by it nonetheless. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: FrazNor@gmail.com Subject: Re: Surveillance Cameras More Common Everyday Date: 18 Apr 2005 07:45:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Here is one on Times Square: http://images.earthcam.com/ec_metros/ourcams/fridays.jpg Refresh as needed. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The one you mention, and three or four other cameras are used at Times Square (34th and Broadway if my memory is correct) in the program Webcam Watcher, an interesting piece of software for Windows. Independent people, with web cams at fixed locations, donate the output from the cameras for use by voyeurs on the net who like looking at things. The writer of the Webcam Watcher program has a directory of about _three thousand_ such locations all around the world. He gives you thumbnail images of all of them on your screen; allows you to manually choose any of them, or have the program function like a 'scanner' (doing a big image) of one after the next, just like a radio scanner operates, working its way to the end of the line and starting over again. If a repretoire of three thousand images seems a bit much to deal with, you can also select a smaller number from the indexes of same, or the thumbnails and concentrate on just those; for instance, those cams active in the past minute, the past five minutes, etc. Some are in constant operation; others only snap a picture of their surroundings every hour, etc. You select the desired cams from the indexes of same, and make up your own list of what to scan whenever one or more of them takes a new picture. If your 'active scan directory' is too large, the big pictures on your screen change every second or two. If it is too small, then you can actually look at and study a picture for a few minutes before the next image (from some other location) comes through, like a radio scanner. Webcam Watcher is _not_ intended as a sex thing at all. He has that type of cam (adult) in the master index, but they are all isolated so you can choose that kind of thing "if you like to watch" but the majority of the cams are just 'regular' scenes, such as expressway cams in Japan (some also from Georgia highways), parks and gardens; a few cams are scenes of the border crossings in Texas, Arizona and California and Detroit, MI; I have one of my weather station cam in his directory, etc. There is one of the ships going through the Panama Canal, some absolutely stunning cam images of mountain tops in Alaska and Wyoming, etc, people's homes, school classrooms, about a dozen cams in New York City (including the several in Times Square), Chicago, San Francisco, etc. I get sort of depressed using the program, since there are so many absolutely delicious views of absolutely wonderful cities and sites I would dearly love to be young enough -- and well enough -- to to visit and see in person, but I know I will never get to see in person, a beach in Australia, or a coffee house in Indonsia for example. If you have a cam with a public display you welcome people viewing, _and you have the WebCam Watcher program_ consider adding the locations of these files to the directory he updates from time to time. Just Google for 'Webcam Watcher'. He has both free and paid copies of the software. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Internet Pioneer: VoIP is NOT Telephony Date: 18 Apr 2005 14:04:33 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How would you then deal with 'phone > patches', the little devices which allow VHF/UHF radios to link into > the public phone network? Should they also be subject to the rules > of the public switched telephone network? PAT] Yes. Patched calls are subject to BOTH the rules of the public telephone network AND the rules of whatever radio channel is in use, because the call is handled by both services. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess what I meant to say was the person using the radio who issues certain tones to the base station where the 'phone patch' is located, who then makes outgoing phone calls over a (common, owned by the ham radio operator's club for example) phone line. Is that commonly-owned phone line, and the 'patch' device in the middle, and most important, the portable transciever (a two meter rig comes to mind) all subject to both radio and telco rules, for example, the 911 surcharge, and other fees on account of his transciever rig _can possibly_ be used on the phone network? What about the local number portability fee, etc? After all, he does have a _phone number_ (albiet shared in common with other club members) doesn't he? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Justin Time Subject: Re: Internet Pioneer: VoIP is NOT Telephony Date: 18 Apr 2005 12:15:41 -0700 Pat wrote: > TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How would you then deal with 'phone > patches', the little devices which allow VHF/UHF radios to link into > the public phone network? Should they also be subject to the rules > of the public switched telephone network? PAT] I think you are barking up the wrong tree here Pat. Those little devices that do phone patches for amateur radio operators connect to telephones that are part of the public switched network. As such, the group operating the patch equipment pays the local exchange company for the monthly charges on the line. As the telephone lines are obtained from the local exchange company, or a competitor they are subject to all the rules and do provide ANI/ALI information to the PSAP. The other point to remember is that phone patch equipment is normally operated (triggered) by a licensed radio operator who presumably would know the limitations of the connection. Rodgers Platt [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You don't feel that Vonage also connects to the public switched network, and Vonage has to pay telco for the lines they use? PAT] ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 09:39:17 +0300 Organization: Elisa Internet customer Tony P. wrote: > Better yet -- every piece of spam tries to sell something. Just follow > the money trail and arrest and imprison the seller. Suddenly it won't > be as attractive to market via spam when you're facing a 15 year > sentence. Yeah, and _what kind of_ a 15-year sentence! Popular lore has it that there is a 'hierarchy of respect' among inmates, with bank robbers having the highest prestige and child molesters at the bottom. If/when more of these spammers are locked up, the molesters may get a break. Cheers, Henry [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And please don't forget, if we are serious about the problem with spam, let's get MCI, cut out of the loop ASAP. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 02:48:14 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Greg Skinner wrote: > By now, many if not most of you have probably read, or at least heard, > about the lawsuit filed against several search engines, accusing them > of conspiring to overcharge for advertisements. More information > here: >http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?cat=USMARKET&src=704&feed=dji§ion=news&news_id=dji-00001320050405&date=20050405&alias=/alias/money/cm/nw > The WSJ recently featured a front-page story on the issue of click > fraud as well. > I have always been skeptical of the pay-per-click (PPC) method of > charging for advertisements. I have always felt it was a poor > business model, because of its susceptibility to fraud. I have never > understood the search industry's fascination with PPC, especially > since there are other methods of selling advertising, such as fixed > fees, which provide no means (and thus, no incentive) to game the > system by merely clicking on ads. Furthermore, the money that is > spent both by the advertisers and publishers (including the search > engines) implementing complex fraud detection systems can be put to > more productive uses. Just about everyone I have spoken to with a > technical background in Internet protocols and architecture seems to > realize this, but the message doesn't get through to business people > who feel that despite click fraud, PPC is a superior advertising model > to any others. Perhaps there is something I have overlooked in my > assessment of the risks vs. rewards of PPC advertising. Yup. There is. Q. "What is an ad worth?" A. "Depends on how many people see it." This is why a 30-second spot during the SuperBowl costs more one on that same network at 3:00AM on a Tuesday. Advertisers by space based on "cost per M" -- i.e. how many dollars does it cost to geth their ad in front of a thousand potential 'customers'. What they will pay "per thousand impressions" depends on how likely somebody is to _buy_, after having encountered the ad. Things/places with higher rates of sales "conversions" are worth more 'per thousand' than those with lower conversion ratios. Given similar conversion ratios, the place delivering the larger number of impressions is worth more than the site with the smaller number of impressions. Before an advertising buyer enters into _any_ contract for ad placement one of their first questions is guaranteed to be "how many people will see this ad?" It doesn't matter _how_ the space is priced -- flat rate or $/M -- they want to know how many people it will reach. Note: along this line, TV/radio ad contracts (especially for "new" programming) usually specify a minimum vievership level -- if the subsequent ratings show that that level wasn't reached, the stations/networks are committed to run 'extra' ads to ensure the required number of 'impressions'. There are parallels in print advertising -- particularly when a new publication is starting up. With web-pages, there is *no*way* to estimate how many people see any particular ad. *OTHER* than to count how many times it was displayed. And that is not a "reliable, accurate" number, by any means. What it is, however, is the "best available" data for estimating. "Smart" web-advertising buyers, have been, for _years_, specifying that they will pay only for "unique" clicks -- only one hit from a given IP address within a specified time-frame (minimum hours, sometimes days). > It seems that PPC advertising is going to be a fixture in web > advertising. Given that PPC makes click fraud easy, we can expect to > see more of it in the future. This should be a serious concern to > anyone who invests in search engines or other companies that do PPC > advertising, or is a customer of such companies. At the very least, > the companies need to disclose the criteria they use for determining > that fraud has taken place, and the rights their customers > (advertisers) have with regards to getting refunds for fraudulent > clicks. It's _always_ a "guessing game". You *cannot* know whether a given click -- or pattern of clicks, even -- is legitimate or fraudulent. The ROM in computers does *not* stand for "ead perator's ind" which is the necessary pre-requisite for making a 100% accurate determination. > I'd also like to know if there are any technical groups that are > studying the issue and proposing solutions. From a standpoint of > detecting fraud at its inception, I thought I might find some interest > among the intrusion detection community, but I haven't yet. The types > of intrusion detection done at the packet level don't seem to scale to > the types of attacks I've witnessed, which suggests that the detection > might be better done at the web server and/or web log processing > level. I checked the Apache documentation to see if any work of that > type had been done, and outside of some basic configuration options > for blocking certain types of sites and requests, there wasn't any. > Also, based on what I've read about some of the tools people are using > to analyze web logs, they can detect certain types of fraud, but don't > necessarily provide alerts of impending fraud, especially if the site > receives a considerable amount of traffic. (This is especially the > case for the largest search engines.) Consider a "fleet" of 500,000 "zombie" PCs, scattered across three continents. Each machine, _once_a_day_, at a random time, connects to a given web-page, without anybody in front of the machine. Now, just _what_ are you going to detect? Consider an ISP who gives all it's customers RFC-1918 addresses, and does NAT/PAT to a relative handful of 'public' IP addresses. And something shows up on slashdot (or similar) that gets "everybody" on that network going to look at the particular page (and ads). Suddenly you see a sh*tload of queries coming from the _same_ IP addresses -- including multiple simultaneous connects from a single address, just with different source ports. How do you differentiate _that_ from a single box with a click-bot running? How do you differentiate _that_ from a single box with a click-bot *behind* the NAT/PAT device? An IP address is part of a DHCP pool. You get a number of clicks from that address at widely separated times. Is that all one user, or is each from a different user, who just happened to get that address fort their dial-up session? How do you *know* whether that address is a DHCP pool address or not? ------------------------------ From: Yammie Subject: Clarisys VOIP USB Phone Date: 18 Apr 2005 09:58:18 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Barely used E-bay Item # 5768559922 ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #170 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Apr 19 00:56:36 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3J4uaU11295; Tue, 19 Apr 2005 00:56:36 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 00:56:36 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504190456.j3J4uaU11295@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 V24 #171 TELECOM Digest Tue, 19 Apr 2005 00:57:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 171 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Officials Want to Wire Earth, Check Signs (Lisa Minter) Verizon FiOS TV Will Offer a New Customer Experience (Monty Solomon) Verizon Offering 'Naked' DSL in Northeast (Monty Solomon) Verizon Wireless International Long Distance Value Plan (Monty Solomon) Wireless Community Supports DVB-H Open Standard (Monty Solomon) Markey Targets Credit ID Theft: Wants Security Freeze (Monty Solomon) Congress Renews Interest in Identity Theft (Monty Solomon) Re: Credit Information Stolen From DSW Stores (Monty Solomon) DSL 3 mbps (cervantes77@hotmail.com) 3rd International Conference on Mobile Systems (Danielle Young) A "What-if" Regarding Papal Election and Diebold (Micheal D. Sullivan) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Dan Lanciani) Re: Can I Substitute NiMH Battery for NiCd in Cordless (Fred Goldstein) Re: Surveillance Cameras More Common Everyday (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: SprintPCS Lousy Web Interface (Steve Sobol) Re: Internet Pioneer: VoIP is NOT Telephony (Robert Bonomi) Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud; Effect on Search Engines (gds@best) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 18 Apr 2005 17:22:54 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Officials Want to Wire Earth, Check Signs By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer Imagine the planet wired for a nearly continuous readout on its vital signs, shared by all. That's the essence of a White House plan announced Monday. The new "Strategic Plan for the U.S. Integrated Earth Observation System" envisions linking nearly 60 nations within a decade to gather and share information from satellites, ocean buoys, weather stations and other surface and airborne instruments. "Whether it's agriculture, or land use, or water planning, or transportation, or energy, there's a lot of data about the environment that has to be collected," said John Marburger III, President Bush's top science adviser. Marburger said "a surprisingly successful enterprise" at collecting and sharing data already is under way as the result of a United Nations summit on sustainable development in South Africa in 2002. Many of the measurements already are being gathered. The new effort will focus on linking them in what Marburger called a planetary "system of systems." He released a 150-page plan that cites benefits such as improved weather forecasting and climate modeling, better estimates of crop yields and energy resources, and more knowledge about air and water quality. As an examples of benefits, officials said better and shared data could save the United States as much as $1 billion in electricity costs each year if winter forecasts prove to be just 1 degree more accurate. As much as $1.7 billion of the annual $4 billion cost of weather-related aviation delays could be saved with better information, they added. Data tracking disease outbreaks such as malaria or West Nile virus would enable officials to minimize their impact as they spread. Retired Navy Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, a Commerce Department undersecretary who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said a key step is getting more businesses involved in the project. "This depends on a lot more people than just the government," he said. White House strategic plan: http://iwgeo.ssc.nasa.gov/default.asp Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. Chat about these topics or other telecom news in our conference room 24/7 with others: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/chatpage.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:40:35 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon FiOS TV Will Offer a New Customer Experience, Seidenberg Calls on Broadcasters to Support Verizon's Franchise Reform LAS VEGAS, April 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Consumers will have a compelling alternative to cable television when Verizon enters the video market later this year with FiOS TV, Ivan Seidenberg, the chairman and CEO of Verizon, told the National Association of Broadcasters today. "FiOS will change the competitive landscape in the video marketplace, both now and in the future. From Day One, we'll offer a new technology, a new business model and a new customer experience," Seidenberg said. Speaking at the NAB's national convention, Seidenberg called on broadcasters to help break down "the biggest barrier" to Verizon's entry into video: the requirement that Verizon obtain a second franchise from local authorities, in addition to the one the company already has, to carry video on its fiber networks. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48437638 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:43:40 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Offering 'Naked' DSL in Northeast WASHINGTON (AP) -- Verizon Communications said Monday that some customers who already subscribe to its phone and high-speed Internet service can drop their local calling plans but still keep their speedy Web connection. The ability to subscribe solely to Verizon's DSL, or high-speed Internet service, could be attractive to young customers who rely primarily on their wireless plan for phone calls. It could also appeal to customers who want to try out new Internet-calling technology. Initially, the availability of "naked DSL" will be limited to customers in the New York company's old Northeastern territory once served by Nynex or Bell Atlantic, the predecessor companies of Verizon. And only customers who already receive phone and high-speed Internet access from Verizon would be eligible. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48443119 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:45:42 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Wireless International Long Distance Value Plan International Long Distance Value Plan Offers Rates Starting at $.09 per Minute BEDMINSTER, N.J., April 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Wireless, owner and operator of the nation's most reliable wireless network, is making it easier for customers to keep in touch with family and friends around the globe. Starting today, customers can take advantage of Verizon Wireless' new International Long Distance Value Plan for an affordable way to connect with people around the world, including Asia, Central America, Europe, South America, the Caribbean and other North American countries. Eligible Verizon Wireless customers with America's Choice(SM) or North America's Choice calling plans can add the International Long Distance Value Plan for $3.99 per month and receive lower-than-ever international calling rates that start at $.09 per minute plus airtime on calls from anywhere on the America's Choice network.* Calling internationally from a Verizon Wireless phone has never been more affordable. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48447944 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:41:56 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Wireless Community Supports DVB-H Open Standard, Encourages Wireless Community Supports DVB-H Open Standard, Encourages Competition and Innovation for Burgeoning Digital TV Market - Apr 18, 2005 01:22 PM (PR Newswire) Crown Castle Mobile Media, DiBcom, Freescale, Intel, Microtune, Nokia, O2, S-Communications, Silicon & Software Systems Ltd (S3), Texas Instruments, TTPCom, and UDcast Publicly Promote and Drive DVB-H to Mobile Phones LAS VEGAS, April 18 /PRNewswire/ -- A number of players in the wireless industry today announced support for DVB-H (digital video broadcast -- handheld), an open industry standard for the delivery of mobile broadcast digital TV (DTV) for the U.S., European and Asian marketplaces. DVB-H is experiencing broad support across the wireless ecosystem, including partners and competitors alike, who are working together to foster competition and innovation for the growing digital TV market. Such companies include wireless operators such as O2; multicast network operators such as Crown Castle Mobile Media (NYSE:CCI); wireless infrastructure providers such as UDcast; handset manufacturers such as Nokia (NYSE:NOK); software stack providers such as Silicon & Software Systems Ltd (S3); and semiconductor providers such as DiBcom, Freescale (NYSE:FSL), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Microtune(R), Inc. (Nasdaq: TUNE), S-Communications, Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE:TXN) (TI) and TTPCom. Each company listed, plus many others worldwide, is putting support behind DVB-H in efforts to provide an open environment for mobile operators and broadcasters to reach the largely un-tapped but promising digital mobile TV market. DVB-H is an open, non-proprietary standard that will foster growth throughout the wireless market, allowing mobile DTV handsets and services to reach the mass market faster and at a lower cost to consumers. Additionally, DVB-H delivers an improved end user experience over current video streaming services that utilize cellular networks and reduce network capacity for voice services. Broadcast digital TV for mobile phones is a large opportunity for operators, broadcasters, handset manufacturers and silicon providers as it opens up new opportunities and provides additional users and revenue- generating services for digital TV services. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48439463 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 21:05:34 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Markey Targets Credit ID Theft: Wants Security Freeze Markey targets credit ID theft: Wants to put security freeze power in consumers' hands By Thomas Caywood and Tom Mashberg Stunned by the ease with which identity thieves are obtaining credit cards in other people's names, a Bay State congressman is weighing federal legislation that would permit U.S. consumers to clap a padlock on their credit files. http://news.bostonherald.com/politics/view.bg?articleid=79018 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 21:07:02 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Congress Renews Interest in Identity Theft By Associated Press WASHINGTON -- Responding to outrage from consumers whose personal information has been stolen from companies, Congress is primed to pass new laws to try to prevent break-ins and to require businesses to confess to customers when private data is taken. The government's new interest in requiring such embarrassing disclosures reverses years of efforts by the FBI and U.S. prosecutors to shield corporations that have been victims of hackers from bad publicity by keeping such crimes out of headlines. But now, consumers want to know if their private information has been stolen. The Senate is considering at least two proposals to crack down on companies suffering breaches of private customer information. The Federal Trade Commission's chairwoman has endorsed the idea and the Senate Judiciary Committee's chairman hinted this week that a new law might be inevitable. http://business.bostonherald.com/technologyNews/view.bg?articleid=78688 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 23:29:29 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Re: Credit Information Stolen From DSW Stores COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Thieves who accessed a DSW Shoe Warehouse database obtained 1.4 million credit card numbers and the names on those accounts _ 10 times more than investigators estimated last month. DSW Shoe Warehouse said Monday that it has contact information for about half of those people and started sending letters notifying them of the thefts, which happened at 108 stores in 25 states between November and February. A list of the stores is available on the company's Web site. The stolen information did not include home addresses or personal identification numbers, the Columbus, Ohio-based company said in a statement. The company, a subsidiary of Retail Ventures Inc., announced the thefts last month after notifying federal authorities and credit card companies. At the time, the Secret Service said only that information involving more than 100,000 people had been compromised. Besides the credit card numbers, the thieves obtained driver's license numbers and checking account numbers from 96,000 transactions involving checks, the company said. Customer names, addresses and Social Security numbers were not stolen, DSW said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48453610 ------------------------------ From: cervantes77@hotmail.com Subject: DSL 3 mbps Date: 18 Apr 2005 13:55:31 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Is anybody getting 3 mbps on Verizon dsl in N.Y.? They're promoting this speed for new customers on their web site. I'm a subscriber to Verizon dsl but I'm only getting getting 1.5 mbps and am wondering if they upgraded their system. Any info greatly appreciated. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:46:06 -0700 From: Danielle Young Subject: 3rd International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, Join us in Seattle, June 6-8, 2005, for innovative, significant research in the area of mobile and wireless systems. MobiSys 2005 will bring together engineers, academic and industrial researchers, and visionaries for 2.5 exciting days of sharing and learning about this fast-moving field. The conference will feature refereed paper presentations, a poster and demo session, a keynote address by Rick Rashid of Microsoft Research, and a plenary session with Alfred Spector of IBM Research. Workshops: MobiSys 2005 is co-located with two workshops for highly focused discussions of new and emerging topics: EESR '05: Workshop on End-to-End, Sense-and-Respond Systems, Applications, and Services WiTMeMo '05: International Workshop on Wireless Traffic Measurements and Modeling Both workshops will take place Sunday, June 5, 2005. Registration for workshops is separate from MobiSys 2005 registration. To ensure a productive workshop environment, attendance will be limited. ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: A "What-if" Regarding Diebold Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 04:12:27 GMT If the Papal election were conducted with efficient, fraud-resistant Diebold electronic voting machines instead of old-fashioned paper ballots, what would be the effect on the papacy? One result of such an election is at . Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD (USA) (Replace "example.invalid" with "com" in my address.) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 00:20:42 EDT From: Dan Lanciani Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote: > There are various ways of "coping" effectively: > You can use _different_ e-mail addresses for different functions > (e.g., one for the newsgroup moderator 'submission' address, > a different one for submission "acks", another one for > outgoing Telecom-Digest mailings, and yet another one for > "personal" communications.) > You can then apply _different_ rules for each address. e.g.: > You can whitelist everybody that is subscribed to Digest mailing-list. > You can auto-accept any message that is a "reply" to a > newsgroup posting. > You can whitelist other "known" correspondents. > You can auto-accept any message that has a certain "magic word" at the > beginning of the subject line. > You can then, fairly safely, _reject_ messages that lack the > 'magic word' > in the subject line, *with* a notice telling the sender that the > magic word (and what it is) is required for message acceptance. > Doing these things 'right' requires some fairly close integration with the > mail-server itself. > BUT, when done right, can be _very_ effective. > I've been running a custom-developed system (along the above lines) > for roughly the last year. Some months ago I described a similar system that I've been using for considerably longer than one year. (My system is actually even more similar to what you describe than one might infer from my original description in that the magic word approach is exactly what I use for the challenge/response component, though I'm prepared to extend this if spammers ever bother to include the magic word.) You pointed out (correctly) that spam often includes a forged but valid from address whose owner might then receive my bounce notice explaining how to bypass the filter. You went on to accuse me of spamming and mail-bombing such innocent parties. Since you also now advocate rejecting possible spam with a notice, can you please explain exactly how you avoid the misdirected bounce behavior that you find objectionable? Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you very much! You said it very well. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:30:20 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Can I Substitute NiMH Battery for NiCd in Cordless Phone A contrary position to what several others have said ... I have a Panasonic cordless phone that came with a NiCd battery. The battery failed within a year, as NiCd cordless batteries usually do. I found a NiMH substitute, designed for a different Panasonic phone but with the same voltage, shape and connector. So I installed it. The NiMH has a better lifespan per charge than the NiCD ever did. As to how long it'll last, I can't say, because I forget exactly how many years it has been since I made the switch, but it has been several years, and the NiMH battery is still going strong, maybe just beginning to show a few signs of age. On the other hand I've never met a NiCd that I really liked. There are some differences in the ideal charging parameters, but to a considerable extent, they overlap. Of course Your Mileage May Vary. -- fred "at" ionary.com ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Surveillance Cameras More Common Everyday Date: 18 Apr 2005 21:47:31 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Pat wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The one you mention, and three or four > other cameras are used at Times Square (34th and Broadway if my > memory is correct) in the program Webcam Watcher, an interesting piece > of software for Windows. You can use Google as the poor-man's version of the same thing. There are a number of searches that return interesting results, and many web pages have documented them. This one is one of the more comprehensive: http://www.prodownload.com.ar/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1955 I find myself watching public places all over the world as an idle pastime. john- ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: SprintPCS Lousy Web Interface Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:10:58 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com D. M. Hendricks wrote: > Being a good citizen, I'd like to report the fraud incident with the > phone number. Unfortunately, the caller ID was blocked on my Sprint > phone. I called Sprint to get the number, but they said my billing > cycle ended yesterday (a day after I received the call) and that they > could not pull up calling history from that period (!!). She said I > could either wait for my invoice in the mail or look it up online. Jeez ... I really enjoy Sprint's service and they have good coverage in my area, but some of their CSRs are dumber than a box of rocks. The ones in the USA seem to do a great job for the most part, but the ones working from overseas seem ill-trained and ill-informed. I'm getting to the point where I'm going to start insisting to talk to a level-2 CSR or manager. Their service and coverage (and hold-time on calls to customer service!) have gotten steadily better in the 4 1/2 years since I started as a customer with them, but the quality of their CSRs has declined. Sprint doesn't *print* incoming phone numbers on the bill. For a Sprint CSR not to know that is unacceptable. No one prints incoming phone numbers on customer bills except Cingular. My argument has always been "I'm paying for the call, so I expect to see who's calling me" -- but that didn't work with Verizon (I was both an SPCS and Verizon Wireless customer from 12/00 to 6/04) nor did it work with Sprint. > Not wanting to wait for snail mail to report a phone number that will > likely disappear in days, I tried to go online to check where the call > originated from. > Their MyPCS is an UNHOLY PILE OF HORSE MANURE. It's quite possibly > the slowest interface I've ever used, taking ~10 minutes to load each > page. That might have been a problem between your ISP and Sprint. My experience is that yes, sometimes the website is sluggish, but ten minutes? I may have to occasionally wait 15-30 seconds, but that's it. This IS the Internet we're talking about, and the information goes through several ISP's/network backbones between Sprint and your ISP, so it could be an issue at Sprint, at your ISP, or somewhere in between. If you have continual problems, talk to your ISP and they may be able to help you pinpoint where the bottleneck is. I've never had that kind of delay in getting to the SPCS website. > It's good to know that Sprint cares so much about fraud prevention. > Why is it so terribly difficult to find out who called me? All US carriers except Cingular have the wrongheaded idea that when someone calls their customer, the caller has a right to privacy. Screw that -- you have no such right when I'm paying per minute for you to call me. If on a landline with a flat monthly fee, that's different. Not on a cell phone where I have to count airtime minutes. But again, Cingular is the only carrier in the industry with a clue regarding incoming call details. My argument is: I get call details on calls to 888-480-4638 because I pay per minute for people to call my at that number. Why don't I get the same courtesy from my cell carrier(s)? Come on. I don't even get the phone number on my bill when my wife calls, and I know damned well she doesn't block caller ID on her cell phone, so there *is* no privacy issue for her ... the number shows up on my caller ID but not on my bill! (Sorry, you've just pressed one of my hot buttons :>) JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Internet Pioneer: VoIP is NOT Telephony Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 23:57:38 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Scott Dorsey wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How would you then deal with 'phone >> patches', the little devices which allow VHF/UHF radios to link into >> the public phone network? Should they also be subject to the rules >> of the public switched telephone network? PAT] > Yes. Patched calls are subject to BOTH the rules of the public > telephone network AND the rules of whatever radio channel is in use, > because the call is handled by both services. > --scott > "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess what I meant to say was the > person using the radio who issues certain tones to the base station > where the 'phone patch' is located, who then makes outgoing phone > calls over a (common, owned by the ham radio operator's club for > example) phone line. Is that commonly-owned phone line, and the > 'patch' device in the middle, and most important, the portable > transciever (a two meter rig comes to mind) all subject to both > radio and telco rules, for example, the 911 surcharge, and other > fees on account of his transciever rig _can possibly_ be used on > the phone network? What about the local number portability fee, > etc? After all, he does have a _phone number_ (albiet shared in > common with other club members) doesn't he? PAT] NO, "he" does _not_ have a phone number. You cannot place a phone call _to_ that ham by calling that number, for example. The land-line is 'owned', and paid for, by "whomever it is" that owns/ operates the repeater with the phone-patch. Think of the transceivers with the appropriate accessories to access the phone-patch as simply multiple "extensions" on that single-number phone line. Land-line "rules" say that there is a 911 surcharge _per_line_, paid by the line owner -- it is a fixed amount, _regardless_ of how many 'extensions' there are on that line. Same thing for the LNP fees. "Land-line" fees are _not_ applicable to the "radio" portion of such a call/service. Neither are land-line equipment requirements. And, similarly, "radio" fees and equipment requirements do not apply to the 'land-line' portion of such a call/service. Example: anything that is connected to the PSTN is required to have a FCC registered (and -tested- rules-compliant) "network interface" -- what the phone companies sold/rented, once upon a time, as a "DAA". A radio that is able to use a phone-patch to originate a call is *not* required to have any such device. (Although the phone-patch, itself, _is_.) On the other hand, a call that traverses _both_ services, is restricted to the "least common denominator" of the legal restrictions on _each_ service. If a thing is proscribed on *either* kind of operation, it cannot be legally done on a call that employs both kinds of operations. e.g., on the aforementioned ham phone-patch it is *illegal* (_criminally_ so!) for a ham radio operator to call the neighborhood pizza joint to place an order. Now, PSAP database locater requirements compliance raises _interesting_ _questions_ as regards a "phone-patch" line. I'm not knowledgeable enough on location-reporting requirements to even _guess_ at how they apply in that kind of a situation. What do the rules say for a phone line on a farm, where a _single_ POTS line is connected to instruments in the house and the barn? No PBX or anything, just the wires going out to the barn. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Apr 2005 03:53:56 -0000 From: gds@best.com Subject: Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines Robert Bonomi (bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com) wrote: > With web-pages, there is *no*way* to estimate how many people see any > particular ad. *OTHER* than to count how many times it was displayed. > And that is not a "reliable, accurate" number, by any means. What it > is, however, is the "best available" data for estimating. I realize this, actually. However, this "best available" method of estimation is what is in dispute (otherwise there would be no lawsuits). > Consider a "fleet" of 500,000 "zombie" PCs, scattered across three > continents. > Each machine, _once_a_day_, at a random time, connects to a given > web-page, without anybody in front of the machine. > Now, just _what_ are you going to detect? I have described many scenarios such as this where there is no reliable way to differentiate them from clickstreams where the users do not find what they are looking for at the advertiser's site, or decide (non-fraudulently) not to buy, or are just window shopping. I guess I don't understand the general tone of your response. It seems you are agreeing with me that PPC is a poor business model. If you feel that it is superior to, say, paying fixed fees for a certain period of time, I'd like to know why. The advertisers can use information that comes from companies such as Nielsen NetRatings to estimate how many people use a search engine, and what queries they submit to it, to determine a fair bid for an ad buy. Such information is no worse than what is used to determine rates for TV or radio ads. --gregbo [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As for myself, I cannot really picture 'five hundred thousand zombie computers scattered across three continents'. If so, under whose coordination? A gang of crackers all working in concert to cheat some advertiser's competitor, by running up his advertising bill? Seems sort of improbable to me. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #171 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Apr 19 15:02:32 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3JJ2VA18298; Tue, 19 Apr 2005 15:02:32 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 15:02:32 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504191902.j3JJ2VA18298@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 V24 #172 TELECOM Digest Tue, 19 Apr 2005 15:02:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 172 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Verizon Wireless Makes 'IN' About More Than Calling (Monty Solomon) CNID Printouts on Cell Bills, was: SprintPCS Lousy Web (Danny Burstein) Build UHF/VHF Tuners Into Cell Phones (sm5w2@hotmail.com) Verizon, NBC, Uni Sign Carriage Deal (Telecom DailyLead from USTA) Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud; Its Effect on Search Engines (Skinner) Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud; Its Effect on Search Engines (Bonomi) Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud; Its Effect on Search Engines (P Vader) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Robert Bonomi) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Lisa Hancock) Re: DSL 3 mbps (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Verizon Wireless International Long Distance Value Plan (Joseph) Re: SprintPCS Lousy Web Interface (Joseph) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:46:52 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Wireless Makes 'IN' About More Than Calling IN Messaging Lets Verizon Wireless Customers Send and Receive Unlimited Mobile to Mobile TXT, PIX and FLIX Messages BEDMINSTER, N.J., April 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Starting today, wireless customers have another reason to Join IN -- Verizon Wireless, the nation's leading wireless service provider, is expanding its popular IN Calling plans to include IN Messaging, the company's newest offering that gives Verizon Wireless customers free unlimited mobile-to-mobile TXT, PIX and FLIX Messages with more than 43 million Verizon Wireless customers. Customers with Verizon Wireless IN Calling plans receive unlimited free mobile-to-mobile voice calls to other customers on the Verizon Wireless national network. For only $5 additional a month, customers with TXT, PIX or FLIX Messaging-capable phones can sign up for IN Messaging and immediately begin sending and receiving unlimited mobile-to-mobile messaging to other Verizon Wireless customers. IN Messaging from Verizon Wireless gives customers the choice of how to keep in touch with other Verizon Wireless customers by offering the flexibility to select either calling or messaging. IN Messaging customers who want to add additional services to their phones can get unlimited browsing with Verizon Wireless' Mobile Web 2.0(SM) news and information service for just $4.99 monthly access or add the V CAST VPak for $15.00 monthly access, plus applicable airtime. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48463592 ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: CNID Printouts on Cell Bills, was: SprintPCS Lousy Web Interface Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 05:10:55 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Steve Sobol writes: [ snip ] > Sprint doesn't *print* incoming phone numbers on the bill. For a > Sprint CSR not to know that is unacceptable. > No one prints incoming phone numbers on customer bills except > Cingular. Cough, cough. T-mobile has them for most incoming calls (see below) ... > My argument is: I get call details on calls to 888-480-4638 because I > pay per minute for people to call my at that number. Why don't I get > the same courtesy from my cell carrier(s)? Come on. I don't even get > the phone number on my bill when my wife calls, and I know damned well > she doesn't block caller ID on her cell phone, so there *is* no > privacy issue for her ... the number shows up on my caller ID but not > on my bill! T-Mobile displays incoming CNID on the phones and, as of two or so years ago, prints the numbers on the bill. The exceptions are those that are "blocked" by the sender. Which gets me to my question: Can anyone point to the actual court case or FCC decision, or anything ... that made the point that the "owner" of a 1-800 (or similar) number has the right to get all the listings? If the rationale is that the recipient pays, than that should carry over to the cellular phones as well. I'd love to push that case forward ... Thanks. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: sm5w2@hotmail.com Subject: Build UHF/VHF Tuners Into Cell Phones Date: 19 Apr 2005 06:03:34 -0700 More and more stories in the media about TV being distributed to cell phones via some sort of internet or data connection. Why don't they just build VHF/UHF tuners into these phones so that you can watch local TV off-air FOR FREE! AS MUCH AS YOU WANT! WITH NO MOTION OR COMPRESSION ARTEFACTS! Radio Shack sells a palm-sized color LCD TV for about $100. Why can't they build that functionality into a cell phone? Heck, are there any cell phones that also have Am/FM radios built into them? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 12:55:10 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Verizon, NBC Uni Sign Carriage Deal Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 19, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20922&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon, NBC Uni sign carriage deal BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Microsoft strikes deal with RIM * Lucent helps Mexican carrier deploy 3G services * Verizon allows stand-alone DSL * Juniper again knocking on cable's door * Phoenix schools praise VoIP as money saver * Lucent reports earnings, combines wireless and wireline units USTA SPOTLIGHT * VoIP 101 Webinar: How to Integrate Wi-Fi and VoIP, April 21, 1 p.m. EST EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * New Wi-Fi devices promise faster speeds * Motorola develops phones as music centers * Yellow Arrow turns NYC into SMS artscape REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Ebbers' lawyers urge new trial; say judge erred Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20922&l=2017006 NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. Then, talk with your friends about the items in the Digest today and the extra items in our conference area: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/chatpage.html . ------------------------------ Date: 19 Apr 2005 17:21:09 -0000 From: Greg Skinner Subject: Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As for myself, I cannot really picture > 'five hundred thousand zombie computers scattered across three > continents'. If so, under whose coordination? A gang of crackers all > working in concert to cheat some advertiser's competitor, by running > up his advertising bill? Seems sort of improbable to me. PAT] It's not so hard to imagine if you consider the way viruses are spread to launch spam, DDoS attacks, etc. The virus authors or cracker-gangs aren't necessarily working to cheat competitors; they're just being disruptive. --gregbo ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:09:24 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: >Robert Bonomi (bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com) wrote: >> With web-pages, there is *no*way* to estimate how many people see any >> particular ad. *OTHER* than to count how many times it was displayed. >> And that is not a "reliable, accurate" number, by any means. What it >> is, however, is the "best available" data for estimating. > I realize this, actually. However, this "best available" method of > estimation is what is in dispute. So? What else is new? It's a *stupid* lawsuit. "caveat emptor" applies to the buyer of advertising, just as it does to buyer of the advertised product. If the buyers "didn't understand" the _inherent_ limitations and inaccuracies of (a) the marketplace, and (b) the particular pricing scheme, they really shouldn't be playing in that market. _Smart_ web-advertising buyers, have, for *years*, being writing their pay-per-click contracts in a manner which makes it difficult for someone to fraudulently inflate the page click-count. >> Consider a "fleet" of 500,000 "zombie" PCs, scattered across three >> continents. >> Each machine, _once_a_day_, at a random time, connects to a given >> web-page, without anybody in front of the machine. >> Now, just _what_ are you going to detect? > I have described many scenarios such as this where there is no > reliable way to differentiate them from clickstreams where the users > do not find what they are looking for at the advertiser's site, or > decide (non-fraudulently) not to buy, or are just window shopping. Yup that's the point. It's *impossible* to do so. Which answers your question about "why aren't people working on better fraud-detection?" Those who have seriously looked at the problem recognize that detecting such actions 'in progress' chews up exorbitant amounts of resources, and costs more than the fraud does. The 'simple' stuff -- e.g. paying only for 'unique' clicks over time -- kills off all but the sophisticated fraudster. The sophisticated fraudster, on the other hand, is effectively _impossible_ to so much as slow down. > I guess I don't understand the general tone of your response. It > seems you are agreeing with me that PPC is a poor business model. It is what the *advertising buyers* have *demanded*. This wasn't some bright idea dreamed up by the folks selling ad space. Fixed pricing is much simpler for _them_ to deal with. "Poor model" is a term without a referent. _First_ you have to define the goals; only after you have done that, can you attempt to evaluate the 'quality' of the method. With advertisers demanding "$/M" figures or equivalents, to base their buying decisions on, PPC *is* the 'best available' fit to their demands. That the best available technology doesn't live up to their expectations is *their* problem. > you feel that it is superior to, say, paying fixed fees for a certain > period of time, I'd like to know why. Fixed pricing ends up in *exactly* the same position, unless you're paying for your ad to appear *every*time* somebody calls up a web-page at that site. If you're on a limited budget, and cant afford a "shown on every page" ad, but want 'general' exposure, you can only get that by having you ad appear on 'some' pages And, thus the question becomes "how many times do you want that ad to appear?" whether it's expressed as "so many thousand times", or "such-and-such percentage of the time", > The advertisers can use information that comes from companies such > as Nielsen NetRatings to estimate how many people use a search > engine, and what queries they submit to it, to determine a fair bid > for an ad buy. *snicker* Nielsen NetRatings lacks -- by several orders of magnitude -- having enough reporting sources to produce estimates that are within a factor of _ten_ to _fifty_ for all the various 'keywords' that the search-engines selectively sell ad-space for. > Such information is no worse than what is used to determine rates > for TV or radio ads. It is *far* worse, in point of actual fact. The number of samples you have to have, to have a 'meaningful' representation of the population, depends on a number of factors. Of which the size of the population is only one. The number of different categories enters into the picture, as does the relative frequency which the population as a whole touches that category. For a Presidential election, where roughly 120 million of 220 million voting- age adults did vote, you can get +/- 3% accuracy with a sample size of circa 1,500. For a population of a million, you can get the same accuracy with a circa 500 sample size. However, to get a similarly meaningful estimate of something where only 1:10,000 of the population uses it, you've got to have a sample that includes enough people that _might_ use it, before you can have any confidence in the numbers. Say that 1:4 of the people who -might- use this thing, use a search engine to find out about it. That means that roughly 1:40,000 people will hit on that keyword. and the underlying population is about 100 thousand, if you assume that 1:5 of those who might use the thing itself, do use it. To get a meaningful sample on a population of 100K, you need a sample size of a couple of hundred _of_that_population_. to get *that* couple of hundred in a sample of the 'general population' of 220 million, you need about _THIRTY_THOUSAND_ people in the sample. Unless it is a 'scientifically selected' sample, with balanced demographics matching the population as a whole, you at least triple that sample size -- to 'hope' to minimize the effect of distortions in the sample. TV/Radio numbers are *much* easier to do relatively accurately, because the spectrum of possible choices is much smaller. > --gregbo> > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As for myself, I cannot really picture > 'five hundred thousand zombie computers scattered across three > continents'. Your "inability to picture" is not relevant to the real world. Spammers, *today*, are routinely _advertising_ access to pools of 50-100 *thousand* zombie machines. "small" pools are only 10,000 machines or so. A large portion of PC viruses currently being spread are for the purpose of turning machines into zombies, for spamming, DDOS attacks, and other kinds of outright criminal activity. > If so, under whose coordination? A gang of crackers all > working in concert to cheat some advertiser's competitor, by running > up his advertising bill? Seems sort of improbable to me. PAT] Your "disbelief" is not relevant to the state of affairs in the real world. Those zombie armies *are* out there, and *are* being used for many kinds of nefarious activities. I don't have any direct knowledge of their being used for click-fraud, But there is absolutely no question that they _could_ so be used. If the criminal gangs can put together several hundred thousand machines to execute a DDOS attack against a web-site, as _has_ been done more than once. *ALL* they have to do to make it click-fraud is change the URL to point to an ad. The _typical_ "click-fraud" scheme is to _make_money_ doing it, not to run up the expenses of a competitor. The way it works: Somebody puts up a web-site with 'pass through' ads from somebody like Yahoo. Yahoo supplies the ad content -- for people who have bought ad space through their 'syndication' service. When a viewer clicks on the link on that web-site, "somebody" gets some money for it. The scam comes in when that self-same "somebody" contrives to have _lots_ of clicks happen to that Yahoo-supplied (or whomever) link. They don't care _who_ the advertiser is, or what they're selling, The idea is to run up the revenues for that "affiliate" site owner. At the expense of the syndication seller, and the actual advertiser, of course. ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 15:23:54 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations gds@best.com writes: >> Consider a "fleet" of 500,000 "zombie" PCs, scattered across three >> continents. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As for myself, I cannot really picture > 'five hundred thousand zombie computers scattered across three > continents'. If so, under whose coordination? A gang of crackers all Have you been paying ANY attention to what's been happening on the internet in the last several years? Zombies and botnets are created, among other reasons, precisely to make money off sites that pay per click, by directing compromised PCs to go there. Anyone who's ever had the misfortune of witnessing a spyware infestation has seen this for themselves. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:54:50 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Dan Lanciani wrote: > bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote: >> There are various ways of "coping" effectively: >> You can use _different_ e-mail addresses for different functions >> (e.g., one for the newsgroup moderator 'submission' address, >> a different one for submission "acks", another one for >> outgoing Telecom-Digest mailings, and yet another one for >> "personal" communications.) >> You can then apply _different_ rules for each address. e.g.: >> You can whitelist everybody that is subscribed to Digest mailing-list. >> You can auto-accept any message that is a "reply" to a >> newsgroup posting. >> You can whitelist other "known" correspondents. >> You can auto-accept any message that has a certain "magic word" at the >> beginning of the subject line. >> You can then, fairly safely, _reject_ messages that lack the >> 'magic word' >> in the subject line, *with* a notice telling the sender that the >> magic word (and what it is) is required for message acceptance. >> Doing these things 'right' requires some fairly close integration >> with the mail-server itself. >> BUT, when done right, can be _very_ effective. >> I've been running a custom-developed system (along the above lines) >> for roughly the last year. > Some months ago I described a similar system that I've been using for > considerably longer than one year. (My system is actually even more > similar to what you describe than one might infer from my original > description in that the magic word approach is exactly what I use for > the challenge/response component, though I'm prepared to extend this > if spammers ever bother to include the magic word.) > You pointed out (correctly) that spam often includes a forged but valid > from address whose owner might then receive my bounce notice explaining > how to bypass the filter. You went on to accuse me of spamming and > mail-bombing such innocent parties. > Since you also now advocate rejecting possible spam with a notice, can > you please explain exactly how you avoid the misdirected bounce > behavior that you find objectionable? Simple! _I_ don't send any "bounce messages" *AT*ALL*. It's all done by mail *rejection* _during_ the SMTP transaction with the remote server that is trying to deliver the mail to me. This isn't 'procmail', nor is it some form of "post-processing" of material that has arrived in the server inbox -- it is "real time" processing of the message *during* the transmission from the remote system. Thus, there are three possible scenarios:. 1) The mail came to my _server_ from a legitimate, full-blown, mail-server that knows the 'true identity' of the sender, regardless of what the "from" line says. 2) The mail cam to my server from dedicated spam-sending software that *doesn't* do _anything_ with rejection notices. 3) The message came to my server from a legitimate, full-blown, mail-server that does *not* know the identity of the sender. In scenario #1 the rejection notice -- generated by *that* mailserver -- goes back to the _actual_sender_. In scenario #2, the rejection date is bit-bucketed, and nobody gets anything. In scenario #3, what happens depends on "just how stupid" that 'open relay' mail-server configuration is. We already *know* it's _really_ stupid, or it wouldn't be an open relay in the first place. *IT* may be stupid enough to be generating 'backscatter' spam in those situations where the 'from' address is a valid email address -- and the recipient thereof *should* bitch at that that system for spamming them Or if the from address is _not_ valid, then the message ends up in the 'postmaster' mailbox *there*. on the open-relay machine. Along with all the other 'undeliverable' notices. Hopefully this alerts the operator of that mailserver to the problem and they secure their system against open relay. Wanna see how it works? Fire up your e-mail program (do *not* try a reply from inside your newsreader, since you want the mail to *fail*), and send an e-mail to the "From" address listed on this message. See where the "delivery failure" message you get is sent _from_. Hint: it does _not_ come from my servers. If *your* mail server lets you lie to it about who is sending the message... well you need to speak to your mail administrator about _that_ (scenario 3, above). You have a problem trying to do this kind of thing, because your mail-server software is _four_ major releases, and 4 additional minor updates, out of date, and it doesn't have the required capabilities to implement this type of scheme _properly_. > Dan Lanciani > ddl@danlan.*com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you very much! You said it > very well. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: 19 Apr 2005 08:36:28 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Robert Bonomi wrote: > Nope. it's because it is, quite simply, *NOT* ICANN's job to do so. > Of the various organizations (ICANN, IAB, IETF, etc.) that are the > 'authority' for specific functionalities of the greater Internet, > _none_ of them have any authority with regard to the 'content' of > packets. Well then, who IS responsible to do the job? If no such job exists, why isn't one created? > And *nobody* on the 'net wants it any other way. (Well, except for > folks like the government of mainland China, that is.) I don't know about that. I see the net as a great POTENTIAL tool, but one that is fraught with risk and problems. Even supposedly "reputable" outfits flood your email with spam and won't stop. (The people who run whatever they call PC-Expo as an example). Between hackers, spammers, perverts, and thieves, I are extremely hesitant to do much of anything on the Internet. The newspapers have articles constantly about how people have been fleeced from Internet troubles -- either stolen identity, "phishing sites", or fraudulent sites. Don't count of the authorities to go after anyone unless it's a very major deal. (Let me know IF any of the principals in the Norvergence collapse are called to task -- under oath -- to account in detail for that. I am not holding my breath.) At present, there is no deterrent. I am savvy enough that I don't open email from any source I don't know, and I never click on attachments. That has protected me, but in doing so I have deleted many legitimate emails that I merely didn't recognize. Many other users have been badly burned -- whole companies shut down -- because of malicious sabotage sent through email. Are you telling me this is a good system -- where people have to go sorts of trouble to protect themselves and delete legitimate items? When Pat T. brought up these problems, I noticed that almost all responses were for things _Pat_ should do. In other words, he has to make considerable effort to protect himself from malicious efforts from others. Why isn't more being done to stop the malicious work at the source? Why is it that most people just wring their hands and say "nothing can be done". If we can put a man on the moon using 1950 based computer technology, we can make the Internet safe. > Not to mention that there is _nothing_ that ICANN can actually _do_ > that would affect matters. They can't revoke the IP addresses MCI > uses, those addresses were issued by ICANN to ARIN. So de-issue them. > They can't revoke the domain-name(s) MCI uses, those names are part > of properly-executed _contracts_ between MCI and the domain registry > operator. Why do the contracts allow malicious behavior? Why can't these contracts explicitly prohibit -- with penalties -- malicious behavior? Who writes these contracts? > And the operator's contract (with ICANN, or the appropriate > 'national' authorizing authority) requires _them_ (the registry > operator) to publish *all* properly contracted domains. Again -- change the contracts! > Those are the *only* aspects of the Internet that fall under ICANN's > 'area of responsibility'. Sounds like there's a lot that could be done. > Because: (a) there is *NO*ONE* 'in authority'. The net runs by anarchy. Did it ever occur to anyone that this 'anarchy' is a very costly and inefficient policy? How much does malicious efforts and protections against that cost companies? How much traffic is flooding the system, requiring increased servers and lines to accomodate malicious traffic? > (c) last I knew, MCI had something like a _40%_ share of > the U.S. Internet market. It simply isn't practical for > any 'significant' player to write off that big a chunk of > the potential customer base. MCI, being part of a bankrupt empire (resulting from IIRC corrupt accounting practices) has little sympathy from me. Perhaps it'd better for everyone to dump MCI altogether. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now Lisa, do you understand the politics of spam, and why it is such a problem? It amazes me that this net could be (like at present) 85-90 percent spam garbage, most of which comes via one source -- MCI -- and yet people say "oh, we don't dare cut them off, they are too important." That's the old Vint Cerf/ICANN propoganda line; we are not to impose on MCI in any way. You are correct about their bankrupt status: it was due to corrupt accounting practices and thievery at the top. ICANN had one of their vacation/conventions last week at an elegant resort in Argentina with all their 'committee heads' and 'experts' present. They were able to do that partially because of the fees they extort from netters for permission to use this damn thing with an identifiable address at their sites. One of the attendees told me it was not enough to just go to Buenos Aires; he flew that far then had to take a _six hour_ bus ride the rest of the way. ICANN does not publish notes of their meetings in any timely fashion. MCI is a big supporter of ICANN; and Vint Cerf (I assume, unless in the bankruptcy procedings he got canned) is a powerful employee of MCI and also an important person in ICANN. When people talk about Vint Cerf being their idol, I have to laugh at their naievity. He did many good things for the net back in the 1960-70's era, but for several years now he has been a traitor, no more, no less. I still remember the major conference held for netters back in the early 90's when Cerf was present, and telling everyone what a wonderful thing the 'new net' would be. I asked him point blank on the telephone (there was a conference call arrangement as part of that meeting in the 90's) "so what happens to little independent netters like myself and TELECOM Digest? " Vint Cerf's only answer was a typical John Levine sort of comment: "oh, that's a good question". Cerf knew back then he was selling the rest of the net down the river, and he still has some supporters -- even from here on this newsgroup I am sad to say -- who worship him and go ga-ga over him and support all his ideas to turn _our_ net into a totally commercial enterprise; running off all the small guys totally, although I doubt they exactly put it together just like that. I would have loved to continue the 'public radio model' around here, where a few deep pocket sponsors and the rest of the readers had helped to keep me afloat. The 'rest of the readers' by and large came through okay, but there were no deep pockets, simply because I come off to offensively to many of them, by speaking the truth as I under- stand it. The reason I suggested cutting MCI instead of cutting China/Korea was twofold: (1) we very seldom 'see' any spam from China/Korea until the big guys (i.e. MCI) see it first; if _they_ cut China/Korea then we would see little spam at all; and (2) there are legitimate users in the domains .kr and .cn; it would be much harder for _them_ to relocate out of those domains than it would be for the legitmate users of MCI to help put the heat on MCI during an 'outage' period. And I don't delude myself that by requesting John Levine to refuse MCI traffic out of hand where telecom-digest.org is concerned would matter even a whit to MCI and that it would hurt me more than them, but, if the entire net (or large parts of it) simply cut MCI -- called their bluff, kept them out of things -- for a few days until MCI had a chance to review their own attiude and make some changes, then there would be some vast improvement in a few days. That's my thought, and 'putting my money where my mouth is' that's why I am trying to set that example and ask all of you to do the same: reject _all_ MCI traffic until/unless things change. A net that is already so spam- ridden as ours surely can't get any worse while we wait for Vint Cerf, Esther Dyson and their cronies to have hissy fits before they listen to reason. The contracts you suggest changing (I agree!) only got into place as they are when netters rolled over when ICANN demanded it. A tragic mistake is that no one seized root long ago and forced the issue. 'They' say that would have been a mistake; but any more of a mistake than the slow (but increasing expotentially) rot which has taken us over in the past few years? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: DSL 3 mbps Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 23:30:09 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications cervantes77@hotmail.com wrote: > Is anybody getting 3 mbps on Verizon dsl in N.Y.? They're promoting > this speed for new customers on their web site. I'm a subscriber to > Verizon dsl but I'm only getting getting 1.5 mbps and am wondering if > they upgraded their system. Any info greatly appreciated. If you read the fine print the max speed is reached only if you're within the distance from the central office (circuit feet, not direct distance) that makes that speed possible. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Verizon Wireless International Long Distance Value Plan Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 05:51:34 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:45:42 -0400, Monty Solomon wrote: > Eligible Verizon Wireless customers with America's Choice(SM) or North > America's Choice calling plans can add the International Long Distance > Value Plan for $3.99 per month and receive lower-than-ever > international calling rates that start at $.09 per minute plus airtime > on calls from anywhere on the America's Choice network.* Calling > internationally from a Verizon Wireless phone has never been more > affordable. I don't understand why anyone would pay Verizon Wireless or any phone company $4 a month as a privilege to get rates that are hardly a bargain. Using OneSuite you can get rates as low as 1.9¢/minute to call Canada or 2¢/minute to call the UK. Using GorillaMobile it's 5¢/minute to call Canada or 5¢/minute to call the UK. There's a $5.95 fee per year. Both of these services are "PINless" so don't require a lot of extra input except for the initial connection to the access number. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: SprintPCS Lousy Web Interface Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 05:54:48 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:10:58 -0700, Steve Sobol wrote: > No one prints incoming phone numbers on customer bills except > Cingular. Steve, before you say "no one" you'd better check with someone who has T-Mobile service. Their customers have *always* gotten incoming numbers noted on their statements (if CLIP isn't blocked.) ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #172 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Apr 19 23:45:11 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3K3jBp24349; Tue, 19 Apr 2005 23:45:11 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 23:45:11 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504200345.j3K3jBp24349@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 V24 #173 TELECOM Digest Tue, 19 Apr 2005 23:45:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 173 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FTC, California Sue Spammers (Lisa Minter) Bogus Blogs Snare Fresh Victims (Lisa Minter) The Other Telecom Bidding War (Eric Friedebach) Headsets For Cisco IP Phones (for-spam@mail.com) Re: Recieve a Call in One Country; Transfer Over Internet (Scott Dorsey) Re: Build UHF/VHF Tuners Into Cell Phones (Scott Dorsey) Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud; Effect on Search Engines (S. Dorsey) Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud; Effect on Search Engines (G. Skinner) Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud; Effect on Search Engines (Sean Weintz) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:12:20 EDT Subject: FTC, California Sue Spammers From: Lisa Minter FTC, California Sue Spammers The Federal Trade Commission and the Attorney General of California have asked a U.S. District Court Judge to order a halt to an operation that sent millions of illegal spam messages touting mortgage loans and other products and services. The agencies charge that the operation violates federal and state laws, and have asked the court to freeze the defendant's assets pending trial and order a permanent halt to the illegal spamming. According to papers filed with the court, the defendants use third-party affiliates or 'button pushers' to send spam hawking mortgage loans and other products and services. Hyperlinks in the spam take consumers to Web sites operated by the defendants. Consumers fill in data and the information is passed along to lead companies and by them to lenders. One mortgage broker sought, and was given assurances by the defendants that they were complying with provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act. In fact, most of the 1.8 million e-mail messages sent to the FTC by the public demonstrate that they were violating almost every provision of the Act, the law enforcers allege. The agencies charged that the defendants: -- used false or misleading header information in the 'from' or 'reply to' lines. -- used deceptive subject headings; -- failed to notify consumers that they had a right to opt out of receiving the e-mail; -- did not provide an opt-out mechanism; -- failed to honor opt-out requests by consumers; -- failed to identify e-mail as an advertisement; and -- did not provide a valid physical postal address. Each is a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act. Defendants named by the law enforcement agencies are Optin Global, Inc., also doing business as Vision Media Limited Corp.; USA Lenders Network, USA Lenders, and USA Debt Consolidation Service; Vision Media Limited Corp.; Rick Yang, also known as Qing Kuang Yang; and Peonie Pui Ting Chen. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. Also, please note that a new daily feature in Telecom Digest Extra are reports from Consumer.com, dealing with Internet and Telecom topics. Like our other news stories, this is refreshed daily; look for their column each day in td-extra. ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Bogus Blogs Snare Fresh Victims Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 01:58:08 +0000 Since 'blogging' is the direction things are going on the net, I thought it was important to pass along this warning: ** Bogus blogs snare fresh victims ** Users are being warned to watch out for bogus weblogs that hide malicious programs on their pages. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/technology/4441333.stm Some blogs apparently are set up only for the purpose of luring guys into read them, then sneaking a virus or worm onto the guy's computer and turning it (computer) into a zombie. ------------------------------ From: Eric Friedebach Subject: The Other Telecom Bidding War Date: 19 Apr 2005 15:54:10 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com David M. Ewalt, 04.19.05, Forbes.com NEW YORK - The takeover war over MCI may have dominated headlines the past few weeks, as Verizon Communications and Qwest Communications locked horns over the company. But in the background, an equally fierce battle is raging over Adelphia Communications, which could radically alter the marketplace, setting up one of the biggest competitors in the telecommunications industry. If nothing else, it's going to be a bigger deal. On April 19, Cablevision, the sixth-largest cable operator, reportedly raised its bid for Adelphia, to $17.1 billion, improving on a $16.5 billion bid it sneaked into the bidding process last month. Its main competitor, a joint bid between Comcast Cable and Time Warner, has dominated the bidding since Adelphia went up for sale a year ago. Their latest offer is reportedly worth $17.6 billion, but offers less in cash, and more in what could be volatile stock. In contrast, Verizon's latest bid for MCI, at $7.5 billion, is worth a fraction of what is being offered for Adelphia. http://www.forbes.com/2005/04/19/cx_de_0419adelphia.html Eric Friedebach /An Apollo Sandwich from Corky & Lenny's/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If I am not mistaken, there is that one stockholder, Slim (somebody) in Mexico who owns 13 percent of the company, and the purchasers of MCI tried to (or were successful at) cutting a different deal with him than with the other stockholders. I thought that was illegal ... whatever was offered to one stockholder had to be the same for _all_ stockholders; and the other stockholders have been complaining mightily about Slim getting better terms. Does anyone know more about this? PAT] ------------------------------ From: for-spam@mail.com Subject: Headsets for Cisco IP Phones Date: 19 Apr 2005 11:59:10 -0700 Hi, Does anybody know any unexpensive headsets for Cisco IP phones? Looks like only Plantronics and GN have something, but they charge you at least a hundred for pretty ugly headset. I have seen on eBay some kind of adapter to use regular cell phone headset. Has anybody tried it? Seems like reasonable solution. Any experience? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I got a couple of those adapters to use a Plantronix headset with my Nokia cell phone from Mike Sandman. http://sandman.com PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Recieve a Call in One Country and Transfer it Over Internet Date: 19 Apr 2005 16:18:27 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) In article , Stiki wrote: > I would like to recieve a call in one country and transfer it over > internet (using something like Skype) to another country. Is that > possible? Yes. Is it legal? Maybe. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Build UHF/VHF Tuners Into Cell Phones Date: 19 Apr 2005 16:24:43 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) In article , wrote: > More and more stories in the media about TV being distributed to cell > phones via some sort of internet or data connection. > Why don't they just build VHF/UHF tuners into these phones so that you > can watch local TV off-air FOR FREE! AS MUCH AS YOU WANT! WITH NO > MOTION OR COMPRESSION ARTEFACTS! > Radio Shack sells a palm-sized color LCD TV for about $100. Why can't > they build that functionality into a cell phone? Because there is no money in selling the hardware. The money is in selling the programming. The whole point of the TV distribution to cellphone thing is that the cellphone companies charge for the programming. Giving the user a facility to watch TV that they aren't paying for is a losing proposition. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines Date: 19 Apr 2005 16:25:27 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) In article . TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Greg Skinner : >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As for myself, I cannot really picture >> 'five hundred thousand zombie computers scattered across three >> continents'. If so, under whose coordination? A gang of crackers all >> working in concert to cheat some advertiser's competitor, by running >> up his advertising bill? Seems sort of improbable to me. PAT] > It's not so hard to imagine if you consider the way viruses are spread > to launch spam, DDoS attacks, etc. The virus authors or cracker-gangs > aren't necessarily working to cheat competitors; they're just being > disruptive. Five thousand zombie computers scattered across three continents? We call that Roadrunner. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Five _hundred_ thousand, not five thousand. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 19 Apr 2005 21:03:36 -0000 From: Greg Skinner Subject: Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines Robert Bonomi (bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com) wrote: > In article , > wrote: >> I guess I don't understand the general tone of your response. It >> seems you are agreeing with me that PPC is a poor business model. > It is what the *advertising buyers* have *demanded*. This wasn't some > bright idea dreamed up by the folks selling ad space. Fixed pricing > is much simpler for _them_ to deal with. Hmmm ... in my experience fighting click fraud, I got the impression that the buyers were dissatisfied with PPC, and wanted to pay fixed fees. But perhaps that's because relative to its competitors, they got virtually no conversions via the publisher. Perhaps PPC works well for a much more trafficked publisher. But this doesn't bode well for small publishers who want to sell via PPC. >> The advertisers can use information that comes from companies such >> as Nielsen NetRatings to estimate how many people use a search >> engine, and what queries they submit to it, to determine a fair bid >> for an ad buy. > *snicker* > Nielsen NetRatings lacks -- by several orders of magnitude -- having > enough reporting sources to produce estimates that are within a factor > of _ten_ to _fifty_ for all the various 'keywords' that the > search-engines selectively sell ad-space for. Fair enough, but that's not a flaw in the methodology. I would expect that as the Internet matures as an advertising medium, it will be necessary for the ratings services to get more survey participants. Certainly, the advertisers will demand this, as they become more savvy about the value of their buys. Anyway, thanks for your feedback. If anyone else knows of any technical work (even open-source work) along these lines, please let me know. --gregbo ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 18:30:52 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As for myself, I cannot really picture > 'five hundred thousand zombie computers scattered across three > continents'. If so, under whose coordination? A gang of crackers all > working in concert to cheat some advertiser's competitor, by running > up his advertising bill? Seems sort of improbable to me. PAT] There are easily that many zombies available out there. Doesn't need any real coordination at all to use them -- there are automated scripts available to find and use them. I figure probably 1 in 50 home users' PC is "zombified" without them knowing it. Anyway, my point is one bright 13 yr old could do the whole operation alone. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess not everyone takes the trouble, as I do, to automatically run Grisoft AVG in the early morning hours on my machines, and Ad Aware and Spybot Smash and Destroy once per week or so. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #173 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Apr 20 18:43:19 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3KMhJe03659; Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:43:19 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:43:19 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504202243.j3KMhJe03659@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 V24 #174 TELECOM Digest Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:43:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 174 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AOL to Block Identity Theft Sites (Lisa Minter) Fox News Going Mobile with Sprint (Lisa Minter) ID Thief Wins Constantly! TRUE Story (Cheryl Rudow Pope) VCs Target Mobile Phone Tech Companies (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud; Effect on Search Engines (jmeissen) Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud; Effect on Search Engines (Robt Bonomi) Re: SprintPCS Lousy Web Interface (Steve Sobol) Re: The Other Telecom Bidding War (Robert Bonomi) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Dan Lanciani) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Robert Bonomi) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Scott Dorsey) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (news01@jmatt.net) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Paul Vader) Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP and Emergency System (hancock) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 20 Apr 2005 08:09:43 -0700 From: Reply-To: Lisa Minter Subject: AOL to Block Identity Theft Sites NEW YORK (Reuters) - America Online on Wednesday is expected to unveil plans to block identity theft sites and monitor suspected Web sites around the clock. The online unit of Time Warner Inc. partnership with Cyota, a New York-based online security company, to help identify and block sites imitating legitimate companies, such as banks that are suspected of soliciting personal information, or "phishing." "Phishing and identity theft are the fastest-growing security threats online," said Tatiana Platt, an AOL senior vice president said in a statement. "By limiting our members' access to suspected phishing sites, we're trying to cut the lines before a phisher can reel them in." Platt said AOL also plans to release other products aimed at curbing junk mail and other online scams. AOL has implemented a number of subscriber security measures in recent months, including a keychain-sized passcode generator needed to log into an account that provides password security on par with corporate computer users. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters Limited. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: 19 Apr 2005 22:29:54 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Fox News Going Mobile with Sprint By Chris Marlowe Fox News Channel announced a deal with Sprint on Tuesday that will let audiences view the network live on mobile phones from anywhere in the U.S. This is is the first time FNC has made its content available in the wireless medium. It also is a first for Sprint, because the new Fox News Channel Live is the first live news programing on the Sprint network. "These are great firsts for us," FNC director of digital media Jeremy Steinberg said. "This deal positions Fox News Channel to become a significant player in the wireless industry and is a great opportunity to expand the brand and reach our loyal audience outside their homes." The three top-rated shows in cable news -- "The O'Reilly Factor," "On the Record With Greta Van Susteren" and "Hannity and Colmes" -- can be viewed via mobile at the same time they're shown on television screens, as can all other FNC programing, complete with interstitials and advertising. The quality of FNC Live is equivalent to 15 frames per second, about half as good as the in-home version of FNC. All Sprint TV subscribers can watch FNC Live at no additional cost. Sprint TV is available to those using Sprint PCS Vision Multimedia Phones on the Sprint Nationwide PCS Network for $9.99 per month in addition to their existing Sprint PCS Vision plan. Sprint, working with Idetic, pioneered live television to the U.S. mobile consumer sector in 2003. Sprint TV, which launched in August, offers 17 channels of video content on demand. Owned by News Corp., FNC is available in more than 85 million homes. Reuters/Hollywood Reporter Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. Discuss this report and other telecom news items in our conference area: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/chatpage.html ------------------------------ From: Cheryl Rudow Pope Subject: ID Thief Wins Constantly! TRUE Story Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 08:50:55 -0500 Why The Courts Work For The Criminal and NOT The Victims! Illinois Now they send her on Vacation?? I am a victim of Identity Theft committed by a convicted felon who has done this to me several times. She was let off because of claims of medical conditions?? Like she can't be treated in prison? What is wrong here? So she can rob and steal from people and all she has to do when the Court system catches up with her is to just claim she has cancer, MS or some other staged up claim and she is FREE? That is what she used in both counties below to get off! Just think how much money these thieves can get away with! Like Probation is going to do a darn thing? ONLY IN AMERICA! She is no different from someone that robs a bank! I am OUTRAGED AT THE JUSTICE SYSTEM PERIOD! What exactly will stop her from doing this to me again? In 95 she stole my Identity and there were NO laws to prosecute her. NOW here we are in 2005 and have laws and alls they do is give her probation? PLUS she is a prior convicted FELON with a Criminal Background that does NOT stop! The felon now has 8 Current Identity Theft Charges/Check Deception Charges in 2 Counties, Will and Dupage. Six charges in Will and 2 charges in Dupage. She also did prison time in 95 For Embezzelling and Employee Theft in Dupage County. I cannot believe the Judge gave her probation??? In DUPAGE COUNTY Dupage County Case Numbers: 04 CF 2875 04 CF 1193 February 2, 2005 she faced sentencing of the above cases. 1 Identity Theft and 1 Check Deception. I was the Identity Theft Victim. The Judge AGAIN gave her probation because Will County did and also she is claiming to have a Medical Condition? I don't care she can be treated in PRISON! ALSO why is she given the ROYAL treatment of being on Probation ?? SHE has a very LONG criminal background with drug conviction charges, Identity Theft charges and many more. How can a person on Probation for 3 years in 2 Different Counties with 8 Current Convictions get to travel and go on vacation when SHE got Probation because she claimed a so called medical condition that kept her from going to Jail and now a month later she takes a ski trip vacation? Here is the reply I got from Will County State's Attorney: On March 18, 2005, the defendant appeared with her attorney. The defendant requested the court's permission to travel to the State of Colorado from March 23, 2005 to April 3, 2005. Over the State's objection, the court granted it, provided she have her court costs paid in full. They are, so she did. How did she get away with this? She is Cured, FREE and Taking Vacations on Stolen Money! The Courts sure work for the criminal here! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Will County and Dupage County are both in the metropolitan Chicago area; Will being south/southwest and Dupage being west of Cook County/Chicago respectively. But, Ms. Pope, you seem to infer she was due back in court or probation on April 3, about two weeks ago. What has happened since then? Your story does not surprise me, knowing how the courts in that area operate. Can you bring us up to date? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 13:31:15 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: VCs Target Mobile Phone Tech Companies Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 20, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20973&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * VCs target mobile phone tech companies BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon rolls out iobi for big business * Fox News Channel goes wireless with Sprint * Tropic, Scientific Atlanta team up * Judge may give Adelphia breakup fee to Time Warner, Comcast * MCI buys IP media firm * Sprint, Cingular report Q1 earnings USTA SPOTLIGHT * VoIP 101 Webinar Tomorrow! How to Integrate Wi-Fi and VoIP, 1 p.m. EST EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Verizon gears up to enter TV market * Analysis: Wi-Fi, VoIP combo may be inevitable * Ethernet users need to be educated Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20973&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines Date: 20 Apr 2005 07:51:57 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Pat wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess not everyone takes the trouble, > as I do, to automatically run Grisoft AVG in the early morning hours > on my machines, and Ad Aware and Spybot Smash and Destroy once per > week or so. PAT] The reality is actually quite depressing. What I've experienced personally is that the majority of users don't care. As long as they can surf the 'net and do email/IM they're happy. It used to be the case that the load from viruses and spyware was enough to drag a system to its knees, but with 3+ Ghz systems they often hardly notice it. I've actually had people criticize me for "messing with their system" when I offered to help clean up and patch up their Windows boxes (which had never received any security updates, were running expired antivirus software, and were directly connected to cable modems). John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah, but you see, perhaps I am an atypical user in that way. I have to work from here at home, and spend a few hours each day on my web sites, most often as not the Digest. I prefer to leave the cable connection up 24/7 since things like my weather station relies on it. My computers are all old, shabby, cranky things which work at very slow CPU speed, and I just cannot afford the time required to constantly clean out viruses and erase spam. I've got to have those automated virus checking/smashing/ destroying programs on hand and running daily. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 10:27:41 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to T. Sean Weintz : >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As for myself, I cannot really picture >> 'five hundred thousand zombie computers scattered across three >> continents'. If so, under whose coordination? A gang of crackers all >> working in concert to cheat some advertiser's competitor, by running >> up his advertising bill? Seems sort of improbable to me. PAT] > There are easily that many zombies available out there. Doesn't need > any real coordination at all to use them -- there are automated > scripts available to find and use them. > I figure probably 1 in 50 home users' PC is "zombified" without them > knowing it. For the U.S. that might be only a little low. For some other locales, like South America and parts of the Pacific Rim, you're *under-estimating* the problem by an order of magnitude. I've seen numbers like 1 in *8* for some areas. *groan* > Anyway, my point is one bright 13 yr old could do the whole operation > alone. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess not everyone takes the trouble, > as I do, to automatically run Grisoft AVG in the early morning hours > on my machines, and 'Ad Aware' and 'Spybot Smash and Destroy' once per > week or so. PAT] That should be "obvious" -- given that there are fairly reliable estimates of 200,000+ 'zombie' machines on *one* large North American cable ISP. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One thing I really love about Cable One for internet is how they go to the trouble to sort email for their customers. I've quoted some stats here, and those stats are _only as they apply to massis and Telecom Digest_ . My personal email comes via Cable One, TerraWorld, and University of California at Berkeley, but Cable One picks it all up via POP for me and sorts it nicely, putting all the known viruses and the suspected spam into a separate folder called 'my spam'. Then it sends me email telling me to please check out 'my spam' when something arrives there (which is sort of an overkill; viri and spam arrive there constantly also.) When I go to look there, its all laid out nicely, 24 lines at a time with the subject, who it is from, the date, etc, and nice little convenient check boxes to one side and a box at the bottom saying 'check all'. As fast as I can scan those 24 lines and hit the 'check all' box, it all goes away. In the event there _is_ something there I want to keep rarely, I 'check all' then go back and uncheck the one I want to keep. Anything I uncheck to keep then is shown on the training page: do you want to have this sender/subject automatically approved henceforth? I just wish that SBC's DSL had been that courteous. Under some very misguided belief that "we do not get involved in our customer's email" they just dumped it, spam, viri and all into a common bin and left it for me to sort out. Of course, SBC does _not_ allow customers to run cgi-bin or any shells of their own, or any scripts, so I had to go through it all manually. Out of desparation once, I asked the SBC help desk (when I used to have DSL instead of cable) to please give me a shell. "Oh no," said the tech, "SBC does not let customers have shells to use. You are only authorized to use what software we give you." That's back when I was debating whether or not to stay with SBC for DSL only, if they had allowed such a thing. Cable One is such an improvement by comparison, and I have never seen any downtime. In addition to their own virus and spam detectors -- frequently updated -- they encourage people to run their own as desired also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: SprintPCS Lousy Web Interface Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 21:13:53 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Joseph wrote: > On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:10:58 -0700, Steve Sobol > wrote: >> No one prints incoming phone numbers on customer bills except >> Cingular. > Steve, before you say "no one" you'd better check with someone who has > T-Mobile service. Their customers have *always* gotten incoming > numbers noted on their statements (if CLIP isn't blocked.) No one that I was aware of besides Cingular ... If you say T-Mobile does too, that's good enough for me ... Still not even close to all of the US carriers, though. :( JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: The Other Telecom Bidding War Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 10:47:01 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If I am not mistaken, there is that one > stockholder, Slim (somebody) in Mexico who owns 13 percent of the > company, and the purchasers of MCI tried to (or were successful at) > cutting a different deal with him than with the other stockholders. Verizon _did_ purchase those shares. Interestingly, MCI subsequently refused to dismantle a 'poison pill' provision against any single shareholder owning more than 15% of the shares. > I thought that was illegal ... whatever was offered to one stockholder > had to be the same for _all_ stockholders; and the other stockholders > have been complaining mightily about Slim getting better terms. Does > anyone know more about this? PAT] You thought wrong. In certain situations, and *only* in those situations, is it required that all shareholdeers receive 'equal' treatment. See Carl Ichann's backgrounds for a *long* history of buying up 'significant' numbers of shares in a company, and then "greenmailing" them into buying those shares back at a substantial premium over the market value. A deal _not_ offered to the other shareholders of the company at that time. Fact: if you make a "tender" offer for shares in a publicly traded company, assuming that enough shares are proffered to satisfy the minimum quantity in the ender offer, you must either (depending on the terms of the tender offer) buy all the shares offered at the 'tender' price, or buy the maximum number of shares, as specified in the tender offer, pro-rated among the profferers, according to the relative proportion of the number of shares each profferer offered out of the total number of proffered shares. Fact: in the _execution_ of a merger or buy-out of a publicly traded company, you must pay the same price for all shares of a given class/type. Fact: there is *nothing* that prevents one from: (a) purchasing shares on the "open market", at _any_ price (higher or lower than a tender or merger price, or (b) making similar 'private' purchases. "Even if" you have a tender offer outstanding. "Even if" you have reached an 'agreement in principle' with the management of the company you're buying out -- until the purchase agreement has been approved by _both_ sets of shareholders it is not binding. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess I thought wrong once again, didn't I, Robert? I do know that the other 87 percent of the shareholders were quite annoyed that Slim got special service not available to them. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 00:11:07 EDT From: Dan Lanciani Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote: > In article , Dan Lanciani > wrote: >> Since you also now advocate rejecting possible spam with a notice, can >> you please explain exactly how you avoid the misdirected bounce >> behavior that you find objectionable? > Simple! _I_ don't send any "bounce messages" *AT*ALL*. Neither do I, but that isn't an answer to the question I posed. > It's all done by mail *rejection* _during_ the SMTP transaction with > the remote server that is trying to deliver the mail to me. That is how my system works as well. > This isn't 'procmail', I've never used procmail; that was somebody else's suggestion. > nor is it some form of "post-processing" of material > that has arrived in the server inbox -- it is "real time" processing > of the message *during* the transmission from the remote system. Real time processing is an obvious and worthwhile optimization; however, while it does reduce the incidence of misdirected bounces it by no means eliminates them. It only pushes the problem back one hop. I'm not hypocritical enough to criticize non-real-time challenge/response systems just because I do a little better by rejecting in real time. You are criticizing my system without even doing a little better ... > Thus, there are three possible scenarios:. > 1) The mail came to my _server_ from a legitimate, full-blown, > mail-server that knows the 'true identity' of the sender, > regardless of what the "from" line says. > 2) The mail came to my > server from dedicated spam-sending software that *doesn't* do > _anything_ with rejection notices. > 3) The message came to my server from a legitimate, full-blown, > mail-server that does *not* know the identity of the sender. > In scenario #1 the rejection notice -- generated by *that* mailserver > -- goes back to the _actual_sender_. > In scenario #2, the rejection date is bit-bucketed, and nobody gets > anything. > In scenario #3, what happens depends on "just how stupid" that 'open > relay' mail-server configuration is. We already *know* it's > __really_ stupid, or it wouldn't be an open relay in the first place. > *IT* may be stupid enough to be generating 'backscatter' spam in > those situations where the 'from' address is a valid email address "may be"? Returning an error log to the envelope from is exactly what a relay is supposed to do. > -- and the recipient thereof *should* bitch at that that system for > spamming them The system "spamming" them may not be the open relay (if in fact there is an open relay involved). This of course leads to the notion of trying to force relays to blacklist relays that fail to blacklist open relays. I'm sure such nonsense has been proposed. > Or if the from address is _not_ valid, then the > message ends up in the 'postmaster' mailbox *there*. on the > open-relay machine. It ends up on the last hop relay before your machine. That may or may not be the open relay (if in fact there was an open relay involved). > Along with all the other 'undeliverable' > notices. Hopefully this alerts the operator of that mailserver to > the problem and they secure their system against open relay. Your analysis is incomplete, but it doesn't matter: your system works in exactly the same way that mine does. It will provoke misdirected bounces in exactly the same circumstances that mine will. You do not have a solution to the misdirected bounce behavior; you are merely trying to downplay the problem and/or shift the blame to other relays. That would be fine if you refrained from criticizing those of us who have been using the same techniques that you have now discovered but who do not try to downplay the consequences. > Wanna see how it works? I'm willing to take your word for how your system works; however, I strongly suggest that you send my mail system some spam to see how it responds before you make any additional bogus assumptions. > You have a problem trying to do this kind of thing, because your > mail-server software is _four_ major releases, and 4 additional minor > updates, out of date, and it doesn't have the required capabilities to > implement this type of scheme _properly_. Let me see if I can translate your comment. Your system depends on some hooks included in recent versions of sendmail. You assume that any similar system must depend on such hooks. You looked at the version of sendmail on my mail server and noticed that it was too old to have such hooks. You therefore conclude that I can't possibly be doing anything close to what you consider acceptable. News flash. I was hacking sendmail code long before the program was even called "sendmail." My spam filter interface is integrated into the SMTP server code directly. It does not depend on any user or cf file hooks. Some of us are still capable of writing our own C code for such functionality rather than waiting for the latest version of sendmail (with the latest set of security holes) to offer an easy solution. Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 10:15:10 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > Robert Bonomi wrote: >> Nope. it's because it is, quite simply, *NOT* ICANN's job to do so. >> Of the various organizations (ICANN, IAB, IETF, etc.) that are the >> 'authority' for specific functionalities of the greater Internet, >> _none_ of them have any authority with regard to the 'content' of >> packets. > Well then, who IS responsible to do the job? If no such job > exists, why isn't one created? When you figure out what the Internet is, you'll understand the answer to that question. The Internet is a _voluntary_ co-operative effort of *private* network operators. *nobody* 'owns' it. *nobody* 'controls' it. Everybody makes _their_own_rules_ for *THEIR*OWN* network. Unfortunately, "their" rules do not apply to someone who is _not_ on their network. When someone chooses to allow people "_not_ on their network" to access resources "on their network", they are 'extending trust' to those people to voluntarily obey their _unenforceable_ rules. The *only* 'enforcement' option available is to deny those 'scofflaws' access to the resources on their network. If you "don't like" the way YOUR NETWORK OPERATOR is extending trust (or not revoking it) to those who abuse that trust, either (a) find a different network operator, (b) bitch at your existing operator to get them to change _their_ operation, or (c) disconnect yourself. >> And *nobody* on the 'net wants it any other way. (Well, except for >> folks like the government of mainland China, that is.) > I don't know about that. Try to find anybody who wants restrictions on what _they_ can do/say/etc. On the Internet. Even among those who favor restrictions on what "other people" can do/say/etc. on the Internet. If 'officialdom' can proscribe sending one kind of message, they can proscribe sending _any_other_ kind of message. > I see the net as a great POTENTIAL tool, but one that is fraught > with risk and problems. Yeah. So? If you're not prepared to deal with the risks, "don't play in the street." applies. If the benefits for you don't outweigh the risks then *UNPLUG*THE*COMPUTER*. Problem _solved_. > Between hackers, spammers, perverts, and thieves, I are extremely > hesitant to do much of anything on the Internet. The newspapers > have articles constantly about how people have been fleeced from > Internet troubles -- either stolen identity, "phishing sites", > or fraudulent sites. Don't count of the authorities to go > after anyone unless it's a very major deal. (Let me know > IF any of the principals in the Norvergence collapse are > called to task -- under oath -- to account in detail for that. > I am not holding my breath.) At present, there is no > deterrent. > I am savvy enough that I don't open email from any source > I don't know, and I never click on attachments. That has > protected me, but in doing so I have deleted many legitimate > emails that I merely didn't recognize. Many other users have > been badly burned -- whole companies shut down -- because of > malicious sabotage sent through email. > Are you telling me this is a good system -- where people have > to go sorts of trouble to protect themselves and delete > legitimate items? If you use "good quality" software, for reading mail -- as opposed to the cr*p that Microsoft as foisted off on the world, most of those "problems" simply disappear. As for the 'getting fleeced' issue, there is *NOTHING*NEW* about that. "Ponzi schemes" have been around (by _that_ name) since the 1920s. The 'Spanish prisoner' con goes back even further. > When Pat T. brought up these problems, I noticed that almost all > responses were for things _Pat_ should do. In other words, he has to > make considerable effort to protect himself from malicious efforts > from others. > Why isn't more being done to stop the malicious work at the source? HOW? The -bad guy- *owns* the "source". He has -zero- interest in "stopping" his own activities. Shall we impose 'licensing' on every computer that gets connected to the internet? Including a requirement that the operating system and all applications be secure and un-exploitable? (Maybe that's not a bad idea -- it would get rid of *all* those d*mn virus-infected (and potentially infected) MS-Windows boxes. But, how many readers of Telecom Digest or the newsgroup would be left _that_ was done? ) > Why is it that most people just wring their hands and say "nothing can > be done". Because it is, quite simply, a _fact_. There will *always* be 'bad guys' out there. And, as long as they can control the 'sending' system, there is, bluntly, no way to force them to play by the rules. Want to require certain kinds of headers in e-mail? The bad guy sender can _forge_ those headers, just as easily as the good guy can put the right info in them. When _everybody_ is their own publisher/source, > If we can put a man on the moon using 1950 based computer technology, > we can make the Internet safe. Bullshit. Sorry, but its a fact, nonetheless.. We can't even make the _streets_ safe, and we've been trying to do that for what, 80+ year. something like 50,000+ people/year are killed in auto accidents in the U.S. alone. >> Not to mention that there is _nothing_ that ICANN can actually _do_ >> that would affect matters. They can't revoke the IP addresses MCI >> uses, those addresses were issued by ICANN to ARIN. > So de-issue them. "So sorry. *You* have been kicked off the Internet. Your addresses are in an address-block assigned to ARIN that has been reclaimed by ICANN, because some other user in that block misbehaved." Why do I think that that concept is doomed to failure in the real world. Not to mention that, _by_charter_, ICANN and the RIRs, e.g. ARIN, are _voluntary-participation_ *technical* coordination agencies only. Nobody *has* to go to a RIR to get IP addresses. As long as 'whomever' you buy connectivity from will "route" packets to those addresses to you, it doesn't matter _what_ the RIRs, etc. say. The only "good news" is that the "rest of the internet' _does_, in general, limit how _they_ will route traffic to the address-spaces that ICANN and the RIRs _have_ "authorized". >> They can't revoke the domain-name(s) MCI uses, those names are part >> of properly-executed _contracts_ between MCI and the domain registry >> operator. > Why do the contracts allow malicious behavior? Why can't > these contracts explicitly prohibit -- with penalties -- malicious > behavior? Who writes these contracts? Because, for starters, there is no 'universal agreement' on what constitutes "malicious behavior". There are multiple layers of contracts involved. ICANN, or some other TLD "issuing authority", enters into contracts with "approved registrars". Those registrars, subsequently, enter into contracts with "registrants" of a domain name. The 'issuer-registrar' contract specifies certain "minimum requirements" that the registrar-registrant contract must contain. The 'issuer' is *not* a party to the registrar-registrant contract, and, thus, _cannot_ act directly against the registrant -- they have 'licensed' the registrar to do certain things, and as a result of that licensing the 'issuer' *is* _legally_bound_ to certain performance, by the actions of the (licensed) registrar. Registrars *are* free to impose 'more restrictive' terms than those 'minimum requirements' in *their* contract with the registrant. There _are_ at least two 'significant' registrars who *do* include terms in their registrar-registrant contract that forbids using the registered domain-name for certain kinds of "abusive" actions -- notably sending junk e-mail. *AND*, they actually enforce those added terms, although the quality of the enforcement is somewhat spotty at times. There's a "real world" difficulty with this, however. When there is "more than one" registrar (as _is_ the case, today) then anybody who _does_ write more restrictive terms into their contract is at a "competitive disadvantage" to those who have only the 'required minimums' in _their_ contract. If you're a "bad guy", _which_ kind of a registrar are you going to choose? AND, obviously, the "quality" of the totality is only as high as the standards of the _lowest_quality_ operator. As to "who writes these contracts?", well, the registrar-registrant contracts are written by the registrars. The 'issuing authority' generally provides a "sample" registrar-registrant contract -- one that satisfies the "minimum requirements' of the issuer-registrar contract. *MANY* registrars adopt that sample boilerplate *without* making any changes/additions. >> And the operator's contract (with ICANN, or the appropriate >> 'national' authorizing authority) requires _them_ (the registry >> operator) to publish *all* properly contracted domains. > Again -- change the contracts! The word for that is "impossible". The existing contracts are *self-renewing* _at_the_same_terms_ (although in the case of one TLD, with an escalating fee schedule), as long as both parties fulfil their required acts. This is _expressly_ stated in the contracts. Changing such a contract requires either: a material breach of the *existing* contract by one party, allowing the other to exit it, *or* the _agreement_ of both parties to the changes. Are you really so naive as to think that the bad guys *will* "agree" to a contract change -- which provides *no* benefit to _them_ -- and that would allow the opposite party to harm them (the bad guy) at will. I take that back, 'naive' is inappropriate here. "What color is the sky on _your_ planet?" is more accurate. >> Those are the *only* aspects of the Internet that fall under ICANN's >> 'area of responsibility'. > > Sounds like there's a lot that could be done. If you ignore the realities of contract law, the difficulties of cross-border enforcement, and some other basic facts of life, >> Because: (a) there is *NO*ONE* 'in authority'. The net runs by >> anarchy. > Did it ever occur to anyone that this 'anarchy' is a very costly and > inefficient policy? How much does malicious efforts and protections > against that cost companies? How much traffic is flooding the system, > requiring increased servers and lines to accomodate malicious traffic? Hell yes, it's occurred to people. _Life_ is dangerous. "Mortality rate: 100%" Nobody _requires_ you to use the Internet. Yeah, it'd be "nice" if the various defenses were not necessary. But, in the 'real world' they _are_. Just like locks on your doors. Using the Internet is a _voluntary_ thing, but you do have to "take it as it is". If it's "too much trouble", then the decision is simple -- *don't* use it. There _are_ people/businesses who have made that decision. >> (c) last I knew, MCI had something like a _40%_ share of >> the U.S. Internet market. It simply isn't practical for >> any 'significant' player to write off that big a chunk of >> the potential customer base. > MCI, being part of a bankrupt empire (resulting from IIRC corrupt > accounting practices) has little sympathy from me. Perhaps it'd > better for everyone to dump MCI altogether. A fair number of those who can _afford_ to do so, *have* done so. For many, it is simply =not= a viable option. Like it or not, commercial business operations pay for most of the cost of of operating the Internet. A commercial business does not have the "luxury" of a blanket write-off of 40% of their potential customers. If they attempt it, they *will* lose that business to their competition who does not do it. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now Lisa, do you understand the > politics of spam, and why it is such a problem? It amazes me that > this net could be (like at present) 85-90 percent spam garbage, most > of which comes via one source -- MCI -- Better check your facts. Comparatively little spam actually _comes_from_ MCI address-space. MCI is actually fairly good about stomping actual spam origination. What they _are_ excoriated for -- and *DESERVEDLY*SO* -- is continuing to provide *other* services -- be it web-server, _incoming_ mail, etc. -- to parties which are well-known for spamming. It's "the abuse didn't come _through_ *our* network, so we don't care" mind-set. For what it's worth: I just ran some statistics from my logs -- of the last 2137 unsuccessful delivery attempts, a whopping _41_ were from anywhere in MCI address-space. (BTW, more than 2/3 of look to be from "zombie" PCs; also more than half had forged AOL/YAHOO/HOTMAIL "from" addresses, making detection/rejection, 'trivial'). I get 80% of that number of messages from *ONE* ISP in Germany. I get almost 85% of that number of message that come directly from Nigeria. I get more messages than that from zombie PC's in Brazil. I get more messages than that from mainland china -- mostly in English, so I presume they're "U.S. based" spammers with off-shore servers. I get more than that number of messages from "above.net" address-space. I get nearly twice that number were from Verizon address-space. I get about twice that MCI number from 'LEVEL3" address-space. I get more than twice that many from Verio address-space I get more than five times that number were from AT&T address-space. I get more than _twelve_times_ that number were from a _single_ spammer getting connectivity from xo.com (He sends from his own server, always the the same machine, registered in his own name, so it 's *really* easy to block the "property.com" domain. One of these days, I am, however, going to file a lawsuit against him, for repeated attempted theft of services.) This isn't to say that blocking all of MCI is a bad idea if it fits your political agenda, just _don't_ expect it to make any significant near-term difference in the amount of spam in your inbox. [[.. munch ..]] > The contracts you suggest changing (I agree!) only got into place as > they are when netters rolled over when ICANN demanded it. A tragic > mistake is that no one seized root long ago and forced the issue. Some people have tried such things. There have been attempts at setting up "alternative" root nameservers. with other (non-ICANN recognized) top-level domains. Of course, for anybody to be able to _reach_ one of those alternate domains, they have to use a nameserver "resolver" that kicks the query 'upstairs' to that 'alternative root' _instead_ of the standard one. This means that -- for the 'alternative domains' to be universally accessible, *everybody* has to reconfigure their nameserver away from the default configuration. For some strange reason, *every* such attempt over the last 10+ years has fizzled into oblivion. One could say that "the masses" _have_ made their wishes known on the subject. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So Lisa, note how Robert is going to continue to fight against so many folks on the net who are detirmined to get rid of spam. No matter how far afield, how far off of first base he is, he is going to continue to respond as you (and I, and all the other readers) saw today. He talks about the contracts all of us who hold domain names had to sign, as though they were 'voluntary' (what a sad laugh) and as though it is impossible for ICANN (which is in fact the overall controller around here) to write new contracts since Robert does not understand what the term 'malicious' means in everyday language that everyone else with a lick of sense understands. And he insists that it is impossible for ICANN to build into new contracts such simple, humble concepts as 'no phishing, no spamming, no falsification of network addresses' because the contracts out there now are renewable in perpetuity, or until the savior comes again, whichever happens first. So, Robert would have us believe that ICANN (I use them in a generic sense) can't do anything because the existing contracts are written in stone, renewable forever, and anyway, Robert knows that there is no reasonable definition of 'malicious' in the context of our net. And although as I understand the law, it is generally there to provide for the weakest members of our society, Robert says if our brains are not as smart as his (I mean, can't any _real_ man configure his mail server to eliminate viri and spam?) then our alternative is to shut the computer down. I imagine he would love it if we did. So Lisa Hancock, I guess Robert has really explained quite well where we stand. Don't look for any laws or contracts to protect regular users, or anything like that, since Robert has explained that is all quite impossible. And above all, do not pick on poor little MCI, since Robert (who encourages me to check the facts) has explained that MCI does quite well in stopping spam which originates in their house, but as Robert explains it they don't do very well on spam throughput from other sources, as if there was some real difference between the two, other than the fact that Robert says there is. And before Robert starts muddying the water once again patiently explaining to us the differences in job responsibilities between the various technical agencies administering things here on the net, bear in mind he will quite likely explain to us once again that it is all one big anarchy, which by definition has no 'agencies' -- technical or otherwise -- in charge of anything. All I know is, I should receive hazardous duty pay for dealing with all this shit day after day. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: 20 Apr 2005 09:33:25 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) In article , > Robert Bonomi wrote: >> Nope. it's because it is, quite simply, *NOT* ICANN's job to do so. >> Of the various organizations (ICANN, IAB, IETF, etc.) that are the >> 'authority' for specific functionalities of the greater Internet, >> _none_ of them have any authority with regard to the 'content' of >> packets. > Well then, who IS responsible to do the job? If no such job > exists, why isn't one created? Individual ISPs are responsible. The notion here is that we're all supposed to be a community. If an ISP is doing something you don't like, you don't have to peer with them or accept their traffic. If they are doing something nobody likes, nobody has to peer with them or accept their traffic. For years this worked very well. But now large amounts of the main backbone are run by a small number of companies who don't really care about the net or about anything other than short-term profits. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you very much, Scott. Your last paragraph said it well. That's why I have requested before and will request again of John Levine do not peer me with MCI or anyone else on the Spamhaus list. Send them away. And 'main backbone, small number of companies who do not care about anything other than short term profits'. That is the reason I refer to Vint Cerf as a traitor. He knew damn good and well what he was doing when he sold the rest of us down the river. PAT] ------------------------------ From: news01@jmatt.net Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: 20 Apr 2005 06:33:48 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Robert Bonomi wrote: > Thus, there are three possible scenarios:. > 1) The mail came to my _server_ from a legitimate, full-blown, > mail-server that knows the 'true identity' of the sender, > regardless of what the "from" line says. > 2) The mail cam to my > server from dedicated spam-sending software that *doesn't* do > _anything_ with rejection notices. > 3) The message came to my server from a legitimate, full-blown, > mail-server that does *not* know the identity of the sender. Robert ... thanks for that explanation! I'm a big fan of RBL blacklisting at the server, instead of filtering after delivery, for a number of reasons. This is one more reason I hadn't thought about: a better opportunity for a reasonable decision about whether to notify the (alleged) "sender" of the spam. I used to rant against "silent" blocking. I thought ALL email should be either delivered or returned to the sender, or at least an attempt should be made to return it. I thought it was very bad that legitimate email could be silently tossed with neither the sender or the recipient being notified. If it was really spam, the bounce would probably go nowhere, but if it was good email, at least the sender would know he needed to find another way to contact the recipient. Of course, as others have pointed out, this is a real problem now that spammers are forging valid return addresses. If the mail is filtered after delivery, the filter process can either throw it away or return it to an address which may be a real person who is not the source of the spam and doesn't need to be swamped with bounces from spam that he didn't send. As Robert points out, if the delivery attempt is immediately rejected by the receiving server, it's up to the sending server to decide what to do about notification. In the case of legitimate mail, the sending server should be able to deliver a legitimate notification to the real sender. If it's spam, the sending server is probably not going to deliver a rejection notice to anybody, unless it's an open relay, and I think those are getting scarce. It seems that most spam these days is being blasted out by special-purpose spamming software, often running on hijacked broadband customers' machines, and those machines aren't likely to generate rejection notices. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I still suggest returning undelivered email 'to the sender'. If some innocent person gets a jillion pieces of mail because *someone else forged his email address* then maybe that person will get angry enough to join the effort to try and clean up the net. Read my autoack sometime, it says if you sent the email, then thank you for writing; _if you did not send the email_ then welcome to the club the rest of us belong to. (or words to that effect.) PAT] ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 15:02:41 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: >> 'authority' for specific functionalities of the greater Internet, >> _none_ of them have any authority with regard to the 'content' of >> packets. > Well then, who IS responsible to do the job? If no such job > exists, why isn't one created? A) Why would anyone living in a free country want controls on what people can say? B) Do you really misunderstand the internet so badly that you think that there's any place you COULD create controls? C) Who says what's allowable or not? I vote for NOBODY. The internet doesn't exist - it's just a bunch of public ways connecting private networks. No website runs 'on the internet' - it's a peephole into private property that you get to look into. If you don't like what's going on inside, don't peek. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Oh, sure as hell, Paul! And every public highway in the world has lots of private driveways attached to it, but there are still rules to follow in order to be on the highway. All, that is, except the internet, where Robert will tell you it is an 'anarchy' (when he is not patiently explaining to Lisa and whoever else will listen to his rot) the jobs that do not belong to the various agencies involved). Why didn't you instead claim that Interstate 70 does not exist; its just a bunch of little towns and small highways running through Kansas, and how we can turn our head aside if we do not want to look? Let me ask you this: In 1905, when automobiles were first beginning to show up in mass numbers (on the non-highways which connected the little towns and roads of America) were you also opposed to speed limits, license plates -- indeed driver's licenses -- and rules which pertain to hit and run, etc. A lot of people were, you know, seriously. More than one person in those early days of the automobile said the very idea of requiring license plates (so others could identify your machine) and driver's licenses (so that society assumed you were qualified to operate your machine) and rules about 'malicious' behavior (when operating your machine); were you as opposed to those as you seem to be now where attempts to deal with spam are concerned? PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency Date: 20 Apr 2005 08:51:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jack Decker wrote: > My commentary follows the excerpts ... > http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1113646231312020.xml > "If it wasn't the silliest thing, but the hang-up was I couldn't give > them an exact address, and he was in trouble," said Lawrence, who > ultimately had to run across Michigan Avenue to the Ypsilanti Fire > Department before help arrived. Note that the problem appears to be not knowing one's location rather than not being able to reach the 911 center. The caller did get through -- there was a connection. What didn't follow was an address -- but is that even offered in that area? The capability to transmit the caller's location to a 911 center and 911 service altogether is relatively new. It wasn't that long ago you had to provide your address, and not long ago you had to know a specific 7 digit number for your local police/fire/ambulance service. > I will just point out that if a life is ever lost because someone > cannot reach 911 ... One of the reasons enhanced 911 was developed was that people in the suburbs didn't know where there were. Historically, one dialed 0-operator and asked for help. But local operator service centers have been consolidated and may be many miles away and the operator won't know the area. Telephone exchanges overlap municipal boundaries. Also, 911 centers had their own problems. > Please understand what I am saying here -- if an ILEC is making access > to the 911 system difficult for VoIP providers because they think it > gives them a competitive edge, they are creating a condition where > someone might die, solely to enhance their bottom line. Actually, the ILEC isn't "creating" anything. It's the VOIP that is offering something new and different -- marketing as low cost -- and thus their responsibility to get properly connected. My county charges a $1/month 911 tax as part of the phone bill. Will a VOIP provider serving me also charge that fee? I doubt it because they're exempt from regulation. Seems to me VOIP wants a free ride -- no fee but full service. That's wrong. The issue of such fees "being wrong" is not relevant here. The fees exist and everyone has an obligation to pay them. > ... and are hoping for some type of FCC > action that will establish a nationwide standard ... That sounds like [gasp!] telephone regulation to me. We don't want regulation, do we? > I again remind you that the foundation for 911 was built while > the ILEC's were MONOPOLY providers that enjoyed government-protected > profit margins I don't believe that is historically accurate. At the time of divesture and allowance of competition, much of the country did NOT have any 911 service. What service there was did not have the sophisticated address transmission feature. By the time E-911 came along, it was a competitive marketplace with the appropriate foundations. Further, I understand that competing wireline local phone companies don't have any problem with 911 service. It's only VOIP because it doesn't use the telephone network. I suspect if VOIP had to establish a physical presence in each central office, like the competing wireline companies did, it would have full 911 service without any hassles. But that would be a tremendous expense and raise the price -- and ruin the whole low-cost attractiveness of VOIP. Again we see wanting full service but not wanting to pay for it. As to "govt protected profit margins", that's not true. If it was, whenever there was a telephone worker strike the company would merely give in to union's demands, but they didn't. Secondly, other regulated monopolies like railroads or telegraph companies lost big money year after year without sympathy from their regulators. If a phone company had a bad year, it had no guarantee it'd be able to make that up the following year, as the telegraph carriers found out. The telephone companies were and are forced to provide many unprofitable services where they lose big money -- obligations other carriers are free from. The old Bell System disappeared 20 years ago and can't be used an excuse anymore. Remember too the old Bell System was strictly limited in what services and products it could offer-- Bell wasn't allowed to offer cable TV, for instance. Your statement should have read "government _limited_ profit margins". > So now the 911 centers are stuck with technology that only works > really well with the existing wireline network, and yet nobody in the > press seems to want to blame the real culprits, which are the ILEC's > that set up such technologically-mediocre systems, and their > co-conspirators in local governments who saw an opportunity to bypass > the voters in the decision making process. Who says the E911 are "technologically mediocre"? You came along with something new and you want other people to pick up the cost of using your product so your product will be cheap. > No, it's much easier to lay all the blame on the VoIP companies, > which have only been in business for less than a couple of years (in > most cases) and who had no say at all into how the existing 911 > system was designed. You're contradicting yourself. You admit VOIP is something new, yet you expect the centers to redesign themselves--at their expense--to accomodate you when you're late. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here in Independence, where we are a > little more backward in our telecom, it seems, the city has a phone > in the telecom area which is specifically designated for the job of > 'emergency, but not 911 equipped calls'. It is not some 'private line > in a back office somewhere' as seems to be the case in Ypsilanti or > Brooklyn, NY. The phone terminates in a place where experienced > professionals can deal with the calls, even though said calls do not > come through the equipment looking like 'regular' 911 calls. VOIP > carriers _have to take the word of the various agencies_ that a call > is being terminated where it can be best handled. Should the VOIP > carriers have to personally audit each community to assure this? Yes, the VOIP carriers should personally audit the service everywhere. That's part of the basic obligation of providing telephone service. Mr. Decker made a big point of the life-criticial aspect of 911. VOIP is the service provider to the customer, as such, they have the obligation to make sure they can connect to someone else as one would expect. Why should the subscriber have to do it? Almost all subscribers would have no idea how and where to check. If I buy a washing machine from a major dept store, they will deliver it, hook it up, and take it back with a full refund or replace it if there's any problem. If I buy it from a discount house I'll have to get it home and hook it up myself, if there's a problem I'm "SOL", but I've saved $100. Each person makes their own decision as to what's best for them to buy. It seems here that VOIP is the discount store, but wants to use -- free of charge -- the dept store's delivery and installation crews because "the dept store was always there and built up a trade". You can't have it both ways. When you go to the discount store you get discount service, pure and simple. VOIP's big selling point is low price--partly from freedom from regulated prices, partly from not having the overhead other companies have. That overhead appears to include the proper connectivity to E911 services (among other problems.) Please don't tell me my 911 tax on my phone bill shouldn't be there. It IS there and until it goes away, you have no argument. I don't think it's fair that people like me have to pay this tax while VOIP comes in, without paying such taxes, and demands a free ride. As far as VOIP goes, be honest with your customers and tell them you're running a discount store. You gotta schlep home the washer yourself, hook it up yourself, and get it serviced yourself. For some people, that's a great deal. Years ago discount stores made no pretense of being anything else. Please don't pretend you're a mature full service company because you're not. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #174 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Apr 21 00:56:08 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3L4u8W06320; Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:56:08 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:56:08 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504210456.j3L4u8W06320@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 V24 #175 TELECOM Digest Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:55:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 175 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson QUALCOMM Announces Second Quarter Fiscal 2005 Results (Monty Solomon) Cingular Wireless Posts Solid First-Quarter Results (Monty Solomon) Motorola Announces Record First-Quarter Sales and Earnings (M Solomon) America Online Launches Major Campaign Against Phishing (Monty Solomon) VeriSign Reports First Quarter 2005 Results (Monty Solomon) Google Launches Personal History Feature (Monty Solomon) Re: Can I Port an 800 Number Without Old Carrier's Permission (A Gillis) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Bob Goudreau) Re: AOL to Block Identity Theft Sites (mc) Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril (Dave Garland) It Happened Again (TELECOM Digest Editor) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:03:43 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: QUALCOMM Announces Second Quarter Fiscal 2005 Results Revenues $1.37 Billion, EPS $0.31 Pro Forma Revenues $1.37 Billion, EPS $0.29 SAN DIEGO, April 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM), pioneer and world leader of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) digital wireless technology, today announced results for its second fiscal quarter ended March 27, 2005. Total QUALCOMM Second Quarter Results: * Revenues: $1.37 billion, up 12 percent year-over-year and down 2 percent sequentially. * Net income: $532 million, up 9 percent year-over-year and 4 percent sequentially. * Diluted earnings per share: $0.31, up 7 percent year-over-year and 3 percent sequentially. * Effective tax rate: approximately 16 percent for the quarter. Fiscal 2005 estimated tax rate of approximately 24 percent. * Operating cash flow: $821 million, up 6 percent year-over year; 60 percent of revenue. * Dividends: paid $230 million in cash dividends and announced a 29 percent increase in quarterly dividends payable starting in the third quarter. * Stock repurchase: on March 8 announced a two-fold increase in stock repurchase authority to $2 billion. From the date of announcement through April 19, 2005, repurchased approximately 19.5 million shares at a net cost of approximately $688 million. Sold a put option that may, if exercised, require us to repurchase an additional 5.75 million shares at approximately $33.75 per share for a net cost of approximately $194 million. QUALCOMM Pro Forma Second Quarter Results: Pro forma results exclude the QUALCOMM Strategic Initiatives (QSI) segment and a one-time tax benefit recorded in the second quarter of fiscal 2005 and are presented as if the "New Method"(1) of recording royalties had been in use in the prior year. * Revenues: $1.37 billion, up 15 percent year-over-year, and down 2 percent sequentially. * Net income: $487 million, up 14 percent year-over-year and 3 percent sequentially. * Diluted earnings per share: $0.29, up 12 percent year-over year and 4 percent sequentially. * Effective tax rate: approximately 27 percent for the quarter. Fiscal 2005 estimated tax rate of approximately 28 percent. * Free cash flow: $741 million, up 3 percent year over year; 54 percent of revenue. (Defined as net cash from operating activities less capital expenditures.) Detailed reconciliations between total QUALCOMM results and QUALCOMM pro forma results and cash flows are included at the end of this news release. Prior period reconciliations are presented on our Investor Relations web page at www.qualcomm.com . - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48509924 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:07:39 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cingular Wireless Posts Solid First-Quarter Results: -- Net subscriber additions of more than 1.4 million -- 50.4 million subscribers at quarter's end -- Gross subscriber additions of 4.8 million -- Monthly subscriber churn of 2.2 percent overall and 1.9 percent in postpaid -- 210 basis-point sequential improvement in normalized OIBDA margin -- Continued progress in GSM conversion, with 84 percent of minutes now on Cingular's GSM network -- Integration initiatives continue on schedule ATLANTA, April 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Cingular Wireless, the nation's largest wireless provider, today posted solid first-quarter results driven by continued strong subscriber growth, improved churn and sequential margins, and strength in data and enterprise services. Cingular delivered net subscriber additions of more than 1.4 million and ended the first quarter with 50.4 million subscribers. Gross additions were nearly 4.8 million while churn was 2.2 percent -- a sequential improvement of 20 basis points. In addition, OIBDA margin -- normalized to exclude direct merger integration costs -- increased to 25.5 percent, which is a sequential improvement of 210 basis points. ("Pro forma" results reflect the acquisition of AT&T Wireless, plus related acquisitions and dispositions, as if they had occurred on January 1, 2003.) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48492342 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:02:43 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Motorola Announces Record First-Quarter Sales and Earnings First-Quarter 2005 Financial Highlights - Sales up 10 percent: Sales of $8.16 billion, compared to first-quarter 2004 sales of $7.44 billion. - Earnings Per Share up 47 percent: Earnings of $.28 per share, versus $.19 per share from continuing operations in the year-ago quarter. - Gain of 1.4 percentage points in global mobile device market share: Mobile device shipments of 28.7 million units, representing an estimated market share of 17.1 percent, an increase of 1.4 percentage points versus the year-ago quarter and 1.2 percentage points versus fourth quarter of 2004. SCHAUMBURG, Ill., April 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) today reported record sales of $8.16 billion in the first quarter of 2005, an increase of 10 percent from sales of $7.44 billion in the first quarter of 2004, and reported record first-quarter earnings of $.28 per share, versus earnings from continuing operations of $.19 per share in the year-ago quarter. First-quarter 2005 earnings include pre-tax income of $234 million, or $.06 per share, from the sale of an investment. First-quarter 2004 earnings from continuing operations included pre-tax income of $143 million, or $.04 per share, from the sale of an investment and other items highlighted in that release. During the quarter, the company continued to strengthen its balance sheet, generating operating cash flow of $438 million and ending the quarter with a record net cash(1) position of $6.0 billion. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48510374 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:06:03 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: America Online Launches Major Campaign against Phishing DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 20, 2005--America Online Inc.: -- Round-the-Clock Blocking of Suspected Scam/Identity Theft Sites Supplements Other Anti-Phishing Tools, Ongoing Member Education Campaign -- AOL Partners with Online Security Company Cyota to Help Identify Web Sites That Attempt to Steal Passwords, Financial Information America Online today announced a major new initiative to combat "phishing" -- the practice of using fraudulent e-mail and fake web sites to solicit sensitive personal information from users. As part of that campaign, America Online has partnered with Cyota, Inc., the leading anti-fraud and online security solution provider for financial institutions, to help identify and block access to suspected phishing sites through a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week monitoring process. AOL is also working internally and with other partners to identify and block phishing sites. This effort supplements the other steps AOL has taken to help protect its members against phishing, including spam blocking, cooperation with law enforcement, member education, and tools like AOL(R) Money Alerts, AOL(R) Passcode, and AOL(R) Official Mail. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48490983 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:19:00 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: VeriSign Reports First Quarter 2005 Results MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN), the leading provider of intelligent infrastructure services for the Internet and telecommunications networks, today reported its results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2005. VeriSign reported revenue of $401 million for the first quarter of 2005, a 75 percent increase compared to the same period of 2004. On a GAAP basis, VeriSign reported net income of $49 million for the first quarter 2005 and earnings per share of $0.19 per fully-diluted share. This compares with net income of $9 million and earnings per share of $.04 per fully-diluted share for the same period of 2004. On a non-GAAP, after tax basis, using a 30% effective tax rate on non-GAAP pre-tax income of $95 million, earnings per share for the first quarter was $0.25 per fully-diluted share, as compared to non-GAAP pre-tax income of $50 million and earnings per fully-diluted share of $0.14 for the same period in 2004. These non-GAAP results exclude the following items, which are included under GAAP: amortization of intangible assets related to acquisitions, the net gain or loss on the sale of investments or the impairment of investments, restructuring and other recoveries/charges, and stock-based compensation charges related to acquisitions. A table reconciling the non-GAAP to GAAP numbers reported above is appended to this release. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48510821 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:26:14 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Google Launches Personal History Feature By MICHAEL LIEDTKE AP Business Writer SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Google Inc. is experimenting with a new feature that enables the users of its online search engine to see all of their past search requests and results, creating a computer peephole that could prove as embarrassing as it is helpful. Activating Google's "My Search History" service, unveiled Wednesday afternoon at http://labs.google.com , requires users to create a personal login with a password. Users of Google's e-mail, discussion groups and answer services can simply use their existing log-ins. The service allows users to decide if they want Google to automatically recognize them without having to log in each time they use the same computer. Those who prefer to log in on each visit can use a link that will appear in the right-hand corner of Google's home page. Whenever a user is logged in, Google will provide a detailed look at all their past search activity. The service also includes a "pause" feature that prevents it from being displayed in the index. Users will be able to pinpoint a search conducted on a particular day, using a calendar that's displayed on the history page. The service sometimes will point out a past search result related to a new search request. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48520265 ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: Can I Port an 800 Number Without the Old Carrier's Permission? Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:41:42 -0700 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com William's difficulties may lie in his remarks in Question #2, below. He said he'd been paying the invoice on the Toll-Free number since he "bought the company". It could be that the previous owner of the business ordered the T-F number (and thus is the true "owner" in the eyes of Cloacal since they may not have been notified of the businesses sale). So Cloacal is doing their job, being sure that our new friend William doesn't hijack the T-F number from the original and true of the number. I'd guess William needs to convince Cloacal that he bought the business and its assets (including the valuable Toll-Free number). Once that happens they'll probably honor his RespOrg documents. If this is actually what's in play in this case then Hooray for Cloacal! They're doing their job, protecting one persons assets from another who (right now) has no right to take that asset. Pat's advice to draw Judith Oppenheimer into the fray is great! She, of all people, will know how to beat this problem into submission! Al wrote in message news:telecom24.163.6@telecom-digest.org... > Pat, > Please strip my email address and name; TIA. > Here's a question about 800 number portability which I hope you or > the other readers can answer. > I have switched to a small CLEC for my service -- call them ma-pa-telco. > I told ma-pa-telco that I was unsatisfied with the service I was getting > from my old carrier -- let's call them "Cloacal" -- so I asked ma-pa-telco > to take over my 800 line. > I signed a "Letter of Agency", and thought it was all done. Today, > however, ma-pa-telco tells me that after seven or eight false starts, > Cloacal refuses to transfer my 800 line, saying that my signature on > the letter of agency is "Unauthorized" and that they won't tell me who > is "authorized" to sign it. > So, some questions: > 1. Can ma-pa-telco force a switch? I mean, can they tell the > company-in-charge-of-the-800-number-portability-database to just > move the number over? > 2. Can I force Cloacal to release my 800 number even though they say > I'm not the "authorized" person? It's my number, right? They've > certainly got plenty of signatures to check: I've been paying the > bill for this ever since I bought the company. Can I just tell > Cloacal to grow up and consider me as authorized? > 3. Is there a procedure in place to resolve this kind of issue? When > they set up the 800 portability database, someone must have thought > of things like a CEO retiring or a company like Cloacal refusing to > play nice with the other children. > This has been going on for over a week, and now it's just silly: as > far as I'm concerned, Cloacal is dragging their feet just because I > got tired of them acting like Ma Bell's idiot baby bell brother and I > said so to their face. At this point, the FCC should spank them and > tell them to get over it. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For starters, problems like this are > often times handled very satisfactorily by Judith Oppenheimer, a > reader here with several excellent web sites (begin your review of her > work at http://judithoppenheimer.com which is the ICB Consultancy home > page.) She has successfully cleared up things like this now and then. > Generally, yes, the _owner_ of an 800 number can take it where he > wants. One caveat: *who is the owner*? Signing a letter of agency > does not an owner make, if the true owner has a sticky widget. Think > back to when you first got the number ... did you sign any papers > telling Cloacal they were the owner? Did you originally get the > number from them? Who told _you_ that you are the owner of the number > (not the user of the number, but the _owner_ of it?) Another caveat: > do you owe any money to Cloacal on your bill with them? Telcos have a > right under the rules pertaining to number portability to hold a > number hostage if you do owe money. Under the law, telco has > protection to assure they get paid. Still a third caveat: Is the > number 'popular' or easy to remember, dial, etc? If it is -1212 or > -2345 or -1234, etc and etched on people's minds and quite 'easy to > remember or use', if Cloacal otherwise has any rights to the number, > they are going to fight more than ever. Genuine 800 numbers (as > opposed to 888, 877, 866 and yes! even 855) are not usually given up > by their 'owners' without some effort. Ms. Oppenheimer will need to > know all that in order to help you. But she seems to know her stuff > and _who_ to talk to. Good luck with your problem. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:08:58 -0400 Paul Vader wrote: >>> 'authority' for specific functionalities of the greater Internet, >>> _none_ of them have any authority with regard to the 'content' of >>> packets. >> Well then, who IS responsible to do the job? If no such job >> exists, why isn't one created? > A) Why would anyone living in a free country want controls on what people > can say? > B) Do you really misunderstand the internet so badly that you think that > there's any place you COULD create controls? > C) Who says what's allowable or not? I vote for NOBODY. Well said! This thread reminds me of something Arkady Shevchenko touched on in his early 1980's book _Breaking_with_Moscow_, in which he recounts his experience as a high-level defector from the Soviet Union. He described a school of thought to which certain members of the Soviet 'nomenklatura' belonged to. This group believed that just as the Soviet economy was all controlled and directed by the government central planning agency called GOSPLAN, that a similar (but apparently very top secret!) economic planning agency must exist to run the US economy at a similar or even deeper level of detail. Given that the American economy was so much larger and more dynamic than the Soviet one, this agency must therefore be worth copying/stealing secrets from/etc.! A non-trivial amount of intelligence effort was subsequently expended trying to ferret out details of this supposed American counterpart to GOSPLAN. Of course, those spying efforts came to naught, because (to paraphrase Gertrude Stein) "there was no there there"; no government agency in Washington was in charge of deciding every little low-level economic detail such as how many shoes must be made this week or how many tons of coal must be mined next month in order to meet the Five Year Plan. But to the adherents of this belief, steeped in nothing but their own experiences of rigid centralized control of everything, it was simply inconceivable that an economy with *no one at all* in charge could not only work, but indeed actually work much *better* than one run in a top-down fashion by a select group of alleged economic experts. And so it is with the internet. It turns out that just letting different private networks work out for themselves the terms of how they wanted to connect (or not) with other such networks became far more attractive to customers than the old centrally controlled "walled garden" private commercial networks that were around in the early 1980s (Compuserve, the original AOL, etc.) No one is "in charge" of the internet, any more than someone is "in charge" of a market economy. Yes, both of them need a certain amount of rules in order to function (e.g., consensus on which currencies/protocols are popular enough to merit being used to exchange value/data; rights to own physical property/address numbering and name-space resources; rules against fraudulent behavior that would deprive someone of their property, etc.) But you can't go too crazy with the rules, or else you end up either with rules that don't/can't get enforced (see: Prohibition, or the "CAN-SPAM" act) or you have to implement such an onerous overweening system of control that you lose the benefits of the free exchange of property/data (see: the North Korean economy, or the rigidly-controlled Chinese internet). Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: AOL to Block Identity Theft Sites Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 19:43:39 -0400 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) In my opinion, all browsers should block or warn about references of the form: yyyyy where yyyyy is a URL that does not match xxxxx. Simple - why don't they do it? ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:43:52 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > My county charges a $1/month 911 tax as part of the phone bill. Will > a VOIP provider serving me also charge that fee? I doubt it because > they're exempt from regulation. Seems to me VOIP wants a free ride -- > no fee but full service. That's wrong. Perhaps. But perhaps the financing mechanism is wrong. It's reasonable to look at the alternatives. Why does your county charge as part of the phone bill? Why not as part of the property tax (that would seem most equitable), or a county income tax, or a portion of the sales tax? Do they charge for fire protection by a surcharge on matches and lighters? Do they finance the libraries by a tax on books and magazines? > Please don't tell me my 911 tax on my phone bill shouldn't be there. > It IS there and until it goes away, you have no argument. I don't > think it's fair that people like me have to pay this tax while VOIP > comes in, without paying such taxes, and demands a free ride. True. So why aren't you belaboring your county about the unfair way they've chosen to charge for something that you deem a general community necessity? > As far as VOIP goes, be honest with your customers and tell them > you're running a discount store. You gotta schlep home the washer > yourself, hook it up yourself, and get it serviced yourself. For some > people, that's a great deal. Years ago discount stores made no > pretense of being anything else. Please don't pretend you're a mature > full service company because you're not. Of course. But is *sounds* like Vonage is in fact telling people. There's no reason why the county 911 can't use CID on a non-911 line to access their database, except that they don't want to be bothered. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:26:51 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: It Happened Again Again, today, Wednesday, late evening, spam rolled in so heavily here at massis, about 6 or 8 messages got lost in the shuffle, including one from Robert Bonomi. When the last issue before this came out, around 7 PM Wednesday evening, it was a larger than usual issue and the queue totally cleared out. Then midnight Wednesday, start of Thursday, we were hit again with a spam attack. So if you responded Wednesday evening sometime and it is not here, please replace it. I think it is quite ironic that one of Bonomi's messages got lost this time around, somewhere between a couple of the phishing attacks and one of the 'God Bless You from Nigeria Where my Late Husand was Killed by the Rebels' messages. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #175 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Apr 21 17:31:21 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3LLVLv14071; Thu, 21 Apr 2005 17:31:21 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 17:31:21 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504212131.j3LLVLv14071@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 V24 #176 TELECOM Digest Thu, 21 Apr 2005 17:30:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 176 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson New Spam Scam Exploits Pope's Death (Lisa Minter) Vonage to FCC: Qwest is Playing Nice, so SBC Should, Too (Jack Decker) Using Existing Home Telephone Wiring (Brian E Williams) Nextel Contract Expiration, How to Determine? (Steve) Time Warner, Comcast buy Adelphia (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) TC 35 Modules and 2N Gateways (dee4darek@gmail.com) Re: AOL to Block Identity Theft Sites (Ed Clarke) Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency (JustTime) Re: CNID Printouts on Cell Bills, was: SprintPCS Lousy Web (Justin Time) Re: Markey Targets Credit ID Theft: Wants Security Freeze (B. Williams) Re: ID Thief Wins Constantly! TRUE Story (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: It Happened Again (T. Sean Weintz) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (news01@jmatt.net) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 03:09:24 -0400 From: lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com Subject: New Spam Scam Exploits Pope's Death by Sharon Gaudin http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3497551 A new spam campaign is exploiting people's interest in and grief over the death of Pope John Paul II. The spam claims to offer readers a free collection of books written by the late pope. The email tells users to click on a link to receive the gift, but the link actually takes them to a Web site offering 'free money-making advice'. "This is absolutely slimy," says Carole Theriault, a security consultant with Sophos, Inc., an anti-virus and anti-spam company with U.S. headquarters in Lynnfield, Mass. "We started seeing this scam over the weekend, soon after the pope's funeral ... They're using the pope's name with all the news surrounding his death and the emotional investment to fool people." Pope John Paul II's funeral was held Friday, April 8. Theriault says this is just the latest example of spammers using current headlines and emotional topics to lure people in. "We're seeing an increasing amount of spam using current events to get into people's inboxes," she says. "They're stealing headlines from CNN to try to bypass simple spam filters ... It's tasteless. People don't like being mislead. If they want a book on Pope John Paul II, they don't want to be misdirected to a site about money-making secrets." Theriault notes that similar spam campaigns were launched soon after the Dec. 26 tsunami crisis. "Spammers are prepared to plumb the depths in their attempt to get Internet users to buy their goods or services," adds Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "The pope's death has been mourned by millions around the world, yet for the spammers it's just another opportunity to sell their unwanted wares." Theriault says she doesn't think this particular campaign will be a long-lasting one. "We expect this particular spam campaign to die out as the stories about the pope's death and funeral trickle from our news bulletins," she says. "However, we can be sure that spammers will try and capitalise on the next world event, be it a disaster or a triumph." NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, all these complainers should read the advice given by our resident anti-spam expert, Robert Bonomi who would tell them (1) any real man would know how to get his computer to do his bidding if only they would get rid of the Microsoft stuff on it and (2) if they really can't hack it, then give up the computer and the net totally. Sounds like a good deal to me. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:47:54 -0400 Subject: Vonage to FCC: Qwest is Playing Nice, so SBC Should, Too http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=365 Vonage to FCC: Qwest is playing nice, so SBC should, too -Posted by Russell Shaw @ 2:44 pm [.....] Vonage claims "that SBC has agreed to begin discussions on working cooperatively to improve 911 offerings available to customers using VoIP," Wilhelm wrote. "However, Vonage also noted its concern that SBC has already provided 911 interconnection access to its unregulated VoIP affiliate. "The terms and conditions of the access granted its affiliate are also not being made public and are subject to a non-tariffed 'ancillary' agreement," Wilhelm added. "Vonage reiterated its strong concern about any practice that would permit an ILEC to offer 911 access to its unregulated affiliate on a confidential and non-tariffed basis while restricting customers of other VoIP services from receiving the same level of access." Full story at: http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=365 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: BrianEWilliams Subject: Using Existing Home Telephone Wiring Date: 21 Apr 2005 05:50:15 -0700 I have POTS wired through the house. Is it simple to get my VoIP service to use this wiring? The optimist in me says all I have to do is turn off POTS, run a wire from the telephone jack on the VoIP router, and plug it into a telephone wall jack. The realist in me says this would be way too simple. Any thoughts? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are on the right path, Brian. Just make _absolutely_ positive that the POTS line is removed _at the demarc_ where it cannot get in the way. Dialtone from the POTS line colliding with dialtone from VOIP means disaster for your VOIP adapter which will probably fry out. It probably won't hurt the telco central office switch -- although 'they' may have to go reset a fuse sometimes -- but it can mean death to the VOIP adapter if voltage from the one comes in contact with the other. And don't just remove a couple wires on a local box somewhere unless you know your house wiring _very well_; go outside to the demarc or wherever it is and pull the wires from central out of the way there. PAT] ------------------------------ From: steve Subject: Nextel Contract Expiration, how to determine? Date: 21 Apr 2005 06:00:38 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I am trying to determine what the expiration date on my Nextel cellular contract is. I cannot find it on my bill, or logging on to online account management. I would like to determine this without calling Nextel if possible, as I'm afraid they might pull some trick and extend it if I call. Any suggestions as to where I can obtain this info? Thanks, Steve ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 13:50:06 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: April 21, 2005 - Time Warner, Comcast buy Adelphia Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 21, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21008&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Time Warner, Comcast buy Adelphia BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon picks Motorola for FTTP gear * Sprint's global hotspots double through deals * Analysis: VoIP's future may be shaped this year * EarthLink, Qualcomm, AT&T and Nokia report earnings USTA SPOTLIGHT * At SUPERCOMM: Register today for the IP Video Conference EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Vodafone takes aim at BlackBerry * 10 telecom technologies to watch Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21008&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: dee4darek@gmail.com (dee4darek@gmail.com) Subject: TC 35 Modules and 2N Gateways Date: 21 Apr 2005 05:45:53 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, I want to buy big amount of Siemens TC 35 modules (new or used) and GSM gateway (2N - working on tc 35). If you have any information where can I find please let me know, below link with TC 35 description, http://www.datek.no/Hardware/SiemensTC35/Datasheet-TC35_module.pdf Please answer to my email. dee4darek@gmail.com Regards, Darek ------------------------------ From: Ed Clarke Subject: Re: AOL to Block Identity Theft Sites Date: 21 Apr 2005 11:01:50 GMT Organization: Ciliophora Associates, Inc. Reply-To: clarke@cilia.org On 2005-04-20, mc wrote: > In my opinion, all browsers should block or warn about references of the > form: > yyyyy > where yyyyy is a URL that does not match xxxxx. > Simple - why don't they do it? Virtual hosts. I have half a dozen websites on a single IP; costs my customers less for web hosting. The only time it makes a difference is for vanity -- reverse host maps to forward host -- or for SSL. This signature left blank. ------------------------------ From: Justin Time Subject: Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency Date: 21 Apr 2005 05:26:17 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Dave Garland wrote: Of course. But is *sounds* like Vonage is in fact telling people. There's no reason why the county 911 can't use CID on a non-911 line to access their database, except that they don't want to be bothered. The point is that CID can be blocked and is not guaranteed to be delivered. The ANI information the 911 centers use is pretty much the same data that feeds the telephone company billing system. That information cannot be blocked or opted out of providing. Of course, if you want the PSAP to use CID information to take emergency calls on a non-emergency number and do the look-up from the CID it would be permissible to have the PSAP lines configured for Anonymous Call Rejection which would reject all calls that didn't have CID. That would insure the PSAP had at least some information to work with. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: On 'regular' 911, attempts to use *67 in front of it are ignored. A good way to phrase it is that on calls to 911 the police always pay the bill (for the transit of the traffic) and they _insist_ on getting the numbers of the calling parties, just like on an 800 number; when someone else is paying, you get no choice in the matter. I notice an interesting thing about Vonage and *67 also. *67 _does work_, but if you do *67-something else you'll hear a distinct 'click' after the *67 has been dialed and a new dial tone from some different switch it sounds like to me, jumps in and takes the remainder of your dialing string. I dunno why ... but Vonage does not accept *67-911 either, so there is no way the caller ID in those cases would not get a story for its owners. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Justin Time Subject: Re: CNID Printouts on Cell Bills, was: SprintPCS Lousy Web Date: 21 Apr 2005 05:46:18 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Interesting point. But couldn't the cellular companies come back stating they had delivered the CID when the phone rang? That you didn't record the information isn't their concern. But again, if you use the argument that your cell phone is like an 800 number that is entitled to billing information, then the same argument could be made for your POTS line as well. You are paying to receive the service. Rodgers Platt ------------------------------ From: BrianEWilliams Subject: Re: Markey Targets Credit ID Theft: Wants Security Freeze Date: 21 Apr 2005 06:43:37 -0700 Great, another PIN to remember! How about getting an email every time my credit file is accessed? Seems like a reasonable compromise. ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: ID Thief Wins Constantly! TRUE Story Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 08:38:05 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications There is a different between this criminal and a bank robber. Innocent bystanders are in harm's way and are often shot and killed during bank robberies. You are rightfully offended to a point, but please don't suggest that a thug with a gun is no more dangerous than a swindler. Cheryl Rudow Pope wrote: > Why The Courts Work For The Criminal and NOT The Victims! Illinois > Now they send her on Vacation?? I am a victim of Identity Theft > committed by a convicted felon who has done this to me several times. > She was let off because of claims of medical conditions?? Like she > can't be treated in prison? What is wrong here? So she can rob and > steal from people and all she has to do when the Court system catches > up with her is to just claim she has cancer, MS or some other staged > up claim and she is FREE? That is what she used in both counties below > to get off! Just think how much money these thieves can get away with! > Like Probation is going to do a darn thing? ONLY IN AMERICA! She is no > different from someone that robs a bank! I am OUTRAGED AT THE JUSTICE > SYSTEM PERIOD! What exactly will stop her from doing this to me again? > In 95 she stole my Identity and there were NO laws to prosecute > her. NOW here we are in 2005 and have laws and alls they do is give > her probation? PLUS she is a prior convicted FELON with a Criminal > Background that does NOT stop! > The felon now has 8 Current Identity Theft Charges/Check Deception > Charges in 2 Counties, Will and Dupage. Six charges in Will and 2 > charges in Dupage. She also did prison time in 95 For Embezzelling and > Employee Theft in Dupage County. > I cannot believe the Judge gave her probation??? In DUPAGE COUNTY > Dupage County Case Numbers: 04 CF 2875 04 CF 1193 February 2, 2005 she > faced sentencing of the above cases. 1 Identity Theft and 1 Check > Deception. I was the Identity Theft Victim. > The Judge AGAIN gave her probation because Will County did and also > she is claiming to have a Medical Condition? I don't care she can be > treated in PRISON! ALSO why is she given the ROYAL treatment of being > on Probation ?? SHE has a very LONG criminal background with drug > conviction charges, Identity Theft charges and many more. How can a > person on Probation for 3 years in 2 Different Counties with 8 Current > Convictions get to travel and go on vacation when SHE got Probation > because she claimed a so called medical condition that kept her from > going to Jail and now a month later she takes a ski trip vacation? > Here is the reply I got from Will County State's Attorney: On March > 18, 2005, the defendant appeared with her attorney. The defendant > requested the court's permission to travel to the State of Colorado > from March 23, 2005 to April 3, 2005. Over the State's objection, the > court granted it, provided she have her court costs paid in full. They > are, so she did. How did she get away with this? She is Cured, FREE > and Taking Vacations on Stolen Money! The Courts sure work for the > criminal here! > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Will County and Dupage County are both > in the metropolitan Chicago area; Will being south/southwest and > Dupage being west of Cook County/Chicago respectively. But, Ms. Pope, > you seem to infer she was due back in court or probation on April 3, > about two weeks ago. What has happened since then? Your story does not > surprise me, knowing how the courts in that area operate. Can you > bring us up to date? PAT] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The only reason, IMO, that a criminal uses a gun in a bank robbery rather than a computer is because he is not smart enough. If he knows how to use a computer he likely will not get his hands dirty with the brute force a gun implies. PAT] ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: It Happened Again Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 12:07:00 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > Again, today, Wednesday, late evening, spam rolled in so heavily here > at massis, about 6 or 8 messages got lost in the shuffle, including > one from Robert Bonomi. When the last issue before this came out, > around 7 PM Wednesday evening, it was a larger than usual issue and > the queue totally cleared out. Then midnight Wednesday, start of > Thursday, we were hit again with a spam attack. So if you responded > Wednesday evening sometime and it is not here, please replace it. I > think it is quite ironic that one of Bonomi's messages got lost this > time around, somewhere between a couple of the phishing attacks and > one of the 'God Bless You from Nigeria Where my Late Husand was Killed > by the Rebels' messages. > PAT You might want to think about investing in a good anti-spam appliance. Of course for that to be feasible, you must host your own email (run your own mail server) which I am not sure you do. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Alas, I do not. The mail server is purely part of the MIT system, besides which, I am not sure I am smart enough to run a mail server. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: 21 Apr 2005 09:45:49 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Paul Vader wrote: >> Well then, who IS responsible to do the job? If no such job >> exists, why isn't one created? > A) Why would anyone living in a free country want controls on what people > can say? Your question assumes there are no controls on what people can say. That assumption is wrong -- we have many controls on what we can say. Among other things, you may not threaten anyone, harass anyone, disburse certain kinds of pornography or libel or slander another person. Further, various communication media have additional restrictions on them. The US Mail has restrictions, as does the use of the telephone or loudspeakers. Spam is harassment. It requires the _receiver_ to expend time and money to deal with it day after day. > B) Do you really misunderstand the internet so badly that you think that > there's any place you COULD create controls? Any computer system has the capability of including controls. Well-run computer systems had controls included within them right from the start. I don't know the technical details of the Internet; nor is there any need for me to. The fact is that the Internet has serious problems and it's up to the people who operate it to fix it. > C) Who says what's allowable or not? I vote for NOBODY. See A) above. Laws already exist that determine what is allowable or not. Sabotage via a "virus" is pretty obvious. Further, fixing the Internet is not merely an issue of "content" but also dealing with cost allocation and sender identity. > The internet doesn't exist - it's just a bunch of public ways > connecting private networks. No website runs 'on the internet' - it's > a peephole into private property that you get to look into. If you > don't like what's going on inside, don't peek. * That's flat out wrong. Pat below gives a good analogy, but there are others. You do not have anonymity when using your telephone -- your number is transmitted to certain recipients whether you like it or not. The US Mail is a "public way" connecting people, but there are laws on using it just the same, just as there are laws on using your telephone. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Oh, sure as hell, Paul! And every > public highway in the world has lots of private driveways attached to > it, but there are still rules to follow in order to be on the > highway. Excellent point. > Let me ask you this: In 1905, when automobiles were first beginning to > show up in mass numbers (on the non-highways which connected the > little towns and roads of America) were you also opposed to speed > limits, license plates -- indeed driver's licenses -- and rules which > pertain to hit and run, etc. A lot of people were, you know, seriously. The extent of such motor vehicle laws remains under great debate today -- many people oppose new public safety laws (see misc.transport.road for passionate discussions on this issue). Many people object to being ordered to wear their seatbelts or not use their cell phone. But the bottom line is that as soon as there was more than one car on the road with the potential of hitting each other (as well as people and objects off to the side), laws were required to control use. The more cars on the road, the more laws required. When the Internet was a private network serving an exclusive community, few rules were needed. But like roads, the Internet is no longer a private enclave. People and businesses are dependent on their computers and email to conduct business and viruses and spam have shut whole businesses down. This is unacceptable just as tolerating drunk drivers is unacceptable. In the 1950s, engineers studying growing car accidents realized certain things could be done to save lives. The auto industry fought these tooth and nail, a fight that continues to this day. It's the same thing with the Internet -- laws are required to protect the public interest. The issue is not whether laws are required, but rather what specific laws and the degree of regulation are required. Bob Goudreau wrote: > inconceivable that an economy with *no one at all* in charge could not > only work, but indeed actually work much *better* than one run in a > top-down fashion by a select group of alleged economic experts. Your analogy isn't true -- it's wrong to say the U.S. economy has "no one at all" in charge. Far from it. First off, considerable control of the economy is exercised by the Federal Reserve in regulating banking activity and the govt itself influences activity by tax policy. Secondly, and more importantly, the economy operates under a complex set of laws governing commercial activity. If I hand you a piece of colored slip of paper printed "certified check" you have very strong confidence that paper will convert into cash for you without question or trouble. That doesn't happen by accident, it happens by laws regulating the banking system. These laws didn't happen by chance, they happened because the economy was growing but lacked the confidence and controls to work without undue risk. Many laws came out of the economic collapse of 1929. Indeed, a big problem with today's Russian economy is that there are few laws and controls on their economy. Assumptions safely made in U.S. trade cannot be done in Russia. Everything has much higher risk. > And so it is with the internet. It turns out that just letting > different private networks work out for themselves the terms of how > they wanted to connect (or not) with other such networks became far > more attractive to customers than the old centrally controlled "walled > garden" private commercial networks that were around in the early > 1980s (Compuserve, the original AOL, etc.) That arrangement has serious problems. Trying to fix said problems is the point of our discussion. IMHO, the private networks liked Compuserve failed because (1) they came along too early in the PC era and (2) they were too expensive. There was a limit on how much work could be done on a 2400 modem and Compuserve virtually metered every keystroke. Having an email account was of little value when no one else you knew had a computer and account in those days. > No one is "in charge" of the internet, any more than someone is "in > charge" of a market economy. > Yes, both of them need a certain amount of rules in order to function > (e.g., consensus on which currencies/protocols are popular enough to > merit being used to exchange value/data; rights to own physical > property/address numbering and name-space resources; rules against > fraudulent behavior that would deprive someone of their property, > etc.) Your two statements contradict each other. Either there is control or no control. Clearly there IS control. Thus, our debate becomes not one of having control (as some are framing it), but rather the _degree_ of control. > But you can't go too crazy with the rules, or else you end up > either with rules that don't/can't get enforced (see: Prohibition, or > the "CAN-SPAM" act) or you have to implement such an onerous > overweening system of control that you lose the benefits of the free > exchange of property/data (see: the North Korean economy, or the > rigidly-controlled Chinese internet). When mandatory seatbelt-wearing laws came out, not everybody obeyed them. But they had the positive effect of encouraging more seatbelt use and saved many lives. Laws and enforcement aren't perfect, but the system overall does work. The U.S. prospered BECAUSE of regulated trade laws (provided for in the original Constitution), not in spite of them. People had far higher confidence and consistency in what they were dealing with. ------------------------------ From: news01@jmatt.net Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: 21 Apr 2005 10:48:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I still suggest returning undelivered > email 'to the sender'. I used to agree with that. I thought it was irresponsible and inexcusable for any ISP to throw away mail without notifying (or getting previous approval from) either the recipient or the (alleged) sender. But, after considering the potential effect on an innocent party whose address gets forged on spam, I have reconsidered. I still hate it when I send mail that just silently disappears with no notification or explanation, but there are worse things that could happen. However, I think letting the sending server handle the notification alleviates this problem. > If some innocent person gets a jillion pieces of mail because > *someone else forged his email address* then maybe that person will > get angry enough to join the effort to try and clean up the net. I have already joined the effort to clean up the net. My website is helping Project Honeypot identify email-harvesting bots. ( http://www.projecthoneypot.org/ ) My SMTP server is using RBL to reject a LOT of incoming spam, so I don't have to whine about losing legitimate incoming email in a flood of spam. And it's up to the sending servers to decide whether or not to notify the sender. My guess is that legitimate servers will, and spambots won't. And if anybody either gets an erroneous notification about rejected spam that he didn't really send, or fails to get a notification when his legitimage message didn't reach me, that's the fault of the sending server, not mine. I'm doing what I can to clean up the net. I don't need a jillion pieces of mail to convince me cleaning up the net is a good thing. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But isn't also a good idea to auto-ack the alleged senders of the spam mail since if a person gets enough of those they may be moved to clean out the zombies in their own computer (if they have any, or if they don't) become angry enough to join in the fight in a big time way? That is why I am seriously thinking about changing my auto-ack to say 'thank you for writing me and if you didn't write to me then welcome to the club'. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #176 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Apr 21 18:45:24 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3LMjNI14659; Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:45:24 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:45:24 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504212245.j3LMjNI14659@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 V24 #177 TELECOM Digest Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:45:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 177 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Lisa Hancock) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 16:12:47 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam A message here from Robert Bonomi was, IMO, so full of controversy and error, I just felt I have to reply to it as a separate message. My replies are interspersed below his as it goes along. Periodically, his conversation with Lisa Hancock is included, and she responds on her own in the message following this one. Indents are Robert. 'Greater than' are usually Lisa Hancock. I am flush at the left margin as you read along. From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 10:15:10 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > Robert Bonomi wrote: >> Nope. it's because it is, quite simply, *NOT* ICANN's job to do so. I don't see why not. ICANN has taken almost total control of the registrars and the rules, i.e. ICANN can revoke your domain name anytime they want in a dispute over copyright/patent infringement. All the registrars have to do what ICANN wants. Yes, I would say ICANN is a good candidate for helping to in general 'clean up' and reform the net. >> Of the various organizations (ICANN, IAB, IETF, etc.) that >> are the 'authority' for specific functionalities of the >> greater Internet, _none_ of them have any authority with >> regard to the 'content' of packets. They do if the 'content of packets' involves child porn, or invades the copyright/patent authority of someone else. Why not when the 'content of the packets' includes spam, phish, scam or false IP addresses? > Well then, who IS responsible to do the job? If no such job > exists, why isn't one created? When you figure out what the Internet is, you'll understand the answer to that question. She knows, as I know and as you know the Internet _used to be an anarchy_, or 'informally governed' to put it, but that can no longer be the case. The Internet is a _voluntary_ co-operative effort of *private* network operators. *nobody* 'owns' it. *nobody* 'controls' it. Everybody makes _their_own_rules_ for *THEIR*OWN* network. Indeed, but just as Independence has its own laws and Chicago, Illinois has its own laws, and when you come here you obey our laws and if I should ever again choose to go to Chicago I would follow your laws, to get from Independence to Chicago we do not travel on a 'voluntary cooperative' of highways. Why are you confusing what someone does with their own property versus how they behave on common property? Unfortunately, "their" rules do not apply to someone who is _not_ on their network. When someone chooses to allow people "_not_ on their network" to access resources "on their network", they are 'extending trust' to those people to voluntarily obey their _unenforceable_ rules. The *only* 'enforcement' option available is to deny those 'scofflaws' access to the resources on their network. Again, you are getting confused between the private property of a network operator and the public property which belongs to all. If you "don't like" the way YOUR NETWORK OPERATOR is extending trust (or not revoking it) to those who abuse that trust, either (a) find a different network operator, (b) bitch at your existing operator to get them to change _their_ operation, or (c) disconnect yourself. And if I do not like the way Chicago, Illinois operates, the politics and the general decay I see everywhere west of Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive which the tour busses always overlook, I can move away which is what I did. But to get from Chicago to Independence, I had to travel on common property _and behave myself the entire trip_ by displaying my chauffer's license plate, asking him to stay within the speed limit, and not drive through other people's yards on the way. Yes, I suppose I could have gotten off the bus in St. Louis or somewhere since the chauffer refused to follow my instructions. >> And *nobody* on the 'net wants it any other way. (Well, >> except for folks like the government of mainland China, >> that is.) I said before, this is _pure propoganda_ no more, no less, which had its beginnings in the days when home computers and networks and such were something special. We _all_ wanted that freedom at one time, the freedom to do our own thing, but now that the Commons has turned into a barnyard with cows and pigs shitting everywhere; no longer any place we can go for respite, that simply is no longer true. You persist in telling that _bald face lie_ about what people on the 'net want and do not want as if _you_ were the expert on the subject. Lisa Hancock interjected: > I don't know about that. Neither do I Lisa. Like yourself, I am getting just damn sick and tired of having to step in shit everywhere I walk these days. Try to find anybody who wants restrictions on what _they_ can do/say/etc. On the Internet. Even among those who favor restrictions on what "other people" can do/say/etc. on the Internet. No one is suggesting restrictions on what you say and do on your own network. Again, a bald face lie! Only about what you and I and everyone can say or do on the public network we call the Internet, the collection of highways from Independence to Chicago. If 'officialdom' can proscribe sending one kind of message, they can proscribe sending _any_other_ kind of message. Not so! We prohibit 'them' from doing so; that's what constitutions and Bill of Rights are for. Lisa says:> I see the net as a great POTENTIAL tool, but one that is fraught > with risk and problems. Yeah. So? If you're not prepared to deal with the risks, "don't play in the street." applies. The street is not something to play in to start with, except you can play in the street in your town and I in mine. But Interstate 70 or US Highway 66 is not a place to play. It is a way to get from one point to another. If the benefits for you don't outweigh the risks then *UNPLUG*THE*COMPUTER*. Problem _solved_. What a brilliant deduction, Robert! Many people have done just that, or worse perhaps, they leave the computer 'idling in the driveway' where other passersby have ugly thoughts about it. Why should _we_ have to stay at home just so you can have your joyride, like a bat out of hell? Lisa comments more: > Between hackers, spammers, perverts, and thieves, I are extremely > hesitant to do much of anything on the Internet. The newspapers > have articles constantly about how people have been fleeced from > Internet troubles -- either stolen identity, "phishing sites", > or fraudulent sites. Don't count of the authorities to go > after anyone unless it's a very major deal. (Let me know > IF any of the principals in the Norvergence collapse are > called to task -- under oath -- to account in detail for that. > I am not holding my breath.) At present, there is no > deterrent. > I am savvy enough that I don't open email from any source > I don't know, and I never click on attachments. That has > protected me, but in doing so I have deleted many legitimate > emails that I merely didn't recognize. Many other users have > been badly burned -- whole companies shut down -- because of > malicious sabotage sent through email. > Are you telling me this is a good system -- where people have > to go sorts of trouble to protect themselves and delete > legitimate items? That's what he is claiming, Lisa. (Robert again) If you use "good quality" software, for reading mail -- as opposed to the cr*p that Microsoft as foisted off on the world, most of those "problems" simply disappear. That's right ... blame the mess on everyone except your good and precious netizen friends. And the 'good quality software' you espouse would cure nothing except that _you_ would not see the mess that others see. As for the 'getting fleeced' issue, there is *NOTHING*NEW* about that. "Ponzi schemes" have been around (by _that_ name) since the 1920s. The 'Spanish prisoner' con goes back even further. Yeah, you are right, they do go back that far. More within the range of my memory were the (written on paper, handled via the postal service) 'chain letters' people used to recieve and pass on. But, we could appeal to the postmaster to get those stopped, and often times did accomplish something. Lisa: > When Pat T. brought up these problems, I noticed that almost > all responses were for things _Pat_ should do. In other > words, he has to make considerable effort to protect himself > from malicious efforts from others. > Why isn't more being done to stop the malicious work at the > source? HOW? The -bad guy- *owns* the "source". He has -zero- interest in "stopping" his own activities. All he owns is his own network. You live in Chicago area, where there is zero interest in stopping the corruption and crime which make up a big part of daily life there. I presume you may possibly own some property there. All well and good. But if you decide to migrate here to a small town in Kansas as I chose to do, you _will_, by God, obey the rules when flying or bussing or driving to get here. I do not care how many scams and spams you want to pull off in your town. You won't be permitted to carry on that way when you get here, nor should you be allowed to carry on that way on the bus ride here. Shall we impose 'licensing' on every computer that gets connected to the internet? Including a requirement that the operating system and all applications be secure and un-exploitable? (Maybe that's not a bad idea -- it would get rid of *all* those d*mn virus-infected (and potentially infected) MS-Windows boxes. Ah, so now the anarchist, the dude who claims to speak for 'everyone on the net' agrees the idea of a license plate for your machine might not be a bad idea. But, how many readers of Telecom Digest or the newsgroup would be left _that_ was done? ) I don't know and do not care. It is so typical, so common in these discussions, to get _personal_ isn't it Robert? Why did you have to name c.d.t. as your choice? Did you presume that I, in my own sense of self-preservation would likely see and agree with your (let's face it) bald faced propoganda to self-preserve the internet in the way you want it to go? Hell, for all I know, the readership count might go up if _everyone_ behaved themselves on the public roads. I could run the newsgroup on robo-mod (without hoops to jump through to get posted) and have messages out almost immediatly on their being written. Lisa: > Why is it that most people just wring their hands and say > "nothing can be done". Because it is, quite simply, a _fact_. There will *always* be 'bad guys' out there. And, as long as they can control the 'sending' system, there is, bluntly, no way to force them to play by the rules. Want to require certain kinds of headers in e-mail? The bad guy sender can _forge_ those headers, just as easily as the good guy can put the right info in them. When _everybody_ is their own publisher/source ... More of the same bald faced lies and propoganda the 'old crowd' around here is so good at. The bad guys can do as they please, play in the streets, rip off other folks, produce and distribute pictures of naked little boys, etc. _As soon as they get on the highway (or non-highway as Paul Vader is bold to say) then they become the business of the rest of us. Lisa: > If we can put a man on the moon using 1950 based computer > technology, we can make the Internet safe. Bullshit. Sorry, but its a fact, nonetheless.. We can't even make the _streets_ safe, and we've been trying to do that for what, 80+ year. something like 50,000+ people/year are killed in auto accidents in the U.S. alone. Because there are always people who throw up objections everywhere. >> Not to mention that there is _nothing_ that ICANN can >> actually _do_ that would affect matters. They can't revoke >> the IP addresses MCI uses, those addresses were issued by >> ICANN to ARIN. Lisa: > So de-issue them. "So sorry. *You* have been kicked off the Internet. Your addresses are in an address-block assigned to ARIN that has been reclaimed by ICANN, because some other user in that block misbehaved." Why do I think that that concept is doomed to failure in the real world. It is doomed to fail because the technology of addresses in an 'address block' is obsolete. I told you here before about the instances of People's Gas in Chicago being forced to cut off a paying customer because they were served by branch line on the gas feed and gas company wanted to cut one non-payer and had to cut everyone else behind him. I told you about WUTCO having the same problems with deliquent customers of their clock service. One clock line into a twenty story building, the delinquent guy would not let them in to remove the instrument, they had to cut everyone with a 'load' on the line that stopped all the pendulums, then remove the load after everything was stopped and restart everyone else _except_ for the deadbeat. If an address block gets cut because of someone's misbehavior (or should I call it his liberal or non-understanding of malicious' behavior') then the supervisors (let's call then ICANN) apologizes to the good persons who got cut and works with that person's ISP to get their service restored _on a different address block_ ASAP. And let that be a lesson to the technical people: ASAP when it is technically possible, addresses resolved down the final couple of digits. Don't skip your lunch hour or your days off to work on it, but be mindful that as soon as possible everyone needs to have their own fully resolved address. Get rid of the 'branch lines'. In the good old days, it never occurred to gas company nor to WUTCO that some of their customers would not only be deadbeats but bull-headed ones at that; they thought *they* could skimp on plumbing pipes and such by doing stuff as 'branch lines'. Not so these days. Not to mention that, _by_charter_, ICANN and the RIRs, e.g. ARIN, are _voluntary-participation_ *technical* coordination agencies only. Nobody *has* to go to a RIR to get IP addresses. As long as 'whomever' you buy connectivity from will "route" packets to those addresses to you, it doesn't matter _what_ the RIRs, etc. say. The only "good news" is that the "rest of the internet' _does_, in general, limit how _they_ will route traffic to the address-spaces that ICANN and the RIRs _have_ "authorized". >> They can't revoke the domain-name(s) MCI uses, those names >> are part of properly-executed _contracts_ between MCI and >> the domain registry operator. > Why do the contracts allow malicious behavior? Why can't > these contracts explicitly prohibit -- with penalties -- malicious > behavior? Who writes these contracts? Robert, you like to talk out of both sides of your mouth at once. First you (and others of your ilk) are fond of telling us about this great anarchy and how _no one_ on the net wants it any different, and how we dasn't impose with rules and regulations on packets, etc. Then, although you acknowledge 'license plates' might not be a bad idea (mainly I think you said that in your never-ending quest to throw mud all over Microsoft), you now talk about contract law and how the contracts are written in stone, non-revokable, etc. Because, for starters, there is no 'universal agreement' on what constitutes "malicious behavior". Oh? What can't you or anyone understand about identity pilfering, spamming, virus writing, etc in the context of the internet? There are multiple layers of contracts involved. ICANN, or some other TLD "issuing authority", enters into contracts with "approved registrars". Those registrars, subsequently, enter into contracts with "registrants" of a domain name. Ah, so the old system of anarchy, which we all enjoyed at one time while we could afford that luxury is in fact starting to melt away. The 'issuer-registrar' contract specifies certain "minimum requirements" that the registrar-registrant contract must contain. The 'issuer' is *not* a party to the registrar-registrant contract, and, thus, _cannot_ act directly against the registrant -- they have 'licensed' the registrar to do certain things, and as a result of that licensing the 'issuer' *is* _legally_bound_ to certain performance, by the actions of the (licensed) registrar. _This_ is the point at which new contracts need to be written. And don't kid yourself on contracts being good forever and never changeable and all that bulljive. Judges have been known to void out one-sided contracts which were oppressive. Can you say 'Norvergence' and 'finance company'? All those fools who had Norvergence equipment and the bigger fools who insisted that by telling people to put a freeze on their accounts payable, "I [ptownson] was going to cause them to get sued." Nothing you can do but pay up and shut up, they claimed. And now you, Robert, insist there is nothing people can do for spam except buy newer and better spam appliances, and hope to God that as spam continues to increase computer CPU cycles will also grow in their ability to keep up with it. What absolute nonsense does the man speak! Registrars *are* free to impose 'more restrictive' terms than those 'minimum requirements' in *their* contract with the registrant. There _are_ at least two 'significant' registrars who *do* include terms in their registrar-registrant contract that forbids using the registered domain-name for certain kinds of "abusive" actions -- notably sending junk e-mail. *AND*, they actually enforce those added terms, although the quality of the enforcement is somewhat spotty at times. There's a "real world" difficulty with this, however. When there is "more than one" registrar (as _is_ the case, today) then anybody who _does_ write more restrictive terms into their contract is at a "competitive disadvantage" to those who have only the 'required minimums' in _their_ contract. No problem here -IF- new contracts are written which write in such little things as no malicious behavior using some commonly understood phrases as to what 'malicious' behavior is. Then the only people who would not be able to understand what was expected _when you entered upon the public way_ would be someone like yourself possibly and the other die-hard anarchists, who if they understood anything at all about anything would have realized long ago that a bunch of sheep, cows and horses left in the commons are soon going to eat all the grass and shit everywhere in its stead. If you're a "bad guy", _which_ kind of a registrar are you going to choose? New, properly written contracts would not give the "bad guys' much choice in where to go. You may choose the registrar who is the cheapest, gives the best service, etc. But no registrar, per their new contract with ICANN will be able to turn a blind eye to your 'malicious behavior'. AND, obviously, the "quality" of the totality is only as high as the standards of the _lowest_quality_ operator. As to "who writes these contracts?", well, the registrar-registrant contracts are written by the registrars. The 'issuing authority' generally provides a "sample" registrar-registrant contract -- one that satisfies the "minimum requirements' of the issuer-registrar contract. *MANY* registrars adopt that sample boilerplate *without* making any changes/additions. >> And the operator's contract (with ICANN, or the appropriate >> 'national' authorizing authority) requires _them_ (the registry >> operator) to publish *all* properly contracted domains. Oh, bore me to death, would you please? Judges cancel out unconscienable contracts all the time, again, see Norvergence as the best, most recent example. Lisa: > Again -- change the contracts! The word for that is "impossible". The existing contracts are *self-renewing* _at_the_same_terms_ (although in the case of one TLD, with an escalating fee schedule), as long as both parties fulfil their required acts. This is _expressly_ stated in the contracts. Changing such a contract requires either: a material breach of the *existing* contract by one party, allowing the other to exit it, *or* the _agreement_ of both parties to the changes. For someone who prides himself (actually deludes himself) on the 'anarchy of the net' you certainly seem to know a lot about contract law. Well, listen up: judges have been known to blow all those things out of the water when they review them and understand the context under which they were asked to get involved. Oh, but you may be right! ICANN (I am _not_ speaking generically in this case, but about the real organization) DOES-NOT-WANT to change the contracts so the small, individual webmasters, netters, etc have any chance for survival short of your system for survival. They (ICANN) like things the way they are: Their motto should be, "If they won't accept our propoganda about the operation of the net and just go away or otherwise behave themselves by our standards, then we will through neglect and omission drive them away."n Are you really so naive as to think that the bad guys *will* "agree" to a contract change -- which provides *no* benefit to _them_ -- and that would allow the opposite party to harm them (the bad guy) at will. No, I am not that naive, and I doubt Lisa Hancock is either. But I know one thing, which she may just be starting to learn: Just as ICANN could if it chose turn the screws on the bad guys, they are choosing not to do so, to use the bad guys as a tool on the rest of the net, to get us out of here, or in total submission. **ICANN likes things the way they are now**. After all, they are taking in money on all those licenses we had to sign to get to drive our machines on the public way; money they use (with additional help from MCI via Vint Cerf) to go on elegant vacation/convention trips three or four times per year to esoteric out of the way resorts. The Bad Guys never like it when police are called to their location to answer your last statement. I take that back, 'naive' is inappropriate here. "What color is the sky on _your_ planet?" is more accurate. No, what would be more appropriate would be for you to excuse yourself for a few minutes while you went privately to have a badly needed bowel movement. Try and get that stuff out of your system. >> Those are the *only* aspects of the Internet that fall >> under ICANN's 'area of responsibility'. Something's going wrong then with the way ICANN is set up, but they don't think so. I really would not expect much more of Esther Dyson, she is such a total goofus anyway. But Vint Cerf, that is the shocker. That's why many of us refer to him as a traitor. _He_ is an old line netter from the 1960's. He knows how things are here. I don't really expect a has-been real estate agent from San Francisco to know better, but Vint Cerf, I do. Lisa: > Sounds like there's a lot that could be done. If you ignore the realities of contract law, the difficulties of cross-border enforcement, and some other basic facts of life, and the fact that far too many old time netters like Robert are going to muddy the water and make things as difficult as they can. >> Because: (a) there is *NO*ONE* 'in authority'. The net runs by >> anarchy. Whoops, here we go again, which is it Robert, anarchy or a limited amount of contract law which you have insisted in your discussions of what the various involved parties can and cannot do ? You contradict yourself left and right in your presentation. Lisa: > Did it ever occur to anyone that this 'anarchy' is a very costly and > inefficient policy? How much does malicious efforts and protections > against that cost companies? How much traffic is flooding the > system, requiring increased servers and lines to accomodate > malicious traffic? Hell yes, it's occurred to people. _Life_ is dangerous. "Mortality rate: 100%" Nobody _requires_ you to use the Internet. Yeah, it'd be "nice" if the various defenses were not necessary. But, in the 'real world' they _are_. Just like locks on your doors. But when we lock our doors often enough and long enough then it sometimes occurs to us to get rid of the elements in the community which makes such extreme measures necessary, so we have prisons and hand out nine-year sentences. Using the Internet is a _voluntary_ thing, but you do have to "take it as it is". If it's "too much trouble", then the decision is simple -- *don't* use it. There _are_ people/businesses who have made that decision. I don't fly any longer for that reason. What _used to be_ fun to do has turned into a gigantic pain in my ass as they dump all my possessions out on the floor, make me walk barefoot through an ex-ray machine and in general treat me as an interuption to their fun rather than the reason they have a job at all; then get impatient with me on account of my partial paralysis as I struggle to pick up all my stuff dumped out everywhere and stuff it back in my suitcase. And that's supposed to be fun? Yeah, and so is the internet; just ask Robert. [Oh, and an aside: remember after 9-11 how they were saying private security firms were no good, and they wanted all government employees to do the 'screening'? Now the other day in the Monitor I read where they are saying private security firms do a better job than government employees. They can't make up their mind either, but I can tell you for sure they are going to keep on milking 9-11 for all the politics they can get out of it.] >> c) last I knew, MCI had something like a _40%_ share of >> he U.S. Internet market. It simply isn't practical for >> any 'significant' player to write off that big a chunk of >> the potential customer base. Lisa: > MCI, being part of a bankrupt empire (resulting from IIRC corrupt > accounting practices) has little sympathy from me. Perhaps it'd > better for everyone to dump MCI altogether. A fair number of those who can _afford_ to do so, *have* done so. For many, it is simply =not= a viable option. Like it or not, commercial business operations pay for most of the cost of of operating the Internet. A commercial business does not have the "luxury" of a blanket write-off of 40% of their potential customers. If they attempt it, they *will* lose that business to their competition who does not do it. Even if many of those customers are the electronic equivilent of deadbeats? A smart commercial business cuts off its cancerous spots before the cancer overtakes them completely. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now Lisa, do you understand > the politics of spam, and why it is such a problem? It > amazes me that this net could be (like at present) 85-90 > percent spam garbage, most of which comes via one source -- > MCI -- Better check your facts. Comparatively little spam actually _comes_from_ MCI address-space. MCI is actually fairly good about stomping actual spam origination. What they _are_ excoriated for -- and *DESERVEDLY*SO* -- is continuing to provide *other* services -- be it web-server, _incoming_ mail, etc. -- to parties which are well-known for spamming. It's "the abuse didn't come _through_ *our* network, so we don't care" mind-set. I have checked my facts! Spamhaus presents good facts. Maybe I should insert here their web site with a list of the top offenders. And if you want to play games by talking about spam originating in house versus spam throughput from elsewhere, be my guest. Why isn't MCI stomping on it all? Your attitude on this is amazing. For what it's worth: I just ran some statistics from my logs -- of the last 2137 unsuccessful delivery attempts, a whopping _41_ were from anywhere in MCI address-space. (BTW, more than 2/3 of look to be from "zombie" PCs; also more than half had forged AOL/YAHOO/HOTMAIL "from" addresses, making detection/rejection, 'trivial'). I get 80% of that number of messages from *ONE* ISP in Germany. I get almost 85% of that number of message that come directly from Nigeria. I get more messages than that from zombie PC's in Brazil. I get more messages than that from mainland china -- mostly in English, so I presume they're "U.S. based" spammers with off-shore servers. I get more than that number of messages from "above.net" address-space. I get nearly twice that number were from Verizon address-space. I get about twice that MCI number from 'LEVEL3" address-space. I get more than twice that many from Verio address-space I get more than five times that number were from AT&T address-space. I get more than _twelve_times_ that number were from a _single_ spammer getting connectivity from xo.com (He sends from his own server, always the the same machine, registered in his own name, so it 's *really* easy to block the "property.com" domain. One of these days, I am, however, going to file a lawsuit against him, for repeated attempted theft of services.) Oh, you are going to file a lawsuit against a man who is using his property to send messes over the non-highway to pester you, when you instead could improve your 'sophistication' (and I use that word very loosely) to built better defenses in your software instead, or as a last ditch effort you could take your own advice to Lisa and myself and others of us and just turn off your computer totally? My, aren't we consistent in our advice to the unwashed masses .... This isn't to say that blocking all of MCI is a bad idea if it fits your political agenda, just _don't_ expect it to make any significant near-term difference in the amount of spam in your inbox. Obviously _your political agenda_ does not allow for it, but then, a real man is always able to adjust a mail server to do his bidding, isn't he? And no, I do not delude myself into thinking that blocking MCI is going to matter one whit to them, and it will hurt me a little in the short run. But I am trying to set an example here, and I hope that others will follow my example. [[.. munch ..]] PAT replied to Lisa: > The contracts you suggest changing (I agree!) only got into > place as they are when netters rolled over when ICANN > demanded it. A tragic mistake is that no one seized root > long ago and forced the issue. Some people have tried such things. There have been attempts at setting up "alternative" root nameservers. with other (non-ICANN recognized) top-level domains. Of course, for anybody to be able to _reach_ one of those alternate domains, they have to use a nameserver "resolver" that kicks the query 'upstairs' to that 'alternative root' _instead_ of the standard one. This means that -- for the 'alternative domains' to be universally accessible, *everybody* has to reconfigure their nameserver away from the default configuration. For some strange reason, *every* such attempt over the last 10+ years has fizzled into oblivion. One could say that "the masses" _have_ made their wishes known on the subject. More than likely it means greed got in the way with some of the cooperating big players; it was nothing or little to do with the masses of netters speaking their mind. The masses don't really care _who_ resolves their request for service, just that it gets done. When I ask for a URL I don't ask "I wonder who is resolving me?", do you? In the event someone establishes an alternate root for people to use, there will be some confusion at first, but I would say if the new alternate root was unable to resolve something, then _it_, the alternate root, would go and ask the other traditional root if it had any idea what to do . If traditional root did not want to ask _our_ root for anything, then so be it; their loss, not ours. Short term confusion, yes, but malicious behavior on the net, even it not specifically encouraged by the 'other' guys we would not have. And do you recall discussions here recently about Internet2, which was a reaction by many in .edu to get some blessed peace and quiet after years of this abuse? Internet2 was designed for just that reason was it not? PAT ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: 21 Apr 2005 12:08:15 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Robert Bonomi wrote: > When you figure out what the Internet is, you'll understand the answer > to that question. > The Internet is a _voluntary_ co-operative effort of *private* network > operators. *nobody* 'owns' it. *nobody* 'controls' it. Everybody > makes _their_own_rules_ for *THEIR*OWN* network. Not true. There IS an 'owner' and there ARE people who 'control' it. The 'owner' assigns addresses and issues the communication rules. These rules that control how the networks interface with other -- how messages are addressed and delimited and so on. People don't simply shoot off a stream of bytes into the air -- those bytes must be formatted to a defined layout in order to get to their intended recipient. > If 'officialdom' can proscribe sending one kind of message, they can > proscribe sending _any_other_ kind of message. As mentioned in other posts, communication is ALREADY proscribed in various ways. > Yeah. So? If you're not prepared to deal with the risks, "don't play > in the street." applies. > If the benefits for you don't outweigh the risks then > *UNPLUG*THE*COMPUTER*. Problem _solved_. That's a condescending and inappropriate attitude. If someone is harassing me by telephone, your attitude is that I should disconnect my phone. However, public policy doesn't agree. Rather, they go after the offender. There are both laws and technology to protect the subscriber. The Internet is becomming a public utility and as such should include protections other public utilities have to protect end consumers. >> If we can put a man on the moon using 1950 based computer technology, >> we can make the Internet safe. > Bullshit. Sorry, but its a fact, nonetheless.. We can't even make the > _streets_ safe, and we've been trying to do that for what, 80+ year. > something like 50,000+ people/year are killed in auto accidents in the > U.S. alone. The reality is that while streets are not 100% safe, there are ongoing continuous improvements. Roads are much safer than years ago, and the RATE of fatalities continues to radically decline. As mentioned in other posts, the experience of business has resulted in various laws to regulate business activity so people have a high degree of confidence. But in contrast, it seems that nothing is being done to improve Internet integrity. The 'movers and shakers' seem as stubborn as the car-makers were to install safety devices. > Because, for starters, there is no 'universal agreement' on what > constitutes "malicious behavior". As others mentioned it's not that hard to come up with a consensus. Or the govt should do it, as it has for other venues. > There's a "real world" difficulty with this, however. When there is > "more than one" registrar (as _is_ the case, today) then anybody who > _does_ write more restrictive terms into their contract is at a > "competitive disadvantage" to those who have only the 'required > minimums' in _their_ contract. Then we need laws passed by the govt to mandate this; just as the govt mandates proper behavior in other forms of commerce and communication. All autos sold in the US must contain mandated safety and emission standards. >> Again -- change the contracts! > The word for that is "impossible". The existing contracts are > *self-renewing* _at_the_same_terms_ (although in the case of one TLD, > with an escalating fee schedule), as long as both parties fulfil their > required acts. This is _expressly_ stated in the contracts. Self-renewing contracts only renew automatically with the consent of both parties. Further, govt law may override or enhance contract provisions. (Contracts that call for racial discrimination, for example, are not enforceable and obviously renewable contracts need an exit clause.) >> Sounds like there's a lot that could be done. > If you ignore the realities of contract law, the difficulties of > cross-border enforcement, and some other basic facts of life, Seems to me the technocrats are ignoring the realities of how the rest of the business and social fabric of the country operates. (See the other post about Russia.) > _Life_ is dangerous. "Mortality rate: 100%" Strawman. Irrelevent. > Nobody _requires_ you to use the Internet. Nobody "requires" me to participate in a lot of things, like credit cards, a phone, a govt-issued ID card, having a driver's license and owning a registered car. However, not participating makes life awfully tough. Many businesses and govt agencies make it effectively difficult or impossible to do business with them except via the Internet. > Yeah, it'd be "nice" if the various defenses were not necessary. But, > in the 'real world' they _are_. Just like locks on your doors. Yes, we have locks on our doors. But we do not roll over and blandly accept the problems that make us put locks on our doors -- we fight back. Admittedly with various degrees of success and with controversy, but we do fight back. In NYC, nobody thought they could reduce crime and quality of life issues -- city life got really lousy in the 1970s -- but they managed to successfully fight back and improve things. You're simply shrugging your shoulders and saying "nothing can be done, so go lock your doors". Sorry, but that answer is not good enough. A lot of arrogant business people faced public scorn because of problems in their industries. They had a choice of cleaning it up themselves, or having the govt step in and clean it up for them. If Internet activists are worried about govt intervention (as responses here seem to indicate), they better clean up the problems on their own or it will be imposed upon them. > Using the Internet is a _voluntary_ thing ... No longer true, as many companies and govt agencies have made it the primary information and communication source, and made more traditional sources (ie telephone and walk-in) unavailable. > What they [MCI] _are_ excoriated for -- > and *DESERVEDLY*SO* -- is continuing to provide *other* services -- be > it web-server, _incoming_ mail, etc. -- to parties which are > well-known for spamming. It's "the abuse didn't come _through_ *our* > network, so we don't care" mind-set. So, what is being done about this? TELECOM Digest Editor noted: > ... and as though it is impossible for ICANN (which is > in fact the overall controller around here) to write new contracts > since Robert does not understand what the term 'malicious' means in > everyday language that everyone else with a lick of sense understands. > And he insists that it is impossible for ICANN to build into new > contracts such simple, humble concepts as 'no phishing, no spamming, > no falsification of network addresses' because the contracts out there > now are renewable in perpetuity, or until the savior comes again, > whichever happens first. Excellent points. > So Lisa Hancock, I guess Robert has really explained quite well where > we stand. Sadly, the responders here seem to demonstrate much techno-arrogance. This isn't anything new from the technocrats. I remember years ago how the systems programmers who had great power would demand things be done in a certain way only because they said so, not because the system itself mandated it. Application programmers could be the same way toward end-users. Remember the "do not fold/mutilate/spindle" backlash protests of the 1960s when people purposely did just that out of frustration with computers? > All I know is, I should receive hazardous duty pay for dealing with > all this shit day after day. PAT] Other moderators feel the same way. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #177 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Apr 22 01:29:44 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3M5ThD18102; Fri, 22 Apr 2005 01:29:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 01:29:44 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504220529.j3M5ThD18102@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 V24 #178 TELECOM Digest Fri, 22 Apr 2005 01:30:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 178 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson PSAPs and CNID Blocks, was: New Technology Poses 911 Peril (D. Burstein) SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal (Jack Decker) Re: New Spam Scam Exploits Pope's Death (Steve Sobol) Re: New Spam Scam Exploits Pope's Death (Paul Vader) Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency (Wesrock) Re: AOL to Block Identity Theft Sites (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: CNID Printouts on Cell Bills, was: SprintPCS Lousy Web (Steve Sobol) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Mark Crispin) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Fred Goldstein) Re: Nextel Contract Expiration, How to Determine? (John McHarry) Re: It Happened Again (John McHarry) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Danny Burstein Subject: PSAPs and CNID blocks, was: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 23:02:36 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC ( PSAP = Public Safety Answerin Position = the 911 center ) [ lots snipped ] In Justin Time writes: > to access their database, except that they don't want to be bothered. > The point is that CID can be blocked and is not guaranteed to be > delivered. The ANI information the 911 centers use is pretty much the > same data that feeds the telephone company billing system. That > information cannot be blocked or opted out of providing. Of course, > if you want the PSAP to use CID information to take emergency calls on > a non-emergency number and do the look-up from the CID it would be > permissible to have the PSAP lines configured for Anonymous Call > Rejection which would reject all calls that didn't have CID. That > would insure the PSAP had at least some information to work with. If you're a registered PSAP you can get the local telco to provide you with the Caller ID info, even if blocked. Keep in mind that the caller id number is passed all the way from your local central office to the destination CO. It's only at that last location, immediately preceeding the "final loop", that the number is replaced with a "not available" notation. So if you're approved, the final CO will, indeed, pass it along. Similarly, if you've got a facility that's considered, for want of a better term, "close enough", you can get the same exemption. For example, back in 2001 a group of universities and hospitals called "Insight 100" (since many of them used the Northern Telecom switch of the same name) requested this from the FCC so they could better assist callers to their emergency rooms. (FCC Docket 91-281, file # NSD-L-01-153) After the usual bit of paperwork delay (not too bad, considering), and a bunch of comments from the public (including me), the FCC granted them this waiver. Other groups that are covered would be (in many areas of the country) your local volunteer ambulance or fire company, many of which are reached through a direct-dial seven (ten) digit call. And yes, CNID is not as reliable as the more specific 911 database, but it's far better than nothing. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 21:17:25 -0400 Subject: SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=8259385 SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - SBC Communications Inc. is in talks to provide Internet telephone provider Vonage Holdings Corp. with enhanced 911 emergency services for its customers, after an initial fight between the two carriers. Initially SBC rejected a request from Vonage to lease access to the necessary equipment and databases, preferring to focus on an industrywide effort. Now the two sides are talking about a deal and going over technological requirements, according to a letter from SBC made available on Thursday. Privately held Vonage provides its service using high-speed Internet connections and does not have access to the traditional 911 system where a phone number and address pop up in emergency call centers. Instead, the company's 550,000 customers must activate a 911 service by registering an address which is used to send calls to lower-priority lines at call centers. That has drawn complaints that customers are unaware they must activate the service. "We have offered to negotiate commercial agreements ...," Christopher Rice, SBC executive vice president for network planning and engineering, said in an April 18 letter to Vonage Chief Executive Jeffrey Citron. Regardless, Rice told Vonage that the carrier would have to reach agreements with each public safety entity for delivery of 911 calls. Full story at: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=8259385 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: New Spam Scam Exploits Pope's Death Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 17:55:49 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com wrote: > A new spam campaign is exploiting people's interest in and grief over > the death of Pope John Paul II. This is not surprising. Spammers have tried to capitalize on 9/11, the Asian tsunami and other tragedies. No news here; move along, please. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, all these complainers should > read the advice given by our resident anti-spam expert, Robert Bonomi > who would tell them (1) any real man would know how to get his > computer to do his bidding if only they would get rid of the > Microsoft stuff on it and (2) if they really can't hack it, then > give up the computer and the net totally. Sounds like a good deal to > me. PAT] Part of the problem IS MicroSlop. They've finally learned, with Windows 2000/XP/2003, how to build an operating system that doesn't crash. They still have issues with building an operating system that can't easily be broken into. But in cases like this, I think the problem is more of a social problem than a technical problem. JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: New Spam Scam Exploits Pope's Death Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:46:14 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, all these complainers should > read the advice given by our resident anti-spam expert, Robert Bonomi > who would tell them (1) any real man would know how to get his > computer to do his bidding if only they would get rid of the Is there any way to plonk the moderator of a mailing list? Geez Patrick, take a pill and stop bringing up people's names like that, especially since they know more about the internet than you do. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sure there is a way to plonk the moder- ator of a mailing list. Just ask any real man how to adjust your computer to do what you want. I have an idea; put me on your Spam Assassin black list for starters. Wave bye bye to Pat! PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 19:10:24 EDT Subject: Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency In a message dated 21 Apr 2005 05:26:17 -0700, Justin Time writes: > Dave Garland wrote: > Of course. But is *sounds* like Vonage is in fact telling people. > There's no reason why the county 911 can't use CID on a non-911 line > to access their database, except that they don't want to be bothered. > The point is that CID can be blocked and is not guaranteed to be > delivered. The ANI information the 911 centers use is pretty much the > same data that feeds the telephone company billing system. That > information cannot be blocked or opted out of providing. SBC directories, including probably the one for Independence, Kansas, include a statement to this effect on the page with emergency numbers (mostly 911), and direct you to call the 7-digit number for the emergency agency if you want to block your identity and where you are calling from. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: AOL to Block Identity Theft Sites Date: 21 Apr 2005 23:24:00 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Ed Clarke wrote: > On 2005-04-20, mc wrote: >> In my opinion, all browsers should block or warn about references of the >> form: >> yyyyy >> where yyyyy is a URL that does not match xxxxx. >> Simple - why don't they do it? > Virtual hosts. I have half a dozen websites on a single IP; costs my > customers less for web hosting. The only time it makes a difference > is for vanity -- reverse host maps to forward host -- or for SSL. > He wasn't talking about matching IP addresses. He was talking about HTML link tags where the reference in the tag doesn't match the text associated with the tag. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: CNID Printouts on Cell Bills, was: SprintPCS Lousy Web Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 16:32:28 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Justin Time wrote: > Interesting point. But couldn't the cellular companies come back > stating they had delivered the CID when the phone rang? That you > didn't record the information isn't their concern. Sure, they COULD. I'd tell 'em they're full of crap, but they could. :) > But again, if you use the argument that your cell phone is like an 800 > number that is entitled to billing information, then the same argument > could be made for your POTS line as well. You are paying to receive > the service. You're almost right. But I don't get billed per-minute for incoming calls on POTS. My monthly bill does not increase each time I receive another call. It does on an 800 number, and it uses minutes on a cell phone, which costs me money if I go over my monthly allotment. JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 17:00:55 -0700 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On Thu, 21 Apr 2005, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > When the Internet was a private network serving an exclusive > community, few rules were needed. Actually, the Internet was under very strict regulation; all traffic had to "be, or be in support of, official US government business". That was stretched a lot; but it was sternly enforced when stretched too hard. When the (more or less benevolent) military dictatorship was overthrown, there was an attempt at establishing acceptable use policies (AUP). There was a huge hue and cry about how evil it was to have AUPs and how the network should be an anarchy. The anarchists won. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:36:16 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Pat, I hate to discourage you, but as somebody who has been on the Internet even longer than you (since the ARPAnet in 1978), and who has paid some attention to the legalities (since telecom regulation is much of my consulting practice), I have to say that Robert Bonomi is right and both you and Lisa are wrong. The Internet is anarchy. Still is. ICANN is a paper tiger. It got its authority from Bernie Ebbers, and held on by inertia. Really. The "Internet" is not a legal entity. There are multiple backbone networks. Each is a private entity that carries what it feels like, and charges what it can. "Peering" means that both sides agree that they value each other's connections, and thus don't charge each other. "Upstream" means that a provider sells service to a smaller one. It's a wonderful example of free-market economics. No regulator could have dreamed it up; no tariff could have described it. And it only works *because* there is no one ISP with enough market power to make the rules. Before 1992, there was NSFnet, with federal funding and an Acceptable Use Policy which kept it rather noncommercial. That was the main backbone. There were also lots of private IP networks, many not connected to each other or any backbone. They could still get "public" address space from Jon Postel, who controlled the addressing. There were some other inter-organizational IP networks. By then, TCP/IP had largely fulfilled the original OSI mission (open system interconnection) while completely bypassing the OSI standardization processes. It took a different route to ubiquity -- free code. Suffice to say that there was some effort made to derail a proposal that would have given ANS CO+RE (a joint venture of MCI, IBM and the University of Michigan's MERIT) a monopoly on commercialization. Once NSFnet was privatized and the AUP thus ended, multiple backbones popped up. The industry organized itself rather nicely between 1993 and 1995; the phrase "at Internet speed" was actually meaningful. But again, NOBODY was in charge. Jon handed out addresses, and DNS names went from being free to $100 to $70. Jon died suddenly, and Melvin Dummar found a will in his name, giving control of the name and address space to a Washington lawyer named Sims, who created ICANN out of whole cloth, appointing a board. At least that's as good an explanation as I can figure out for how ICANN came about. The US Government gave ICANN backing, but there was no real legal authority to it. Sometimes an assertion of authority is good enough. ICANN claimed to have authority over the name and number space. Addressing (numbering) hasn't been all that controversial -- there are regional registries that hand out IP blocks to ISPs. ICANN hasn't tried anything dramatic there. In the name area, ICANN managed the split between registrar (made competitive) and registry. They set rules that registrars have to follow to get certified, and name a single registry for each top level domain (TLD), like .net, .com. etc. They haven't, however, pushed hard against the country-code registrars that Jon had appointed. Mostly they've spent oodles of time and money creating TLDs like .aero and .museum that are rarely used. What can they do about spam? Frankly, nothing. They control TLDs. That gives them some leverage against the registries and registrars, who are supposed to follow some rules, but if a registrant pays his $8 or whatever and buys a domain from some registrar, then he can use it for spam until the registrar pulls it. Since registering is automated, there's no real threat against spammers. Even the address-space threat is not helpful; spammers are often able to find vacant number blocks and sneak them onto networks long enough to do their damage. And the bulk of spam nowadays is sent via hijacked home PCs running spambot malware, not spammer server farms the way Spamford used to do it. Indeed, the truth is that if the Internet community in general got mad enough at ICANN, it could bypass them. ICANN's power comes from its control over the DNS root servers. Big ISPs feed their DNS servers from the ICANN-blessed roots. But if the ISP decided to use an alternative root, or if an end user decided to use an alternative DNS service (and they do exist), then it would still work. However, there would be some risk of conflict, if two different root servers assigned the same name to different addresses. That's the "nuclear option", to use a currently-popular phrase. This didn't happen during ICANN's controversial birthing phase because they got Bernie on board, when his UUNET was the top ISP, its reputation was good, and Vint Cerf (the Chauncey Gardiner of the Internet, famous for being there) was his sexy spokesmodel. The other big ISPs fell in line too, with some grumbling. But there's no law binding anyone to use ICANN-blessed roots, just an understanding that it's better, for now, than letting names clash. And the harm from numbering clashes would be even worse, if that started to happen. But the answer would not be for some "authority" to clamp down, since there is none; it would be for ISPs to be selective about whose BGP route advertisements they accept. A technical solution, if unpleasant. So can anybody do anything about spam? Well, maybe, but pointing the finger at ICANN won't do any good. Spam exists, frankly, because at the time the core protocols of the Internet was invented, it was a private network, which you couldn't attach to without permission, and such misbehavior was not tolerated. The appropriate response is technological. Yes, laws help too; I have no problem with levying massive civil penalties, criminal fines, jail time, and perhaps lengthy visits to Guantanamo Bay on spammers and the people who hire them (follow the money!). But that is unlikely to do a lot of good alone. I suggest that we need to rethink email, especially the "free" aspect of it. I've had a proposal out there on my website for quite a while (http://www.ionary.com/ion-spam.html) . It requires emails to be either a) sent by someone you already know, for free (this would include mailing lists like the Digest), or b) accompanied by a "stampette", basically a one-time certificate, purchased from an issuer that the recipient recognizes as trustworthy. This puts a price in the fractional-penny range on "stranger emails", enough to discourage spam but not normal use. While John Levine hates it (and I respect his opinion), I still haven't seen any ideas I think are better. Others might come along though. This is all done at the mail-service-provider layer, either your ISP or on your own server. It doesn't involve the highway owner (backbone ISP) or the sign posting company (ICANN). Microsoft has even had useful contributions to the anti-spam dialog. We have to focus the attention on methods that can really work, not on scapegoats. Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In other words, John Postel gave away something he did not really own, and attorney Sims went along with the scam. I've heard about Sims and ICANN before; how he 'created' it as sort of a figment of his imagination and handed over the name and number space to them. I've also heard about Bernie Ebbers and his connection to ICANN. Yes, Lisa, that's the Bernie Ebbers of MCI infamy, the one who was recently convicted of accounting fraud and the fellow who will soon be in jail for 85 years, unless the judge chooses to show mercy to an old man. In the past, whenever ICANN needed money for one of their vacation/conventions somewhere, Vint Cerf would get the money for them out of MCI's largesse. Now days of course, netters help pay for those vacation/convention flings through the extortion ICANN uses on them through the registration 'fees'. Fred, you mention ICANN is essentially a 'paper tiger' with no real authority, but however they came to get their 'authority' from the United States Commerce Department, in any event they have it now, the 'authority', I mean. Do you agree with my assessment that ICANN is happy with the mess things are in now? They wouldn't want to change anything at all, would they? I mean, was the construction of the contracts now used totally an accident? I don't think it was. They could have said *something* about the ever present maliciousness and malfeasance if they had _really wanted to_, am I right? But they didn't want to, did they? Its better to get the small websites out of the way, wouldn't they agree with that? Is ICANN still getting their largesse out of MCI via Vint Cerf if you know? PAT] ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Nextel Contract Expiration, How to Determine? Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 01:37:51 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net On Thu, 21 Apr 2005 06:00:38 -0700, steve wrote: > Hi, > I am trying to determine what the expiration date on my Nextel > cellular contract is. I cannot find it on my bill, or logging on to > online account management. > I would like to determine this without calling Nextel if possible, as > I'm afraid they might pull some trick and extend it if I call. > Any suggestions as to where I can obtain this info? Dig out your original paperwork and look it up there. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: It Happened Again Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 01:55:10 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net On Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:26:51 -0400, TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > Again, today, Wednesday, late evening, spam rolled in so heavily here > at massis, about 6 or 8 messages got lost in the shuffle... Pat, you might want to try something like Spamassassin. It isn't perfect, but nothing is that doesn't find too many false positives. It has Baysian classifiers you might find useful (you can feed it gobs of spam and good mail, and it will do a good job of learning the differences), but I don't get enough spam through all the filters to have tried them. At least they should get rid of the Nigerian widows, unless they are also telecom freaks. There are other good tools as well, like Razor. Until you trust the tools, you can have them sort the flagged spam into a separate folder for manual examination. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: lcs.mit (which includes massis and others) has Spam Assassin installed; as a user I have an .rc file for local diddling as desired. I do get a separate folder full of spam daily, and I have the score level on Spam Assassin set quite low which no doubt catches much of the spam , but the 'regular' mail box (allegedly the non-spam stuff) is now also mostly spam to the extent of about 85 percent of it, two or three hundred items of mail in the regular box each day which I _must_ manually sort in order to keep the genuinely good stuff. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #178 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Apr 22 17:36:59 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3MLawg26101; Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:36:59 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:36:59 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504222136.j3MLawg26101@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 V24 #179 TELECOM Digest Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:35:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 179 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Widespread Internet Attack Cripples Computers with Spyware (Lisa Minter) Dead Marine's E-Mail Raises Legal Issues (Lisa Minter) Target, Yahoo in Online Picture Developing Pact (Lisa Minter) Vonage Solves Clearwire Blocking Problem; Asks Feds to Help (J. Decker) Basics of COT (Ignorance Is Bliss) Answer a Waiting call on Definity (srinidhi104@gmail.com) Re: New Spam Scam Exploits Pope's Death (Steve Sobol) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Steve Sobol) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (news01@jmatt.net) Re: AOL to Block Identity Theft Sites (David B. Horvath) Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency (Garland) Re: SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal (Tim@Backhome.org) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 22 Apr 2005 12:35:19 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Widespread Internet Attack Cripples Computers With Spyware WASHINGTON, D.C.-- An insidious new Internet attack that hijacks a victim's Internet connection and stealthily installs a barrage of adware and spyware is targeting businesses and organizations across the United States. The two-pronged attack, which has been ongoing since early March, has afflicted an estimated 20,000 computers, according to Ken Dunham, director of malicious code at IDefense, a Virginia-based Internet security company. It starts with an assault known as DNS poisoning: Domain name system servers, which guide Internet traffic, are fooled into directing anyone heading to any.com Web site -- for example, www.cnn.com or www.americanexpress.com -- to a malicious Web site that the attackers control. That Web site then surreptitiously installs a wide range of adware and spyware on the victim's computer. Companies suffer from the attack in a number of ways. First, the Internet connection for anyone using the poisoned DNS server -- often the entire company in the case of smaller businesses -- is completely disrupted. All Web traffic and e-mail trying to go to any.com site gets hijacked for as long as the DNS server remains compromised. "Even after the DNS server is fixed, the company has to clean the adware and spyware from any affected computers, an onerous task that can keep IT people like David Parsons, who supports about 7000 people in his help-desk job at a Boston hospital, extremely busy. Parsons says his hospital was "slammed for about two days straight" by the DNS poisoning attacks starting March 29. Physician and patient records were affected, as were 'more trivial' functions. Dunham conservatively estimates that 3000 DNS servers at a range of U.S. companies, including at least two with more than 8000 employees, were compromised over the past month. "It's a very sophisticated attack," Dunham says. His company sent out a high-level threat warning to its clients, which includes Fortune 500 companies and government organizations. Dunham notes that both DNS poisoning attacks and the types of spyware and adware involved have been around for some time. But, he says, "this [attack] certainly is unprecedented in terms of the methodology and the sheer scope of adware and spyware installed." However, Web surfers at home generally are not vulnerable to this type of attack. Most ISPs use a type of DNS server called BIND, which is not directly affected by attempts at DNS poisoning. But older BIND servers can contribute to the problem by passing the attack along to vulnerable Windows DNS servers. How It Works "It took us a little while to figure this one out," says Kyle Haugsness at the Internet Storm Center, who has been tracking the attacks since they first began and wrote a report about them for the ISC. Haugsness doesn't have a total count of the different organizations that have been compromised, but he says that about 500 organizations were hit within the first six days, including a few small not for profit sites. Every computer has to talk to a DNS server to know how to get anywhere on the Internet, and almost every company network has its own DNS server. When a server is poisoned, it's effectively tricked into sending someone who types in a.com URL to the attacker's Web site instead. That Web site checks to see if the victim is using Internet Explorer, and if so, it tries to install a huge amount of adware and spyware. Its attempts work if you haven't kept your copy of IE updated. Dunham says the software installed includes known Trojan horses like Krepper, and adware such as 180solutions and Coolwebsearch -- about 18MB of unwanted software in all. The apps can pop up advertisements on your system and change your IE settings. They can also send user information, such as keywords from searches, to the apps' designers. "All the installation is done silently, in the background, with no user interaction," says Dunham. Whether or not the malicious Web site succeeds in installing any spyware or adware, the victim ends up at two Web sites in separate windows that look like search engines and have a multitude of links to advertisers. Until the DNS server is fixed, any attempt to go to any.com Web site ends up right back at those two sites. According to Haugsness's report, the DNS cache poisoning affects some Windows NT 4 and DNS servers, and Symantec firewalls that use DNS. Both have released patches for the vulnerable products. What You Can Do The bad news is that there's not much you can do personally to guard your work computer from being affected by DNS poisoning. You have no good way to avoid using DNS or to protect yourself if your company's DNS servers have been hit. Your IT department must make sure your DNS servers are not vulnerable. But you can protect yourself against the malicious software installs by making sure your version of Internet Explorer is up-to-date with all current patches. Other browsers, such as Firefox are not vulnerable to such installs. If you've already been hit with spyware and adware by this attack or some other method, consult Steve Bass's helpful advice for cleaning your computer. What's Behind It Joe Stewart, a senior threat researcher at LURHQ, a South Carolina-based Internet security company that independently studied these attacks, the Web site redirection involved and the links in the two apparent Web search pages that resulted. Stewart found that clicking on one of the advertiser links in either of the sites sends information to Findwhat.com, an Internet marketing company that counts pay-per-click advertising as a big part of its business. The information sent includes one of two account numbers. That sent number notifies Findwhat to transfer payment to that particular account. So, according to Stewart, the attack is all about money. The adware and spyware generates revenue in much the same way as pay-per-click links do with a variety of different companies, he says. Once you click on an advertisement in a pop-up, someone else gets paid. According to Findwhat spokesperson Michelle Craft, her company started a comprehensive inquiry when it was notified about LURHQ's report. Findwhat discovered that those behind the DNS poisoning attacks were affiliates of two Findwhat account holders. "Both of the traffic sources mentioned in the LURHQ report were immediately terminated by the applicable [account holders] and are no longer able to access Findwhat.com's advertisers," Craft says. Advertisers who paid as a result of victims' clicks have gotten their money back, she adds. Craft declines to provide any further information on the Findwhat account holders, and says Findwhat doesn't have any more information on the attackers. The Global Internet But there may be other clues as to who's behind the attacks. The malicious spyware installs come from an Internet site whose name includes the word _vparivalka_. Important note: Do not try to point your browser to the 'vparivalka' site, as it may try to install a large amount of difficult-to-remove adware and spyware on your PC. It is recommended that _all users_ -- both big and small -- block out 'vparivalka' to prevent their computers from going to it. According to Irine Sakk, a native Russian speaker in Northwestern University's Department of Linguistics, _vparivalka_ is a Russian slang word with connotations of fraud and cheating. Depending on context, she says, it can mean giving someone something they didn't want, when they were expecting something else. The ISP responsible for the current IP address used by vparivalka.org is based in the Ukraine and does not list any contact information on its Web site, which says it is "under construction." Internet Pain Although LURHQ's Stewart has worked with FBI agents investigating other attacks in the past, he doesn't know of any investigations into these attacks, and doesn't expect to see one. "We have a hard enough time getting law enforcement to pay attention" to seriously destructive viruses, he says. But attacks like these are "really becoming more of a problem for the end user than, say, viruses or phishing or the other things getting the headlines," he says. By throwing up unwanted pop-ups, hijacking Web connections, and slowing computers to a crawl, they are "making the experience of using the Internet painful, and causing the Internet to be almost useless to a large number of users." Copyright 2005 by PC World Communications, Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. Discuss this article and the effects of malicious behavior and spamming on the net in our conference room 24/7 at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/chatpage.html *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, PC World Communications, Inc. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: 22 Apr 2005 12:37:42 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Dead Marine's E-Mail Raises Legal Issues By ADRIENNE SCHWISOW, Associated Press Writer Yahoo Inc. may have resolved its dispute with a family over accessing the e-mail account of a Marine killed in Iraq, but legal experts say the fight may continue for a long time. . John Ellsworth sought his son's e-mails after Lance Cpl. Justin Ellsworth was killed Nov. 13 while inspecting a bomb in Iraq. But the father didn't know his son's password, and Yahoo said it couldn't break its confidentiality agreement with the Marine. The family was granted access this week after an Oakland County probate judge ordered Yahoo to do so. Yahoo had said all along that it would comply with any such order. Henry H. Perritt Jr., a professor and expert in cyberlaw at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, said he knows of no other case where battles over a dead person's e-mail have gone to court, but he expects to see more, especially as long as our troops are getting killed almost daily in Iraq. "I think that as it is now, the service providers for the most part just hand it over when they've established death and that someone is the administrator of the estate," Perritt said Thursday. "But they are really just beginning to think about this." Other e-mail service providers, including America Online Inc., EarthLink Inc., and Microsoft Corp., which runs Hotmail, have provisions for transferring accounts upon proof of death and identity as next of kin. AOL says it gets dozens of such requests a day. Yahoo's policy, however, states that accounts terminate at death. Yahoo said it has complied with court orders in a handful of similar situations, but has not changed its policies on privacy. "We are pleased that the court has issued an order resolving this matter, satisfying Mr. Ellsworth's request as representative of his son's estate, and allowing Yahoo to continue to uphold our privacy commitment to our users," spokeswoman Mary Osako said. John Ellsworth had argued that his son would have wanted him to have the account. The Marine told his dad that kind e-mails kept him going, and his family wanted to make a scrapbook out of them. His father now is wading through tons of spam from mortgage companies and online dating services; porn and scams from people who single out our troops, taking advantage of their lonely situation. Here and there among the volumes of spam, scams and porn, he finds an encouraging letter from people his son didn't even know; people who write thoughtful, helpful letters to the troops to show them encouragement. "Those few decent letters are a great comfort," Ellsworth told Detroit radio station WJR. The Sunnydale, Calif., company's willingness to work with the family isn't surprising considering that many Internet service providers still are trying to figure out the best way to handle such situations, said Julie E. Cohen, a professor of cyberlaw and intellectual property at Georgetown University Law Center. Though e-mails are akin to medical and financial records that executors routinely access to administer the estates of the deceased, Cohen said, service providers may have been slower to catch up in realizing the importance of making e-mails available. Perritt agreed with the family's contention that accessing e-mail is similar to accessing a safe deposit box. "I don't see any reason why e-mail should be different from any other kind of property," he said. "But it's a new twist on an old issue, particularly with the huge number of troops being sent back home dead." Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. Chat about this report and other news with other readers in our conference area. http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/chatpage.html ------------------------------ Date: 22 Apr 2005 12:30:31 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Target, Yahoo in Online Picture Developing Pact Yahoo Inc. said on Thursday it has launched an online photo service with Target Corp. that this fall will enable consumers to order prints of their digital pictures for pick up at a Target store. The site, Target Yahoo Photos http://www.target.com/yahoophotos, extends Yahoo's existing online photo site. The new site gives consumers unlimited photo storage and tools for sharing pictures via e-mail and other means. Users will have the option of picking up their photos, printing them at home or having them delivered by mail. Some 1.3 billion pictures were transmitted, or "uploaded," to online photo sites from personal computers in 2004. Leading sites include Eastman Kodak's photo service, privately held Shutterfly, and Snapfish, which was recently bought by printer and computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co., Shutterfly, Snapfish and other online photo developing services mail photos to their customers. Research firm IDC predicts that the so-called Internet-to-retail market is going to double to about $1 billion in 2008.

In Internet-to-retail, users upload pictures to Web sites run by such companies as Wal-Mart or Ritz Cameras, which are both powered by Kodak rival Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. (4901.T). Elsewhere, Google Inc.'s Picasa photo site allows users to send or order prints from a variety of providers including Snapfish and Wal-Mart. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 14:25:34 -0400 Subject: Vonage Solves Clearwire Blocking Problem, Asks Feds For Help http://rcrnews.com/news.cms?newsId=22336 By Heather Forsgren Weaver WASHINGTON-Vonage Holding Co., the largest independent Voice over Internet Protocol provider, has solved the problem at least one customer was having when Clearwire Corp. blocked access to Vonage's VoIP service, said Jeffrey Citron, Vonage chief executive officer, on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Clearwire is a new wireless Internet service venture backed by cellular pioneer Craig McCaw. Citron said Vonage is still investigating what remedies it has against Clearwire because Clearwire is an information service. The debate about what constitutes an information service vs. what makes a telecom service has ramifications for everything with requirements about open access, universal service, enhanced 911 and law-enforcement surveillance. Full story at: http://rcrnews.com/news.cms?newsId=22336 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Ignorance Is Bliss Subject: Basics of COT Date: 22 Apr 2005 07:11:09 -0700 Hello, I am new to Telecom and trying get a very basic understanding of Signaling and etc. Could somebody please explain (or point to some URL/book/spec) me about COT test? Is there any good book that covers these basics? Thanks, Jay ------------------------------ From: srinidhi104@gmail.com Subject: Answer a Waiting call on Definity Date: 21 Apr 2005 22:56:46 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, My Definity has call waiting facility enabled. If I am on a call and If I have a call waiting for me, If I press Flash button (gives dialtone) and then #9, I get connected to the waiting call after putting the 1st call on hold.To return to the 1st call, I need to give the exact sequence again. However, If I just press the cradle, I directly get connected to the waiting call without the 1st call being put on hold. Can anyone help me out in figuring what Configurations need to be donein definity so that the FLASH button works exactly like the cradle i.e If I just press the Flash, I need to connect to the Next call as opposed to getting the dialtone. This would be helpful for one of my experiments. Thanks, Srinidhi ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: New Spam Scam Exploits Pope's Death Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 00:09:28 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Paul Vader wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, all these complainers should >> read the advice given by our resident anti-spam expert, Robert Bonomi >> who would tell them (1) any real man would know how to get his >> computer to do his bidding if only they would get rid of the > Is there any way to plonk the moderator of a mailing list? He doesn't morph; you can killfile him just like you can killfile anyone else. > Geez Patrick, take a pill and stop bringing up people's names like > that, especially since they know more about the internet than you > do. * > * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something > like corkscrews. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sure there is a way to plonk the moder- > ator of a mailing list. Just ask any real man how to adjust your > computer to do what you want. I have an idea; put me on your Spam > Assassin black list for starters. Wave bye bye to Pat! PAT] While I think Paul is overreacting, Pat, I think you are also overreacting. I know you've had issues with spam. I'm willing to help you with the spam problem if you're interested in getting help. Contact me off-group. Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 00:35:11 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Fred Goldstein wrote: > I hate to discourage you, but as somebody who has been on the Internet > even longer than you and me -- I've "only" been around since 1989 :) > Jon [Postel] died suddenly, and Melvin Dummar found a will in his > name, giving control of the name and address space to a Washington > lawyer named Sims, who created ICANN out of whole cloth, appointing > a board. This doesn't sound right. Didn't ICANN exist a few years before Postel's passing? > What can they do about spam? Frankly, nothing. They control TLDs. > That gives them some leverage against the registries and registrars, > who are supposed to follow some rules, but if a registrant pays his > $8 or whatever and buys a domain from some registrar, then he can > use it for spam until the registrar pulls it. Since registering is > automated, there's no real threat against spammers. ICANN could probably craft better rules and enforce them. (IMHO) > Even the address-space threat is not helpful; spammers are often > able to find vacant number blocks and sneak them onto networks long > enough to do their damage. Which is the fault of the ISPs > his UUNET was the top ISP, its reputation was good, and Vint Cerf (the > Chauncey Gardiner of the Internet, famous for being there) was his > sexy spokesmodel. Eeyew, you called Vint Cerf sexy. > such misbehavior was not tolerated. The appropriate response is > technological. Yes, laws help too; Again IMHO, the ultimate solution has to be a combination of legal, technical and social ... > price in the fractional-penny range on "stranger emails", enough to > discourage spam but not normal use. While John Levine hates it (and I > respect his opinion), I still haven't seen any ideas I think are > better. It won't work. JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: news01@jmatt.net Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Date: 22 Apr 2005 07:04:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But isn't also a good idea to auto-ack > the alleged senders of the spam mail since if a person gets enough > of those they may be moved to clean out the zombies in their own > computer (if they have any, or if they don't) become angry enough to > join in the fight in a big time way? That is why I am seriously > thinking about changing my auto-ack to say 'thank you for writing me > and if you didn't write to me then welcome to the club'. PAT] But, as Robert and I have pointed out, if the destination SMTP server flatly refuses the SMTP connection, then it's the job of the SENDING server, NOT the destination server, to decide what kind of message to return to the sender. If the sending server is a legitimate server, delivering legitimate mail, that somehow got itself onto a blacklist, then it will probably return a failure notice to the (alleged) sender. If the sending server is an open relay because the admin doesn't know any better, and it's relaying spam that came from somewhere else with forged return addresses, it will probably return a failure notice to the SMTP From address, which probably does not belong to the sender, but that's not my problem. If the sending server is a zombie on a hacked Windows box belonging to some clueless broadband customer whose machine is spewing spam without his knowledge (which is quite common), sending a jillion failure notices to the machine owner would be a good idea, because people who allow their machines to spew spam, even unintentionally, deserve the consequences. And notifying him that his machine needs cleaning up would be good for him and the rest of the world. But it's highly unlikely that the SMTP return address on those spam messages actually is the real address of the owner of that machine. Sending a jillion failure notices to some innocent uninvolved individual is not a good way to convince people that the net needs cleaning up. It would be like throwing a rock through your neighbor's window to convince him crime is a problem. OK .. maybe that's stretching the analogy, since the rock-throwing would be clearly illegal, and returning failure notices to someone who didn't really send spam is technically legal, if the spam had his return address on it. But since you know that it's highly probable that the return address belongs to someone whose address was stolen, through no fault of his own, flooding him with spam rejection notices just to say "See how bad spam is? You should do something about it" is really bordering on harrassment. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So what are you saying, that I should cease my auto-ack which is intended to serve legitimate users in order to avoid possibly getting sued for harrassment by someone who gets a million auto-acks from me that some third person caused to be generated? That's bull ... anyway, I am essentially judgment-proof unless you can find some way to attach my social security disability checks. I have no other money to speak of. I do not intend to let good, legitimate, often times new users just hang waiting. Anyway, I get auto acks here all the time also, from spammers who have signed me up for every mailing list known to mankind. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 09:52:49 -0400 Subject: Re: AOL to Block Identity Theft Sites From: David B. Horvath, CCP Reply-To: dhorvath@cobs.com On 21 Apr 2005 23:24:00 GMT, jmeissen@aracnet.com wrote: > In article , Ed Clarke > wrote: >> On 2005-04-20, mc wrote: >>> In my opinion, all browsers should block or warn about references >>> of the form: >>> yyyyy >>> where yyyyy is a URL that does not match xxxxx. >>> Simple - why don't they do it? >> Virtual hosts. I have half a dozen websites on a single IP; costs my >> customers less for web hosting. The only time it makes a difference >> is for vanity -- reverse host maps to forward host -- or for SSL. > > HTML link tags where the reference in the tag doesn't match the text > associated with the tag. > John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com I missed the original posting but most of the href's I've ever seen are on the original form where xxxxx does not match yyyyy. For instance: www,telecom-digest.org (that's www comma ...). - David ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 00:49:17 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when Justin Time wrote: > The point is that CID can be blocked and is not guaranteed to be > delivered. The ANI information the 911 centers use is pretty much the > same data that feeds the telephone company billing system. That > information cannot be blocked or opted out of providing. Of course, Sheesh. The point is to have the 911 center receive location info on a VOIP caller under *most* circumstances. If the caller wants to conceal their location (e.g. by blocking) they wouldn't be calling 911 for service to their location anyhow, would they? And the worst-case fallback is, to pre-911 days, when the caller has to tell them where they are calling from. The vast majority of callers, after all, DO know where they are. Of course it's not perfect. There will be people who fall between the cracks. Of course it can be defeated. I can think of a few ways to defeat or falsify ANI info too (and if you read this group regularly, you probably can also). I don't think the special case is particularly likely. But if you do, make the alternate 911 line an 800 number, which receives ANI. Easy, eh? There comes a point where the money spent covering any possible eventuality greatly exceeds the value. A friend of mine who works in public health bemoans the fact that the "war on terror" spends close to a billion dollars in anthrax-detection gear, to save an estimated 4 lives per year, when the same amount of money could save thousands, even tens of thousands, of lives if spent on less sexy health measures. This is like that. In real life, there's always a "close enough". ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 03:06:19 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications E-911 has one really invaluable feature known as called party trunk and line sezure. No matter how briefly you're off-hook, once you dial 911 you cannot release the connection. Only the call center can release the connection. I wonder if that is even technically possible via VoIP assuming unrestrained cooperation of the LEC that holds the marbles, so to speak? Jack Decker wrote: > http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=8259385 > SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal > WASHINGTON (Reuters) - SBC Communications Inc. is in talks to provide > Internet telephone provider Vonage Holdings Corp. with enhanced 911 > emergency services for its customers, after an initial fight between > the two carriers. > Initially SBC rejected a request from Vonage to lease access to the > necessary equipment and databases, preferring to focus on an > industrywide effort. Now the two sides are talking about a deal and > going over technological requirements, according to a letter from SBC > made available on Thursday. > Privately held Vonage provides its service using high-speed Internet > connections and does not have access to the traditional 911 system > where a phone number and address pop up in emergency call centers. > Instead, the company's 550,000 customers must activate a 911 service > by registering an address which is used to send calls to > lower-priority lines at call centers. That has drawn complaints that > customers are unaware they must activate the service. > "We have offered to negotiate commercial agreements ...," Christopher > Rice, SBC executive vice president for network planning and > engineering, said in an April 18 letter to Vonage Chief Executive > Jeffrey Citron. > Regardless, Rice told Vonage that the carrier would have to reach > agreements with each public safety entity for delivery of 911 calls. > Full story at: > http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=8259385 > How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: > http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html > If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #179 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Apr 23 17:06:56 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3NL6tv07148; Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:06:56 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:06:56 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504232106.j3NL6tv07148@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 V24 #180 TELECOM Digest Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:07:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 180 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #478, April 22, 2005 (John Riddell) Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story (Ed) For Sale: CATV Meters for Sale (WV Cable Guy) Brain Waves Used to Operate Computer (Lisa Minter) How We Made Our Own Carnivore (Lisa Minter) MARS Communications (zootwoman@gmail.com) Re: AOL to Block Identity Theft Sites (mc) Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Fred Goldstein) Re: Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight (Dave Close) Re: SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal (DevilsPGD) Last Laugh! One Way to Get 911's Attention! (Patrick Townson) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #478, April 22, 2005 Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:47:59 -0400 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 478: April 22, 2005 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/en/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** UTC CANADA: www.canada.utc.org/ ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Cellcos Promise Number Portability ** Telus Increases Pressure on Union ** CRTC RFP Seeks Deregulation Experts ** Committee Reviews Do-Not-Call Bill ** Unlimited Canada-U.S. Calling for $30 ** Xplore Announces Satellite Internet Pricing ** Telehop Offers Wholesale LD ** March Networks Hit by Patent Suit ** Dragonwave Boosts Wireless Ethernet Power ** Microsoft Supports Wireless Instant Messaging ** Most Intercity Fibre Still Unlit ** Hamilton to Test Wi-Fi Hydro Meters ** SaskTel Adopts New Messaging Architecture ** Qwest Raises Bid for MCI ** Look Revenue Declines ** Avaya Sales Up 21% CELLCOS PROMISE NUMBER PORTABILITY: Canada's major cellular companies have agreed to let customers keep their numbers when they switch from one wireless carrier to another or between landline and wireless carriers. The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association says it will contract with an independent consultant to develop a project plan by September 1. No target date for implementation was announced. ** The wireless carriers, which have long opposed number portability, appear to be bowing to the inevitable: both the CRTC and the federal government have announced plans to move on the issue this year. (See Telecom Update #436) TELUS INCREASES PRESSURE ON UNION: Saying it wants to "resolve the impasse" between it and the Telecommunications Workers Union, Telus this week increased the pressure on the union to settle their five-year-old contract negotiations. ** On Monday, the telco announced a plan to implement "lockout measures" including freezing scheduled wage increases and suspending joint committees and grievance procedures, beginning next week. The TWU is asking the Federal Court of Appeal for an injunction against the move. ** On Thursday, Telus bypassed the union bargaining committee by releasing details of its latest contract proposal directly to employees. The telco says the offer would make its employees "among the best paid telecommunications team in Canada." CRTC RFP SEEKS DEREGULATION EXPERTS: The CRTC has issued an RFP for a team or consortium to provide economic, legal/analytic, and support services to the Commission for an upcoming proceeding on deregulating local phone service. The Commission expects to pay between $500,000 and $1 million. The RFP is number CABB-5-0051 on the Merx public tenders website; bids are due May 25. www.merx.com COMMITTEE REVIEWS DO-NOT-CALL BILL: The House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Natural Resources, Science and Technology is holding hearings on Bill 37, "An Act to amend the Telecommunications Act," which would set the basis for a mandatory Do-Not-Call registry, allowing the CRTC to fine violators. (See Telecom Update #462) ** This week's witnesses included CRTC Telecom Vice-Chair Richard French, as well as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association. UNLIMITED CANADA-U.S. CALLING FOR $30: BabyTel, a Montreal- based provider of broadband IP-based phone service, has cut its price for unlimited calling in Canada and the U.S. for from $45 to $29.95 a month. The company also permits customers to have phones in multiple locations working on the same number for an extra $4.95 a month. XPLORE ANNOUNCES SATELLITE INTERNET PRICING: New Brunswick- based Barrett Xplore has announced pricing for the wireless broadband service it will begin offering across Canada in July, using Telesat's new Anik F2 satellite. Monthly rates range from $59.99 for 512 Kbps download and 128 Kbps upload to $199.99 a month for 2 Mbps download and 500 Kbps upload. TELEHOP OFFERS WHOLESALE LD: Telehop Communications now offers a Reseller Program that includes international calling, billing, and other services for long distance resellers. MARCH NETWORKS HIT BY PATENT SUIT: Vigilos Inc, a Seattle-based software maker, has sued March Networks for allegedly infringing on two patents for surveillance products. March Networks, whose chairman is Terry Matthews, is preparing an IPO that is expected to raise about $75 million. DRAGONWAVE BOOSTS WIRELESS ETHERNET POWER: Ottawa-based DragonWave Inc. has introduced a new wireless Gigabit Ethernet product that it says has 30% increased reach over the previous model. MICROSOFT SUPPORTS WIRELESS INSTANT MESSAGING: Microsoft says its Office Live Communications Server 2005 now supports Windows-based mobile devices, enabling Instant Messaging and presence-based applications for mobile workers. MOST INTERCITY FIBRE STILL UNLIT: A new report from TeleGeography says that despite huge traffic growth only 3% of the maximum possible intercity bandwidth in Europe and the U.S. has been lit. Despite that, carriers are running out of capacity on some routes, and face expensive upgrades. www.telegeography.com/products/ib/ HAMILTON TO TEST WI-FI HYDRO METERS: This year, Hamilton Utilities will test 100 "smart meters," which will automatically report customers' electricity usage via wireless LANs. SASKTEL ADOPTS NEW MESSAGING ARCHITECTURE: SaskTel is deploying a "next generation" platform developed by New Jersey-based uReach Technologies, as the basis for wireline and wireless voice mail, as well as for new IP-based messaging services. QWEST RAISES BID FOR MCI: Qwest Communications has increased its offer for MCI to $30 a share, 30% more than the rival offer from Verizon that has been approved by MCI's board. (See Telecom Update #476) LOOK REVENUE DECLINES: Look Communications had revenue of $9.7 million for the three months ended February 28, 15% less than for the corresponding quarter a year ago. Look's subscriber base decreased 5% from the previous quarter, reflecting mainly losses of dial-up customers. Net loss: $2.4 million. AVAYA SALES UP 21%: Avaya reports revenue of US$1.22 billion for the three months ended March 31, a 21% increase over a year ago. Sales declined 9% in the U.S. and increased 6% elsewhere in the Americas. IP product sales rose 30%. Net income: $36 million. HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2005 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ From: Ed Subject: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story Date: 22 Apr 2005 14:34:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Here's my VOIP phone story: I signed up for Lingo on August 13, 2004. They've never sent me equipment and they've never let me quit. Here's what has happened. I've kept very careful records. No equipment had been received by September 9, 2004. So I called to cancel. I was put on hold by the "cancellation team." Called numerous times to get through to the cancellation team. Finally got through to someone named Michelle after days and days of calling. This was on September 17. She put me on three way hold to see if she as an employee could get through to the cancellation team. She was not able to do so. Michelle put a note in her file saying I had been trying to cancel for weeks after she personally tried to get through to the cancellation team 3 times. By the time I spoke with Michelle, I had spoken to 7 different people all with one objective in mind, to cancel. Keep in mind that I never received equipment so I could not possibly make VOIP phone calls. On September 24, 2004, an employee called John tried to get me through to the cancellation team. He failed. I finally got a phone call from the cancellation team on September 28, 2004. Presumably this employee successfully cancelled me but this is when the horror really started. In early September, I wrote to my credit card company, MBNA, and disputed the charge on my card. The charge was 39.90 from August 14 and MBNA reversed it since I had never received equipment, had since canceled, and could not possibly make phone calls. In total, Primus Telecommunications has charged my card a total of 4 times successfully. In addition, it has made other unsuccessful attempts as well. Each time the charge on my card has been reversed by MBNA. So far, Primus Telecommunications has received zero dollars from me and has in turn given me zero telephone service. Today, I received a letter saying I've got 10 days to pay Primus Telecommunications 61.99 or they turn me over to a collection agency. Here's an excerpt from the letter: ********** Start of Excerpt ********** Our records indicate that some of your invoices with our company have still not been paid. We want to give you a final opportunity to pay your outstanding bills before we forward them to a collection agency. If we do not hear from you in 10 business days, we will have no alternative but to send your account to a collection service, which may influence your credit rating or result in legal action. ************** End of Excerpt *********** Any suggestions? Do I call a lawyer or the local television station to be interviewed? What would you do if you were in my situation? Ed [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is just my opinion, but I would say don't worry about the collection agency unless you feel like giving them a hard time as well. Remember, an agressive debtor is the best kind of debtor, and you are the 'debtor' in this situation. They (collection agency) are hoping to make at least _some profit_ from this account which was placed with them by the VOIP company. Let them see how unrealistic that idea is. Yeah, I would say call an attorney -- but don't file suit; let Lingo file the suit, which is doubtful, then you _counter sue_ which is always better. That action alone will blow them out of the water, if they are typical of most collection agencies, which frankly expect their bluster alone will convince you to cooperate. And if Lingo induced you to provide them with a credit card number but then had no intention of supplying you with an adapter, which it sounds like to me, that amounts to fraud. Do you have any tracking numbers from the shipment Lingo was supposed to send you? Insist that Lingo prove someone signed for the adapter, and how many times did you say they have attempted to charge your account? Three or four times? That's how many instances of attempted fraud they have committed if they cannot ever prove where they sent you the adapter. PAT] ------------------------------ From: WV Cable Guy Subject: For Sale: CATV Meters for Sale Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 16:57:10 -0400 For sale: 1x Sadelco MiniMax 800 forward path meter, excellent condition. $600 negotiable including domestic shipping. 1x Trilithic RSVP2 reverse path meter, also in excellent shape. $300 negotiable including domestic shipping. Contact Eric at eric@eccd.net . No phone calls please. This ad will not be monitored, so please do not reply to it. Thank you. ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Using Brain Waves to Operate Computer Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 13:06:14 -0500 By Matthew Nagel, BBC Health Republished from BBC Health A paralysed man in the US has become the first person to benefit from a brain chip that reads his mind. Matthew Nagle, 25, was left paralyzed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair after a knife attack in 2001. The pioneering surgery at New England Sinai Hospital, Massachusetts, last summer means he can now control everyday objects by thought alone. The brain chip reads his mind and sends the thoughts to a computer to decipher. Mind over matter He can think his TV on and off, change channels and alter the volume thanks to the technology and software linked to devices in his home. Scientists have been working for some time to devise a way to enable paralysed people to control devices with the brain. Studies have shown that monkeys can control a computer with electrodes implanted into their monkey brains. Mr. Nagle's device, called BrainGate, consists of nearly 100 hair-thin electrodes implanted a millimetre deep into part of the motor cortex of his brain that controls movement. Wires feed the information from the electrodes into a computer which analyses the brain signals. The signals are interpreted and translated into cursor movements, offering the user an alternative way to control devices such as a computer with thought. Motor control Professor John Donoghue, an expert on neuroscience at Brown University, Rhode Island, is the scientist behind the device produced by Cyberkinetics. He said: "The computer screen is basically a TV remote control panel, and in order to indicate a selection he merely has to pass the cursor over an icon, and that's equivalent to a click when he goes over that icon." Mr. Nagle has also been able to use thought to move a prosthetic hand and robotic arm to grab sweets from one person's hand and place them into another. Professor Donoghue hopes that ultimately implants such as this will allow people with paralysis to regain the use of their limbs. The long term aim is to design a package the size of a mobile phone that will run on batteries, and to electrically stimulate the patient's own muscles. This will be difficult. The simple movements we took for granted involved complex electrical signals which would be hard to replicate, Dr. Richard Apps, a neurophysiologist from Bristol University, UK, told BBC News. He said there were millions of neurones in the brain involved with movement. The brain chip taps into only a very small number of these. But he said the work was extremely exciting. "It's quite remarkable. They have taken research to the next stage to have a clear benefit for a patient that otherwise would not be able to move. "It seems that they have cracked the crucial step and arguably the most challenging step to get hand movements. "Just to be able to grasp an object is a major step forward." He said it might be possible to hone this further to achieve finer movements of the hand. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, BBC News. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: How We Made Our Own Carnivore Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 13:21:18 -0500 I assume you all know about the FBI and their 'Carnivore' program which spies on people by sniffing their computer packets and uses this ill-gotten information to get guys in trouble. Some fellows in New York City developed their own Carnivore thing based on information taken from FBI files. Don't ask me how they got into the FBI files. http://rhizome.org/carnivore/How_We_Made_Our_Own_Carnivore.txt If you like what they have to say, then you can build your own sniffer with this program. Just download the version which goes with your operating system: http://www.rhizome.org/carnivore/ We tried it here on Patrick's computer network and it is sitting here right now sniffing at his weather station stuff and some email on another computer. Of course, I presume you could also use this Carnivore to spy on people and their credit card numbers or things like that on the net, but why would you want to do something wrong like steal credit card numbers and passwords? If you administer a computer network at your school or company, I don't see any reason why you couldn't use this in the routine course of your duties at work, etc. Just use this tool in an ethical and honest way, as all guys do when they use their computers; the way the government does its business. Patrick said it should make a good worthwhile project for readers this weekend. Lisa M. ------------------------------ From: zootwoman@gmail.com Subject: MARS Communications Date: 23 Apr 2005 13:21:36 -0700 Has anyone does business with this Canadian company and were they happy with them? Did your AirWave phones work as you expected? ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: AOL to Block Identity Theft Sites Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 22:26:37 -0400 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) What I meant was block. yyyyy WHERE BOTH xxxxx AND yyyyy ARE URLs but do not (even approximately) match. That is block HTML tags that tell you they are going to take you to one address and actually take you to another, e.g.: www.bankofamerica.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I suspect you could you Carnivore sniffers, like the one Lisa talked about in the other message in this issue to catch people when they are phishing like this. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 23:40:25 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam Pat replied to me, > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In other words, John Postel gave away > something he did not really own, and attorney Sims went along with > the scam. No, Jon Postel really did run the Internet, on federal contract. When he was alive, it (naming and numbering) was his baby (via USC ISI, his employer), and AFAIK nobody had a problem with him. He was a government-funded academic, a holdover from the good old pre-commercial days when the net was run by network engineers rather than financial engineers, and he had no personal pecuniary interests. He just took pride in a job well done. So nobody talked about a succession plan. Had he lived to a planned retirement, something could have been planned. But he died suddenly. The "alleged" scam began with Joe Sims, who quickly came out of the woodwork with ICANN, which nobody had heard of when Jon was alive. Sims, per some reports, claimed to be following Jon's will. It seemed like a pretty obvious bluff, but since all that matters is whose root servers the big ISPs point at, Joe managed to get critical mass behind himself. This was during the boom, when money flowed freely, and Joe got a lot of high-rate billable hours for his law firm out of the deal. That was probably what he was after! (You can get rich off of a non-profit organization.) > Fred, you mention ICANN is essentially a 'paper tiger' with no real > authority, but however they came to get their 'authority' from the > United States Commerce Department, in any event they have it now, > the 'authority', I mean. Well, no -- the Commerce Department can't order ISPs to point their root servers at ICANN's roots. That's voluntary. Commerce can thrown money at them though, so they can find ever-more-exotic locations for old-fashioned big meetings. Heaven forbid they try to conduct more business across that unreliable, newfangled Internet thingie! > Do you agree with my assessment that ICANN > is happy with the mess things are in now? They wouldn't want to > change anything at all, would they? I mean, was the construction of > the contracts now used totally an accident? I don't think it was. I suspect they're quite happy. > They could have said *something* about the ever present maliciousness > and malfeasance if they had _really wanted to_, am I right? If you mean spam and phishing, no. That's simply not part of their claimed area of authority, which is names (DNS) and numbers (mostly IP addresses). They don't deal directly with most ISPs, just with registrars and registries. They've tried to impose some "intellectual property" rules onto the national registrars (the two-letter ISO country-code TLDs) but that has met with limited success -- they haven't (that I know of) had a real big stare-down over a major country domain's ownership. A few spats with tinhorn governments, perhaps, but they've exercised some restraint. I think I've also answered Steve Sobol's questions at least indirectly. Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ ------------------------------ From: dave@compata.com (Dave Close) Subject: Re: Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight Date: 22 Apr 2005 22:58:58 -0700 Organization: Compata, Costa Mesa, California Marcus Didius Falco quotes http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.asp?layout=3Ddocument&doc_id=3D1340004344 > Study: Consumers Oppose Cell Phones in Flight Banning cell phones will not stop telephone conversations in flight, at least so long as high-speed Internet access is available. Connexion by Boeing has already reported many customers using Skype to make phone calls via their laptop computers. There have also been a few reports of customers using the same connection to participate in a video conference. Indeed, when Internet access is sold at a flat rate for an entire flight, why would anyone pay a roaming charge to use a cell phone? It would be roaming, you know, as the aircraft microcell is not owned by a carrier, but operates as an agent for them. -- Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA "Greed is to the moralists of the dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 left what sex is to the moralists dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu of the right." - Cathy Young Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA "Politics is the business of getting dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 power and privilege without dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu possessing merit." - P. J. O'Rourke ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 05:06:39 -0600 Organization: Disorganized In message Tim@Backhome.org wrote: > E-911 has one really invaluable feature known as called party trunk > and line sezure. No matter how briefly you're off-hook, once you dial > 911 you cannot release the connection. Only the call center can > release the connection. > I wonder if that is even technically possible via VoIP assuming > unrestrained cooperation of the LEC that holds the marbles, so to > speak? Sure it's possible if you implement the feature into the hardware and software. As it is, it's likely fully not possible, although a combination of rerouting all outbound calls to the E-911 operator and immediately redialing the number (and letting it ring indefinitely, without going to voicemail) would do the trick. ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: Last Laugh! One Way to Get 911's Attention Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:13:59 -0500 The Correct Way To Call The Police George Phillips of New York City was going up to bed when his wife told him that he'd left the light on in the garden shed which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things. He phoned the police, who asked "Is someone in your house?" and he said no. The dispatcher then switched him into a recorded message saying that that all patrol officers were busy, and that he should simply leave a message for them, then lock his door and an officer would be along to take a report when available. George said, "Okay," hung up, counted to 30, and phoned the police again. "Hello I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people in my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now cause I've just shot them all dead". Then he muttered "that will teach them to come on my property ... " as he hung up the telephone. Within five minutes five police cars, an Armed Response unit, a SWAT team and two ambulances showed up at the Phillips residence. Of course, the police caught the burglars red handed. One of the Policemen said to George: "I thought you said that you'd shot them!" George said, "I thought your recorded message said there was nobody available to help me right now!" ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #180 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Apr 24 19:17:34 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3ONHYa18938; Sun, 24 Apr 2005 19:17:34 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 19:17:34 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504242317.j3ONHYa18938@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 V24 #181 TELECOM Digest Sun, 24 Apr 2005 19:17:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 181 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Peer-To-Peer Users Share More Than Stolen Songs (Lisa Minter) CMU Says Hacker Broke Into Computers (Monty Solomon) Law May Help Freeze ID Theft/2003 Law Gives Californians Help (Solomon) Politics in Telecom (sidd@situ.com) Verizon/MCI (Steven Lichter) Re: How We Made Our Own Carnivore (John McHarry) Re: How We Made Our Own Carnivore (Dean) Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story (R. T. Wurth) Re: It Happened Again (Walter Dnes) Re: Last Laugh! One Way to Get 911's Attention (Tony P.) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 24 Apr 2005 14:13:41 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Peer-To-Peer Users Share More Than Stolen Songs By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - College kids looking for free music may have popularized Internet file-trading software, but the technology is now used by everyone from penny-pinching phone callers to polar explorers. Even the recording industry is changing its tune as labels that for years have waged a legal war against "peer-to-peer" companies are now allowing authorized technology. "I never thought you'd hear this from me, but the record industry has, mostly, been fairly cooperative," said Wayne Rosso, who is launching an authorized service called Mashboxx http://www.mashboxx.com while the US Supreme Court considers the entertainment industry's copyright suit against Grokster, his old peer-to-peer company. Peer-to-peer, or P2P, software allows users to connect directly to each others' computers, bypassing the powerful servers that underpin much of the Internet. Web pages, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and other material usually stored on servers can thus be made public directly from a user's hard drive. That makes online communication much simpler, said Steve Crocker, who helped develop an early version of the Internet as a graduate student in the 1960s. "When you think about the amount of hardware and bandwidth and storage that we all have available on the most common of machines and then you think about how hard it is to actually work together, there's a huge disparity," said Crocker, whose Shinkuro software http://www.shinkuro.com allows people in different locations to work on the same document. Encrypted communication keeps snoops and hackers at bay. High-school teachers in Washington have turned to Shinkuro to develop lesson plans, and researchers on a polar icebreaker have used it to send back photos of unusual ice formations, Crocker said. Two online standards-setting bodies, the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, have developed agendas and other material with Shinkuro, he said. Skype Technologies' peer-to-peer Internet phone service ( http://www.skype.com ) allows users anywhere in the globe to talk to one another for free. A service called "Freenet Web" ( http://freenet.sourceforge.net ) helps people communicate in countries like China, where online content is rigorously censored. Users donate portions of their hard drive to host Web pages and other files, and the software keeps their identities private. PLAYING BALL On March 29, the same day the U.S. Supreme Court heard the recording industry's case against Grokster, Rosso sat in a nearby hotel room searching the Internet for free music. Scouring several P2P networks at once, he quickly found and downloaded a copy of the Beatles' "Drive My Car." But the version that came out of his laptop's tiny speakers included a voice-over urging him to buy an authorized copy. One click and 99 cents later, a voiceover-free version of the song filled the room. Rosso's Mashboxx software is one of several P2P platforms that actually promise to pay record labels when their songs are copied. Mashboxx relies on a technology called Snocap ( http://www.snocap.com ) that can identify songs by their digital "fingerprints" and allow copyright owners to control them as they wish. A record label could decide to make a low-fidelity version of the song available for free, for instance, or let the song play three times before requiring a payment. A test version of Mashboxx should be out by May, Rosso said. Another industry-authorized P2P platform called Peer Impact, currently in an invitation-only test mode, adds an extra incentive: Users get credit toward more music purchases when others copy their songs. That approach has been used for a year now by a company called Weed ( http://www.weedshare.com ), whose format has proven popular with independent artists. Users don't need special software to download Weed songs. A band can sell its Weed-encoded songs through its own Web site, but it also makes money when fans copy songs from one another. "It's completely decentralized," Weed President John Beezer said. "We want people who are interested to find music quickly." Beezer said Weed has been most successful so far with cult artists like Sananda Maitreya ( http://www.sanandapromotion.com ), formerly known as Terence Trent D'Arby. Agreements with major labels are in the works, Beezer said. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily, and discuss these items 24/7 in our conference room area http://telecom-digest.org/chatpage.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 01:09:26 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: CMU Says Hacker Broke Into Computers More than 5,000 alerted to possible identity thefts By Bill Schackner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette A hacker who tapped into business school computers at Carnegie Mellon University may have compromised sensitive personal data belonging to 5,000 to 6,000 graduate students, staff, alumni and others, officials said yesterday. The breach confirmed by officials in the Tepper School of Business is the latest in a recent string of campus computer break-ins nationally and the second since early March affecting Tepper. There is no evidence that any data, including Social Security and credit card numbers, have been misused, officials said. But they have begun sending e-mails and letters alerting those affected. They include graduate students and graduate degree alumni from 1997 to 2004, master's of business administration applicants from September 2002 through May 2004, doctoral applicants from 2003 to this year, and participants in a conference that was being arranged by the school's staff. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05111/491836.stm ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 12:18:11 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Law May Help Freeze ID Theft / 2003 Law Helps Californians Law May Help Freeze ID Theft A 2003 statute allows Californians to block access to their credit reports. Few knew about it until the ChoicePoint scandal. By David Colker and Rong-Gong Lin II Times Staff Writers California residents have the ultimate weapon against identity theft -- but few know it. That may be changing, however, as a rash of security breaches putting personal information at risk has heightened public concern about privacy. The weapon is a little-known California law -- the only one of its kind in effect -- allowing residents to freeze access to their credit reports. Such a step effectively prevents identity thieves from opening unauthorized credit accounts in the names of their victims. Inquiries about the law, which took effect in 2003, have risen dramatically in the last few months, state officials said. And it has generated attention across the country as well: This year, 22 states considered legislation that allows consumers to freeze their credit reports. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-credit23apr23,0,6012053.story ------------------------------ Subject: Politics in Telecom From: sidd@situ.com Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 20:48:42 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1053595,00.html Any Kerry Supporters On The Line? The Bush Administration Punishes Some Democrat Backers By VIVECA NOVAK AND JOHN DICKERSON excerpts: The Inter-American Telecommunication Commission meets three times a year in various cities across the Americas to discuss such dry but important issues as telecommunications standards and spectrum regulations. snip-- At least four of the two dozen or so U.S. delegates selected for the meeting, sources tell TIME, have been bumped by the White House because they supported John Kerry's 2004 campaign. snip-- Only after the start of Bush's second term did a political litmus test emerge, industry sources say. The White House admits as much: "We wanted people who would represent the Administration positively, and -- call us nutty -- it seemed like those who wanted to kick this Administration out of town last November would have some difficulty doing that," says White House spokesman Trent Duffy. Those barred from the trip include employees of Qualcomm and Nokia, two of the largest telecom firms operating in the U.S., as well as Ibiquity, a digital-radio-technology company in Columbia, Md. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, politics is what did me in a few years ago, as many of you may recall. The Digest was getting, albiet a very small, allowance monthly from International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, CH. That is, until I started objecting to the way that ICANN, Vint Cerf and MCI were administering the 'new internet' (the post 1994 reforms than ICANN instituted.) Bingo, ITU cut me off with no further adieu. Of course we did not have (either) Bush in those days, we had Clinton and Gore (the man who 'invented' -- or was it 'discovered' -- the internet) but still, one does not speak against ICANN and the powers that be unless you are independently wealthy or otherwise live happily on gruel and peanut butter. You'll be sorry if you do (speak out) as many can tell you. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Subject: Verizon/MCI Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 21:11:10 GMT Anyone think Verizon will give up now? I sure hope so. My stock has been in the dumps since GTE merged with Hell Atlantic. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: How We Made Our Own Carnivore Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 23:36:37 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 13:21:18 -0500, Lisa Minter wrote: > If you like what they have to say, then you can build your own > sniffer with this program. Just download the version which goes > with your operating system: > http://www.rhizome.org/carnivore/ > We tried it here on Patrick's computer network and it is sitting here > right now sniffing at his weather station stuff and some email on > another computer. It is fine to run a sniffer on your own lan, but larger systems, like university lans, usually consider a promiscuous ethernet port, which is key to sniffing, as network abuse. You are likely to get kicked off, or worse. For diagnostic sniffing, using Linux, I am partial to Ethereal, which is mostly a graphic front end to tcpdump. It can be set to trace specific protocols, which gives it very similar capabilities, although not as user friendly. ------------------------------ From: Dean Subject: Re: How We Made Our Own Carnivore Date: 23 Apr 2005 17:06:58 -0700 But Lisa, isn't this rather irresponsible? I mean how can you be sure this software is only sniffing your own machines (perfectly alright I guess) and not spying on you (i.e. sending info about you on to whomever) or spamming other netusers? I assume you don't know the people behind this software. Don't you think it's better to avoid installing "mystery" software on any machine, particularly one connected to the Internet? Dean Lisa Minter wrote: > I assume you all know about the FBI and their 'Carnivore' program > which spies on people by sniffing their computer packets and uses > this ill-gotten information to get guys in trouble. Some fellows in > New York City developed their own Carnivore thing based on information > taken from FBI files. Don't ask me how they got into the FBI files. > http://rhizome.org/carnivore/How_We_Made_Our_Own_Carnivore.txt > If you like what they have to say, then you can build your own > sniffer with this program. Just download the version which goes > with your operating system: > http://www.rhizome.org/carnivore/ > We tried it here on Patrick's computer network and it is sitting here > right now sniffing at his weather station stuff and some email on > another computer. Of course, I presume you could also use this > Carnivore to spy on people and their credit card numbers or things > like that on the net, but why would you want to do something wrong > like steal credit card numbers and passwords? > If you administer a computer network at your school or company, I > don't see any reason why you couldn't use this in the routine course > of your duties at work, etc. Just use this tool in an ethical and > honest way, as all guys do when they use their computers; the way the > government does its business. Patrick said it should make a good > worthwhile project for readers this weekend. > Lisa M. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The people at the Radical Software Group and rzihome.org can be trusted not to load unwanted junk on one's computer, and things you might happen to see on other computers come to you in 'read only' mode. That is, nothing which passes through the ether that you happen to view can 'jump out' and attach itself to you. So they are reasonably safe to deal with. Lisa did warn us against abusing credit card numbers and passwords which happen to pass through the ether, and the law provides serious penalties against making personal gain of ill-gotten knowledge which does not belong to us, just like on ham radio when you are tuning the dial and overhear a conversation not intended for yourself. You cannot do it! If you have any questions about what is, and is not honest on the internet these days, see our illustrated manual, Honesty and the Internet at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/honesty.html and anyway, a _real_man_ always knows how to adjust his computer to avoid stepping in a pile of dung as he makes his way though the barnyard which used to be the commons traveling down the non-highway. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story From: R. T. Wurth Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 22:51:10 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet [posted and mailed] Ed wrote in news:telecom24.180.2@telecom-digest.org: > Here's my VOIP phone story: > I signed up for Lingo on August 13, 2004. They've never sent me > equipment and they've never let me quit. [... details snipped. ] > In total, Primus Telecommunications has charged my card a total of 4 > times successfully. In addition, it has made other unsuccessful > attempts as well. > Each time the charge on my card has been reversed by MBNA. So far, > Primus Telecommunications has received zero dollars from me and has in > turn given me zero telephone service. > Today, I received a letter saying I've got 10 days to pay Primus > Telecommunications 61.99 or they turn me over to a collection agency. [...] > What would you do if you were in my situation? > Ed Know your rights with respect to collection agencies. Just say "No," and they have to leave you alone. See the Fair Collection Practices Act summary at the US Gov't's Consumer Info Center: Rich Wurth / rwurth@att.net / Rumson, NJ USA ------------------------------ From: News Subsystem Subject: Re: It Happened Again Reply-To: see_my_sig_at_bottom_of_message@waltdnes.org Date: 24 Apr 2005 22:39:00 GMT TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: >> You might want to think about investing in a good anti-spam appliance. >> Of course for that to be feasible, you must host your own email (run >> your own mail server) which I am not sure you do. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Alas, I do not. The mail server is > purely part of the MIT system, besides which, I am not sure I am > smart enough to run a mail server. PAT] There are a couple of services which allow you to administer your SMTP-stage filters, without having to administer the MTA. It's not for everybody. - you're basically using a separate ISP for inbound email, so you'll have to pay for it. For someone with your level of incoming traffic, that might be a lot. - you do have to take responsibility for your own filtering decisions and blocking choices. It does help to understand CIDRs, whois, and DNSbls, etc. My provider has a "user-friendly menu", but to get the maximum benefit it helps to dive into the config file with vim - you'll probably have to ssh to the provider. - you either need to use your provider's email account, or else arrange to have them accept email for your domain, and also you have to point your MX at their MTA (once they've agreed to accept email for your domain) - and fer-cryin-out-loud, turn off any secondary MX records. The spammers will pound on them. Years ago, I was gung-ho on procmail. Spam evolved, and email went from almost 100% sendmail to a gazillion different MTAs, with their own weird header conventions, which made things rather difficult for my procmail filter. My procmail filter's false-positive rate went up, as did its false-negative rate. I got an account at a provider as described above, and my incoming spam rate (the part that got through) went way down. Out of 780 blocked delivery attempts last month, the biggest catches were ... Badly forged HELO = 119 No hostname = 377 Dynamic IP by rDNS regex = 143 Country by rDNS = 58 Walter Dnes; my email address is *ALMOST* like wzaltdnes@waltdnes.org Delete the "z" to get my real address. If that gets blocked, follow the instructions at the end of the 550 message. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Last Laugh! One Way to Get 911's Attention Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 23:12:59 -0400 In article , ptownson@cableone.net says: > The Correct Way To Call The Police > George Phillips of New York City was going up to bed when his wife > told him that he'd left the light on in the garden shed which she > could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go > turn off the light but saw that there were people in the shed stealing > things. > He phoned the police, who asked "Is someone in your house?" and he > said no. The dispatcher then switched him into a recorded message > saying that that all patrol officers were busy, and that he should > simply leave a message for them, then lock his door and an officer > would be along to take a report when available. > George said, "Okay," hung up, counted to 30, and phoned the police > again. > "Hello I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people > in my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now cause I've > just shot them all dead". Then he muttered "that will teach them to > come on my property ... " as he hung up the telephone. > Within five minutes five police cars, an Armed Response unit, a SWAT > team and two ambulances showed up at the Phillips residence. Of > course, the police caught the burglars red handed. > One of the Policemen said to George: "I thought you said that you'd > shot them!" > George said, "I thought your recorded message said there was nobody > available to help me right now!" Brilliant. Every 911 call should be treated the same way. And to think, our current police chief here in Providence is formerly of the NYPD. Lovely. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And to think _our_ police chief here in Independence grew up in the house directly across the street from me where his parents lived for fifty years until his father died the same year as mine (1991) and his mother was enrolled in the old people's home (last year) where my mother is, after his mother suffered a stroke and a broken hip.) Lee has been chief for a dozen years and was a city employee for twenty years before that. He has the house up for sale now, but earlier today I saw him out in the back yard mowing the grass like he does most Sundays in the spring/summer. I think this has been a busy weekend for the officers: overheard on the scanner radio yesterday afternoon, the dispatcher sent officers to Garden Walk Apartments on North 10th Street, our public assistance housing project. Later one of the officers was heard saying on the radio, "second time I have been there today. I told 'him' if I have to come back any more, someone is going to get locked up." Their problems, it seems, at the 'projects' always involve Demon Rum and/or Crystal Meth, or both. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #181 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Apr 25 18:26:34 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j3PMQXS00804; Mon, 25 Apr 2005 18:26:34 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 18:26:34 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200504252226.j3PMQXS00804@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 V24 #182 TELECOM Digest Mon, 25 Apr 2005 18:26:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 182 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Surveillance Tape Finds Murderer (Lisa Hancock) Happy Homecoming For Space Station Crew (Lisa Minter) Mobile Equipment SIM Toolkit Question (hotpepper@gmail.com) MCI Accepts Qwest's New Offer; Verizon May Raise Bid (Telecom dailyLead) Can You Hook Home Alarm System With Vonage Service? (lothario4real) New Pope Has Email Address (Lisa Minter) Re: Verizon/MCI (John P. Dearing) Re: Verizon/MCI (LB@notmine.com) Re: Verizon/MCI (Tony P.) Re: SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal (zcarenow@yahoo.com) Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story (Danny Burstein) Re: Law May Help Freeze ID Theft/2003 Law Helps Californians (T Horsley) Re: Last Laugh! One Way to Get 911's Attention (Mark Atwood) Re: Last Laugh! One Way to Get 911's Attention (Tony P.) Re: Politics in Telecom (Lisa Hancock) Re: New Spam Scam Exploits Pope's Death (Paul Vader) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Surveillance Tape Finds Murderer Date: 25 Apr 2005 12:21:17 -0700 This newsgroup often discusses privacy issues and technology. On Easter this year a retired man was murdered after he opened the front door of his home. He was a very well liked man and no one could understand why anyone would kill him like that. There were no suspects. The video security system of a convenience store captured a picture of a man who stopped by earlier asking directions to the victim's house. The picture was investigated and eventually it turned out the man was a once co-worker of the victim. Upon further investigation (and a two hour standoff), the man was arrested. He had a gun with bullets that matched those used on the victim. The DA said that without the picture the crime wouldn't have been solved. So, in this case, the video surveillance solved a crime. See: http://www.kyw1060.com/news_story_detail.cfm?newsitemid=45628 ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Happy Homecoming For Space Station Crew Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 14:55:37 -0500 Three astronauts -- an American, a Russian and an Italian -- are all smiles after their safe return from the international space station aboard a Russian capsule. http://g.msn.com/0MNBUS00/2?http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7621918&&CM=EmailThis&CE=1 ------------------------------ From: hotpepper@gmail.com Subject: Mobile Equipment SIM Toolkit Question Date: 25 Apr 2005 06:30:59 -0700 Hi there everybody, I want to add some functionalities to a mobile device with SIM Toolkit, but I didn't know much about SIM Toolkit, and couldn't find some good refrences on the Net, I want to know is there anybody who have some experiences in that field? Thank you in advance. Davar ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 13:29:33 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: MCI Accepts Qwest's Raised Offer; Verizon May Raise Bid Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 25, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21077&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * MCI accepts Qwest's raised offer; Verizon may raise bid BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Report: Motorola mulls Siemens investment * RIM's success has spawned new challenges * Virgin hires Merrill, Credit Suisse for wireless IPO * Time Warner plans to upgrade Adelphia assets * SBC reports earnings USTA SPOTLIGHT * USTA Webinar: USAC High Cost Beneficiary Audit Process-Tomorrow, 1:00 ET EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Fujitsu unveils WiMAX chip * Competition for digital living room heats up * Sports fans turn to highlight Web sites * Mobile phones just another ad channel in Asia REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Proposed municipal cell phone tax in Oregon sparks lobbying campaign Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21077&l=2017006 Legal and Privacy information at http://www.dailylead.com/about/privacy_legal.jsp SmartBrief, Inc. 1100 H ST NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20005 ------------------------------ From: lothario4real@yahoo.com Subject: Can You Hook Home Alarm System With Vonage Service? Date: 24 Apr 2005 17:30:20 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Is it possible to hook up my Vonage to the home alarm system service (Brinks Security)? Or do I still need to get an analog phone line from Southwestern Bell? Thanks. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It _should_ be possible, but bear in mind one thing burglars sometimes do is cut the electrical wire to your house; that would as a result cut off your computer's electrical supply, and kill your Vonage phone. Some alarm companies also have a method of dealing not only with a call _into_ them, but also a way of telling when their device has been _disconnected_ from the phone line. I am not sure how well that would work when using Vonage, so you might want to have the Brinks representative there to look at it also. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Pope Gets an Email Account From: Lisa Minter Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 13:37:34 -0400 Pope Benedict 16 now has email, if you look at the Vatican web site. Clicking on the proper place brings up your email to write him. Neither the Pope nor Vatican officials have yet commented on the amount of spam, but I am sure its rolling in heavily. Maybe the Pope will have need of Viagra pills or Ciallis, or the services of the penis enlargement company, or possibly the Nigerian people will want to make note of his email address. You can read about his new email account at http://www.religionnewsblog.com/11034 . ------------------------------ From: John P. Dearing Subject: Re: Verizon/MCI Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 03:14:26 GMT Steven Lichter wrote: > Anyone think Verizon will give up now? Hard to say. It seems that Ivan *really* wants this one. > I sure hope so. My stock has been in the dumps since GTE merged with > Hell Atlantic. The Bell Atlantic/Nynex merger (painful as it was) actually made sense and was the right thing to do. Kudos to Ray Smith (former Chairman & CEO) for having the vision to see the need and "make it so". The Bell Atlantic/GTE merger is a whole 'nuther kettle of fish. Ivan wanted to "one up" Ray. It certainly was a bigger merger but as a esult of the *HUGE* "negative dowry" (over $50 Billion) that GTE brought to the altar, the combined company went from one of the best debt to equity ratios to one of the worst. At the time of the merger the dot com boom hadn't gone bust yet and the cash flow was probably assumed to be strong enough to cover the debt service. Boom economy goes bust and the cash flow dries up but the debt, which up to this point was the 800lb gorilla in the room but was a *manageable* 800lb gorilla, well the debt becomes an albatross and starts sinking the ship. Very stringent cost containment ensues and the debt starts getting paid down. To their credit, *A LOT* has been paid down. But the stock price is still lagging. As an employee, I still have worthless stock options issued to me as part of the last contract negotiations. The MCI deal does make some sense. Regardless of my employment status, I believe that MCI will be better off long term by going with Verizon. Qwest just doesn't have the wherewithall to keep the combined operation moving forward as a going concern. John P. Dearing A+, Network+, Server+ To reply: Just drop "YOURPANTS" in my address! 8-) ------------------------------ From: LB@notmine.com Subject: Re: Verizon/MCI Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 08:09:02 -0400 Organization: Optimum Online Steven Lichter wrote: > Anyone think Verizon will give up now? > I sure hope so. My stock has been in the dumps since GTE merged with > Hell Atlantic. No. LB [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And according to news reports today at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news Verizon is working now on a new bid. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Verizon/MCI Organization: ATCC Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 18:09:06 -0400 In article , shlichter@sbcglobal.net says: > Anyone think Verizon will give up now? > I sure hope so. My stock has been in the dumps since GTE > merged with Hell Atlantic. I strongly suspect that Verizon is just trying to elevate the price past that which Qwest can reasonably be expected to be able to pay. In other words, once the bankruptcy happens to Qwest it would be childs play for Verizon to roll in and suck all of it up. ------------------------------ From: zcarenow@yahoo.com Subject: Re: SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal Date: 24 Apr 2005 17:42:22 -0700 All I know is that I got an email from Vonage telling me to activate the 911 by logging into their website and start the activation under the "Features" section of site. I assume that now I just need to diall 911 and it should work. Jack Decker wrote: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=8259385 > SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal > WASHINGTON (Reuters) - SBC Communications Inc. is in talks to provide > Internet telephone provider Vonage Holdings Corp. with enhanced 911 > emergency services for its customers, after an initial fight between > the two carriers. > Initially SBC rejected a request from Vonage to lease access to the > necessary equipment and databases, preferring to focus on an > industrywide effort. Now the two sides are talking about a deal and > going over technological requirements, according to a letter from SBC > made available on Thursday. > Privately held Vonage provides its service using high-speed Internet > connections and does not have access to the traditional 911 system > where a phone number and address pop up in emergency call centers. > Instead, the company's 550,000 customers must activate a 911 service > by registering an address which is used to send calls to > lower-priority lines at call centers. That has drawn complaints that > customers are unaware they must activate the service. > "We have offered to negotiate commercial agreements ...," Christopher > Rice, SBC executive vice president for network planning and > engineering, said in an April 18 letter to Vonage Chief Executive > Jeffrey Citron. > Regardless, Rice told Vonage that the carrier would have to reach > agreements with each public safety entity for delivery of 911 calls. > Full story at: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=8259385 > How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: > http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html > If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I _strongly recommend_ you wait until you get email back from them saying it is installed in your case. They usually send email to you confirming it; in some cases the municipality will also advise you. (At least in my town they did.) PAT] ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 01:12:22 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC [ tale of repeated improper billing to credit card edited ] >> Today, I received a letter saying I've got 10 days to pay Primus >> Telecommunications 61.99 or they turn me over to a collection agency. >> What would you do if you were in my situation? As I'm fond of repeating ... Run, do not walk, to your typewriter and send a letter to your state attorney general and cc the public service commission. And for good measure add in the FCC and FTC. The people sending you the bills are treading across (and in my opinion are way past) the fraud line. There are broadly speaking three possibilities once your letters get there. Choice "b" seems to be the most common: a) you'll get completely ignored; b) they'll take your note and forward it over with a cover letter to the various people. That will usually get the attention of someone or another who can fix things for you. and c) just maybe, after they get umptity identical complaints, they'll start actually hitting these businesses and the people running them with civil and even criminal actions. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Law May Help Freeze ID Theft / 2003 Law Helps Californians From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 01:42:09 GMT > The weapon is a little-known California law -- the only one of its > kind in effect -- allowing residents to freeze access to their credit > reports. Such a step effectively prevents identity thieves from > opening unauthorized credit accounts in the names of their victims. So, just out of curiosity, how does a consumer properly identify himself to request one of these freezes? (or, probably more interesting, an unfreeze :-). How long will it be before we see malicious "denial of credit" attacks? (At least there isn't a lot of profit to be made from denying credit, so instead of organized crime, we'll only get mindless vandalism, messy divorces, and political tricks on your opponents as sources for these attacks). >>==>> The *Best* political site >>==+ email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics <<==+ ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Last Laugh! One Way to Get 911's Attention From: Mark Atwood Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 04:21:18 GMT Patrick Townson writes: > The Correct Way To Call The Police > George Phillips of New York City was going up to bed when his wife > told him that he'd left the light on in the garden shed which she .... Debunked by Snopes. http://www.snopes.com/crime/safety/response.htm Mark Atwood | When you do things right, people won't be sure mark@atwood.name | you've done anything at all. http://mark.atwood.name/ http://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Snopes says the incident did not occur, and they may be correct. Snopes also claims in that same article that police should be allowed to prioritize their work as they see best, and that may be correct also. However ... when calling police, people should _never_ be told to leave a recorded message and 'we will get back to you ASAP.' That does absolutely nothing to restore or maintain a citizen's confidence in the police who are supposed to serve him. Citizens are told to only use 911 in a dire emergency, at least that is how I was taught. You are to use 911 only if _immediate_police_ intervention_is needed_this_very_instant. You want to report a stolen car or a burgarized house? Fine ... but those things are _not_ strictly speaking 'emergencies'. They are events that took place at some time in the past. But many times police wish to have everything go through 911 -- emergency or not -- to keep their paperwork in order. Some police departments absolutely refuse to speak directly to citizens until the call has first gone through 911. As a result, sometimes 911 is horribly congested, leading to situations as described in the urban legend account. If 911 is used, the dispatchers should assume an emergency exists and deal with the call like one. They should _never_ tell the caller to 'leave a message and someone will get back to you'. At the same time, if a citizen is courteous enough to call the 7-D for police, police should be courteous enough to deal with him that way also. Police sometimes seem to want to have things both ways: use 911 so we can have some control over the origin of the call, etc, *and* use it for emergencies as well; _we_ will tell you what we can or will do about it'. If police have staffing problems sometimes as a result of this 'call 911 for everything' attitude, that's their problem to deal with. And of course now they want to handle all city government through 311 as well. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Last Laugh! One Way to Get 911's Attention Organization: ATCC Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 18:07:23 -0400 In article , kd1s@nospamplease.cox.reallynospam.net says: > In article , ptownson@cableone.net > says: >> The Correct Way To Call The Police >> George Phillips of New York City was going up to bed when his wife >> told him that he'd left the light on in the garden shed which she >> could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go >> turn off the light but saw that there were people in the shed stealing >> things. >> He phoned the police, who asked "Is someone in your house?" and he >> said no. The dispatcher then switched him into a recorded message >> saying that that all patrol officers were busy, and that he should >> simply leave a message for them, then lock his door and an officer >> would be along to take a report when available. >> George said, "Okay," hung up, counted to 30, and phoned the police >> again. >> "Hello I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people >> in my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now cause I've >> just shot them all dead". Then he muttered "that will teach them to >> come on my property ... " as he hung up the telephone. >> Within five minutes five police cars, an Armed Response unit, a SWAT >> team and two ambulances showed up at the Phillips residence. Of >> course, the police caught the burglars red handed. >> One of the Policemen said to George: "I thought you said that you'd >> shot them!" >> George said, "I thought your recorded message said there was nobody >> available to help me right now!" > Brilliant. Every 911 call should be treated the same way. > And to think, our current police chief here in Providence is formerly > of the NYPD. Lovely. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And to think _our_ police chief here in > Independence grew up in the house directly across the street from me > where his parents lived for fifty years until his father died the same > year as mine (1991) and his mother was enrolled in the old people's > home (last year) where my mother is, after his mother suffered a > stroke and a broken hip.) Lee has been chief for a dozen years and was > a city employee for twenty years before that. He has the house up for > sale now, but earlier today I saw him out in the back yard mowing the > grass like he does most Sundays in the spring/summer. > I think this has been a busy weekend for the officers: overheard on > the scanner radio yesterday afternoon, the dispatcher sent officers to > Garden Walk Apartments on North 10th Street, our public assistance > housing project. Later one of the officers was heard saying on the > radio, "second time I have been there today. I told 'him' if I have to > come back any more, someone is going to get locked up." Their problems, > it seems, at the 'projects' always involve Demon Rum and/or Crystal Meth, > or both. PAT] Crystal Meth has been a huge problem in middle America for many years now. I recall speaking to law enforcement folks at a SEARCH conference in D.C. about 4 years ago and even then it was a major issue. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah, for once something started out rural then moved to the big cities rather than the other way around as it usually goes. PAT ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Politics in Telecom Date: 25 Apr 2005 10:34:15 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com sidd@situ.com wrote: > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1053595,00.html > Any Kerry Supporters On The Line? > The Bush Administration Punishes Some Democrat Backers I don't know why this is such a surprise to anyone. Since political parties came about, it was "the victor goes the spoils". Whatever party came in cleaned house, and this is in Federal, State, and local politics. The development of civil service came about to keep at least some people on their jobs and maintain continuity. But all policy makers and high level people serve solely at the pleasure of those newly elected. A very few people manage to stay on the job, some doing work no one else wants (ie Prison or Sewer commissioner, which aren't very glamorous). Even within a single party, there's "punishment" for those who didn't support the eventual winner. Basically the life of a politician is filled with lining up supporters in a constantly changing world, and choosing who to support elsewhere. Alliances are constantly being made and then broken. FWIW, when FDR was elected in 1932, Herbert Hoover was out of govt and persona not grata. But when Truman, a very loyal Democrat, inherited the office in 1945 he promptly involved Hoover back to the White House and put Hoover's considerable skills to work for famine relief in Europe*. On the other hand, Eisenhower and Truman had a bad falling out and Truman was not welcome in the house during Eisenhower's term. In yet another twist, Kennedy brought back Truman to honor him despite Truman despising Kennedy's father and being very against Kennedy to be the 1960 candidate. The point is that politics is all about friends and enemies and reward and punishment, and it's an accepted part of the game. (*Contrary to myth, Hoover did a lot more to fight the Depression than is given credit for.) It's not much different in the private sector. When a CEO comes in there's normally a reorganization and he puts in his own people and others have to find new jobs, even if they've been with the company for years. ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: New Spam Scam Exploits Pope's Death Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 17:40:15 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Steve Sobol writes: >> Is there any way to plonk the moderator of a mailing list? > He doesn't morph; you can killfile him just like you can killfile > anyone else. Except that he sticks his comments at the end of other people's notes. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Paul, I can fix that for you. I have a little perl script here which I will give in a minute, that you or anyone can use to write me out of the picture entirely. The perl script was originally written for use in the 'latest-issue.html' file on our web site, to make _my_ comments stand out in bright red when they are interspersed with another article. Go to our web site at http://telecom-digest.org, read the latest issue file, and you will see examples of it. I figured if red print was good enough for the Gospel writers in the New Testament when JC was quoted, it should be good enough for me also (ha! ha!). The perl script does this: # This perl script replaces cat with perl to make subjects stand out. # old: cat output >>/home/common/telecom-archives/archives/back.issues/recent.single.issues/latest-issue.html perl -pe 's/&/&/g; s//>/g; s/Subject:.*?$/$&<\/font><\/B>/; \ s/((https?|ftp):\/\/.*?)(\s|, )/$1<\/a>$3/g' output |\ perl -pe 'undef $/; s/\nTELECOM Digest is an electronic.*?organization\./\n$&<\/font><\/b>/s;' \ -e 's/\n\[TELECOM Digest Editor.s Note:.*?PAT\]/\n$&<\/font>/sg' \ >> $outfile Now, as you can see, each issue of the Digest is run through that perl script, and anytime I choose to speak out (inconvenient for you, I understand) anytime in an issue there is a line of text which begins with a left bracket '[' and immediatly continues with the string (without the quotes) 'TELECOM Digest Editor's Note:' then the font changes colors and continues in that new brownish color until the ending is discovered ('PAT' followed by a right bracket ']') then the font color changes back again to what it was. So maybe I just say 'thank you' or maybe I rant and rave for several lines, no matter. That opening phrase flush at the left margin and the closing phrase (PAT followed by a right bracket) controls when the color changes. By the same technique I make the Subject line stand out in bright red and I put the closing words from my patrons in blue. Now all you need to do, Paul, is take those sentences which came from me between left bracket TELECOM Digest, etc and ending with PAT right bracket and either send them to /null or send me to /hell or whatever you want. Use my perl script to do whatever you want to do with the offensive lines in the middle. See Paul, I try to look out for folks around here. I don't ever make guys do something they don't want to do. Either you read me because you want to, or you skip over me because you don't want to read. Using _force_ on guys is not my style. This public service announcement was intended to help you protect yourself and your friends from the ravages of a moderator with brain disease. You are welcome. Now watch the color change. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #182 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Tue, 26 Apr 2005 19:03:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 183 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Cybercrime Costs Billions But How to Report It? (Lisa Minter) Main Web Site Hackers Are Schoolboys, Watchdog Says (Lisa Minter) Verizon Identifies Solution Enabling VoIP Companies to Connect (Decker) Verizon Dials Up 911 VoIP Solution (Jack Decker) Thumbs Down on Verizon's High Speed IP Network (Jack Decker) Cisco Systems to Acquire Sipura Technology (Jack Decker) EarthLink Wireless Offers Treo 650 (Monty Solomon) Nortel Buys PEC Solutions (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) Testing Cingular (and Perhaps Other GSM) Phones (al_groups) Access Gateway (Jay) Re: Can You Hook Home Alarm System With Vonage Service (GlowingBlueMist) Re: Can You Hook Home Alarm System With Vonage Service (Tony P.) Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story (Ginger Holiday) Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story (Ed) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 26 Apr 2005 09:33:32 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Cybercrime Costs Billions But How to Report It? By Lucas van Grinsven, European Technology Correspondent AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Cybercrime costs societies billions of dollars every year, but it is not easy for European citizens to report that their digital identity has been stolen, according to anti-virus software companies and police. Britain's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) three weeks ago estimated the nation's cost of computer crime at $4.7 billion a year. Yet common computer break-ins such as hacking, phishing and identity theft must be reported to the local police. Britain's police offer online forms for citizens to report "non-emergency minor crimes" including theft, criminal vandalism and damage to motor vehicles, but there is no special category for computer crime. Elsewhere in Europe, citizens are also mostly referred to local police forces to report these crimes. "It really is a problem. These crimes are global, but citizens work with local police. Most of the police are trained to catch bank robbers rather than Internet robbers," said Mikko Hypponen at anti-virus company F-Secure in Finland, where citizens have to report to local police. Dutch police have admitted that most are ill equipped to deal with cybercrime. "Victims of high-tech crime experience this every day," wrote Pascal Hetzscholdt, policy adviser of the Dutch police's digital investigation unit, in a recent article for a police detectives magazine. "When reporting a crime, they find that the police have big problems with taking and processing the technical aspects of the incident. Police and the public prosecution also have trouble estimating the importance," Hetzscholdt said. Weak police skills lead to low interest, others say. "The police are not interested, because there are too many viruses, the subject is too complicated and the chances are slim that the police will catch somebody," said senior technology consultant Graham Cluley at British anti-virus firm Sophos. Without details from victims of computer crimes, furthermore, investigators and prosecutors find it more difficult to seek appropriate punishment for the offenders. An NHTCU spokeswoman said every local police force in Britain had a computer crime unit, while recognizing it was essential "we have to keep training to keep up with the pace." British police said computer crimes need to be reported to local police but would be passed on to a specialized unit if needed. To report unsolicited email, which for many office workers can run into the dozens or hundreds every day, British citizens need to download, print and fill in one form for every single spam message and send it in the mail. "It's not grown-up at the moment," Sophos's Cluley said. In the United States, in contrast with the European situation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation at least operates a national Internet Fraud Complaint Center, to which businesses and citizens can report cybercrimes http://www.ifccfbi.gov . Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. To discuss this, and other problems with spamming, and cybercrime, also go to our chatroom area: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/chatpage.html ------------------------------ Date: 26 Apr 2005 09:36:09 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Main Web Site Hackers Are Schoolboys, Watchdog Says LONDON (Reuters) - Attacks on company and government Internet sites spike during school holidays when the main culprits -- schoolboys -- spend time in front of their computers rather than in the classroom. There were almost 400,000 attacks on Web sites around the world last year, a surge of 36 percent from 2003, said a report issued by Internet watchdog agency Zone-H to coincide with a London information security exhibition. "A lot of 15- and 16-year-old guys are smart enough to have strong political opinions," Roberto Preatoni, Zone-H founder, told Reuters Monday. The main targets are U.S. military Web sites, which are attacked by anti-Iraq war protesters, and large companies and governments, which attract anti-globalization protesters. Preatoni said the tools needed to hack into and change Web sites were available on the Internet and were easy to use. "For the average person it sounds complicated but if you know what you are doing it's really quite easy," he said. "Almost anyone with a bit of practice can take down or deface a web site." Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 13:18:00 -0400 Subject: Verizon Identifies Solution Enabling VoIP Companies to Connect This is the "official" press release: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-26-2005/0003486469&STORY&EDATE= Verizon Identifies Solution Enabling VoIP Companies to Connect to E 911 Emergency Calling System http://www.verizon.com Company Archive Connection to Verizon's 911 Network in New York City Expected This Summer NEW YORK, April 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon will provide Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) service providers and their vendors the ability to use Verizon's Enhanced 911 emergency calling system to connect VoIP customer 911 calls to Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs). "Working with VoIP companies and their vendors, we have identified a means to route VoIP calls so that they appear in emergency response centers much the way wireline and wireless 911 calls do," said Michael O'Connor, executive director of federal regulatory affairs for Verizon. The E 911 system directs a 911 caller to the appropriate local government emergency response center, known as a Public Safety Answering Point. The call travels over a dedicated network and automatically provides the PSAP operator with the name and address associated with the caller's telephone number. This information, which the operator receives almost instantaneously, allows public safety officials to dispatch help quickly, when seconds count. Automatic location information is especially helpful if the caller is unable to speak or drops off the line. Currently, most VoIP emergency-service offerings do not provide the emergency response center with name, address or callback number. Verizon expects that by this summer, VoIP providers and their vendors will be able to provide their customers in New York City with E 911 service. If the New York City model is successful, it will be replicated in other locations. Initially, only wireline carriers connected directly to the E 911 system. Subsequently, wireless carriers were connected. "With the recent and rapid growth of VoIP service, we needed to find a way to integrate VoIP providers into the E 911 system in a manner that would reliably serve VoIP end-users and that at the same time would not compromise the safety and reliability of the E 911 system for other users," said O'Connor. "After discussions with VoIP providers and the emergency services community, we believe that we have identified an arrangement that meets the needs of both groups and enables VoIP providers to offer their customers significantly better 911 services than they receive today. "And, unlike proposals previously made by the VoIP community, the arrangement does not introduce new types of security vulnerabilities to the E 911 system." O'Connor stressed that even after VoIP providers get access to the E 911 system, VoIP providers and VoIP customers will still need to provide up-to-date location information to ensure that the 911 call is routed to the appropriate PSAP. If a VoIP customer does not update his or her service location, the 911 call will not reach the appropriate PSAP. SOURCE Verizon Web Site: http://www.verizon.com ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 13:01:58 -0400 Subject: Verizon Dials Up 911 VoIP Solution Excerpts from two articles follow: http://www.techweb.com/wire/networking/161600282 April 26, 2005 (11:15 AM EDT) Verizon Dials Up 911 VoIP Solution By TechWeb News Verizon Communications said it will provide VoIP providers with a solution that will let them use Verizon's enhanced 911 emergency calling system. Problems handling 911 emergency numbers have been a major hurdle for VoIP providers, but positive movement in recent days by major landline carriers is being hailed by VoIP companies. "Working with VoIP companies and their vendors, we have identified a means to route VoIP calls so that they appear in emergency response centers much the way wireline and wireless 911 calls do," said Michael O'Connor, Verizon's executive director of federal regulatory affairs, in a statement Tuesday. The Verizon statement coincides with efforts by Qwest Communications and SBC Communications to solve the 911 problem with Vonage, North America's largest VoIP provider. The remaining former Baby Bell, BellSouth, is also said to be working on the problem. More than 90 percent of U.S. landline telephone service is provided by the former Bells. Their means of communicating with 911 dispatch numbers is not compatible with VoIP phoning, particularly where VoIP moves over cable broadband. Verizon said its VoIP 911 service will be offered in New York City this summer, and, if successful, it will be replicated in additional Verizon locations. Full story at: http://www.techweb.com/wire/networking/161600282 [Article #2:] http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=11892&hed=Verizon+Answers+VoIP+911+Call&hed§or=Industries&hed§or&subsector=InternetAndServices Verizon Answers VoIP 911 Call Vonage works with carrier to develop parallel emergency database to connect callers with emergency dispatchers. April 26, 2005 Verizon Communications said Tuesday it will test a major improvement to VoIP performance by directing its subscribers' 911 emergency calls to the appropriate authorities. The dedicated system will not just route the calls to Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), but will automatically provide the PSAP operator with the name and address of the subscriber associated with the telephone number. The system is being implemented and tested in New York City with an eye to a region-wide rollout. According to Verizon, the system will be available to VoIP service providers in all of New York City by the summer. Verizon did not announce a specific timetable for a region-wide rollout. Full story at: http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=11892&hed=Verizon+Answers+VoIP+911+Call&hed§or=Industries&hed§or&subsector=InternetAndServices How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 13:37:37 -0400 Subject: Thumbs Down on Verizon's High Speed IP Network The following was spotted on IP Inferno, a VoIP and telecommunications related blog. These comments were written by Ted Shelton: http://ipinferno.blogspot.com/ Tuesday, April 26, 2005 Don't try VoIP on Verizon I was excited about Verizon's new high speed IP network -- finally some terrific speeds and broad availability on cell phones! Here is the first cell phone network that could support Skype! But wait, what's that in the user agreement? Data sessions may be used for following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force and field service automation. Intranet access requires the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.). Unlimited plans are for individual use only and not for resale. The Unlimited plans cannot be used: (1) for any applications that tether the device to laptops, PCs, or other equipment for any purpose, (2) for uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games, (3) with server devices or with host computer applications other than the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, including, without limitation, Web camera posts or broadcasts, continuous jpeg file transfers, automatic data feeds, telemetry applications, automated functions or any other machine-to-machine applications, (4) as substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. Well, I am not a lawyer, but it sounds like VoIP is just plain not allowed. Not only that, but without the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, all I can do is email and web browsing!! Why the heck do I need all of this bandwidth if all I can do is email and web? I hope that the marketplace responds to Verizon with a big raspberry, and lets them know that when we buy data services we expect to be able to USE our data services!! On another front, isn't there something the FCC can do? Aren't the public airwaves that these data services are running on a part of the commons and this kind of restraint on trade a violation of the license under which Verizon operates? Someone with more FCC knowledge please help out here! posted by Ted at 8:57 AM ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 14:32:02 -0400 Subject: Cisco Systems to Acquire Sipura Technology I am not sure if this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, I would expect Sipura's quality control to improve (although Sipuras are generally high quality devices, I've heard a few reports of people getting one that is bad out of the box, or that fails in the first week or two of use -- fortunately these are always replaced promptly). On the other hand, I suspect they will not be as responsive to customer needs, nor as quick to offer firmware/feature upgrades. But, VoIP adapters are a competitive market now. Those who remember the early days of computer modems may remember when we basically had a couple of brand choices, Hayes and U.S. Robotics. Now there are many more choices available (and does ANYONE have a Hayes modem anymore?). Same thing with VoIP adapters, we had the Cisco ATA-186 and then the Sipura. Now Cisco is buying Sipura (and has previously purchased Linksys, which already offers VoIP adapters based on Sipura technology) but today there are many other companies offering VoIP adapters, and it wouldn't surprise me if in three or four years you can pick one up in the $20-$40 range (and that's not counting the free-after-rebate or free-with-service-commitment deals that will inevitably come along). It will be interesting to see if Cisco/Linksys/Sipura retains any significant market share at that time. There is a thread on this at BroadbandReports.com: http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,13262331 http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2005/corp_042605.html?CMP=ILC-001 Cisco Systems to Acquire Sipura Technology First Acquisition for Linksys Division; Adds Experienced Team and VoIP Technology SAN JOSE, Calif., April 26, 2005 - Cisco Systems today announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Sipura Technology, Inc. This represents Cisco's first acquisition for its Linksys division, the leading provider of wireless and networking hardware for home, Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) and small business environments. Sipura is a leader in consumer voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology and is a key technology provider for Linksys' current line of VoIP networking devices. In addition to Sipura's valuable technology and customer relationships, their experienced team with extensive VoIP expertise will help build a foundation for Linksys' internal research and development capabilities in voice, video and other markets. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $68 million in cash and options for Sipura. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions, including applicable regulatory approvals, and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2005 ending July 30, 2005. Consumer VoIP is rapidly expanding as independent providers and incumbent telecom and cable operators bring VoIP offerings to consumers. Synergy Research Group, a leading market research firm, reports that today there are close to 8 million home users worldwide using VoIP to make phone calls over their broadband connections. By 2009, Synergy anticipates this number to grow to 58.9 million home users using VoIP to talk to friends and family around the world using broadband and VoIP technology. "VoIP is a strategic segment for innovation and growth for Cisco and Linksys. The acquisition of Sipura will augment Linksys' leading position in the rapidly growing VoIP market and is an example of Linksys' strategy to increase internal R&D capabilities in specific product categories," said Charles Giancarlo, Cisco CTO and Cisco-Linksys president. "Adding Sipura's technology reinforces our commitment to developing products in the consumer voice space." This acquisition follows Cisco's core strategy of using acquisitions to build new technologies and speed time-to-market for its products. The Sipura acquisition accelerates Linksys' leadership in the emerging high growth VoIP consumer and SOHO markets, provides continued competitive differentiation for its VoIP product offerings, and allows Linksys to better serve it customers. Sipura has developed the technology incorporated in leading VoIP adapters (including those integrated into home routers and gateways) and a multi-line IP phone for the consumer and SOHO market. Sipura's technology is currently used by Linksys in some VoIP products, including certain analog telephone adapters and wired and wireless routers with phone ports. Sipura currently has relationships with regional and top-tier VoIP providers. Linksys will continue to work with those service providers, as well as use its traditional retail channels to target consumers and SOHO environments with Sipura's line of VoIP products. Upon close of the transaction, Sipura will be integrated into Cisco's Linksys division, led by Senior Vice Presidents Janie and Victor Tsao. Sipura was founded in March 2003 and is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. About Linksys: Founded in 1988, Linksys, a Division of Cisco Systems, Inc., is the global leader in Wireless and Ethernet networking for consumer, SOHO and small business users. Linksys is dedicated to making networking easy and affordable for its customers, offering innovative, award-winning products that seamlessly integrate with a variety of devices and applications. Linksys provides award-winning product support to its customers. For more information, visit www.linksys.com. About Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, celebrates 20 years of commitment to technology innovation, industry leadership, and corporate social responsibility. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, go to http://newsroom.cisco.com. Press Contact(s): Elizabeth McNichols Cisco Systems, Inc. 408 525-4434 emcnicho@cisco.com Karen Sohl Cisco Systems, Inc. 949 823-1578 ksohl@cisco.com Investor Relations Contact(s): Ken Bond Cisco Systems, Inc. 408 526-6001 kbond@cisco.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 12:22:32 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EarthLink Wireless Offers Treo 650 From PalmOne EarthLink's TotalAccess software delivers wireless sync and personalized content, plus server-side spam and virus protection features/ ATLANTA and MILPITAS, Calif., April 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- EarthLink Wireless, a branded service operated by SK-EarthLink, and palmOne, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLMO) today announced the availability of the Treo(TM) 650 smartphone, which offers a compact, full-featured mobile phone with email, a Palm OS(R) organizer, messaging, web access and digital camera, letting users organize and simplify their business and personal lives all in one device.(1) This powerful multifeatured mobile device is built on the Treo 600's award- winning design and features EarthLink's exclusive TotalAccess software for users on the move. The all-in-one device is pre-bundled with EarthLink's exclusive TotalAccess software, designed to deliver a range of personalized content to the Treo 650. TotalAccess software includes server-side spamBlocker(SM) and Virus Blocker, which eliminate virtually 100 percent of spam and protects the users' inbox from unwanted viruses. EarthLink Wireless offers wireless, over-the-air synchronization between the Treo 650 and EarthLink's server to keep the users' address book updated without cradle-based synchronization. In addition, users can get fast and easy access to email, information, and favorite features in a simple, integrated interface. Accessing EarthLink's Personal Start Page on the Internet allows users to set up customized content to be delivered wirelessly, such as news, stock prices, sports scores, weather, directions, maps and more. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48636798 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 12:30:43 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Nortel Buys PEC Solutions Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 26, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21112&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Nortel buys PEC Solutions BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Sprint accelerates push to win over enterprise customers * Analysis: How high is too high for MCI suitors? * Linksys snaps up VoIP technology vendor * Cable companies refuse to run SBC ads about phone rates * Microsoft Mobile looks to Zhang for a bang USTA SPOTLIGHT * Newton's Telecom Dictionary -- 21st Edition EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Netscape founders create free content network * WildBlue targets June launch * Analysis: Charter bets big on VOD REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Rigas family to surrender assets as Adelphia, feds settle * Arthur Andersen settles WorldCom claims Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21112&l=2017006 Legal and Privacy information at http://www.dailylead.com/about/privacy_legal.jsp SmartBrief, Inc. 1100 H ST NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20005 ------------------------------ From: al_groups Subject: Testing Cingular (and Perhaps Other GSM) Phones Date: 26 Apr 2005 11:09:11 -0700 Hi, I've got some Cingular (and one ATT) phones I managed to repair. However I would like to test them making a couple of phone calls. The problem is I don't have a Cingular account. With Sprint CMDA phones you still can call cust svc even if you don't have an account w/them. Same with Verizon. I am kind of new to GSM phones, so I may be mistaken, but even with a blank GSM card inserted I can't call anybody. The only exception is an emergency number (cellphone says that) which I am not sure if it's going to ring at a 911 number. The cellphones I have are locked as far as I know. Could I perhaps sign up with one of those prepaid accounts that CNG offers, so I could use the GSM I would activate with the phones I already have? Have they to be unlocked even if I want to use a prepaid service GSM card with them (even a Cingular one? Any other links I can find more info on this subject? Thanks a lot, al ------------------------------ From: Jay Subject: Access Gateway Date: 26 Apr 2005 13:56:14 -0700 Hello, What is an Access Gateway? How/Where it is used in TeleCom industry? Thanks, Jay ------------------------------ From: GlowingBlueMist Subject: Re: Can You Hook Home Alarm System With Vonage Service? Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:03:30 -0500 Organization: Octanews wrote in message news:telecom24.182.5@telecom-digest.org: > Is it possible to hook up my Vonage to the home alarm system service > (Brinks Security)? Or do I still need to get an analog phone line from > Southwestern Bell? Thanks. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It _should_ be possible, but bear in > mind one thing burglars sometimes do is cut the electrical wire to > your house; that would as a result cut off your computer's electrical > supply, and kill your Vonage phone. Some alarm companies also have a > method of dealing not only with a call _into_ them, but also a way of > telling when their device has been _disconnected_ from the phone > line. I am not sure how well that would work when using Vonage, so you > might want to have the Brinks representative there to look at it > also. PAT] I don't know the hardware he has but my brother in Florida wanted to do the same thing. He called his security system vender and they upgraded his system to include a cellular phone with a remote antenna hidden in the attic and tied it all in with the same UPS his alarm system used. As mentioned by Pat, the perps in my brother's area like to cut the cable, phone, and power connections prior to breaking in. Seems his local area requires an external power cut off as part of the electrical meter base making killing the power quite easy. So now even with the power off, no cable or landline working, his alarm system along with the following options continues to work, high/low temperature, fire alarm, flooding, and combined cable + AC power failure, and panic buttons. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Can You Hook Home Alarm System With Vonage Service? Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 14:51:17 -0400 In article , lothario4real@yahoo.com says: > Is it possible to hook up my Vonage to the home alarm system service > (Brinks Security)? Or do I still need to get an analog phone line from > Southwestern Bell? Thanks. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It _should_ be possible, but bear in > mind one thing burglars sometimes do is cut the electrical wire to > your house; that would as a result cut off your computer's electrical > supply, and kill your Vonage phone. Some alarm companies also have a > method of dealing not only with a call _into_ them, but also a way of > telling when their device has been _disconnected_ from the phone > line. I am not sure how well that would work when using Vonage, so you > might want to have the Brinks representative there to look at it > also. PAT] Two things. 1) Put a UPS in front of the Vonage router. This will provide power when the perpetrator cuts the line, though I will say that most thieves are too stupid to know how to cut the power these days. 2) When you set up the dial string, include the # sign at the end to tell Vonage that you've stopped dialing and to put the call through. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 23:12:31 -0400 From: Ginger Holiday Subject: Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story Ed wrote: > Here's my VOIP phone story: > I signed up for Lingo on August 13, 2004. They've never sent me > equipment and they've never let me quit. > Today, I received a letter saying I've got 10 days to pay Primus > Any suggestions? Do I call a lawyer or the local television station > to be interviewed? > What would you do if you were in my situation? Many states have consumer protection laws aimed at such practices. For example, in Massachusetts, the statue is Mass General Laws Ch 93A. Under this law, if somebody sends you a bill for something you don't owe, you can send them a demand letter explaining why you don't owe the claimed amount and give 30 days for them to repond. If they don't respond in 30 days, you are entitled to treble damages. Letters like this can get a company's attention very quickly. Send it to the top officer at the top office, and send it certified, return receipt. Check the laws in your state, and possibly look for other examples to learn how to proceed. Of course send your complaint to the attorney general's office, consumer protection office, etc. for good measure. ------------------------------ From: Ed Subject: Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story Date: 25 Apr 2005 17:45:17 -0700 I'm replying to my own post. I want to be absolutely fair so I'm going to report what appears (today) to be good news. Hopefully, it will stay that way. I called Primus Telecommunications today. This time, I talked with a wonderful woman named Nancy. She listened to the whole story. I took me about 15 minutes or so just to tell her about all the phone calling I had done to cancel in September of 2004. In September, I called many times and talked to many people. I also told her that I never received equipment and that no one I ever spoke to at Primus Telecommunications had ever claimed to have sent me any. She said, "So you never received a box from us." I said, "yes, I never received a box." She then called me back in about 15 minutes or so (I did not time anything so this is very rough) and told me "you have been credited the full amount." Sounds like they now agree I don't owe them anything. I still get knots in my stomach when I write this because I have had these charges resusitate themselves so many times. It's a gut reaction. In any case, here's my theory for whatever it may be worth. Since it is all theory, it may not be worth much. I suspect that all of this is bungling, not maliciousness. I'm reminded not to assume evil where incompetence will do. At the time I signed up for Lingo, they were new to all this. If I'm not mistaken, they started the service around June of 2004. If this is correct then they had only been at it a couple of months. I was very quick to try to cancel when I did not receive equipment and they just did not seem prepared to deal with it. I really and truly believe that they did have a cancellation team in place but it was just not sufficient to meet the need. This is why I was unable to get through. In October 2004, I started getting letters from their collections department (see my earlier post for chronology of events). So, I kept calling Customer Service to say I had cancelled and they kept reassuring me that I did not owe anything. Problem is, Customer Service (one phone number) does not seem to have a good line of communication with the other department, Domestic Collections (another phone number). I could be wrong but it appears to me that Customer Service and Domestic Collections are not even in the same country. I'm assuming poor communications here because talking to one department does not seem to affect the actions of the other department (in my case). In any case, talking to Nancy of Domestic Collections seems to (oh how I hope!) to have solved the problem. I will take responsibility here and post again in 60 days (or sooner if things go badly for me). I so hope never to hear from these people again. In 60 days, I hope to be able to report that it appears to be all one big goof-up and I hever heard from Primus Telecommications again. I feel it is very important to be absolutely fair and there is never an excuse for hurting people (or companies) worse than you've been hurt. In other words, balance and justice. I'm actually quite optimistic at this point because I do not find other complaints against Primus Telecommunications similar to mine on the Internet or Usenet. Not that I've tried that hard to find them. I'm hoping that this is a comedy of errors and an exception to what is (I hope) good customer service in most cases. I'm really not trying to get people to stop using Lingo. I just want to get out from under the pressure of these totally unjustified letters. Again, I remind you of the central point: I never received equipment and therefore could not possibly ever have made phone calls. TELECOM Digest Editor questioned me: > Do you have any tracking numbers from the shipment Lingo was supposed > to send you? Funny thing is, Lingo has never claimed to have sent me equipment. This is one reason why I call this a "comedy of errors." In early September, I printed out a copy of my computer screen detailing my order on the Lingo web site. At that time, the order was described as being "in process." If the order had shipped, I assume it would have said "shipped" or something to that effect. It's my belief that I canceled the order (after weeks of waiting) prior to their people ever attempting to ship the order. So no, I don't think there ever was a tracking number. The printout of the order being "in process" after weeks of waiting was the basis for my letter to my credit card company asking them to reverse the charges. My credit card company has been reversing the charges ever since. By the way, if I've learned anything from this experience, I've learned this: Keep careful records. My records are very good. Had I known how this was going to turn out, I would have been even more meticulous about detail. I started keeping records on September 10 when I had tried to cancel the day before. I've been keeping records of everything ever since. Ed ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #183 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Tue, 26 Apr 2005 20:00:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 184 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Qwest's Offer Is Beyond Its Means (Eric Friedebach) Re: Verizon/MCI (Steven Lichter) Re: Verizon/MCI (Paul Vader) Re: SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal (DevilsPGD) Re: SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal (Tony P.) Re: Can You Hook Home Alarm System With Vonage Service? (DevilsPGD) Re: Politics in Telecom (Steve Sobol) Re: Basics of COT (HarryTheDog) Re: New Spam Scam Exploits Pope's Death (Paul Vader) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Eric Friedebach Subject: Qwest's Offer Is Beyond Its Means Date: 26 Apr 2005 15:59:15 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com David M. Ewalt, 04.25.05, Forbes.com NEW YORK - For the first time since the bidding war over MCI erupted two months ago, Qwest Communications has taken the lead over competitor Verizon Communications in the fight for MCI. But the bad news for Qwest is that even if it wins, it loses. Chances are good that Verizon will produce more cash and walk away with MCI in the end. Yet for now Qwest chief executive Richard Notebaert can probably taste victory. After being repeatedly brushed off and ignored by MCI's board, he's finally gotten their attention and approval. What once looked like a long shot bid to shore up Qwest's faltering financials looks momentarily plausible. But Qwest had to ramp up its bid so ferociously to get noticed that now it's faced with a payout that's well beyond its means. At this price, Qwest's proposed merger would be so hard to pay for it would probably negate the value of doing it in the first place. http://www.forbes.com/enterprisetech/2005/04/25/cx_de_0425qwest.html Eric Friedebach /An Apollo Sandwich from Corky & Lenny's/ ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell. Co. Subject: Re: Verizon/MCI Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 01:31:29 GMT John P. Dearing wrote: > The Bell Atlantic/Nynex merger (painful as it was) actually made sense > and was the right thing to do. Kudos to Ray Smith (former Chairman & > CEO) for having the vision to see the need and "make it so". > The Bell Atlantic/GTE merger is a whole 'nuther kettle of fish. > Ivan wanted to "one up" Ray. It certainly was a bigger merger but as a > result of the *HUGE* "negative dowry" (over $50 Billion) that GTE > brought to the altar, the combined company went from one of the best > debt to equity ratios to one of the worst. At the time of the merger > the dot com boom hadn't gone bust yet and the cash flow was probably > assumed to be strong enough to cover the debt service. > John P. Dearing > A+, Network+, Server+ > To reply: Just drop "YOURPANTS" in my address! 8-) I agree the Nxnex/Bell Atlantic merger might have been good. I also agree that the GTE/Bell Atlantic merger was a big error, in more then money. They were two different companies. I don't know about Bell Atlantic, but GTE had bundles of money from selling it non telecom groups as well as merging it AE unit with AT&T. Many people said the GTD5 was not as good as other machines of its kind. It was made to work in many different projects where others would not and it was a log more forgiving then others also. GTE's merger with Contel was ok at the best, but after the merger they dumped a lot of the Contel areas as some GTE areas. After the GTE/Bell Atlantic areas a lot more were dumped, and the latest was the Hawaiian Telco sales was a big error, it was one of the best run of the system and made lots of money since it was located midway between the US and Japan. I retired from GTE a few years before the merger and am glad I did. I have done contract work for Verizon in California were I retired from as well as Washington State and Oregon, it seems to be running the same, but the people I talked to would rather have it as before. I started in 1967 with CWT and when GTE came in we wondered, but that worked out. LB@notmine.com wrote: > No. > LB > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And according to news reports today at > http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news Verizon is working now > on a new bid. PAT] I sure hopt not, much more will sink the whole company. Tony P. wrote: > I strongly suspect that Verizon is just trying to elevate the price > past that which Qwest can reasonably be expected to be able to pay. > In other words, once the bankruptcy happens to Qwest it would be > childs play for Verizon to roll in and suck all of it up. I did contact work for USWest as they were being bought by Qwest; the whole area was a mess since no one know what was going to happen. ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Verizon/MCI Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 18:34:56 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations John P. Dearing writes: > Boom economy goes bust and the cash flow dries up but the debt, which > up to this point was the 800lb gorilla in the room but was a > *manageable* 800lb gorilla, well the debt becomes an albatross and > starts sinking the ship. Congratulations, you're the winner of the mixed metaphor of the week award! * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 21:37:05 -0600 Organization: Disorganized In message zcarenow@yahoo.com wrote: > All I know is that I got an email from Vonage telling me to activate > the 911 by logging into their website and start the activation under > the "Features" section of site. I assume that now I just need to dial > 911 and it should work. If that is all you know then you either haven't activated 911, or you didn't bother to read the information provided when you activated 911 service (important things to know, like the difference between a PSAP and a 911 call center) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Vonage generally sends a much more detailed email when 911 is turned on for each user requesting it. Like Devil'sPGD I would strongy suggest you look more closely into it. Or go to the Vonage dashboard and try to turn it on again. If it is already turned on it will indicate that. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: SBC, Vonage Working on 911 Service Access Deal Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 14:52:08 -0400 In article , zcarenow@yahoo.com says: > All I know is that I got an email from Vonage telling me to activate > the 911 by logging into their website and start the activation under > the "Features" section of site. I assume that now I just need to diall > 911 and it should work. Call it and state you are testing -- they will verify the address for you. In my case, they had the street number wrong. Odd because on Vonage's web site the address is correct. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not usually recommend testing 911 by calling it -- at least not without an okay to do so first from the person(s) in charge. I know in my case the dispatcher said they had it on file, but 'the screen looks different than others I see.' And she would not elaborate on what made it 'different looking'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Can You Hook Home Alarm System With Vonage Service? Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 21:37:05 -0600 Organization: Disorganized In message lothario4real@yahoo.com wrote: > Is it possible to hook up my Vonage to the home alarm system service > (Brinks Security)? Or do I still need to get an analog phone line from > Southwestern Bell? Thanks. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It _should_ be possible, but bear in > mind one thing burglars sometimes do is cut the electrical wire to > your house; that would as a result cut off your computer's electrical > supply, and kill your Vonage phone. Some alarm companies also have a > method of dealing not only with a call _into_ them, but also a way of > telling when their device has been _disconnected_ from the phone > line. I am not sure how well that would work when using Vonage, so you > might want to have the Brinks representative there to look at it > also. PAT] The only way an alarm company can tell if the line was cut is if they're using alternate frequencies (Similar to how DSL over voice typically works) -- This would be completely incompatible with DSL. The only other option is if there is an alternate communications method available -- If the alarm system detects a phone outage and it switches to some sort of radio method instead. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do think it best that he have a security person from Brinks there to make the actual cutover, and not cause them to get all excited if it fails for some reason. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Politics in Telecom Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 00:16:55 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > I don't know why this is such a surprise to anyone. For many perks, the status quo is that only the favorite people and groups (favorites of the political party and administration currently running the country) benefit. This particular perk happened to be different. It was supposed to be available to anyone. But no, I'm not surprised. JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: HarryTheDog Subject: Re: Basics of COT Date: 26 Apr 2005 04:58:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Try a google search. It always throws up a few (thousand ;-) hits for me and I just sift through them putting together an answer. You need to be careful, though. The first hit may not be accurate, may not be apposite, may not have been written by someone who actually knows what they are talking about, etc. That's why you need to read a few hits and then form your own opinion. And there's always the chance that no-one else actually knows the answer, or has posted it to the web, or it has been crawled by your search engine. In this particular case, COT Test, context is important. You don't want to know about baby sleeping arrangements (where does a baby ape sleep? In an Apricot), do you? And you don't want to know about Senator Frist running for President in 2008. And it's not maths, it's Telecoms, so try this: www.tailyn.com.tw/doc/TDC%20621.pdf And if that doesn't answer your question, you can follow my advice above. Be Lucky. Anything more complicated than two tin cans and some wet string needs an expert, a degree and a three week residential training course in the Caymans. ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: New Spam Scam Exploits Pope's Death Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 18:37:40 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) writes: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Paul, I can fix that for you. I > have a little perl script here which I will give in a minute, that Why don't you post your comments in their own message, instead of defacing other people's messages with them? * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not regard my work here as 'defacing' things, and the way this Digest is drawn up each day is the way I have always done it and probably always will do it. Did you review that perl script I provided? It is intended for folks like yourself who prefer this group to be 'Patrick Optional'. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #184 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Wed, 27 Apr 2005 19:25:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 185 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Some Fear Law Would Create National ID Card (Monty Solomon) Change is in the Air for Boston Radio (Monty Solomon) Do You Know Where Your Identity Has Been? (Monty Solomon) ID Theft Alleged at D.C. Blockbuster (Monty Solomon) End of Analog TV / Will America's Favorite Technology Really (M Solomon) Podcasting (Lisa Minter) When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene? (Monty Solomon) SAR Ratings For Cell Phones - Where? (woodboat@gmail.com) Microsoft to Add 'Black Box' to Windows (Lisa Minter) Apple Retaliates Over Jobs Biography (Lisa Minter) Telstra Trials Hotspot Wholesale - AustralianIT.com.au Report (L Minter) Nortel Advances on U.S. Security Market (Lisa Minter) Juniper Buys Two Corporate Networking Startups (Telecom dailyLead USTA) Vocal Launches VOIP Adapter Design (Jack Decker) Sipura's CEO Strikes Gold - Again (Jack Decker) Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story (Ed) VoIP (Choreboy) Re: International DID Supply (Dan Turin) Re: Politics in Telecom (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Main Web Site Hackers Are Schoolboys, Watchdog Says (Lisa Hancock) Re: 10base-T & POTS in Same Cat-5 Cable? (GlowingBlueMist) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:09:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Some Fear Law Would Create National ID Card By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff WASHINGTON -- Congress is poised to pass a law that would make sweeping changes to the nation's system for issuing driver's licenses by imposing stringent requirements on states to verify the authenticity of birth certificates, Social Security cards, legal residency visas, and bank and utility records used to obtain a license. House Republicans attached the bill to a must-pass supplemental spending package for troops in Iraq without first putting it through the usual legislative scrutiny of hearings and debate. Should it emerge intact from House-Senate negotiations over the spending package, it could be law next month. Touted as an antiterrorism measure, the "Real ID Act" would also overturn laws in nine states that allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. If a state does not comply with any provision of the law, its residents would no longer be able to use their driver's licenses for federal identification purposes, such as for boarding a plane. The law, some say, would effectively turn the new driver's license into a national identification card. Its chief champion, House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, says the measure would help prevent terrorists from fraudulently gaining official documents that would allow them to enter the country and move freely. Another set of provisions would significantly raise the standard of proof that asylum applicants must meet when claiming that they have been persecuted on ethnic, religious, or political grounds. It would also grant greater discretion to Homeland Security officials to reject asylum seekers and curtail the ability of appeals courts to issue stays of deportation orders and review rejected cases. Terrorists have "used almost every conceivable means of entering the country," Sensenbrenner said in a statement provided by an aide. "They have come as students, tourists, and business visitors. They have also been [legal permanent residents] and naturalized US citizens. They have snuck across the border illegally, arrived as stowaways on ships, used false passports, and have been granted amnesty. Terrorists have even used America's humanitarian tradition of welcoming those seeking asylum. We must plug these gaps." But many critics of the Real ID Act say that it goes too far and that its language is riddled with problems that might have been corrected through the normal legislative review process. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/04/26/some_fear_law_would_crate_national_id_card/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 23:44:09 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Change is in the Air For Boston Radio By Clea Simon, Globe Correspondent | April 21, 2005 In the old days -- two months ago -- listeners knew what to expect. You could turn on 'Mix' WBMX-FM (98.5) for fun new pop by Rob Thomas or Green Day and get the occasional nostalgic Bon Jovi tune mixed in. WBOS-FM (92.9) played it mellow but fresh, with the latest adult rock from Los Lonely Boys or the Wallflowers. And 'Star' WQSX-FM (93.7) was dance music old and new: Donna Summer meets Salt-N-Pepa. Then, suddenly, they all started sounding a little similar and a little strange. Rock tunes ran into hip-hop, a current top hit segued into a '70s throwback. DJs were muted, if there at all, and everyone was advertising the playlist was wide open. Are the playlists -- the formatting -- really gone? Not exactly. Boston radio may be putting more tunes into rotation, but they'll probably be tunes you already know. Because Boston, to varying degrees, is going 'Jack' -- a hot new radio format designed to win back listeners and snare a bigger piece of an ever-diminishing pie. What is 'Jack'? Put simply, it's a format that abandons the conventional wisdom that listeners respond to song repetition and station self-promotion. Instead, it substitutes a broad playlist of familiar hits that cross musical genres and programs them with virtually no talk. http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2005/04/21/change_is_in_the_air_for_boston_radio/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 01:46:28 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Do You Know Where Your Identity Has Been? To ensure that their personal information isn't hijacked, consumers need to protect themselves. Here are some tips to help keep your data out of the wrong hands. By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | April 24, 2005 "Who steals my purse steals trash," wrote William Shakespeare in 'Othello.' These days it's the other way around. Steal somebody's trash, dig out his old credit card bills and tax documents, and you're well on the way to emptying his purse, and making his existence a living hell. It's called identity theft. Real money is at stake, and lots of it -- more than $50 billion, according to the Federal Trade Commission. As always, crooks go where the money is, and where the pickings are easy. Information about people -- from Social Security numbers to computer passwords -- is all too easy to get, thanks to careless consumers and businesses. The recent rash of security breaches at data centers makes many realize it's a bad problem -- though not as bad as we sometimes think. According to TowerGroup, a Needham consulting firm, most of the estimated 10 million cases of identity theft cited in 2002 were standard credit card and check forgery scams. Fewer than 200,000 were serious attempts to duplicate someone else's identity, in an effort to get new credit cards, drivers licenses, or passports. Still, that's more than enough to worry about, especially considering the immense impact of these crimes. Victims are often presumed guilty and must spend lots of hours and dollars to prove their innocence and clear their records. State and federal lawmakers are rolling out legislation to toughen the penalties for identity theft and to force companies to lock down their customers' private data. Better laws might help, but only to a point. We've got to protect ourselves. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2005/04/24/do_you_know_where_your_identity_has_been/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 02:00:52 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: ID Theft Alleged at D.C. Blockbuster Ex-Worker Accused of Taking Customer Data, Spending $117,000 By Carol D. Leonnig Washington Post Staff Writer A former employee of the Blockbuster video store in Dupont Circle has been indicted on charges of stealing customers' identities, then using them to buy more than $117,000 in trips, electronics and other goods, including a Mercedes-Benz. A grand jury charged that Miles N. Holloman stole credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and other private financial information from the application files of 65 customers of the Blockbuster store in 2003, then used some of that data to open retail store and credit card accounts. According to the indictment, which was unsealed yesterday, Holloman, 25, repeatedly succeeded in pretending to be other people. Prosecutors say he allegedly ran up major expenses by tapping the credit of at least five people. In one case, they say, Holloman obtained a replacement credit card in one male customer's name, then used that credit card to buy a used 2002 Mercedes and to obtain a D.C. driver's license that bore the customer's name but Holloman's picture. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/25/AR2005042501411.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 02:23:27 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The End of Analog TV The end of analog TV Will America's favorite technology really go dark next year? By Michael Rogers Columnist Special to MSNBC Depending on the outcome of discussions in Congress, television as we know it may end at exactly midnight Dec. 31, 2006. That's the date Congress targeted, a decade ago, for the end of analog television broadcasting and a full cutover to a digital format. If enforced, that means that overnight, somewhere around 70 million television sets now connected to rabbit ears or roof-top antennas will suddenly and forever go blank, unless their owners purchase a special converter box. Back when the legislation was written, New Year's Eve 2006 probably looked as safely distant as the dark side of the moon. But now that date is right around the corner and Congress and the FCC are struggling mightily to figure out what to do. Congress, however, left itself a loophole in the 1996 legislation, and could actually let the cut-off date slide by. But powerful lobbyists now are pressing legislators to set a "date certain" for the analog lights-out. The debate over when to throw the switch is a strange brew of big money, high technology, homeland security and a single, unanswerable question: just how angry are the couch potatoes going to be? It's also a textbook example of why the future almost never happens as fast as technologists promise. It all started back in the Eighties, when the Japanese shocked American consumer electronics companies with trade-show displays of high definition television sets that delivered razor-sharp images and stunning audio. Everyone from Congress to the Wall Street Journal raised outcries: America's favorite technology was being taken over by the then-fearsome Japan Inc. As a result, a group of American companies formed the "Grand Alliance" that leapfrogged the Japanese technology by inventing digital HDTV. Thus, early on, HDTV invoked not just pretty pictures, but national pride and economic development. (Ironically, Zenith, the most all-American commercial participant in the Grand Alliance, is now South Korean-owned.) One drawback to the U.S. version of HDTV was that to make it work, all broadcast television (not just high-definition) would have to convert to digital, meaning that every American television set manufactured since 1946 would be rendered obsolete. To ease the transition, Congress generously gave all television broadcasters additional channel space so that they could keep broadcasting their analog signals while they installed and launched their digital channels. The deal was that they would give up their old channels when the transition was done. That part worked: Over 1400 broadcasters now transmit in digital as well as analog, reaching 99 percent of the U.S. television market. During the same period consumers were supposed to buy digital television receivers. That part didn't work. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7593620/ ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Podcasting Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 01:17:36 -0400 Have you given any thought to Podcasting? Here is a free download of iPodder software if you are interested in it. http://cbs5.com/techtuesday/local_story_094145759.html Free iPodder Download:
www.download.com/3000-2182-10368846.html
To read a bit more on the topic, and the rest of the story go to: http://cbs5.com/techtuesday/local_story_094145759.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 20:49:03 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene? By TOM ZELLER Jr. There are about 10 million blogs out there, give or take, including one belonging to Niall Kennedy, an employee at Technorati, a small San Francisco-based company that, yes, tracks blogs. Like many employees at many companies, Mr. Kennedy has opinions, even when he is not working. One evening last month, he channeled one of those off-duty opinions into a satiric bit of artwork -- an appropriation of a "loose lips sink ships" World War II-era propaganda poster altered to provide a harsh comment on the growing fears among corporations over the blogging activities of their employees. He then posted it on his personal Web log. But in a paradoxical turn, Mr. Kennedy's employer, having received some complaints about the artwork, stepped in and asked him to reconsider the posting and Mr. Kennedy complied, taking the image down. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/technology/18blog.html?ex=1271476800&en=1119577e37c30918&ei=5090 NOTE: To read the New York Times on line each day with no login or registration requirements, go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html You'll also find the Christian Science Monitor and audio from NPR at that location. ------------------------------ From: woodboat@gmail.com Subject: SAR Ratings For Cell Phones - Where ? Date: 26 Apr 2005 20:02:02 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Where on the internet can SAR ratings be found for cell phones, esp. Nokia Motorola ? "rfhealth@motorola.com" emailed back to say try this website but it just goes to a page with a general-purpose description of SAR information and a statement that "all motorola phones comply". I found some European or Malaysian websites which didn't have the current US models but otherwise looked useful. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:19:53 PDT From: Lisa Minter Subject: Microsoft to Add 'Black Box' to Windows By Ina Fried Redmond will add the equivalent of a flight data recorder to PCs. Such detailed information could rankle privacy advocates. http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+add+black+box+to+Windows/2100-1016_3-5684051.html?tag=sas.email Read all technology news from this week: http://www.news.com/thisweeksheadlines/ Copyright 2004 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. CNET Networks, Inc. 235 Second Street San Francisco, CA 94105 U.S.A. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This 'black box' is intended to provide Microsoft with the six or seven things you had done prior to having a crash on your Windows OS. That may or may not be something desirable for users. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 26 Apr 2005 21:59:16 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Apple Retaliates Over Jobs Biography It appears Apple and Steve Jobs got very annoyed by something which was published about him in the new biography which was written. As a result, not only are some Apple-controlled bookstores _not_ selling the book, but they have dropped _everything_ published by Wiley. http://beta.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050427/ap_on_bi_ge/book_of_jobs ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:04:42 EST From: Lisa Minter Subject: Telstra Trials Hotspot Wholesale - AustralianIT.com.au Report by Andrew Colley, April 27, 2005 TELSTRA is conducting a trial that could see its WiFi hotspots opened to its wholesale internet customers. http://www.australianit.com.au/articles/0,7204,15101545%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 22:06:19 PDT From: Lisa Minter Subject: Nortel Advances on U.S. Security Market An interesting update on Nortel here in the USA. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=706230 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:00:21 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Juniper Buys Two Corporate Networking Startups Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 27, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21149&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Juniper buys two corporate networking startups BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon, Showtime sign carriage deal * T-Mobile site lets users map service quality * Report: Mobile data revenue poised for growth * Verizon, Level 3 report earnings USTA SPOTLIGHT * Telecom Engineering Conference at SUPERCOMM: Register Today EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * TBS to launch broadband game network REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Deloitte & Touche to pay $50 million in Adelphia fraud case * FCC holds firm on VoIP strategy Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21149&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:26:12 -0400 Subject: Vocal Launches VOIP Adapter Design http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=72872 BUFFALO, N.Y. -- VOCAL Technologies Ltd., a developer of integrated software and silicon solutions, announced today the release of their new Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA) reference design, which allows for enhanced VOIP performance and telephone functionality. ATA's designed to the new specifications would be able to communicate with remote standard telephones located up to 1000 feet away over standard existing telephone wiring without disrupting existing services. With the addition of just over $3 of hardware and downloadable software modules, the, standard VOIP telephone service can be enhanced to provide class 5 switch services, such as multiple incoming lines, conferencing, internal dialing, distinctive ringing, and a host of other services. This would results in a Bill of Material cost of close to $22 for a standard 2 by 2 (2 LAN ports, 2 telephone ports) ATA. Full story at: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=72872 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:00:17 -0400 Subject: Sipura's CEO Strikes Gold - Again http://voxilla.com/voxstory159.html By CAROLYN SCHUK for VOXILLA.COM Cisco Systems announcement that it's buying privately-held Sipura Technology Inc. for its Linksys division shouldn't be too surprising. This is the second company serial entrepreneur Jan Fandrianto has sold to the networking giant. His previous start-up company, Komodo Technology, which developed the first low cost VoIP analog telephone adaptor, was acquired by Cisco in 2000. Fandrianto's technology became the basis of Cisco's ATA-186 product line, which became the de-facto standard for VoIP equipment and is largely credited as the single device that helped propel IP telephony in the consumer sphere. Full story at: http://voxilla.com/voxstory159.html ------------------------------ From: Ed Subject: Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story Date: 26 Apr 2005 18:05:01 -0700 Hi Ginger, Thanks so much! You have put my mind at ease. I'm in the State of Maine. I suspect that the laws here are similar to Massachussetts. Your post prompted me to look at the following page available on the Internet at the Maine Attorney General's office: http://www.state.me.us/ag/index.php?r=clg&s=chap12 One of my rights that I was intrigued by is the right to a prompt delivery. Looks like I'm well within the limit since my order was on August 13 and I've received no equipment ever in 8 months (and would be horrified if they sent it now -- I don't want it!). Another thing that intriqued me was the right to sue in small claims court for an order over the Internet. I foolishly believed that I would have to take a day trip to Delaware (a possibility) because Primus is incorporated there for business in the US. Looks like it can all be done through the Maine courts if I understand correctly. In any case, I have no plan to sue anyone over anything. It's a just-in-case if they were to keep harassing me. I say this because I've been promised that they would stop billing me so many times without result. These bills just keep on coming! The last invoice, according to the Final Notice Prior to Placement with a Collection Service (actual title in bold at top of letter), is 02/28/2005 with a due date of 03/30/2005. So, they've been billing me all along in spite of numerous numerous phone calls to try to resolve this. I can't understand why they would bill my credit card (for real) 4 different times plus try but fail on other occasions and still not investigate. Doesn't it mean anything to Primus Telecommunications when a credit card company reverses charges (as my credit card company did all 4 times)? Maybe they have their side of the story but I just can't understand it from where I sit. Why didn't they bother to look to see if they had sent equipment instead of wasting all that postage mailing letters and all that time talking to me on the phone? It costs them money to make mistakes like this. Surely they must realize this. I don't get it. I just can't understand what these people were thinking. Ed ------------------------------ From: Choreboy Subject: VoIP Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 01:56:40 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com For several months I've been getting calls with spoofed Caller IDs. I understand spoofing requires either VoIP or a PBX system with DSL. Can anybody with cable internet access and suitable software make VoIP calls? The other day I received a wrong-number call from an exchange belonging to Level 3 Communications. Among other services, they offer residential VoIP services through wholesalers such as ISPs and cable operators. I'm confused. Does a consumer need these services to use VoIP? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't think either 'VOIP' or 'PBX system' have anything to do with it. If I understand correctly what I have read here in the Digest, it requires a 'PRI' type thing; that is, a multi-channel set of lines going to DID, or Direct Inward Dialing, which would, I guess, be similar to a PBX arrangement. Companies who have those lines _can_ set the caller ID to be whatever is appropriate in their instance. I suspect the fact that the ID shown was that company may have been just coincidental. You do need either cable internet or DSL to use VOIP; regular 'dialup' lines are just not wide enough or fast enough to do VOIP. But other than having DSL or cable, VOIP takes nothing especially fancy; just an adapter box from the place where you get the VOIP service and any regular telephone instrument will do the job. And if you planned on totally getting rid of your landline phone taking VOIP instead, that is generally not possible with DSL, since most telcos will not give stand-alone DSL. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dan Turin Subject: International DID Supply Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 09:02:44 +0200 Hello Peter, I saw your post about having European DIDs available and wonder what the terms are. I have a small VoIP service here in Switzerland and am looking for as wide an array of international numbers as I can get. If you don't have numbers outside of Europe, do you know of another source? Thanks in advance for your help. Best regards, Dan Turin Dear group, > We have DID's available mainly from Europe. Other countries are > being added. > Calls will be forwarded to your softswitch via SIP or H.323. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Politics in Telecom Date: 27 Apr 2005 09:39:53 -0700 Steve Sobol wrote: > This particular perk happened to be different. It was supposed to be > available to anyone. The New Deal social programs were supposed to be available to anyone. But in many places throughout the country it sure helped to be a loyal Democrat, especially if you wanted a job helping to administer such programs. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Main Web Site Hackers Are Schoolboys, Watchdog Says Date: 27 Apr 2005 09:52:10 -0700 Lisa Minter wrote: > LONDON (Reuters) - Attacks on company and government Internet sites > spike during school holidays when the main culprits -- schoolboys -- > spend time in front of their computers rather than in the classroom. This doesn't surprise me in the least. Kids were doing it in a crude way back when I was in high school. (They would get into time sharing systems, figure out ways to crash them or access executive accounts and create accounts for themselves). The question is what is to be done about it. What troubles me is that when news like this is posted everyone here ignores it. There are a lot of network techies on this newsgroup and like it or not, as such they have a responsibility to at least think about these things in a global sense, not just to protect their own tiny piece of the kingdom. Automated routines that constantly send out test-inquiry signals put a lot of wasted traffic on the Internet as well as waste computer time of recipients. Owners of personal networks tell me even their firewalls report constant attempts to breach. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We had some excitement today here on the CableOne system. Around 1 PM some damn fool customer 'gave birth' to a 'worm', thinking it would shut things down. Well, it did. About five minutes after he released the worm, CableOne gave a loud and boisterous 'hiccough'. The tech support center cleaned it up pretty fast, but a large number of their customers (including myself) got bumped in the process. All we could get was the 'registration page' which is always offered up when a new piece of equipment is put on someone's personal network (such as a router, etc). And, clicking on the 'registration page' returned a message saying 'registration is not available right now, try in a few minutes'. All of us who were affected had to reboot our entire systems, the cable modem of course, the routers and whatever. I guess CableOne identified who the moron customer was who did it and gave him much hell. I first discovered I was down when the local CableOne office here in town called me and said "the techs do not know what is going on just yet, but _everyone_ is getting that registration page and can't go further than that. We will call you back as soon as we get word." About five or ten minutes later, she called again and said to close it all down, reboot it and try again. I did, and all was fine. I wanted to know a bit more, of course, so I called the Phoenix tech support center. (Due to the commotions the hold time was about 20 minutes, which is quite unusual.) The techs told me about the 'hiccough' and said they were encouraging everyone to make certain they had the latest firewall and anti-malware stuff installed. PAT] ------------------------------ From: GlowingBlueMist Subject: Re: 10base-T & POTS in same Cat-5 cable? Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 12:35:45 -0500 Organization: SunSITE.dk - Supporting Open source DaveC wrote in message news:0001HW.BE9508D6000D9A6AF04075B0@news.sonic.net: > Is it acceptable to use 1 pair in a Cat-5 cable for POTS when 2 pair > are being used for 10base-T? Wondering about cross-talk, etc., > introducing noise between these two. > Thanks, > Please, no "Go Google this" replies. I wouldn't > ask a question here if I hadn't done that already. > DaveC > me@privacy.net > This is an invalid return address > Please reply in the news group No problem if you use 10base-T , usually none on 100base-T, but not compatible if you plan to use or upgrade to 1000base-T which some computers switches and routers are now supporting. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2005 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 V24 #185 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Thu, 28 Apr 2005 20:12:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 186 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson NYS AG Spitzer Again; This Time vrs Spyware/Malware (Danny Burstein) VOIP: 911 - Vonage vs Time-Warner Roadrunner (rodneyg@carolina.rr.com) RBOCs Change Tone on VOIP E911 (Jack Decker) FCC To Require 911 for VoIP (Jack Decker) Jeff Pulver Responds to FCC Chairman Martin's Comments on VoIP (Decker) Kings of Spin (Jack Decker) Spam Canned? Not Yet, Say Americans (Lisa Minter) Servers Compromised All Over the Globe (Lisa Minter) Report: FTTP Connections to Quintuple by 2009 (Telecom dailyLead USTA) Spam Mentioning "242 W. 36th St" (NOTvalid@surplus4actors.INFO) A Question From Italy (Wildelynx Vox Versus) Re: The End of Analog TV (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: The End of Analog TV (Lisa Hancock) Re: Politics in Telecom (Steve Sobol) Re: Politics in Telecom (Henry) Re: VoIP (Scott Dorsey) Re: VoIP (Robert Bonomi) Re: Main Web Site Hackers Are Schoolboys, Watchdog Says (mc) Re: 10base-T & POTS in same Cat-5 cable? (David Clayton) Re: Access Gateway (sfx96-groups@yahoo.com) Re: Some Fear Law Would Create National ID Card (Lisa Hancock) Guess Who is on Microsoft's Payroll at $20k/mo.? (Patrick Townson) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Danny Burstein Subject: NYS AG Spitzer Again; This Time vrs Spyware/Malware Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 11:01:23 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC "Attorney General Eliot Spitzer today sued one of the nation's leading internet marketing companies, alleging that the firm was the source of 'spyware' and 'adware' that has been secretly installed on millions of home computers. "The suit against Los Angeles-based Intermix Media, Inc. is the most sweeping case to date involving programs that redirect web addresses, add toolbars and deliver pop-up ads ... "The lawsuit arises under the State's General Business Law, which prohibits false advertising and deceptive business practices, and New York's common law prohibitions against trespass ... http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2005/apr/apr28a_05.html _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Danny, is it true what I heard that back in January sometime, someone managed to rip off the 'panix.com' name? How long did it take for you guys to recover the name? Did you have to pay blackmail to the person who stole it, as was implied I could do if I wished to have internet-history.org back? PAT] ------------------------------ From: rodneyg@carolina.rr.com Subject: VOIP: 911 - Vonage vs Time-Warner Roadrunner Date: 28 Apr 2005 09:13:24 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com In Charlotte, Time-Warner offers Digital Phone as an additional service for their broadband customers. They claim that calling 911 on their service goes to the true E911 center, including display of your name and number. Unfortunately, their plan is $40 + $4 more for voicemail. There are no low-minute plans. I have Vonage, have activated my 911, but have not tested it (yet). Of course, according to all Vonage literature I can find, my 911 call from Vonage will not go to true E911, and will not include my name, address, and phone. Is it true/possible that Time-Warner can provide true E911 service, while Vonage can not? Who are the players (governments, phone carriers, etc.) that are at work in this situation? Thank you for any info you have. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Apparently, the only players in the game who can get 'true E-911' are the telcos themselves or any of their friends. Others have to pay for the service, and the cost was pretty steep until recently when under pressure SBC agreed to begin working with Vonage and other VOIP carriers. The reason this is so is because when 'true E-911' was being developed, telco had it built to _their_ specifications. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 13:10:15 -0400 Subject: RBOCs Change Tone on VOIP E911 http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=72967 RBOCs Change Tone on VOIP E911 The RBOCs now appear to be playing ball with VOIP providers on E911, but for a price (see VOIP 911 Still Trails Wireline). SBC Communications Inc. has been in negotiations with Vonage Holdings Corp. over the past two weeks, Light Reading has learned, while Verizon Communications Inc. Tuesday announced an E911 trial with VOIP providers, including Vonage, for this summer. Verizon says it has been working with various VOIP providers and vendors on a generic interface between a VOIP network and the public E911 system. The interface will allow 911 calls originating on VOIP networks to be automatically routed to one of the two Public Safety Access Points (PSAPs) in New York City. As the incumbent LEC, Verizon owns the pipe to the public E911 system and can sell access to other service providers in New York. "Once it is up and running, we'll be taking discreet steps to make it available elsewhere," says Verizon spokesperson Mark Marchand. Verizon operates in 29 states and the District of Columbia. SBC will likely offer Vonage an E911 interface similar to Verizon's, once the two work out their differences. The fact that the two are talking at all is progress, considering their rocky start. "Let's be real about where they started from," says Vonage spokesperson Brooke Shulz. "The first answer they gave us was 'No, we're not going to sell it to you.' " Full story at: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=72967 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 13:12:51 -0400 Subject: FCC To Require 911 for VoIP http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=13000002LZPM By Elizabeth Millard The FCC has expressed concern after hearing about lawsuits against Vonage, in which users sued the company for inadequately warning them about the potential inability to dial 911 through its services in an emergency. The Federal Communication Commission said it will move ahead with developing a plan to require emergency 911 calling capability on VoIP phones. The FCC's announcement to have 911 in place for all phones comes after Verizon and SBC already have stated that they will speed the process of providing VoIP access to 911. Despite such movement within the industry, FCC chairman Kevin Martin said he still will propose requirements for providers to ensure that the actions are going forward. Full story at: http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=13000002LZPM ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 13:46:06 -0400 Subject: Jeff Pulver responds to FCC Chairman Martin's comments on VoIP Commentary from The Jeff Pulver Blog: http://192.246.69.231/jeff/personal/index.html April 27, 2005 'Help! I Need Somebody!'... But do we really need Somebody to Micromanage Emergency Response Solutions for IP-Based Communications? Last night I read with some concern several news accounts of a comment FCC Chairman Martin made yesterday regarding application of emergency response obligations on VoIP service providers. Now, to be clear, I have no problem with the adoption of appropriately-tailored rules establishing guidelines for implementation of an emergency response system for IP-based communications providers. Who could argue with the promotion of such a public good? As I've said repeatedly, IP technology will allow for the establishment of next-generation emergency response capabilities that will dwarf anything we currently see on traditional telecom networks. In fact, the Global IP Alliance, which I helped to found, is now taking the lead to develop a global IP-based Emergency Response System. It is my hope that this global effort will allow users to hit a single button and immediately activate appropriate language translations, notify appropriate points of contact and emergency responders, transmit individualized medical histories and special circumstances, etc. New rules designed in such a way so as not to disrupt new technology and services but ensure the public good should be acceptable to both industry and government. Cookie-cutter application of old rules to IP-based communications, however, could tend to stifle new technology and innovation and interfere with the ability of IP-based communications providers to develop superior emergency response systems. My preference of course is that industry take the lead to develop non-proprietary emergency response systems that are most suitable to promotion of IP technology while promoting the broadest public good. Short of that, I would hope that regulators, as they inject their authority over IP-based communications, look at IP technology with a fresh eye and an understanding of the differences between IP-based communications and traditional telecom networks. One area where I think it is appropriate for government intervention would be to ensure that unaffiliated IP-based communications providers have access to the "selective routers" and other infrastructure currently controlled largely by incumbent carriers. I would hate to think that those that control necessary infrastructure could stand in the way of establishment of a workable emergency response capability by IP-based communications providers. Certainly, lives should not be lost so that certain providers might be able to maintain a competitive advantage or point to the inadequate capabilities of unaffiliated IP-based communications providers. Another area for government oversight would be to ensure that PSAPs do not block the use of administrative access lines for nomadic emergency response services. These administrative access lines provide a critical interim solution while the IP-based communications industry moves forward rapidly to develop the technological means for the provision of emergency services to nomadic end users. I'm curious to see the fruits of Chairman Martin's statement and I trust that he will not simply "react" to current fears as he and his colleagues weigh in on emergency response solutions that might implicate IP-based communications. Any regulator involvement must continue to promote innovation and advance the promise of IP-based communications while simultaneously promoting the public good and allowing IP technology to improve emergency response solutions. ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 17:34:29 -0400 Subject: Kings of Spin I think all newly-elected legislators ought to be required to take a seminar on "What are astroturf groups, what do they do, and how are they funded?" before they are allowed to vote on legislation. You would think legislators would start to recognize these phony (no pun intended) efforts for what they are after a while, just as many of us can figure out which of our incoming e-mail messages are likely to be spam the minute we see the subject lines. And I still say the USF is nothing but corporate welfare that ought to be abolished post haste! http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/62890 Kings of Spin VoIP taxes and landline fee hikes good for Hispanics, really ... A few weeks ago, a group dubbed the "Keep Universal Service Fund (USF) Fair" Coalition congratulated FCC Commissioner Martin on his new post, suggested the USF fees you pay be increased 40%, and that VoIP service should be taxed. The group insists such a move would be a boon to seniors, hispanics, families with disabilities, and consumers. Unfortunately, as Techdirt and the IP list note, the group is just another PR front outfit funded by the bell telephone companies, orchestrated by the controversial Bell PR agency Issue Dynamics. Bruce Kushnick consistently tracks such Bell efforts to convince consumers to support initiatives that often are against their best interests (higher fees, higher taxes, less competition). Usually by operating through groups with very pro-consumer sounding names. Take a peek at the website , which proclaims "more than 70,000 consumers have visited the coalition’s website and filed comments with the FCC." Article + reader comments at: http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/62890 ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Spam Canned? Not Yet, Say Americans Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 21:04:26 -0500 So, did the CAN SPAM act passed by the feds awhile back help to reduce the amount of spam flowing to inboxes all around the world? Not a bit, say its biggest critics, who note that among other things, lethargy and quarreling among many netters has only made the problem get much worse. http://www.viruslist.com/en/news?id=1222512 ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Servers Compromised All Over the Globe Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 21:06:08 -0500 It used to be in the old days (like six months or a year ago?) that we were told to not respond to phish inqiries and that by staying out of 'bad neighorhoods' on the net (that is, refusing to go to certain sites) we would be okay. But the phishers got tired of waiting for us suckers to come to them, so now they come to us, by tricking us and moving the road signs around in the commons. http://www.viruslist.com/en/news?id=155636876 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 12:46:06 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Report: FTTP Connections to Quintuple by 2009 Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 28, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21181&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Report: FTTP connections to quintuple by 2009 BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * BT picks suppliers for next-generation network * SBC sings new tune with music Web site * Panelists: Today's telecom customers want more than just voice service * Comcast to trade Dallas cable to Time Warner * AOL tests dial-up price cut * Nextel, Alcatel, Comcast report earnings USTA SPOTLIGHT * Now Available: VOIP Packet and Network Security Guide EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Microsoft's TV strategy faces piracy hurdle REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Texas House opens market for TV competition * Bush signs law calling for prison terms for illegal file-swappers Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21181&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@surplus4actors.INFO Subject: Spam Mentioning "242 W. 36th St" Date: 28 Apr 2005 09:54:46 -0700 You may wish to search the BODY of your incoming spam for "242 W. 36th St" My wife has been getting spam every day saying: "To stop all future mailings, follow the link below or send your email address to: Member Services 242 W. 36th St,12th floor New York, NY 10018 (866) 872-6022" She sent me with her Email address to 242 W. 36th St,12th floor New York, NY. I went last week. It is an unrelated business there. They know nothing about spam. Business there is in TV production company. I called (866) 872-6022 and only an answering machine answers. I asked that they give correct address in their out-going message. This week my wife and I were in the area. I am legally blind and have trouble reading the building directory. Therefore I asked my wife to examine directory, she says there is NO "Member Services" listed!!! Again I called (866) 872-6022. There was NO correct address in their out-going message. I have been calling from payphones on street as I have a lot of business to do in the West 30s and 40s in NYC. I tell them to put correct address in their out-going message. When it their area I have been calling maybe every 30 minutes, hoping to get the correct address but it is never given. I realize that there is a surcharge to them of perhaps as much as fifty cents on every call to their toll-free number from a payphone. But all I want is the correct address. Could I perhaps be mis-dialing? Could others please call and ask that correct address be put in their out-going message? To avoid your private phone number being harvested, I recommend that you too call from a payphone. Comments? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you, as a good citizen who is merely trying to be helpful. I am sure other readers will be inspired by your tireless efforts to get the correct address on their recorded message for other folks to use. And it is good that you are using pay phones whenever you can. Okay folks, _you know the routine by now_. Let the user of 866-872-6022 know about the error of his ways. PAT] ------------------------------ From: wildelynx@inwind.it (Wildelynx Vox Versus) Subject: A Question From Italy Date: 28 Apr 2005 08:47:55 -0700 Good morning, My name is Luigi, I'm a junior voice engineer in a TLC company. I'm seeking some .pdf books, or good documentation, for to study the switch Nortel DMS 100 ... it'is my first experience with this product. You could help me? Molte grazie. Luigi ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: The End of Analog TV Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 03:09:36 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Anyone have any idea what the converter boxes for NTSC sets will cost? And, how many folks will it affect? Seems like if an NTSC set is on cable, the cable provider will have to provide the solution and may very well already be ready to do just that. I recently switched our living room set out to HDTV (and we are *really* glad we did) but our bedroom set is NTSC. I suppose our situation is not unusual. Also, I thought there was some 85% "rule" that had to occur in a given market to switch off NTSC. The downside of all this is that no broadcaster will be forced to provide HTDV even after going digital. That will be up to the marketplace, or so it seems. And, my local cable company does not even carry all the local (Los Angeles) broadcast stations that presently have over-the-air HDTV. That I find to be really, really odd. Monty Solomon wrote: > The end of analog TV > Will America's favorite technology really go dark next year? > By Michael Rogers > Columnist > Special to MSNBC > Depending on the outcome of discussions in Congress, television as we > know it may end at exactly midnight Dec. 31, 2006. > That's the date Congress targeted, a decade ago, for the end of analog > television broadcasting and a full cutover to a digital format. If > enforced, that means that overnight, somewhere around 70 million > television sets now connected to rabbit ears or roof-top antennas will > suddenly and forever go blank, unless their owners purchase a special > converter box. Back when the legislation was written, New Year's Eve > 2006 probably looked as safely distant as the dark side of the > moon. But now that date is right around the corner and Congress and > the FCC are struggling mightily to figure out what to do. > Congress, however, left itself a loophole in the 1996 legislation, and > could actually let the cut-off date slide by. But powerful lobbyists > now are pressing legislators to set a "date certain" for the analog > lights-out. The debate over when to throw the switch is a strange brew > of big money, high technology, homeland security and a single, > unanswerable question: just how angry are the couch potatoes going to > be? It's also a textbook example of why the future almost never > happens as fast as technologists promise. > It all started back in the Eighties, when the Japanese shocked > American consumer electronics companies with trade-show displays of > high definition television sets that delivered razor-sharp images and > stunning audio. Everyone from Congress to the Wall Street Journal > raised outcries: America's favorite technology was being taken over by > the then-fearsome Japan Inc. As a result, a group of American > companies formed the "Grand Alliance" that leapfrogged the Japanese > technology by inventing digital HDTV. Thus, early on, HDTV invoked not > just pretty pictures, but national pride and economic > development. (Ironically, Zenith, the most all-American commercial > participant in the Grand Alliance, is now South Korean-owned.) > One drawback to the U.S. version of HDTV was that to make it work, all > broadcast television (not just high-definition) would have to convert > to digital, meaning that every American television set manufactured > since 1946 would be rendered obsolete. To ease the transition, > Congress generously gave all television broadcasters additional > channel space so that they could keep broadcasting their analog > signals while they installed and launched their digital channels. The > deal was that they would give up their old channels when the > transition was done. That part worked: Over 1400 broadcasters now > transmit in digital as well as analog, reaching 99 percent of the > U.S. television market. > During the same period consumers were supposed to buy digital > television receivers. That part didn't work. > http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7593620/ ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: The End of Analog TV Date: 28 Apr 2005 06:46:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Monty Solomon wrote: > During the same period consumers were supposed to buy digital > television receivers. That part didn't work. The life of a TV set could be anywhere between five and thirty-five years. There's a heck of a lot of old TV sets out there still in service, some surprisingly old. Many people use old B&W portables as spare room or attic TVs. Why the heck should consumers be forced to upgrade to get the same old broadcast garbage? There are also a lot of TV viewers out there who don't watch a lot of TV. Their TV sets last a long time. They don't have cable. What will become of them? Ironically, back in the 1950s, the choice of what color TV transmission protocol was determined on compatibility with existing B&W sets, even though there were far fewer sets out there. I guess the selfish technocrats and greedy businesses just can't wait to get their mitts on the radio frequencies to play with. It amazes me that the more cable channels they offer to me the less TV I watch. They just throw out utter junk, and get rid of the little good stuff they once had. It duplicates each other -- "Cheers" is broadcast and cablecast on numerous channels. And for something I pay and pay dearly for they throw in tons of commercials -- more than commercial TV does. But they make a heck of a lot of money doing this. ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Politics in Telecom Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 20:21:33 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Steve Sobol wrote: >> This particular perk happened to be different. It was supposed to be >> available to anyone. > The New Deal social programs were supposed to be available to anyone. > But in many places throughout the country it sure helped to be a loyal > Democrat, especially if you wanted a job helping to administer such > programs. Yeah, I know. But people *had* been getting into this particular conference without regards to politics, AIUI, up until now. JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: Politics in Telecom Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 06:48:55 +0300 Organization: Elisa Internet customer wrote: > it sure helped to be a loyal Democrat, especially if you wanted a > job helping to administer such programs. 'To the victor belong the spoils', a time-honoured tradition in American politics. And by the way: how many loyal Democrats do you think are administering federal programs today? Cheers, Henry [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Only those whose job is protected by Civil Service, and even so, they know to keep their mouths shut before some bogus reason comes up to get them fired also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: VoIP Date: 28 Apr 2005 09:47:24 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Choreboy wrote: > For several months I've been getting calls with spoofed Caller IDs. I > understand spoofing requires either VoIP or a PBX system with DSL. No, you could do it with ISDN too. There are dozens of ways to do it. Caller ID information is not reliable. > Can anybody with cable internet access and suitable software make VoIP > calls? Yes. > The other day I received a wrong-number call from an exchange belonging > to Level 3 Communications. Among other services, they offer residential > VoIP services through wholesalers such as ISPs and cable operators. I'm > confused. Does a consumer need these services to use VoIP? To use VoIP, you need an account with a VoIP provider, you need a VoIP box in your home, and you need fairly wideband internet access. It is very profitable for the ISP to bundle the VOiP services along with the rest of their services, and outsource them to a provider like Level3, just like they outsource mail and news services in most cases today. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: VoIP Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 02:58:08 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Choreboy wrote: > For several months I've been getting calls with spoofed Caller IDs. I > understand spoofing requires either VoIP or a PBX system with DSL. > Can anybody with cable internet access and suitable software make VoIP > calls? > The other day I received a wrong-number call from an exchange belonging > to Level 3 Communications. Among other services, they offer residential > VoIP services through wholesalers such as ISPs and cable operators. I'm > confused. Does a consumer need these services to use VoIP? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't think either 'VOIP' or 'PBX system' > have anything to do with it. If I understand correctly what I have > read here in the Digest, it requires a 'PRI' type thing; that is, a > multi-channel set of lines going to DID, or Direct Inward Dialing, Would you believe "DOD" -- direct *OUTWARD* dial? "DID" trunks handle incoming calls only. "DOD" trunks handle outgoing calls only. "DID/DOD" trunks handle both. Caller-id data _origination_ occurs only for outgoing calls. > which would, I guess, be similar to a PBX arrangement. Some sort of a 'switch', usually a PBX-equivalent, is required to handle DID / DOD trunks. Then there are the "big boys" -- who have SS7-compatible switches, which are a C.O.-equivalent, rather than PBX-equivalent, device. > Companies who have those lines _can_ set the caller ID to be > whatever is appropriate in their instance. Sometimes the telco 'filters' what CID data the company can send, sometimes not. When "not", an unscrupulous company can set the ID info to _anything_. Unfortunately, the "lowest-priced" PRI providers are the ones least likely to do filtering, *and* are the ones that said unscrupulous companies are most likely to use. > I suspect the fact that the ID shown was that > company may have been just coincidental. You do need either cable > internet or DSL to use VOIP; regular 'dialup' lines are just not wide > enough or fast enough to do VOIP. But other than having DSL or cable, > VOIP takes nothing especially fancy; just an adapter box from the > place where you get the VOIP service and any regular telephone > instrument will do the job. And if you planned on totally getting > rid of your landline phone taking VOIP instead, that is generally > not possible with DSL, since most telcos will not give stand-alone > DSL. Unless you buy SDSL service, which is _always_ delivered on it's own pair. Unless you get your DSL from MCI, Covad, or New Edge Networks -- or a 'reseller' of any of those carriers -- all of whom offer dedicated-pair ADSL. Unless Qwest is your ILEC. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I _defy you_ to pick up your phone right now and talk to the first service rep who answers and order SDSL service. They will not know what you are talking about; probably no one in the vicinity will know. And if you _do_ order it satisfactorily from MCI, Covad, New Edge or others, then God bless you; it will be extraordinarily expensive and if your intent was to save money by going with VOIP instead of landline, you've completely killed that plan. In essence -- in real life practice and experience -- you cannot get stand alone DSL (and pay your VOIP bill each month on top of that) in any reasonable cost-effective way. After arguing with the service reps for some period of time on the matter, you will decide cable is a better and less expensive way to go. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Main Web Site Hackers Are Schoolboys, Watchdog Says Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 20:25:19 -0400 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) > The question is what is to be done about it. What needs to be done is that computer law and ethics need to be taught, or at least mentioned, in middle school. Schoolboys are constantly being misinformed by other schoolboys. They're told that they can't incur any serious punishment, and that a glamorous career awaits them if they become "3l33t hAX0Rs". ------------------------------ From: David Clayton Subject: Re: 10base-T & POTS in same Cat-5 cable? Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 13:25:21 +1000 Organization: X-Privat NNTP Server - http://www.x-privat.org On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 12:35:45 -0500, GlowingBlueMist wrote: > DaveC wrote in message > news:0001HW.BE9508D6000D9A6AF04075B0@news.sonic.net: >> Is it acceptable to use 1 pair in a Cat-5 cable for POTS when 2 pair are >> being used for 10base-T? Wondering about cross-talk, etc., introducing >> noise between these two. > No problem if you use 10base-T , usually none on 100base-T, but not > compatible if you plan to use or upgrade to 1000base-T which some > computers switches and routers are now supporting. 1000base-T uses all 4 pairs in a CAT-5 cable, so that's out -- and also "beware" of certain switches that use the (previously) unused pairs for externally powering Ethernet equipment. I have only experienced problems with some digital PBX phones when using a pair in a CAT-5 data cable running 10/100 Ethernet, analog seemed to be ok even on long runs (50M+). Regards, David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@XYZ.myrealbox.com Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. (Remove the "XYZ." to reply) Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have. ------------------------------ From: sfx96-groups@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Access Gateway Date: 28 Apr 2005 01:37:23 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Well, it can mean a number of things, but generally speaking you can think of it as an interface (hardware and software) that allows one network to connect to another network for the purpose of transmitting information. This is referred to as "internetworking." Computer networks use gateway servers, bridges, and routers to provide this function. Within telecomm the devices are technically different and are generically referred to as Network-to-Network Interfaces (NNI). Physically, they are adapter cards sitting in a rack in a telecom cabinet. An example that comes to mind is the Internet access gateway many mobile phone service providers employ in their networks to allow subscribers to use text messaging (SMS and MMS) to send messages to email addresses on the Internet. You include a gateway code in your message header, and that tells the SMS/MMS server that instead of sending the message to another cell phone, route it through the access gateway to the Internet. I'm sure their are many other examples (Wi-Fi networks interfacing to the Internet, etc.), but that is one I have recently investigated. Hope this helps. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Some Fear Law Would Create National ID Card Date: 28 Apr 2005 07:03:18 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Monty Solomon wrote: > By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff > WASHINGTON -- Congress is poised to pass a law that would make > sweeping changes to the nation's system for issuing driver's licenses > by imposing stringent requirements on states to verify the > authenticity of birth certificates, Social Security cards, legal > residency visas, and bank and utility records used to obtain a > license. Many states do this now. It's virtually impossible to live in this day and age without an official state issued ID card -- either a driver's license or state ID card. (Some states issue an official ID card for those who don't have a license). Other IDs like credit cards or employer work-IDs are no longer accepted. This includes even when you are paying cash up front for something -- they still want ID to see that you are who you claim you are. I'm a little troubled by this. Why can't someone have some anonymity in their life? If I go to a doctor and pay the $75 in cash up front, why do they need to see ID? Even when you rent a storage locker and pay in advance they want ID. > Touted as an antiterrorism measure, the "Real ID Act" would also > overturn laws in nine states that allow illegal immigrants to obtain > driver's licenses. This country has to come to terms with its CONTRADICTORY policies of illegal immigrants. On the one hand, they expend a great deal of effort keeping illegals out. But once they're here, they're afforded lots of benefits and rarely get kicked out, and that's not fair to those waiting through proper channels for a quota slot. Illegal aliens cost some places big money since they have to provide services but the illegals tend to be "underground" and not pay any taxes nor are counted for reimbursement. On the other hand, illegals fill employment needs for jobs more established Americans refuse to take. A lot of business interests very much illegals to be left alone. > The law, some say, would effectively turn the new driver's license > into a national identification card. Its chief champion, House > Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, says > the measure would help prevent terrorists from fraudulently gaining > official documents that would allow them to enter the country and move > freely. The driver's license is pretty much already a national ID. However, I don't agree with the above. Terrorists are not isolated and are bankrolled; as such, they can spend the money needed to beat the system. Further, the existing system has and will continue to have more holes than a screen door -- making these ID cards won't help. As to "moving about freely", will the govt establish official checkpoints at various places? "Your papers? No papers? You will have to come with us?" > Terrorists have "used almost every conceivable means of entering the > country," Sensenbrenner said in a statement provided by an aide. > "They have come as students, tourists, and business visitors. They > have also been [legal permanent residents] and naturalized US > citizens. They have snuck across the border illegally, arrived as > stowaways on ships, used false passports, and have been granted > amnesty. Terrorists have even used America's humanitarian tradition > of welcoming those seeking asylum. We must plug these gaps." How many terrorists have entered this country? Counting all those methods described above, it appears to be a very great many. ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: Guess Who Works for Microsoft With a Salary of $20k/mo. ? Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:04:57 -0500 This is not a telecom-related topic; it is more of a 'continue to kick Microsoft around' matter. Microsoft is a very influencial employer in the Redmond, Washington area. You may have read in the news recently where Microsoft had decided to 'go soft' on civil unions and 'gay marriage' as they are currently under discussion in the State of Washington. Ballmer and Gates say they 'just recently' decided on that course of action. But the GLEAM organization at Microsoft and AmericaBlog say that is not quite the case. 'Just recently', I mean ... it turns out that Ralph Reed, a very conservative Christian evangelical has been in the employ of Microsoft as an 'advisor' to Bill Gates for more than a year now, at a salary of $20 K _per month_ , with documentation in the form of his pay stubs, etc. Shame, shame, shame! Read the story on Americablog here: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/microsoft-paying-religious-right.html ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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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 V24 #186 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Thu, 28 Apr 2005 23:38:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 187 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Verizon Reports Continued Strong Results With EPS Growth 8.6 (Solomon) Infinity Tries All-Podcasting Radio Format (Monty Solomon) Disney Suspends Video-On-Demand Trial (Monty Solomon) A Phone That Takes Dictation: Testing Voice-to-Text Function (Solomon) Ads That Know What You Want (Monty Solomon) Audit Finds Potential for Data Leaks (Monty Solomon) Michigan PSC Issues Order on VoIP (Jack Decker) Looking For Call Forwarding Service Similar to yac.com (Frans Keijer) Invitation to Montenegro, Italy, and Slovenia 2005 (IPSI Conferences) Re: The End of Analog TV (Danny Burstein) Re: Guess Who Works for Microsoft With a Salary of $20k/mo. ? (mc) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 15:16:41 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Reports Continued Strong Results With EPS Growth of 8.6 Another Record-Breaking Quarter at Verizon Wireless; Solid Increases in Wireline Data and Broadband; $1.8 Billion in First-Quarter Earnings NEW YORK, April 27 /PRNewswire/ -- FIRST-QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS Consolidated Results - 63 cents in diluted EPS (earnings per share), up 8.6 percent year-over- year from 58 cents in adjusted EPS (non-GAAP measure) Wireless - First-quarter Verizon Wireless record of 1.64 million net customer additions, up 18.0 percent; 45.5 million total customers, up 16.8 percent - Total quarterly revenues up 20.4 percent, to $7.4 billion; average monthly service revenue per customer up 2.1 percent; churn (customer turnover) of 1.33 percent, a new record low for the second consecutive quarter Wireline - Verizon's best-ever quarterly DSL line growth; 385,000 net new broadband connections (DSL and FiOS data customers), 3.9 million total broadband connections - Data revenues up 11.6 percent; long-distance revenues up 8.3 percent Notes: Growth percentages cited above compare first quarter 2005 with first quarter 2004. See the schedules accompanying this news release and http://www.verizon.com/investor for reconciliations to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for the non-GAAP financial measures included in this announcement. Discontinued operations in the prior-year quarterly period presented includes the operations of Verizon Information Services Canada, following an agreement to sell that business. Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) today reported first-quarter 2005 earnings of $1.8 billion, or 63 cents per diluted share, as quarterly revenues increased 6.6 percent, driven by the fifth consecutive quarter of more than 20 percent total revenue growth year-over-year at Verizon Wireless. The $1.8 billion in reported first-quarter 2005 earnings compares with $1.2 billion, or 43 cents per share, in the first quarter 2004. Verizon's 63 cents per share in first-quarter 2005 earnings increased 8.6 percent compared with 58 cents per share in the first quarter 2004, when 2004 results are adjusted for special items, primarily for pension settlements associated with a voluntary separation plan (non-GAAP measure). No special items or adjustments are included in first-quarter 2005 results. Consolidated revenues of $18.2 billion in the first quarter 2005 increased 6.6 percent, or $1.1 billion, compared with the first quarter 2004. Verizon Wireless contributed $7.4 billion, or 40.8 percent, of first- quarter 2005 consolidated revenues. This compares with wireless revenues of $6.2 billion, or 36.1 percent of consolidated revenues, in the first quarter 2004. Total wireless revenues have increased by more than 10 percent year- over-year for 11 consecutive quarters, including the 20 percent-plus year- over-year increases for the past five quarters. Operating revenues for Domestic Telecom, the company's U.S. wireline business segment, were $9.5 billion in the first quarter 2005, a 1.2 percent decrease compared with $9.6 billion in the first quarter 2004. This is the segment's lowest rate of revenue decline in nearly four years. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48665385 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 15:36:28 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Infinity Tries All-Podcasting Radio Format By SETH SUTEL AP Business Writer Infinity Broadcasting Corp., a terrestrial radio company whose business model is being challenged by the iPod phenomenon, is borrowing a page from its rival's playbook. Next month, Infinity will convert an underperforming station in San Francisco to a format that will play only "podcasts," or amateur recordings distributed via the Internet to listeners' iPods and other digital music players. Infinity, which is part of the Viacom Inc. media conglomerate that also owns CBS and MTV, announced Wednesday that it would convert its KYCY-AM station in San Francisco to the new format on May 16. Infinity said it would be the first time a radio station anywhere played an all-podcast format. Robert Unmacht, a radio consultant in Nashville who tracks radio formats, confirmed that it would be the first such station in the United States. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48698920 Infinity Broadcasting Launches KYOURADIO, the World's First Podcasting Radio Station, on Monday, May 16 - Apr 27, 2005 10:00 AM (PR Newswire) New Radio Platform To Be Featured on San Francisco's KYCY-AM And KYOURADIO.COM NEW YORK, April 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Joel Hollander, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Infinity Broadcasting, announced today the creation of KYOURADIO, the world's first-ever podcasting radio station. KYOURADIO's content will be created exclusively by its listeners and available in San Francisco at 1550 KYCY-AM and streamed online at http://www.kyouradio.com beginning on Monday, May 16. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48672968 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Something I guess I do not understand. What is the difference -- if any -- between 'podcasting' and the video/audio streaming from broadcasting stations which we have had for many years? Is it 'podcasting' (as opposed to 'streaming a/v') because there is no 'over the air' outlet as well (some of them are internet only) or is it because they sell little terminal devices which are limited in what internet they can recieve (streams only instead of general purpose internet). What, generally, is the technical distinction between 'streaming' and 'podcasting' if any? Someone wanted to sell me a computer; the best I can describe it is that it was very specialized, it was intended to be only a constant stream of whatver 'radio' you wanted to send out over the net. Mostly turn-key in operation, it was supposed to take about two hours daily to program a 24 hour program format. He said it was being sold for $7500 per unit with financing available and that I should be 'easily able' to sell advertisements on it to make my money back many times over. Look at http://www.ellsworthcountyradio.com to see an example of it at work. Or look at http://www.nextgen101.com for more details. I didn't (and still don't) know what to do about it, but I do not think Infinity is going to be first. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 22:22:02 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Disney Suspends Video-On-Demand Trial BURBANK, Calif. (AP) -- The Walt Disney Co. on Thursday suspended its MovieBeam video-on-demand service in the three cities where it was being tested, citing plans to upgrade the technology behind the system. Disney launched the service September 2003 in Salt Lake City, Jacksonville, Fla., and Spokane, Wash. It transmits movies over the same broadcast signal used to transmit television programs and stores them on a hard drive in the MovieBeam unit. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48741059 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 22:24:53 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: A Phone That Takes Dictation: Testing Voice-to-Text Function A Phone That Takes Dictation: Testing Voice-to-Text Function By WALTER S. MOSSBERG Cellphone text messaging, long popular abroad, is finally catching on in the U.S., especially among younger users. But cellphones are notoriously frustrating to use for entering text. If you're unfamiliar with using a numerical keypad to enter text (lucky you), spelling out a simple word like "dance," for example, would require pressing 3, 2, 66, 222, 33. Typing out full sentences using this method is even more annoying, leading users to get creative with abbreviations and short-spellings. "R u goin 2 b l8?" is text-speak for "Are you going to be late?" Phone makers have tried to solve this problem by squeezing little keyboards into the bodies of some phones. But these keyboards usually make phones bigger and bulkier than normal, and often show up only on costlier models, like the Treo or BlackBerry. This week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested a new phone that attempts to solve the text-entry problem in a novel way that doesn't involve typing, and can be used on a small, inexpensive phone with just a numerical keypad. This new phone lets you dictate your text messages by just speaking into the phone. The Samsung p207, $79.99 with a two-year contract from Cingular Wireless, has built-in "speech-to-text" technology: It turns what you say into text on the screen. This technology, called VoiceMode, was created by a small Massachusetts company called VoiceSignal Technologies Inc. If it works properly, VoiceMode should make composing a text message as simple as dictating a voice-mail message. Unfortunately, it doesn't work very well. In our tests, the system made so many errors requiring tedious corrections that it might have been faster for us to peck out our messages the old-fashioned way -- especially if we used the abbreviations and shorthand phrases so common among text-messaging fans. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20050427.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The Cingular Wireless lady here in Indpendence also sells Erickkson phones in addition to Nokia. The Erickkson phones she offers have a tiny little minature typewriter like attachment which plugs on the bottom of the phone; it is called a 'chat board'. Although it will (apparently) match up with the Nokia 6100 series phone like I have, the 'pinout' does not quite work the same way. It would be nice if it did, however. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 22:52:07 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Ads That Know What You Want By Joanna Glasner SAN FRANCISCO -- Picture this: You're shopping online for a new minivan, surfing automaker websites and buying guides. You then head to the homepage of your local paper to check out the headlines, and at the top of the page is an ad for a local car dealer, offering rebates and low financing on new minivans. If you're like many web users, you probably find it creepy that your local paper knows you're looking for new wheels. Even so, advertisers are betting you're far more likely to click on the car dealer's ad than a random banner for a dating site or DVD rentals. That's the theory behind behavioral marketing -- a growing niche in the online advertising industry focused on targeting promotional messages to an individual's online activities. Some might call such tracking across websites by a less flattering name: adware. Marketers call it a promising revenue stream. Behavioral marketing was a prominent buzzword at this week's Ad:Tech conference in San Francisco. The conference, held in the midst of a boom period for internet ad sales, devoted considerable resources to identifying ways for online publishers to generate bigger profits from advertising. Many of the most popular strategies involved mining more information about individuals. Targeted marketing is nothing new in the online world, as anyone who's ever received personalized book recommendations from Amazon.com can attest. However, by recording peoples' movements over networks of web properties rather than just individual sites, some marketers are betting that they will be able to improve response rates to online ad campaigns dramatically. http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,67365,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 23:21:07 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Audit Finds Potential For Data Leaks Audit finds potential for data leaks Resale computers still contained files By Christi Parsons and Rudolph Bush, Tribune staff reporters. Christi Parsons reported from Springfield, and Rudolph Bush reported from Washington. Tribune reporter Ray Long also contributed to this report. Warning of the potential for an embarrassing breach of security, state auditors said their recent review of used state computers warehoused for public sale found that nearly one-third had not had their hard drives wiped clean of information as required by Illinois law. In a little-noticed finding contained in Auditor Gen. William Holland's blistering report on Gov. Rod Blagojevich's Department of Central Management Services, the auditor said that several state agencies had shipped computers to the department for resale that contained potentially sensitive information. Among the computers Holland mentioned were some once used by the secretary of state's office, which tracks driver's licenses and a wide range of other personal data. Despite a state law requiring that hard drives be scrubbed clean before a state computer can be sold, 15 of 50 computers offered for resale by Central Management Services and tested by auditors during a two-week period last year had not been cleaned. On five of those units, auditors still couldn't access the hard-drive data, but on 10 others, they could. They accessed instant message programs, "my documents" folders, video games and, in the case of one University of Illinois computer, student homework. http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0504280242apr28,1,5203560.story ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 17:53:31 -0400 Subject: Michigan PSC Issues Order on VoIP The order is at this URL (PDF file): http://cis.state.mi.us/mpsc/orders/comm/2005/u-14073_04-28-2005.pdf The most significant part of the order is this: "The Commission requests the Legislature to amend the Michigan Telecommunications Act so as to specifically empower the Commission to assess the effect of Voice over Internet Protocol service on Michigan's citizens, to adopt non-intrusive registration and certification mechanisms by which customer complaints regarding voice communication services may be forwarded to the appropriate companies, and to ensure that all citizens of this state have the benefit of enhanced 9-1-1 services." In other words the Commission would like the our legislators to pass a law (as part of this year's revision of the Michigan Telecommunications Act) that would let them require VoIP providers to be licensed and, to some degree, regulated by the Commission. The problem with that is that the Federal Communications Commission has already ruled that VoIP will be regulated at the federal level, so what the MPSC is in effect asking the legislature to do is put Michigan into the position of being in a "turf war" with the federal government. If the legislators are smart they will not take this bait, at least not without taking a good hard look at what limitations are placed on the states by the federal ruling. Note that the comments filed in this case were made approximately one year ago, and things are changing in the VoIP industry on almost a daily basis. As I posted earlier today, there are reports out that the FCC will soon require VoIP companies to offer some type of 911 access. So these issues will get worked out at the federal level, and there is no good reason the state should attempt to impose licensing or regulation requirements beyond the normal consumer protection regulations that apply to all businesses. How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Frans.Keijer@gmail.com (Frans Keijer) Subject: Looking for Call Forwarding Service Similar to yac.com Date: 28 Apr 2005 17:06:21 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I am looking for a call forwarding service (in Europe or the US) that offers similar functionality like yac.com -- but that allows me to forward a call to Germany, even when it ORIGINATES in Germany. (The Ofcom doesn't allow this in the UK, therefore it doesn't work with the Yac Number service.) Any idea? :-) I need: - Instant call forwarding (I would be happy with the self recorded greeting the caller hears during the time it rings, like the Yac Number offers it) - Automated fax recognition at the same number (voice calls ring normally at my line, the fax beep will be recognized and any faxes stored in the faxbox or forwarded via e-mail) Cheers, F.K. ------------------------------ Subject: Invitation to Montenegro, Italy, and Slovenia 2005 From: IPSI Conferences Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 23:08:15 +0200 Dear potential Speaker: On behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to extend a cordial invitation for you to attend one of the upcoming IPSI BgD multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary conferences. The first one will take place in Sveti Stefan, Montenegro: IPSI-2005 MONTENEGRO Hotel Sveti Stefan (arrival: 1 October 05 / departure: 8 October 05) Deadlines: 1 May 05 (abstract) / 1 July 05 (full paper) The second one will take place in Venice, Italy: IPSI-2005 VENICE Hotel Luna Baglioni (arrival: 9 November 05 / departure: 14 November 05) Deadlines: 1 June 05 (abstract) / 1 August 05 (full paper) The third one will take place on the Bled lake, Slovenia: IPSI-2005 SLOVENIA Hotel Toplice (arrival: 8 December 05 / departure: 11 December 05) Deadlines: 1 July 05 (abstract) & 1 September 05 (full paper) All IPSI BgD conferences are non-profit. They bring together the elite of the world science; so far, we have had seven Nobel Laureates speaking at the opening ceremonies. The conferences always take place in some of the most attractive places of the world. All those who come to IPSI conferences once, always love to come back (because of the unique professional quality and the extremely creative atmosphere); lists of past participants are on the web, as well as details of future conferences. These conferences are in line with the newest recommendations of the US National Science Foundation and of the EU research sponsoring agencies, to stress multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research (M+I+T++ research). The speakers and activities at the conferences truly support this type of scientific interaction. One of the main topics of this conference is "E-education and E-business with Special Emphasis on Semantic Web and Web Datamining" Other topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Internet * Computer Science and Engineering * Mobile Communications/Computing for Science and Business * Management and Business Administration * Education * e-Medicine * e-Oriented Bio Engineering/Science and Molecular Engineering/Science * Environmental Protection * e-Economy * e-Law * Technology Based Art and Art to Inspire Technology Developments * Internet Psychology If you would like more information on either conference, please reply to this e-mail message. If you plan to submit an abstract and paper, please let us know immediately for planning purposes. Note that you can submit your paper also to the IPSI Transactions journal. Sincerely Yours, Prof. V. Milutinovic, Chairman, IPSI BgD Conferences ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Re: The End of Analog TV Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 00:15:56 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: > Why the heck should consumers be forced to upgrade to get the same > old broadcast garbage? but, but, but ... the Big Number of Purchases (of new tvs) will help all those American manufacturers of digital television sets, so lots of companies will hire lots of people here for lots of jobs. (that's sarcasm, son). _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Guess Who Works for Microsoft With a Salary of $20k/mo. ? Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 21:04:52 -0400 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) This is what happens when non-political organizations or companies decide to be politically active. They can try to play both sides of an issue and lose both sides. Why should Microsoft be either promoting or opposing gay marriage -- never mind both at once, incurring all the unpopularity of both positions? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The trouble right now for Microsoft is that for _so long, so many years_ they have taken a rather progressive, liberal attitude on these things. Now they claim they are trying to back out of it gracefully, but entirely. See our news on this topic in http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html today, in the lower right corner, news from http://salon.com the 'firing line' news items. 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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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 V24 #187 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:16:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 188 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson What Search Sites Know About You (Monty Solomon) Nokia Draws Bead on iPod People (Monty Solomon) Your Money Under More Scrutiny (Monty Solomon) IP-Based TV Will Revolutionize Entertainment (Monty Solomon) Rainbow Media to Launch VOOM 21 HD Originals (Monty Solomon) Re: A Phone That Takes Dictation Testing Voice-to-Text (Lisa Hancock) Re: VoIP (T. Sean Weintz) Re: VoIP (Robert Bonomi) Remembering the panix.com Hijacking (Lisa Minter) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 23:34:32 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: What Search Sites Know About You By Joanna Glasner For most people who spend a lot of time online, impulsively typing queries into a search engine has become second nature. Got a nasty infection in an embarrassing spot? Look up a treatment on your favorite search site. Obsessing about an ex? Try Googling his or her name. Chances are the queries will unearth some enlightening information. But while search engines are quite upfront about sharing their knowledge on topics you enter in the query box, it's not so clear what they know about you. As operators of the most popular search engines roll out more services that require user registration, industry observers and privacy advocates say it's become more feasible to associate a particular query with an individual. "You should think about what you put in that search box, because it may not be as anonymous as you think," said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com. It has long been standard practice, Sullivan noted, for search sites to employ cookies, which track activity on a computer's internet browser. But cookies don't identify a person by name. If two people access a site on the same browser, the cookie wouldn't distinguish between them. However, when people provide personal information to register for services offered by search engine companies, such as free e-mail accounts, news alerts or personalized homepages, they're no longer anonymous. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67062,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 01:19:56 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Nokia Draws Bead on iPod People Reuters 11:28 AM Apr. 28, 2005 PT Nokia expects to sell 25 million smartphones this year -- handsets offering limited PC-type functions like e-mail -- more than doubling the 12 million it sold in 2004, according to a forecast by company CEO Jorma Ollila. He also said at a company event in Amsterdam that the company expects to ship 100 million camera phones in 2005, and that Nokia would sell 40 million phones with MP3 digital music players this year, compared with 10 million in 2004. By comparison, Apple said it sold 5.3 million iPods in the first three months of 2005 while Canon was the top seller of digital cameras in 2004, with 17 percent of the global market of 74 million units, according to research firm IDC. Nokia unveiled its N91 multimedia phone, which will have a 4-gigabyte hard drive that can store thousands of music files. The phone, which will also run on high-speed 3G and wireless LAN networks, is due out by the end of the year. Nokia said its other new phones, the N90 and the N70, will have two-megapixel cameras with high-quality Carl Zeiss lenses. The N90 will be in shops in the second quarter at a price of around 600 euros ($784), while the N70, also a 3G phone, will hit the shelves in the third quarter. Apple's original iPod retails for about 319 euros in Europe while Canon's cameras start at less than half the cost of the N90. The company launched the new N-series sub-brand to make the new phone lineup stand out as luxuries specifically designed for high quality photos, video and music. http://www.wired.com/news/gizmos/0,1452,67380,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 01:21:28 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Your Money Under More Scrutiny By Manu Joseph Pressured by anti-terror laws, banks will be spending billions of dollars over the next few years on software to counter money laundering. The software will automatically track suspicious financial transactions, but it will also monitor millions of innocuous ones, and may make it harder to cheat on your taxes. Thanks to the stringent requirements of the Patriot Act, enacted after 9/11 to choke the supply of terror funds, and the unambiguous threats of steep fines and even imprisonment of bank directors if their organizations facilitate money laundering, U.S. financial institutions are very enthusiastic about installing anti-money-laundering software. Between 2005 and 2008, American banks are forecast to spend about $14.7 billion on anti-money-laundering software, hardware, maintenance and other compliance-related activities, according to Neil Katkov, a Tokyo-based analyst with Celent Communications. Europe and Asia are expected to spend over $11.6 billion during that period. By 2006, 94 percent of large financial institutions in the United States will have installed anti-money-laundering, or AML, technologies, according to Celent. Already, the United States is the global driver of anti-laundering software. And the number of transactions reported to government agencies, like the United States' Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, is growing fast. In 2004, banks reported 14.8 million transactions to FinCEN. That's 600,000 reports more than in 2003, according to FinCEN's annual report for 2004 (.pdf). http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67249,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 09:43:27 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: IP-Based TV Will Revolutionize Entertainment IP-Based TV Will Revolutionize Entertainment; SBC calls for 'light-touch' regulatory approach to ensure consumers receive new technology quickly 20 April 2005, 10:02am ET SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 20, 2005--IP-based television will change the way consumers watch TV while opening a new competitive choice for millions, said Lea Ann Champion, senior executive vice president of IP Operations and Services for SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC) at a U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing about the future of new technology. Champion demonstrated the capabilities of IP-based video or IPTV for lawmakers and urged them to avoid imposing incumbent obligations on new entrants in the video services market that would discourage deployment of the new system. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200504201402_BWR__BW5581 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 09:45:19 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Rainbow Media to Launch VOOM 21 HD Originals Rainbow Media Holdings to Launch and Operate VOOM 21 HD Originals; Signs Major Distribution Agreement with EchoStar Communications Corporation JERICHO, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 29, 2005--Rainbow Media Holdings LLC: -- Greg Moyer and Nora Ryan Named Co-General Managers of VOOM 21 HD Originals -- VOOM HD originals will appear on DISH Network Rainbow Media Holdings LLC today announced that it will operate and launch the VOOM 21 HD Originals, an innovative suite of 21 high-definition channels, for distribution to cable operators and satellite TV providers. Rainbow also announced today that it has concluded its first major carriage agreement for the channels with EchoStar Communications Corporation, which will carry ten of the HD channels on its DISH Network, expanding to carry all 21 channels by 2006. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200504291248_BWR__BW5229 ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: A Phone That Takes Dictation: Testing Voice-to-Text Function Date: 29 Apr 2005 07:21:57 -0700 Monty Solomon wrote: > This week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested a new phone that > attempts to solve the text-entry problem in a novel way that doesn't > involve typing, and can be used on a small, inexpensive phone with > just a numerical keypad. This new phone lets you dictate your text > messages by just speaking into the phone. > Unfortunately, it doesn't work very well. Voice recognition technology still has a long way to go before it works. I don't like automated answering systems, but I much prefer working with Touch-Tone signals than voice commands which seem to be often misunderstood and less precise. The English language is a horrible thing to automate. Remember English developed from TWO distinct sources and is a blend of syntax, sounds, etc. How do you deal with "their there they're"? Years ago the hospital I worked at had automated voice dictation recording equipment via the telephone system. One dialed into the system, then dialed various codes to start/stop/playback the tape. The tapes were sent out for transcription. Note this was controlled by rotary phones. I believe dictation systems was one of the few things the Bell System allowed to be interconnected with their network. The PBX seized the incoming extension line in order to get the dial pulses, and passed them onto to the dictation system. I presume supervision was passed too. (Music for the PA system was also provided by independent playback though the PA system itself was Bell and part of the PBX.) ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: VoIP Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:24:52 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Choreboy wrote: > For several months I've been getting calls with spoofed Caller IDs. I > understand spoofing requires either VoIP or a PBX system with DSL. > Can anybody with cable internet access and suitable software make VoIP > calls? > The other day I received a wrong-number call from an exchange belonging > to Level 3 Communications. Among other services, they offer residential > VoIP services through wholesalers such as ISPs and cable operators. I'm > confused. Does a consumer need these services to use VoIP? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't think either 'VOIP' or 'PBX system' > have anything to do with it. If I understand correctly what I have > read here in the Digest, it requires a 'PRI' type thing; that is, a > multi-channel set of lines going to DID, or Direct Inward Dialing, > which would, I guess, be similar to a PBX arrangement. Companies who > have those lines _can_ set the caller ID to be whatever is appropriate > in their instance. I suspect the fact that the ID shown was that > company may have been just coincidental. You do need either cable > internet or DSL to use VOIP; regular 'dialup' lines are just not wide > enough or fast enough to do VOIP. But other than having DSL or cable, > VOIP takes nothing especially fancy; just an adapter box from the > place where you get the VOIP service and any regular telephone > instrument will do the job. And if you planned on totally getting > rid of your landline phone taking VOIP instead, that is generally > not possible with DSL, since most telcos will not give stand-alone > DSL. PAT] Caller ID CAN be spoofed using VOIP. Apperently SIP allows for this, and some VOIP providers leave this feature open for customers to use/abuse. I know hackers were spoofing caller ID over VOIP using the ASTERISK open source PBX system which lets you set all the nitty gritty SIP parameters -- apparently including the CLID string. From what I understand, some providers filter this at their switch, some don't ... PRI's are a standard type of high cap ISDN line (as opposed to BRI, the low cap vesrion). I think caller ID can be spoofed from EITHER type of ISDN line, assuming one has the right type of equipment plugged into it (which usually means a PBX switch) ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: VoIP Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 12:34:52 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Robert Bonomi wrote: > In article , Choreboy > wrote: >> For several months I've been getting calls with spoofed Caller IDs. I >> understand spoofing requires either VoIP or a PBX system with DSL. >> Can anybody with cable internet access and suitable software make VoIP >> calls? >> The other day I received a wrong-number call from an exchange belonging >> to Level 3 Communications. Among other services, they offer residential >> VoIP services through wholesalers such as ISPs and cable operators. I'm >> confused. Does a consumer need these services to use VoIP? >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't think either 'VOIP' or 'PBX >> system' have anything to do with it. If I understand correctly what >> I have read here in the Digest, it requires a 'PRI' type thing; >> that is, a multi-channel set of lines going to DID, or Direct >> Inward Dialing, >> Would you believe "DOD" -- direct *OUTWARD* >> dial? >> "DID" trunks handle incoming calls only. "DOD" trunks >> handle outgoing calls only. >> "DID/DOD" trunks handle both. >> Caller-id data _origination_ occurs only for outgoing calls. >> which would, I guess, be similar to a PBX arrangement. >> Some sort of a 'switch', usually a PBX-equivalent, is required to >> handle DID / DOD trunks. >> Then there are the "big boys" -- who have SS7-compatible switches, >> which are a C.O.-equivalent, rather than PBX-equivalent, device. >> Companies who have those lines _can_ set the caller ID to be >> whatever is appropriate in their instance. >> Sometimes the telco 'filters' what CID data the >> company can send, sometimes not. When "not", an unscrupulous >> company can set the ID info to _anything_. >> Unfortunately, the "lowest-priced" PRI providers are the ones least >> likely to do filtering, *and* are the ones that said unscrupulous >> companies are most likely to use. TELECOM Digest Editor continued: >> I suspect the fact that the ID shown was >> that company may have been just coincidental. You do need either >> cable internet or DSL to use VOIP; regular 'dialup' lines are just >> not wide enough or fast enough to do VOIP. But other than having >> DSL or cable, VOIP takes nothing especially fancy; just an adapter >> box from the place where you get the VOIP service and any regular >> telephone instrument will do the job. And if you planned on >> totally getting rid of your landline phone taking VOIP instead, >> that is generally not possible with DSL, since most telcos will not >> give stand-alone DSL. Mr. Bonomi continued: >> Unless you buy SDSL service, which is >> _always_ delivered on it's own pair. >> Unless you get your DSL >> from MCI, Covad, or New Edge Networks -- or a >'reseller' of any of >> those carriers -- all of whom offer dedicated-pair ADSL. >> Unless Qwest is your ILEC. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I _defy you_ to pick up your >> phone right now and talk to the first service rep who answers and >> order SDSL service. They will not know what you are talking about; >> probably no one in the vicinity will know. I guess I just deal with a better class of service rep than you do. I've _never_ had any problem ordering SDSL. And I've only done it more than a dozen times. Providers in CA, WA, FL, NY, and IL. Never dealt with New Edge; _have_ dealt with MCI, Covad, and several other no-longer-existent physical-services providers, e.g. 'northlight'. TELECOM Digest Editor continued: > And if you _do_ order it satisfactorily > from MCI, Covad, New Edge or others, then God bless you; it will be > extraordinarily expensive and if your intent was to save money by > going with VOIP instead of landline, you've completely killed that > plan. *ANY* dedicated internet connection with VoIP will be more expensive than a simple POTS land-line, This is a given. SDSL is generally more expensive -- yes, even "much more expensive" -- because of the 'class of service' provided with that physical transport. It doesn't _have_ to be, SDSL head-end equipment is no more expensive than ADSL gear is. The higher price tag generally buys you: Pro-active monitoring of circuit and head-end equipment, with vendor- initiated maintenance _before_ problems reach 'noticeable' levels LESS oversubscription of the upstream link(s). This means that you have a _much_better_ chance of getting all the bandwidth you need/want, *WHEN* you need/want it. *immediate* contact with _knowledgeable_ tech-support staff. none of this 'wait 30 minutes on hold, while being told how 'important your call is to us', crap. No 'first-line' droids who don't know how to deal with anything that isn't in one of the 'scripts' they had to memorize. But actual _thinking_ people. The types who _don't_ suggest that you need to restart Windows when the problem is that traceroute is dieing two hops _upstream_ of the DSLAM. If ones own time has any significant value, the 'opportunity cost' of the time spent "waiting on hold", with the typical consumer ISP, reaches significant figures in very short order. Cable companies seem to be especially bad in _this_ respect. Dealing with *one* recent problem, where their cable internet service was totally out for almost a week, my folks spent nearly _twelve_hours_ "on hold", trying to get the problem fixed. As semi-retired professional business consultants, their time bills at only $80/hr. That's a 'cost' of nearly $1,000, above and beyond the amounts invoiced. If paying an _additional_ $75/month for service would have avoided the problem, they would have come out 'ahead' for the year. Unfortunately, they _don't_ have ANY choice for high-speed access. They're too far from the telco C.O. for DSL. And there is only the one cable company "in town". Well,"in town", sort-of. The customer support phones are answered in another state. "Business class" service costs more than bottom-of-the-bucket. If you grossly oversubscribe the uplink from the DSLAM -- and I've seen a full shelf of 24 ports (at 768k down) serviced by a _single_ T-1 -- your costs are relatively low. OTOH, 'business class' service often feeds four shelves of 768kbit ports with at 45mbit T-3. TELECOM Digest Editor continued: > In essence -- in real life practice and experience -- you cannot > get stand alone DSL (and pay your VOIP bill each month on top of that) > in any reasonable cost-effective way. After arguing with the service > reps for some period of time on the matter, you will decide cable is a > better and less expensive way to go. PAT] *THAT* depends on what your needs are. If you need _reliable_ amounts of bandwidth, especially uplink bandwidth, cable generally cannot deliver it. The sheer number of customers sharing the same limited capacity on the cable prevents it. Cable typically has several hundred -- up to a few _thousand_ -- customers sharing the circa 60mbit of cable capacity. And usually only a single T-3 feeding the head- end for that run. It doesn't take many 'bandwidth hogs' to saturate the upstream capacity. *Very*few* cable companies can provide you with more than a *single* IP address. Many cable companies _forbid_ running 'servers' of any sort in their contract. (Typical allocation of cable bandwidth is 10=15% for 'up' from the customer, and 85-90% for 'down' to the customer -- with servers usually generating much more outbound traffic than inbound, they chew up a disproportionate chunk of the 'up' bandwidth, adversely impacting all the other cable customers on the same run.) Virtually no cable company will give you more than a _single_ IP address. A fair number of cable companies do not offer the option of a true 'static' address. DHCP pools *only*. If you can get a static address, forget about getting 'reverse DNS' that reflects _your_ information. With, generally, a choice of *one* cable company in any locale, you have only a 'take it or leave it' choice. Some DSL providers, particularly the lowest-price ones, do make similar engineering decisions, and impose similar restrictions on use of their service. Doing so is one way of being able to hold costs down, so that you _can_ offer service at a 'cheaper' price-point. Virtually all DSL providers, however, offer a _much_wider_ range of services, at a correspondingly wider range of price-points, than cable companies do. They can do this because, unlike cable companies, there is _only_one_ customer on any given run of wire exiting the head-end. And, therefore, they *can* connect different customers -- on a customer-by-customer basis -- to different head-end equipment, providing different levels of service. They can put the _sustained_ high-bandwidth users -- with minimal 'over-subscription' -- all together on gear that is engineered to handle the sustained loads, and priced accordingly, while still advertising high-speed service, albeit 'grossly oversubscribed' to the casual user at a bargain price. Cable service _is_ "absolutely great" for the 'early adopters'. As long as the number of customers sharing the same 'run' from the head-end is small, it works superbly. On the other hand, there are routine complaints from cable subscribers in Chicago proper, that the "high-speed" service is nearly unusable from around 3:30 in the afternoon till on towards 10:00PM. That they get throughput of a whopping 60-100k bits/second download speed on their "advertised as multi-megabit" connection. It seems directly attributable to all the school-kids coming home and getting online to play games. "Too many users, not enough bandwidth" No way to 'fix' it, either, short of physically *re-wiring* the territory (the 'outside physical plant'), so that there are fewer customers per run from the head-end. The architecture of DSL 'scales' better, because there is *no* 'sharing' of the data connection between the customer and the head end. Thus, one customer cannot adversely affect the 'last mile' bandwidth available to another customer. Cable Internet isn't necessarily "bad", but there are more places, and more ways, where the quality of service can, _as_delivered_to_the_ customer_, get clobbered. *ANY* assertation that any particular technology choice is alway "better" is patent nonsense. One has to consider: 1) what the customer _requirements_ are 2) what the available alternatives are *in*their*area* 3) what the advantages/disadvantages of _those_ offerings are. In _my_ situation, 'cable' was simply *not* a viable alternative. Firstly, because until quite recently, the cable company in my area *DID*NOT* *OFFER* internet service. This _is_ an 'insurmountable barrier' to choosing cable internet service. Now that they do, their only offering is STILL not compatible with my needs I need multiple public-network IP addresses (NAT is not a viable option for technical reasons -- d*mn those protocols that put IP addresses _inside_ the data part of the packet!) and the cable company will only provide _one_ such address. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 02:17:12 EDT From: Lisa Minter Subject: Remembering the panix.com Hijacking After we here, (telecom and Townson) accidentally lost the internet-history.org domain and the company in Geneva, CH grabbed it (and still have done nothing with it other than illegally squat on it to prevent _us_ from using it), we did hear from the guy who grabbed it, offering to return it for $800. At first, it sounded a lot like the panix.com hijacking, and it does bear some similarities, but the key distinction is that Panix ownership never "expired", so there was no legal validity whatsoever to any other person's claims. But if Panix hadn't had powerful and ugly friends helping them, no doubt they'd have heard things like "well, it'll take a month or two to resolve, but if we put our expert programmer on it, at $500/day, you'll have it back in 48 hours" Two articles worth reviewing to get more aquainted with the hijacking at Panix are these: There's a half hearted article over at: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1781860,00.asp and some more stuff at: http://www.icann.org/correspondence/cole-to-tonkin-14mar05.htm This is not any official statement from Panix management about what happened. But an official statement from me might be "The internet just is not fun to use any longer. The piles of shit through the barnyard have long since exceeded the green pastures of the commons I have heard through ancient tales used to be here instead." Lisa Minter ------------------------------ 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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Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #479, April 29, 2005 (John Riddell) MPSC Asks Michigan Legislature to Amend the Michigan (Jack Decker) Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox Takes Action Against Vonage (Decker) Verizon Signs Additional Programming Deals for FiOS TV (Monty Solomon) Report: TV Phone Outlook Rosy (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) AOL Import/Export (CountFrederick) Dialogue Communications Abuse of Reverse Rate SMS (Gareth Morrissey) Re: VOIP: 911 - Vonage vs Time-Warner Roadrunner (Thor Lancelot Simon) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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. 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Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #479, April 29, 2005 Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 15:09:18 -0400 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 479: April 29, 2005 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/en/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** UTC CANADA: www.canada.utc.org/ ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Big Week at the CRTC ** Tariff Decisions to Be Fast-Tracked ** Telco Promotions Okayed, With Conditions ** Debate Begins on Local Service Deregulation ** CRTC Backs Off Floor Price Changes ** Government Amends Do-Not-Call Bill ** Telus-TWU War Escalates ** Telus Wants Quality Reports Revised ** Ottawa Opens New Spectrum ** CRTC Reduces RFP Value ** AT&T Names New Exec for Canada ** Shift Provides VoIP on SuperNet ** Rogers Launches Corporate 'Push' Email ** Entourage Quebec Techs Accept Contract ** Nortel to Buy U.S. Government Supplier ** Aliant Sales Edge Up ** Rogers Wireless Sales Soar BIG WEEK AT THE CRTC: The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission issued a flurry of important decisions and notices this week. TARIFF DECISIONS TO BE FAST-TRACKED: CRTC Circular 2005-6 announces procedures to reduce the time required to rule on retail tariff filings by the major incumbent telcos. The Commission says that within ten days of a filing it will reject the application, or give it interim approval, or begin a process aiming, in most cases, at a decision within 45 business days of the filing. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Circulars/2005/ct2005-6.htm ** The new procedures are similar to those proposed by Bell Canada last November (see Telecom Update #457) except that there is no provision for automatic approvals. ** The Commission has re-introduced the service standards for tariff applications it put in place three years ago but subsequently suspended. (See Telecom Update #346) TELCO PROMOTIONS OKAYED, WITH CONDITIONS: CRTC Telecom Decision 2005-25 lifts the 2003 moratorium on promotions for incumbent telcos' local services. Promotional rates must cover costs and must be available to all customers in a given rate band, not just competitors' customers. A promotion can last only six months, and must not lock customers in past that period. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2005/dt2005-25.htm DEBATE BEGINS ON LOCAL SERVICE DEREGULATION: CRTC Telecom Public Notice 2005-2 opens a proceeding to determine criteria for deregulating the incumbent telcos' retail local services. Various filings will take place between May and September, followed by a public consultation on September 26-29. A decision is expected in spring 2006. To comment, notify the Commission by May 4. ** Aliant's April 2004 application for local service forbearance (see Telecom Update #428) will be dealt with in this proceeding. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Notices/2005/pt2005-2.htm CRTC BACKS OFF FLOOR PRICE CHANGES: CRTC Telecom Decision 2005-27 eliminates many of the changes to floor prices for incumbent telco services that were initially proposed by the Commission in 2003 (see Telecom Update #405). In particular, the rules are based on Phase II costing, not retail rates. The new rules are not retroactive and will not affect existing customer contracts. ** Rates for standalone or bundled services must include the tariffed rates for any "essential/near-essential" services provided to competitors, and for any residential local services included in a bundle. The lowest term or volume rate must cover costs. Targeted pricing that would de- average rates within a given rate band is not permitted. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2005/dt2005-27.htm GOVERNMENT AMENDS DO-NOT-CALL BILL: The federal government has introduced amendments to its bill to set up a national do-not-call registry for telemarketers. The changes would exempt calls to established customers and clients, and from charities where certain conditions are met. They would also allow consumers to accept calls from charities while blocking commercial telemarketing. ** The amendments would also require a review of the Do-Not- Call List after five years. TELUS-TWU WAR ESCALATES: Both the Canada Industrial Relations Board and the Federal Court of Appeal have refused to issue orders blocking Telus from implementing "lockout" measures against the Telecommunications Workers Union. The telco put the measures into effect on Monday. (See Telecom Update #478) ** The TWU says it will charge Telus with violating collective bargaining laws and regulations, for emailing details of a proposed contract directly to employees. The union says the email is misleading because it omitted the "enormous concessions" employees would have to accept under Telus's offer. ** The union also issued a statement denying Telus's "outrageous allegation" that some company facilities have been sabotaged. TELUS WANTS QUALITY REPORTS REVISED: As we reported in Telecom Update #474, major telcos must this year give credits to subscribers for substandard service dating back to 2002. As a result, Telus has now asked the CRTC to adjust its service quality reports for July-December 2003, to omit the impact of near-simultaneous events that were out of its control -- forest fires, major flooding, and a serious cable cut in Vancouver. OTTAWA OPENS NEW SPECTRUM: Industry Canada has opened new spectrum in the 5 GHz range, and improved existing frequency bands to meet increasing demand for broadband wireless. ** A new government paper on Spectrum Utilization Policy for Licence Exempt Wireless LANs in the 5 GHz Range is available now at http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/insmt-gst.nsf/en/sf01158e.html. CRTC REDUCES RFP VALUE: The CRTC has amended its RFP for legal/economic assistance with the local forbearance proceeding to indicate that it now expects to pay between $250,000 and $500,000 for the work, half the original estimate. (See Telecom Update #478) AT&T NAMES NEW EXEC FOR CANADA: AT&T Corporation has named John V. Slamecka as Vice-President, AT&T Business Services for Canada, the Caribbean and the Latin American Region, replacing Penny Shaffer. He is based in Coral Gables, Florida. SHIFT PROVIDES VoIP ON SUPERNET: Shift Networks, a Calgary- based small-business VoIP supplier, and Strategic Information Systems, an IT supplier to aboriginal communities, have agreed to jointly provide hosted IP telephone service over Alberta SuperNet. ROGERS LAUNCHES CORPORATE 'PUSH' EMAIL: Rogers Wireless's new MyMail service delivers "push" email, calendar, and contacts to business customers on a range of wireless devices, using the Visto Enterprise Server. ENTOURAGE QUEBEC TECHS ACCEPT CONTRACT: Entourage installation and repair technicians in Quebec have voted to accept a new four-year contract with their employer, now a subsidiary of Bell Canada. 1,400 Ontario employees remain on strike. NORTEL TO BUY U.S. GOVERNMENT SUPPLIER: Nortel Networks has agreed to buy PEC Solutions for US$448 million. Last year PEC, a Virginia-based integrator that sells mainly to the U.S. government, had a profit of $16 million on revenue of $203 million. ALIANT SALES EDGE UP: Aliant reports first-quarter revenues of $524 million, 1.9% up from the same period last year. Local and long distance revenue fell to 50% of the total from 55%. Wireless sales rose 15%. Aliant's net income of $43.6 million was down 4.5% from last year. ROGERS WIRELESS SALES SOAR: Rogers Wireless revenues reached $875 million in the first quarter, 48% higher than a year ago. Revenues from the former Microcell made up three-fifths of the gain. Rogers says that data services will likely account for 10% of wireless revenues by year-end. Net income: $47 million. ** Revenue from Rogers' cable operations increased 7%. Rogers Communications had sales of $1.58 billion (up 25%) and a net loss of $46 million (down from $78 million). HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE Email ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at www.angustel.ca 2. The email edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an email message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the email edition, send an email message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending email to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's email address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' email addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2005 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please email ianangus@angustel.ca. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:37:39 -0400 Subject: MPSC Asks Michigan Legislature to Amend Telecom Act http://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/0,1607,7-159-16400_17280-116720--,00.html MPSC Asks Michigan Legislature to Amend the Michigan Telecommunications Act to Add Voice over Internet Protocol Consumer Protection Measures Contact: Judy Palnau (517) 241-3323 April 28, 2005 The Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) today issued an order asking the Michigan legislature to amend the Michigan Telecommunications Act to authorize it to address concerns raised about Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) service. VOIP is a developing technology that may be used to transmit voice conversations over the Internet. It is the subject of ongoing debates among state and federal regulators, legislators and the telecommunications industry. "Michigan residents using Voice over Internet Protocol deserve consumer protections," said MPSC Chairman J. Peter Lark. "Because the Michigan Telecommunications Act is silent on Voice over Internet Protocol service using the public switched telephone network, customers using this new technology do not have consumer protections that telecommunication customers have. As has already been demonstrated in Michigan and elsewhere, lack of 9-1-1 access using VOIP service is a serious concern. We are asking the Michigan legislature to amend the MTA and put safeguards in place for VOIP customers." The MPSC on March 16, 2004 started an investigation of VOIP in Michigan, asking for comments on VOIP issues in Michigan. The Commission received comments from 38 organizations and individuals. Comments included identification of known VOIP providers serving Michigan customers; the proper degree of regulation; telephone numbering resources; emergency calling; universal service fund; access charge structures; abbreviated and toll-free dialing; quality of service; and various technical issues. Today's MPSC order asks the Michigan legislature to authorize it to assess the effect of VOIP service over the public switched telephone network on Michigan citizens, to adopt non-intrusive registration and certification mechanisms by which customer complaints regarding voice communication services may be forwarded to the appropriate companies, and to ensure that all citizens of the state have the benefit of enhanced 9-1-1 services. The MPSC is an agency within the Department of Labor & Economic Growth. Case No. U-14073 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 15:37:04 -0400 Subject: Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox Takes Action Against Vonage I'm just passing along this press release ... don't shoot the messenger, please ... http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-29-2005/0003494550&EDATE= Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox Takes Action Against Vonage to Protect Internet Phone Customers http://www.michigan.gov/ag LANSING, Mich., April 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Attorney General Mike Cox announced today that New Jersey-based Vonage Holdings Corporation, a major provider of Internet-based telephone service, faces legal action for misleading consumers about the company's emergency 9-1-1 service. In a Notice of Intended Action (NIA) sent to Vonage Wednesday, Cox told the company it has failed to make it clear that customers do not have access to traditional 9-1-1 service. "Vonage needs to make sure its customers understand that normal 9-1-1 access may not be available to them," Cox said. "Emergency calls made through Vonage's service are often routed through call centers that may not be answered outside of regular business hours." Although Vonage advertises its "911 dialing" as a benefit, the feature has significant limitations compared to traditional phone service. Customers who use Vonage's service are not directed to operators who dispatch emergency vehicles. If emergency personnel do get the call, they may not be able to identify the caller's phone number or have information displaying the caller's address. "I don't know about most people, but I don't have the ability to time my emergencies," Cox said. "Vonage has ten days to respond to the NIA, or my office will file a lawsuit seeking injunctive relief and civil penalties." Consumers who want to file a complaint about Vonage or VOIP may do so by writing to the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division at P.O. Box 30213, Lansing, MI 48909, or by calling toll-free 1-877-765-8388. During 2003 and 2004, the Consumer Protection Division collected more than $600 million on behalf of Michigan. In 2004, the Division stopped more than $400 million in utility rate increases and responded to more than 102,000 consumer complaints. SOURCE Michigan Attorney General Web Site: http://www.michigan.gov/ag ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:58:37 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Signs Additional Programming Deals for FiOS TV Viewers Will Find Channels Devoted to Their Interests NEW YORK, April 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon today took another step toward its goal of providing one of the country's most extensive TV programming lineups when it announced separate programming-distribution agreements with five networks. Under the agreements, Verizon will carry the channels on Verizon FiOS TV when it launches later this year. They are: Varsity TV, Gospel Music Channel, Soundtrack Channel, MavTV and GolTV. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48755131 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:30:21 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Report: TV Phone Outlook Rosy Telecom dailyLead from USTA April 29, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21213&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Report: TV phone outlook rosy BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon to end free Wi-Fi hotspots in NYC * Mom-and-pop VoIP resellers on the rise * CenturyTel reports earnings USTA SPOTLIGHT * 3G Wireless with WiMAX and Wi-Fi -- Now in the Telecom Bookstore EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Commentary: Is there an audience for Internet TV? * Meet the "Wired 40" VOIP DOWNLOAD * Equipment maker: VoIP a bandwidth hog * Comcast, Mediacom selling VoIP for what it's worth * FCC may demand VoIP phones provide 911 services REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Minneapolis sues TWC over franchise fees * Airlines consider how to adjust if cell phone ban is lifted * Qwest promotes affordable phone service to tribal areas Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21213&l=2017006 ------------------------------ Reply-To: CountFrederick From: CountFrederick Subject: AOL Import/Export Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 16:48:36 -0400 Organization: Optimum Online Trying to help a friend. My friend has a PC and has an AOL account. He also receives his E-mails on his wife's PC. He has now purchased a new PC and has been receiving E-mails on this new PC. The result is that his E-mails are spread over 3 computers. How can I consolidate these E-mails on one computer? Also, how can I move AOL E-mail messages to Outlook Express? Thanks, FRED [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Outlook Express uses POP-type to 'fetch' mail from the various accounts and consolidate onto the one (Outlook Express) account. You go to the 'properties' menu, select 'accounts' and set up each of the email accounts there; then when you click on 'send/receive' Outlook Express goes around to each of the three email accounts gets the mail and displays who it is from, the subject line and the date for each piece of mail. You will need to check with each mail system you use for the POP addresses in each case. Usually, but not always, the POP server at the mail system will be identified as 'pop.whoever.com'; for instance I go to 'pop.cablelone.net' to get my personal mail. Outlook Express also asks you to define the 'default address' to be used for outgoing mail. In my case, that is 'smtp.cableone.net'. In the process of sending/receiving email, in addition to going around to all three places to get my mail, Outlook Express also dumps all outgoing mail (that you have written) at the 'default' post office. Those mail systems which allow you to use POP to pick up all your mail will usually explain the procedure to use (and the name of the mail server [as I said, quite frequently it is 'pop.whoever.whoever']) some- where in their documentation. Not all mail systems allow picking up the mail 'remotely' through Outlook Express. This is especially true of the 'web based' free mail services. They make their money by making you at least look at the advertisements they put on your screen. It is more likely you will be allowed to use POP (meaning, Outlook Express or a similar 'mail collector' program if you are using a mail service that you pay for. F'r instance, I _pay for_ Cable One, which is why I get to use POP. I also pay for TerraWorld (our local ISP) so I can use his POP also, although his is 'mail.terraworld.net' for mail in both directions, in and out. Typically though, when 'remote' pick up and drop off of email is allowed, it comes in to you from 'pop' and goes out from you through 'smtp.whoever' or 'sendmail.whoever'. Whatver the mail service you use tells you, that is how you fill in the blanks in the Outlook Express software. You'll need to have the user name (_at that_ site_) and the password (_at_that_site_) as well; it is not the same as the user name/password of your computer. Certain other conditions apply as well when you are configuring the Outlook Express, which are dependent on what the site where you are retrieving your mail remotely say they are. Things to do with the port to pick your mail up through, etc; often times they are just defaults, but sometimes not; also sometimes other technical details, which once set, never have to be changed. Outlook Express (and similar remote mail pick up programs) can sometime be sort of picky, but Outlook Express at least has a few other most common things built in that you can choose from. For example, Compuserve, to name one, does not use POP but something called 'I-MAP' where the incoming mail gets put into 'folders'. Outlook Express knows about that. Regards America On Line, I am not sure if they even allow remote pick up of mail or not. And regards 'being picky', now and again I have had situations where Outlook Express was _attempting_ to get my mail, but there was some item of spam which was _so large_ (like a million bytes) that Outlook Express kept timing out while trying to retrieve the huge, ugly spam. That happened once with Cable One; I knew there were a dozen or so items of mail there, but Outlook Express would get about half way through retrieving the first item, and keep stalling. I called up Cable One tech support, mad as hell, blaming them for the delay; the tech looked in my mailbox, came back on the line, and in sort of a crude way said to me, "You ever been constipated? Some giant 'thing' which would not come out without _much_ effort? That's what some spammer left for you today. Just log on direct to your mail over here, take it out and bash it, then the rest will all move as it should." So I logged on to mail.cableone.net directly, smashed and destroyed the ugly thing, then Outlook Express worked the way it was supposed to. Now, Cable One no longer sends what _they perceive_ to be spam through remote recievers like Outlook Express. They take all the viruses each day and the spam, and leave it on _their_ mail system where you can examine it as desired but not have to personally touch it or possibly get your own computer contaminated. Instead, they send you a short piece of email saying come over and clear out the trash and viruses, and they supply a link to click on. I have never yet seen them make a wrong choice on any of it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: garethmorrissey@yahoo.com (Gareth Morrissey) Subject: Dialogue Communications Abuse of Reverse Rate SMS Date: 29 Apr 2005 13:52:10 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Someone using Dialogue premium rate sms services www.dialogue.co.uk to send out sms messages to mobiles that have never requested them (never subscribed). Possibly targeting Virgin mobile customers. Virgin mobile do know this is happening, and can look on their system to if you have sent messages to short text numbers and subscribed or not. If you hold your ground with customer services they should credit your account. Dialogue are a legitimate company, they are just perhaps lacking controls to prevent abuse of reverse charged sms. You can also contact Dialogue Customer Care: support@dialogue.co.uk +44 (0) 8700 790 400 ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: VOIP: 911 - Vonage vs Time-Warner Roadrunner Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 18:53:07 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , TELECOM Digest Editor responded to : > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Apparently, the only players in the > game who can get 'true E-911' are the telcos themselves or any of > their friends. Others have to pay for the service, and the cost was > pretty steep until recently when under pressure SBC agreed to begin > working with Vonage and other VOIP carriers. The reason this is so > is because when 'true E-911' was being developed, telco had it built > to _their_ specifications. PAT] That's utterly bogus, Mr. Moderator, and I wish you'd restrict your editorial commentary to topics you actually knew something about. It seems pretty clear to me that trunk engineering in the backbone voice network is not such a topic. The incumbent local carriers built first basic 911, and then enhanced 911 (E911) service to meet _standards externally imposed on them by the FCC and state regulators_. The standards called for what some might think of as an absurdly high level of service, but, in the heavily regulated environment of the time, the local carriers shrugged, said "sure, we'll do it, just let us get the money back as revenue", and overengineered the service as requested. The result was a service that was extremely robust but that imposed significant costs for every switch you wanted to connect to it. Now along comes a new kind of carrier that wants to connect to the infrastructure for that same service, but that wants the incumbent carriers to bear the cost of allowing the new carrier to connect to the infrastructure in a totally different way -- so that the new carrier can avoid the cost of having to connect the old way, which allows it (the new carrier) to maintain a price advantage over the old carrier by not having to include the rather large cost of the infrastructure to do E911 interconnection in its cost basis. Surprise, surprise, the old carriers cry foul and say that the new carrier isn't entitled to connect in a different way and force the old carriers to pay to figure out how to let the new carrier connect a in the new way. And the new carrier, very politically savvy, goes to its friends in government and to the media and tries to paint it as if the whole debate isn't about the new carrier avoiding costs that everyone else in the industry has to pay for 911 service -- instead, it's those nasty old carriers who are "refusing" to let the new carrier connect to 911 service. To be plain, that's horsepuckey. Vonage didn't *feel like paying what everyone else had to pay for 911 interconnection* -- software for SS7 signaling in their gateway switches, special trunks into every PSAP in every LATA they serve, and so forth -- and so they just didn't pay it -- while suckering people in the media, which seems to include, notably, Jack Decker and you yourself, Mr. Moderator, into helping them paint their *choice* to not provide 911 service, so they could have lower costs and underprice other carriers, as something that other carriers were forcing on them. All you need to see that that's not true is the example of more responsible, and less politically adept, VOIP carriers who have done the right thing instead of cutting corners, and who therefore *do* provide E911 service: Packet8, the cable companies' in-house VOIP telcos, and so forth. Surprise, surprise: their services cost more -- because being irresponsible about 911 service gives Vonage lower costs. But it is ridiculous to blame anyone but Vonage for the fact that Vonage has refused to pay the costs of traditional 911 interconnection and therefore does not provide actual 911 service. Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com "The inconsistency is startling, though admittedly, if consistency is to be abandoned or transcended, there is no problem." - Noam Chomsky ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #189 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Sat, 30 Apr 2005 20:45:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 190 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson EPIC Alert 12.07 (Monty Solomon) EFFector 18.12: Action Alert - Stop the REAL ID Act! (Monty Solomon) EPIC Alert 12.08 (Monty Solomon) White Noise After Hangup (Choreboy) Michigan Threatens to Sue Vonage - Claims 911 Limitations (Jack Decker) Is There a Device to Block Selected Incoming Numbers (Jim Kennedy) Cingular / sms.ac Ripoff Alert (John R Levine) Re: The End of Analog TV (Steve Sobol) Re: VoIP (Robert Bonomi) Re: VOIP: 911 - Vonage vs Time-Warner Roadrunner (Tony P.) Re: The End of Analog TV (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story (Not Public) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 18:50:52 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EPIC Alert 12.07 ======================================================================== E P I C A l e r t ======================================================================== Volume 12.07 April 7, 2005 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington, D.C. http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_12.07.html ======================================================================== Table of Contents ======================================================================== [1] Congress Holds Hearings to Review USA PATRIOT Act [2] Commercial Data Brokers Grilled at California Hearing [3] EPIC Urges Privacy Safeguards for RFID and Copyright Technology [4] Spotlight: Homeland Security's Access Card Less Than Secure [5] Education Agency's Student Tracking Proposal Opposed [6] News in Brief [7] EPIC Bookstore: Michael Caloyannides's Privacy & Computer Forensics [8] Upcoming Conferences and Events http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_12.07.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 18:56:42 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 18.12: Action Alert - Stop the REAL ID Act! A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 328th Issue of EFFector: * Action Alert - Stop the REAL ID Act! * EFF Announces 2005 Pioneer Award Winners * News Publishers and Internet Industry Urge Reversal in Apple Case * Blog Without Getting Burned * EFF Urges State Department to Drop RFID Passport Plan * MiniLinks (14): German Publisher Fined for Linking * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/18/12.php ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 18:52:22 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EPIC Alert 12.08 ======================================================================== E P I C A l e r t ======================================================================== Volume 12.08 April 21, 2005 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington, D.C. http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_12.08.html ======================================================================== Table of Contents ======================================================================== [1] EPIC FOIA Note #3: Voting Machine Vendor Misled Election Officials [2] States and Congress to Regulate Data Brokers in Wake of Scandals [3] Controversial Database Project MATRIX Closes Down [4] California Considers Prohibiting RFID Use in State ID Cards [5] Choicepoint, Voter Rolls and Public Records Highlighted at CFP 2005 [6] News in Brief [7] EPIC Bookstore: Mari J. Frank's Guide to Ending Identity Theft [8] Upcoming Conferences and Events http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_12.08.html ------------------------------ From: Choreboy Subject: white noise after hangup Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 18:15:43 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Today I answered the phone, said hello a couple of times, and heard nothing. Eventually there was a click, then white noise. What kind of telephone service produces white noise if you hang up on somebody? ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 12:41:10 -0400 Subject: Michigan Threatens to Sue Vonage - Claims 911 limitations not Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/63110 Michigan Threatens to Sue Vonage Claims 911 limitations not clear The Michigan attorney general is threatening to sue Vonage, claiming the company doesn't make the 911 limitations of its VoIP service clear. A lawsuit has already been filed by the Texas Attorney General, who claims Vonage does not make it clear that users need to manually set-up their 911 service. Of course this welcome screen, and other warning screens are posted frequently; most Vonage users don't understand how you could miss the warning. Article + reader comments at: http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/63110 Additional comments: http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,13290919 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jim Kennedy Subject: Is There a Device to Block Selected Incoming Numbers Date: 30 Apr 2005 07:41:20 -0700 Is there a home/home office telecom device, eg. answering machine, caller id unit, etc, that allows you to program in particular numbers to be blocked or to receive a custom message? I would like all other calls to go through as is. Thanks. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The telcos (Traditional Bell at least) offers a blocking service. You have to get *60 turned on by telco, then you can do what you are asking -- theoretically -- and get rid of the nuisances. I say _theoretically_ since SBC at least claims as often as not 'that call cannot be blocked', i.e. outside of LATA, or people who send bogus numbers for caller ID. Once you ask telco to turn on *60 you can enter numbers you do not wish to hear from any further, and that person gets a recorded intercept saying 'the party you are calling is not accepting calls at this time.' You can also 'block last call recieved, whether or not you know the number,' by dialing (I think) '01' at the internal prompt, even if the caller deliberatly withheld their number via *67. You can hear a recitation of the numbers on your blocked list as part of the *60 process also, and to protect the privacy of those persons who used *67 when calling you, the recitation refers to them as 'private entries' . You can also get 'block the blockers' service from telco using *77 and when someone does do *67 when calling you, _they_ get a recorded message that they have to unblock delivery of their ID and dial the call again. So, if you sign up for both these features, (*60 and *77) you get rid of most or all the pests. But, one caveat with certain telcos, like SBC Southwestern Bell, they don't go out of their way to make this work correctly. With some of these telcos, calls which are out of LATA cannot be blocked, and calls where the caller gives you a bogus string for ID cannot be blocked. And of course, if the caller moves from one payphone to another, he _will_ get through to you. Now in years past, when Illinois Bell existed and had this service, you _could_ block out of LATA calls, and maybe you could not, if the place originating the phone call had an old fashioned switch. But you could at least 'ping' it first and see if it would work or not (from out of LATA). Locally, it would come back immediatly and say okay; but if out of LATA it would go away for a few seconds and then come back and say okay but sometimes your request would time out and you would back an answer saying "cannot be added right now, try again in a few minutes" or else it would just say "cannot be added" (period.) But SBC won't deal with any out of LATA that I know of. So maybe this service from your telco will help you eliminate many of the pests. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 30 Apr 2005 17:30:59 -0400 From: John R Levine Subject: Cingular / sms.ac ripoff alert I found a bunch of mysterious inbound 30 cent "premium" text messages on my cell phone bill, which I believe were invitations to chat from sms.ac. To my astonishment, Cingular told me that they absolutely would not remove the charges, and if you have text messaging at all, there is no way to prevent random crooks from sending these messages and forcing you to pay for them. So I did the only possible thing, and turned off text messaging completely. Too bad. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: The End of Analog TV Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 17:25:18 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Tim@Backhome.org wrote: > And, my local cable company does not even carry all the local (Los > Angeles) broadcast stations that presently have over-the-air HDTV. > That I find to be really, really odd. Where exactly are you, and who's your cable company? JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: VoIP Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 00:31:16 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , T. Sean Weintz wrote: > Choreboy wrote: > Caller ID CAN be spoofed using VOIP. Apperently SIP allows for this, and > some VOIP providers leave this feature open for customers to use/abuse. > I know hackers were spoofing caller ID over VOIP using the ASTERISK open > source PBX system which lets you set all the nitty gritty SIP parameters > -- apparently including the CLID string. From what I understand, some > providers filter this at their switch, some don't ... VoIP is neither 'sufficient' to guarantee being able to spoof the calling number, nor is it 'necessary'. :) You've got to have the 'right kind' of head-end interconnect to the PSTN, _and_ be dealing with a carrier that does not restrict what info you can pass for the "calling number" info. > PRI's are a standard type of high cap ISDN line (as opposed to BRI, > the low cap vesrion). I think caller ID can be spoofed from EITHER > type of ISDN line, assuming one has the right type of equipment > plugged into it (which usually means a PBX switch) It's a very _rare_ occurrence that one would be able to do it via a BRI. at least in the U.S. Those lines almost invariably are configured with the telco over-riding any info the customer might send. BRIs are generally offered in a *limited* number of configurations by the telcos (whether ILEC or CLEC) on a 'pick from the menu' basis, and you take one of those choices, or you don't get a BRI. I've _never_ seen one of the canned BRI options that had the capability for passing unrestricted CLID info. This isn't to say that such an offering _couldn't_ exist, just that I've never run across it in dealing with several ILECs, and a number of the major CLECs. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: VOIP: 911 - Vonage vs Time-Warner Roadrunner Organization: ATCC Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 21:30:39 -0400 In article , tls@panix.com says... > In article , TELECOM Digest Editor > responded to : >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Apparently, the only players in the >> game who can get 'true E-911' are the telcos themselves or any of >> their friends. Others have to pay for the service, and the cost was >> pretty steep until recently when under pressure SBC agreed to begin >> working with Vonage and other VOIP carriers. The reason this is so >> is because when 'true E-911' was being developed, telco had it built >> to _their_ specifications. PAT] > All you need to see that that's not true is the example of more > responsible, and less politically adept, VOIP carriers who have done > the right thing instead of cutting corners, and who therefore *do* > provide E911 service: Packet8, the cable companies' in-house VOIP > telcos, and so forth. Surprise, surprise: their services cost more -- > because being irresponsible about 911 service gives Vonage lower > costs. But it is ridiculous to blame anyone but Vonage for the fact > that Vonage has refused to pay the costs of traditional 911 > interconnection and therefore does not provide actual 911 service. > Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com You can cast the VoIP providers as the demons but in reality it's the incumbents. Pretty much every switch made for the past decade or more has been IP aware. Hell, even my G3i has a TCP/IP address, as does my Intuity LX. And in case you didn't know here is how Vonage works: They use Paetec and Focal switches to hand off to the PSTN. These are fully featured 5ESS and the like switches, and both those carriers are fully regulated. This is just a little side business to utilities a glut of switching capacity. So for instance, my little RT31P2 actually talks to Vonage and then connects via Paetec's switch in Providence. My E-911 works btw. It's because RI is unique -- the state owns the E-911 infrastructure while Verizon owns the data. ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: The End of Analog TV Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 07:17:17 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Monty Solomon wrote: >> During the same period consumers were supposed to buy digital >> television receivers. That part didn't work. > The life of a TV set could be anywhere between five and thirty-five > years. There's a heck of a lot of old TV sets out there still in > service, some surprisingly old. Many people use old B&W portables as > spare room or attic TVs. > Why the heck should consumers be forced to upgrade to get the same old > broadcast garbage? Depends what the converter will cost. Anyone know the price? > There are also a lot of TV viewers out there who don't watch a lot of > TV. Their TV sets last a long time. They don't have cable. What > will become of them? > Ironically, back in the 1950s, the choice of what color TV > transmission protocol was determined on compatibility with existing > B&W sets, even though there were far fewer sets out there. > I guess the selfish technocrats and greedy businesses just can't wait > to get their mitts on the radio frequencies to play with. > It amazes me that the more cable channels they offer to me the less TV > I watch. They just throw out utter junk, and get rid of the little > good stuff they once had. It duplicates each other -- "Cheers" is > broadcast and cablecast on numerous channels. And for something I > pay and pay dearly for they throw in tons of commercials -- more than > commercial TV does. HDTV reopens the door for my wife and I (senior citizens). There are some great travel type programs in HD that become worth watching because of color, clarity, and resolution. > But they make a heck of a lot of money doing this. ------------------------------ From: Not Public Subject: Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 23:45:15 GMT Ed wrote in message news:telecom24.185.16@telecom-digest.org: > I don't get it. I just can't understand what these people were thinking. Your assumption that they were thinking might be incorrect... gb ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #190 TELECOM Digest Sun, 1 May 2005 18:00:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 191 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Disconnecting Phones and Tumors (Monty Solomon) How President's News Conference Ended Up Live on Four Networks (Solomon) A Plan to Offshore ... Just 3 Miles Out (Monty Solomon) Cell Phone Triangulation Data - Calulating Location Distances (jason) Inmates Use Intermediaries to Go Online (Lisa Minter) Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi (Lisa Minter) Re: VOIP: 911 - Vonage vs Time-Warner Roadrunner (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: Michigan Threatens to Sue Vonage; Claims 911 Limitations (DevilsPGD) Re: The End of Analog TV (Gene S. Berkowitz) Re: Is There a Device to Block Selected Incoming Numbers (Tim@Backhome) Re: A Phone That Takes Dictation: Testing Voice-to-Text (Wesrock) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 22:12:43 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Disconnecting Phones and Tumors By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Good news for cellphone users: a new study published in the April issue of the journal Neurology shows no connection between cellphone use and the risk of developing a brain tumor. A Danish survey of 427 people with brain tumors and 822 with no tumors found no difference in their frequency of cellphone use or the number of years they had used a cellphone. In addition, in the patients who had brain tumors, there was no correlation between the location of the lesion and the side of the head they usually used for talking on the phone. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/26/health/26cell.html?ex=1272168000&en=c60fc0d304516de4&ei=5090 NOTE: To read New York Times online daily with no registration or login requirements, go to http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html for this and about a hundred other articles in the Times each day. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 03:16:33 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: How the President's News Conference Ended Up Live on Four Networks By JACQUES STEINBERG In a showdown that featured inside-the-Beltway lobbying and bare-knuckle boardroom negotiating, Donald J. Trump and President Bush effectively squared off yesterday in pursuit of the same parcel of real estate -- a piece of the NBC-TV prime-time lineup. And it was the president who blinked first. But in the end, the president's aides appeared to be every bit as canny as those representing Mr. Trump. The decision by the White House to move up the starting time of its news conference by a half-hour -- a move that NBC sought, at least in part to protect the starting time of Mr. Trump's "Apprentice" show -- set off a chain of events that wound up garnering the president live coverage on all four major broadcast networks. The decision, announced in the evening, had the effect of putting sufficient pressure on CBS-TV and Fox Broadcasting, to prompt them to announce that they, too, would carry the news conference live on their main networks, reversing decisions that they had announced publicly earlier in the day. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/29/politics/29tvbox.html?ex=1272427200&en=853726429c6fce6d&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 11:41:20 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: A Plan to Offshore ... Just 3 Miles Out By Hiawatha Bray | April 25, 2005 Don't start with the pirate gags -- eye patches, pieces of eight, Johnny Depp with a cutlass. David Cook and Roger Green have heard them all. Still, it is hard to resist the analogy. Here we are, with thousands of American software engineers clamoring for more work, and these two guys have a plan to carry even more jobs offshore. Not to India this time, or to China. Just ... offshore. They figure three miles out in the Pacific should be far enough. Roger Green is a software entrepreneur. David Cook was once a supertanker skipper who spent 15 years hauling crude oil through the world's sea lanes. Now the two men have announced a remarkable venture called SeaCode, a company that plans to hire 600 superb software designers from every corner of the world and house them in a luxury cruise ship just out of reach of US immigration law -- but close enough to bid on multimillion-dollar US software contracts. It sounds goofy, but Cook and Green say that since news of their plan got out last week, their website's nearly been hammered flat by engineers around the world who are eager to sign on. Of course the SeaCode concept isn't nearly as popular with Americans worried about the loss of jobs to foreign competitors. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/04/25/a_plan_to_offshore____just_3_miles_out/ NOTE: For today's technology news and hundreds of other news headlines of interest, and links to read them, look at our web site: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html and the various pages which connect from it. ------------------------------ From: jason@cyberpine.com Subject: Cell Phone Triangulation Data - Calculating Location Distances Date: 1 May 2005 07:20:22 -0700 Are there currently any cell phones or carriers that allow a cell phone to access and store location (based on tower triangulation) information? I know there are many phones that now allow download/install of java freeware aps. Can java on new fancy phones (like the Motorola A630) get access to this information? Or, would a subscribed service be required? email me direct at: sales (((at)))) cyberpine ((((dot)))) com ------------------------------ Date: 30 Apr 2005 18:43:17 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Inmates Use Intermediaries to Go Online Very few prisons/jails allow inmates any use of computers at all because the authorities assume the prisoners will use them for no good. Why, who knows, they may even use web sites to try and drum up sympathy for their cause. http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050501/ap_on_hi_te/internet_inmates [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would like to know one thing about prison phone systems, which are notoriously rip-off systems. The prison authorities _claim_ the recipients of phone calls from prisoners are not allowed to use _call transfer_ or _call forwarding_ or _three way calling_ on calls from prisoners. I guess that is because the end result -- the person with whom the prisoner wound up conversing with -- would possibly not be on the 'approved' list at the prison. Does the prison phone system have the technical capability to restrict the called party's phone in that way? For example, I forward my phone somewhere, then you, in prison, call me as we agreed on. Or, you call me from the prison, I flash the hook and bring someone else on the line with me. The prison says in their literature that is impossible. Is it really? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 30 Apr 2005 18:46:03 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi Anyone know what the reasoning was on this? http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050430/ap_on_hi_te/verizon_nyc_wi_fi ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: VOIP: 911 - Vonage vs Time-Warner Roadrunner Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 01:10:50 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Tony P. wrote: > In article , tls@panix.com says: >> All you need to see that that's not true is the example of more >> responsible, and less politically adept, VOIP carriers who have done >> the right thing instead of cutting corners, and who therefore *do* >> provide E911 service: Packet8, the cable companies' in-house VOIP >> telcos, and so forth. Surprise, surprise: their services cost more -- >> because being irresponsible about 911 service gives Vonage lower >> costs. But it is ridiculous to blame anyone but Vonage for the fact >> that Vonage has refused to pay the costs of traditional 911 >> interconnection and therefore does not provide actual 911 service. > You can cast the VoIP providers as the demons but in reality it's the > incumbents. You can twist what I said if you like, but in reality the passage you quote above doesn't say what you claim it does -- after all, it says quite clearly that to see how sleazy Vonage is acting here, you need only look at the example of _other VoIP providers_ who have chosen to not act sleazy. > Pretty much every switch made for the past decade or more has been IP > aware. Hell, even my G3i has a TCP/IP address, as does my Intuity LX. It is not clear to me what you think "being IP aware" is, or what that has to do with trunk and switch provisioning for basic or enhanced 911 service. As far as I know, every Nortel DMS ever built has had a TCP/IP stack on the control processor, but so what? That has nothing at all to do with doing packet voice over IP, and even less to do with the actual service design of E911, which is mandated by agreements between the LECs and the regulatory authorities in most states. You'll probably try to twist my words again, so let me just be wholly plain about throwing down the gauntlet, here. Please explain *exactly* what you think the fact that your G3i has a TCP/IP address has to do with how carrier switches are trunked to PSAPs in existing E911 service implementations. In article , Tony P. wrote: > And in case you didn't know here is how Vonage works: > They use Paetec and Focal switches to hand off to the PSTN. These are > fully featured 5ESS and the like switches, and both those carriers are > fully regulated. This is just a little side business to utilities a > glut of switching capacity. Precisely. They don't actually use their own switches as gateways to the PSTN, because they don't want to pay for SS7-capable software loads or SS7 interconnection. The result is that the call enters the PSTN from a carrier who doesn't actually have the LIDB data required to do proper 911 service -- thus (part of) the reason for the special hacks Vonage wants all the existing 911 services to implement to accomodate Vonage. Why should anyone but Vonage pay for Vonage's choice to cut costs by implementing their interconnection to the PSTN as if they were a giant corporate PBX? Certainly nobody forced Vonage to do it that way; but certainly they saved a pretty penny on SS7-capable software loads for their Cisco SIP gateways -- which *are* available, if you choose to pay for them -- or real gateway switches, not to mention all the those trunks they decided not to pay for that 911 service would have required. Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com "The inconsistency is startling, though admittedly, if consistency is to be abandoned or transcended, there is no problem." - Noam Chomsky ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Michigan Threatens to Sue Vonage - Claims 911 Limitations Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 19:53:09 -0600 Organization: Disorganized In message Jack Decker wrote: > http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/63110 > Michigan Threatens to Sue Vonage Claims 911 limitations not clear > The Michigan attorney general is threatening to sue Vonage, claiming > the company doesn't make the 911 limitations of its VoIP service > clear. A lawsuit has already been filed by the Texas Attorney General, > who claims Vonage does not make it clear that users need to manually > set-up their 911 service. Of course this welcome screen, and other > warning screens are posted frequently; most Vonage users don't > understand how you could miss the warning. Maybe folks in Michigan (and Texas ...?) just aren't that smart to begin with? ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: The End of Analog TV Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 23:23:03 -0400 In article , Tim@Backhome.org says: > Anyone have any idea what the converter boxes for NTSC sets will > cost? I would find it amazing if they retail for more than US$99. The technology is just too cheap. This task could be handled by the equivalent of a Tivo or Xbox, and reduced to an ASIC, you're looking at sub-$50. A perfect example of this is DVD players. I paid $200 for my first one; now they're $30 "door-buster" specials at the local BigBox. --Gene ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Is There a Device to Block Selected Incoming Numbers Date: Sun, 01 May 2005 06:12:15 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Jim Kennedy wrote: > Is there a home/home office telecom device, eg. answering machine, > caller id unit, etc, that allows you to program in particular numbers > to be blocked or to receive a custom message? I would like all other > calls to go through as is. > Thanks. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The telcos (Traditional Bell at least) > offers a blocking service. You have to get *60 turned on by telco, > then you can do what you are asking -- theoretically -- and get rid > of the nuisances. I say _theoretically_ since SBC at least claims as > often as not 'that call cannot be blocked', i.e. outside of LATA, or > people who send bogus numbers for caller ID. Once you ask telco to > turn on *60 you can enter numbers you do not wish to hear from any > further, and that person gets a recorded intercept saying 'the party > you are calling is not accepting calls at this time.' You can also > 'block last call recieved, whether or not you know the number,' by > dialing (I think) '01' at the internal prompt, even if the caller > deliberatly withheld their number via *67. You can hear a recitation > of the numbers on your blocked list as part of the *60 process also, > and to protect the privacy of those persons who used *67 when calling > you, the recitation refers to them as 'private entries' . > You can also get 'block the blockers' service from telco using *77 > and when someone does do *67 when calling you, _they_ get a recorded > message that they have to unblock delivery of their ID and dial the > call again. So, if you sign up for both these features, (*60 and *77) > you get rid of most or all the pests. But, one caveat with certain > telcos, like SBC Southwestern Bell, they don't go out of their way to > make this work correctly. With some of these telcos, calls which are > out of LATA cannot be blocked, and calls where the caller gives you > a bogus string for ID cannot be blocked. And of course, if the caller > moves from one payphone to another, he _will_ get through to you. Now > in years past, when Illinois Bell existed and had this service, you > _could_ block out of LATA calls, and maybe you could not, if the place > originating the phone call had an old fashioned switch. But you could > at least 'ping' it first and see if it would work or not (from out of > LATA). Locally, it would come back immediatly and say okay; but if > out of LATA it would go away for a few seconds and then come back > and say okay but sometimes your request would time out and you would > back an answer saying "cannot be added right now, try again in a few > minutes" or else it would just say "cannot be added" (period.) But > SBC won't deal with any out of LATA that I know of. So maybe this > service from your telco will help you eliminate many of the pests. > PAT] As I recall, the service is called "Selective Call Rejection" by SBC in California. It will only hold a list of up to 10 numbers at a time, which is virtually useless. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That's what they call it here also, and what Illinois Bell called it in Chicago. And the limit is ten numbers, which I think _should_ be enough if you use it in a judicious fashion; in other words, only on the worst, most hopeless cases. You should not rush to do *60 everytime some drunk in a bar somewhere calls you; only for the really persistent and sort of stupid callers. It's hard for me to imagine you have _that many_ total jerks in your life to deal with. And bear in mind, all the problems with the service (such as out of LATA in the case of Southwestern Bell) and people sending bogus ID (again, Southwestern Bell) and people who walk around from one pay phone to another. I still maintain though that for the 'average phone user' it pretty much does what the original correspondent requested, especially if used in conjunction with *77 (reject all 'anonymous' [deliberatly blocked ID] callers). Although I am no longer with SBC -- I find Prairie Steam much better and far less expensive -- I still get both those features (*60 and *77) through Prairie Stream now. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 10:37:42 EDT Subject: Re: A Phone That Takes Dictation: Testing Voice-to-Text Function In a message dated 29 Apr 2005 07:21:57 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: > Voice recognition technology still has a long way to go before it > works. I don't like automated answering systems, but I much prefer > working with Touch-Tone signals than voice commands which seem to be > often misunderstood and less precise. The Bank of America changed its customer account information audio response system a few months ago to all voice recognition. A week or two ago they changed it, "because we listened to you," they changed it to where you can select either voice recognition or Touch-Tone entry. Like you, I dislike voice recognition systems and for the same reason. (Most voice recognition systems can be used with Touch-Tone entry, but you usually have to use trial-and-error to guess the corresponding buttons to push.) Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #191 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Mon, 2 May 2005 14:57:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 192 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson MCI Returns to Verizon (Lisa Minter) Nortel Reports Results for the Fourth Quarter and Year 2004 (M Solomon) Qwest - Last Resort Employment For Incompetent Imbeciles (greg1199) Cell Phone Registry - Not Necessary (Marcus Didius Falco) Verizon Raises Offer for MCI (Telecom DailyLead from USTA) State's Regulatory Sites Set on Internet Phones (Jack Decker) Who Answers 911? New Tech Puts Dispatchers to Test (Jack Decker) Re: Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi (Clark W. Griswold, Jr.) Re: Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi (Tony P.) Re: Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi (Danny Burstein) Re: Is There a Device to Block Selected Incoming Numbers (Rick M) Re: Is There a Device to Block Selected Incoming Numbers (Tim@Backhome) Re: Inmates Use Intermediaries to Go Online (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: Inmates Use Intermediaries to Go Online (Robert Bonomi) Last Laugh! What's Purchased in Omaha is Useless in Omaha (John Mayson) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Mon, 2 May 2005 12:46:37 -0400 From: Lisa Minter Subject: MCI Returns to Verizon by Colin C. Haley http://www.internetnews.com/article.php/3501841 MCI has jilted Qwest yet again. The Ashburn, Va., long-distance and enterprise network services provider today deemed Verizon's latest $8.4 billion ($26 per share) offer superior to Qwest's $9.7 billion ($30 per share) proposal. MCI officials listed several factors they say compensate for the $1.3 billion difference, including "the increasing need for scale and comprehensive wireless capabilities." Verizon Wireless, co-owned by Verizon and Vodafone, is the second-largest U.S. mobile carrier with 43 million subscribers on a nationwide network. Meanwhile, Denver-based Qwest serves 767,000 through a third-party system. A combined Verizon-MCI could bundle third-generation (define) wireless offerings with Internet connectivity, data transport and virtual private network (define) services to increase revenue from corporations and government agencies. Other factors cited by MCI include: Qwest's overall financial picture; questions about its ability to invest in new capabilities; doubts about synergies; and feedback from current enterprise customers. "From the standpoint of risk versus reward, Verizon's revised offer presents MCI with a stronger, superior choice," said Nicholas Katzenbach, MCI chairman, in a statement. Verizon, a regional telecom based in New York, upped its offer by about $800 million this weekend to answer Qwest in the three-month bidding war. Before today, Qwest had finally pulled ahead of Verizon in the competition for MCI, but the lead only lasted a week. A Qwest spokesman was not immediately available for comment, but the carrier could take its offer directly to MCI shareholders to see if they agree with their board's opinion. Verizon has been pushing financial stability in its proposals and press releases over the sale price. "The evolving nature of the telecommunications industry requires that effective competitors have financial strength and a full array of offerings," Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon CEO, said in a statement. "Verizon is a leading national communications provider with a stable balance sheet, a premier national wireless business, and a plan to invest in MCI." Qwest and Verizon covet MCI because of its large IP data-service deals with government agencies and corporations. And with the pending merger of SBC and AT&T, neither wants to be left behind by the wave of industry consolidation. The Baby Bells consider those long-term, high-margin contracts crucial to their future prosperity, as cable operators, VoIP upstarts and wireless carriers try to hone in on their traditional businesses. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Jupiter Media. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 08:05:14 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Nortel Reports Results for the Fourth Quarter and Year 2004 TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 2, 2005--Nortel Networks Corporation (NYSE:NT)(TSX:NT): -- Q4 2004 revenues of $2.6 billion, up sequentially 20 percent -- Q4 2004 net earnings of $133 million, $0.03 per common share on a diluted basis -- Q4 2004 cash balance of $3.7 billion, up sequentially $296 million Nortel Networks Corporation (NYSE:NT)(TSX:NT) today reported results for the fourth quarter and audited results for the year 2004 prepared in accordance with United States generally accepted accounting principles in U.S. dollars. Today's announcements serve as a status update by the Company and its principal operating subsidiary Nortel Networks Limited ("NNL"), pursuant to the alternative information guidelines of the Ontario Securities Commission. These guidelines contemplate that the Company and NNL will normally provide bi-weekly updates on their affairs until such time as they are current with their filing obligations under Canadian securities laws. Fourth Quarter 2004 Results Revenues were $2.62 billion for the fourth quarter of 2004 compared to $3.27 billion for the fourth quarter of 2003 and $2.18 billion for the third quarter of 2004. The Company reported net earnings in the fourth quarter of 2004 of $133 million, or $0.03 per common share on a diluted basis, compared to a net earnings of $528 million, or $0.12 per common share on a diluted basis, in the fourth quarter of 2003 and net loss of $259 million, or $0.06 per common share on a diluted basis, in the third quarter of 2004. Net earnings in the fourth quarter of 2004 included $37 million of net earnings from discontinued operations; special charges of $81 million related to restructuring activities; and a benefit of approximately $134 million primarily related to customer financing recovery and settlements. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48792662 ------------------------------ From: greg1199@yahoo.com Subject: Qwest - Last Resort Employment For Incompetent Imbeciles Date: 1 May 2005 21:25:22 -0700 Qwest talking monkeys, Either you offer online payment, or you don't offer it. Pick one, and stick with it! But don't tell me you offer it, then wuss out of it with some pathetic, miserable, poorly-worded, lame excuse that Beavis wouldn't have used for failing to show up at Burger World. You subhuman mongrels are fit only for use in medical experiments. It's possible you could also pump gas, but only for those who have enough gas to go somewhere else after you fail to pump it. As a compromise, why don't you donate plasma, hopefully saving a life that has at least some value. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well ! I never !! I guess you certainly made your point very clear. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 01 May 2005 22:35:26 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: FWD: Cell Phone Registry - Not Necessary The following, from SNOPES corresponds with my understanding of the issue. There is a concern about text-messaging SPAM to cell phones, which has not been a major concern as yet (except in a few markets), but may become one. There have been a few issues with people getting telemarketing calls on their cell phones (particularly, but not always, when they have "ported" a landline number to a cell phone), so there may be an advantage to putting your cell phone number on the national do-not-call list. * Original: FROM..... Lyle Davis I've already received a mailing on this and if you haven't, you likely will fairly soon. Relax. Here's the real information from snopes.com Claim: A directory of cell phone numbers will soon be published. Status: Multiple: a.. A consortium of wireless providers is planning to create a 411 (directory assistance) service for cell phone numbers: True. b.. You must register your cell phone with the national "Do Not Call" directory before 1 January 2005 to prevent your number from being provided to telemarketers: False. Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2004] A directory of cell phone numbers will soon be published for all consumers to have access to. This will open the doors for solicitors to call you on your cell phones, using up the precious minutes that we pay lots of money for. The Federal Trade Commission has set up a "do not call" list. It is called a cell phone registry. To be included on the "do not call" list, you must call from the number you wish to register. The number is 1-888-382-1222 or you can go to their website at www.donotcall.gov. ================================= Starting Jan 1, 2005, all cell phone numbers will be made public to telemarketing firms. So this means as of Jan 1, your cell phone may start ringing off the hook with telemarketers, but unlike your home phone, most plans pay for your incoming calls. These telemarketers will eat up your free minutes and end up costing money. According to the National Do Not Call List, you have until Dec 15, 2004 to get on the national "Do Not Call List" for cell phones. You can either call 1-888-382-1222 from the cell phone that you wish to have put on the "do not call list" or you can do it online at www.donotcall.gov. Registering only takes a minute, is in effect for 5 years. All of you will need to register before Dec 15. You may want to also do your own personal cell phones. Origins: As the use of cellular telephone technology has grown tremendously in the last several years, many consumers have given up maintaining traditional land-line phone service entirely. They prefer the convenient portability of cell phones, as well as the privacy: So far, cell phone numbers have generally been excluded from printed phone directories and directory assistance services, and protections have been put in place to restrict telemarketing calls to cell phones. Soon, however, some of the privacy that cell phones provide may be eroded. Six national wireless companies (AllTel, AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Nextel, Sprint PCS, and T-Mobile) have banded together and hired Qsent, Inc. to produce a Wireless 411 service. Their goal is to pool their listings to create a comprehensive directory of cell phone customer names and phone numbers that would be made available to directory assistance providers. (In most places, telephone users can call directory assistance at 411 [for local numbers] or by dialing an area code plus 555-1212 [for out-of-area numbers] and, by providing enough information to identify an individual phone customer [usually a full name and city of residence], obtain that customer's phone number. Many cell phone customers are opposed to the proposed Wireless 411 service for a number of reasons: a.. They prefer the privacy of knowing that their cell phone numbers are available only to those to whom they provide them. They don't want other people being able to obtain their cell phone numbers without their consent or knowledge. b.. They are concerned that their cell phone numbers will be sold to telemarketers (or other groups that might make undesirable use of those numbers). c.. They see one of the goals of the Wireless 411 service as a ploy to spread cell phone numbers to wider circles of friends and acquaintances, who will then place calls to cell phones and thereby force cell customers to pay for additional wireless minutes. The wireless companies behind the proposed Wireless 411 service contend that their service will be beneficial to cellular customers and that they have addressed those customers' major concerns: a.. The service would save money for the estimated five million customers who use only cellular phones and currently pay to have their cell phone numbers listed in phone directories. b.. The Wireless 411 service would be strictly "opt-in" - that is, wireless customers will be included in the directory only if they specifically request to be added. The phone numbers of wireless customers who do nothing will not be included, those who choose to be listed can have their numbers removed from the directory if they change their minds, and there is no charge for requesting to be included or choosing not to be included. c.. The Wireless 411 information will not be included in printed phone directories, distributed in other printed form, made available via the Internet, or sold to telemarketers. It will be made available only to operator service centers performing the 411 directory assistance service. Nonetheless, many consumers don't trust the Wireless 411 consortium to uphold their promises, and although Qsent and its clients plan to make the Wireless 411 service available sometime in 2005, its implementation in that time frame is far from certain, as the wireless companies are still fighting proposed legislation which seeks to regulate wireless phone directories. So, although the gist of the message quoted at the head of this page is correct in alerting consumers to a proposed directory of cell phone numbers, it is misleading in stating that such a directory will "soon be published" (the word "published" implies making a printed directory available, which the wireless consortium maintains they will not do) and in directing readers to sign up with the The National Do Not Call Registry. The latter step will not keep wireless customer listings out of the proposed Wireless 411 database - it will only add their phone numbers to a list of numbers off-limits to most telemarketers, a step which is premature (because the Wireless 411 directory has not yet been implemented) and largely unnecessary (because the Wireless 411 directory information is not supposed to be supplied to telemarketers, and because FCC regulations already in place block the bulk of telemarketing calls to cell phones). Some versions of the exhortation to cell phone users to add their names to the Do Not Call Registry erroneously state there is a 15 December 2004 deadline for getting listed. Says Lois Greisman, the Federal Trade Commission official who oversees the anti-telemarketing registry: "There is no deadline; there never has been a deadline to register." However, belief that there might be such a cut-off coupled with the e-mailed alerts themselves have served to multiply many times over the number of registrations. Since the initial wave of sign-ups following the 2003 launch of the list, registrations have come in at the rate of 200,000 new numbers a week. Yet in the final week of November 2004, nearly 1 million new subscribers were added, and in the first week of December 2004, that figure jumped to 2 million. At this point in time, 69 million phone numbers are contained in the registry. Adding one's cell phone number to the National Do Not Call Registry (even if currently unnecessary) won't likely have any adverse effect, but customers should be aware of exactly what that action will or will not accomplish. Updates: Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular Corp. have always been opposed to the proposed cell phone directory, and initial partners Sprint Corp. and Alltel Corp. have since pulled away from the project due to concerns about bad publicity and possible new government regulations. So, as of January 2005, even if the cell phone directory database was compiled as planned, at least 45% of U.S. cell phone numbers wouldn't be included. In April 2005, USA Today reported that registrations for the national do-not-call list for the week ending April 2 were about double the normal level, and registrations for the following week reached a peak five times higher than average. The newspaper also reiterated what we stated above: ... the anxiety is unfounded. First, it's illegal to make sales pitches to wireless phones by using automatic dialers - which is how the vast majority of telemarketing calls are placed. (One reason is that cellular users must pay for incoming calls.) Also, most of the big wireless carriers have chosen either not to take part in the directory or to put off any plans to do so in light of consumer fears. They say any directory would include only those customers who agreed to participate and that the numbers would not be shared with telemarketers or anyone else. Congress has considered a bill to codify such rules. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 14:01:39 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Verizon Raises Offer For MCI Telecom dailyLead from USTA May 2, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21244&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon raises offer for MCI BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Push e-mail market about to get crowded * Versatel, Belgacom in merger talks * Q-and-A with Juniper's Scott Kriens * Nortel reports earnings USTA SPOTLIGHT * In USTA's Telecom Bookstore: "Softswitch Architecture for VoIP" EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Nextel beefs up push-to-talk service * Siemens, Meru focus on WLAN REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Mobile phone towers prompt lawsuits Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21244&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 12:13:46 -0400 Subject: State's Regulatory Sights Set on Internet Phone http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwendland2e_20050502.htm BY MIKE WENDLAND FREE PRESS COLUMNIST Michigan's Public Service Commission wants to have regulatory authority over the rapidly growing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service that uses a broadband Internet connection to place and receive phone calls. The commission, meeting last week in Lansing, sent a formal request to the Legislature to amend the state's Telecommunications Act to include VoIP service as an area the commission can oversee. "Michigan residents using Voice over Internet Protocol deserve consumer protections," said commission Chairman J. Peter Lark. "Because the Michigan Telecommunications Act is silent on Voice over Internet Protocol service ... customers using this new technology do not have consumer protections that telecommunication customers have." Michigan is not alone in putting VoIP in its regulatory sights. But based on the experiences of Minnesota and California, it may encounter some stiff opposition from the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC successfully fought both states in federal courts in recent months, essentially arguing that VoIP is an interstate service beyond state control. Still, facing a pile of complaints from landline phone companies that claim VoIP interlopers are getting an unfair advantage, the FCC has since agreed to reconsider its hands-off approach and is seeking public comments on possible VoIP regulation. In Michigan, meanwhile, officials believe it is necessary for the state to provide consumer safeguards over what is a largely unregulated business. Full story at: http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwendland2e_20050502.htm How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 12:21:28 -0400 Subject: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders to Test Cell phones have been around a LOT longer than VoIP, yet to the best of my knowledge no state attorney general has ever sued a cell phone company over the way they handle 911 calls. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/technology/personal_technology/11542733.htm Who answers 911? Technologies like cell phones and VoIP put emergency responders to the test By Sam Diaz Mercury News It's the phone number that can help save a life. But calling 911 and expecting help to come running is becoming more of a gamble than ever before -- especially in a tech-savvy place like Silicon Valley, where people rely heavily on cell phones and are more likely to try out a new technology such as Internet phone service. Now more than ever, the emergency phone system is being put to the test. As mobile and Internet phone services spread, it's becoming harder for 911 dispatchers to pinpoint a caller's geographic location, a crucial element of 911 and speedy response times. In the Bay Area, it's anyone's guess where a cell phone call to 911 will end up -- or how long it will take for a dispatcher to answer. In most Santa Clara County cities, 911 calls from a cell phone will end up at the local, city-run police dispatch centers. But dial 911 from Fremont or Menlo Park and it's more likely to end up at the California Highway Patrol catchall dispatch center in Vallejo, where it will be rerouted to a closer 911 center -- an extra step that could slow emergency response times. For those using one of the new Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, phone services, calls to 911 might not even make it to a dispatcher because many of the providers aren't yet able to provide direct access into the 911 network. Full story at: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/technology/personal_technology/11542733.htm ------------------------------ From: Clark W. Griswold, Jr. Subject: Re: Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi Date: Sun, 01 May 2005 16:02:14 -0600 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Lisa Minter wrote: > Anyone know what the reasoning was on this? Yep. They want to get people to buy their overpriced EV-DO cellular data service instead of the cheaper WiFi connection. ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi Date: Sun, 01 May 2005 22:06:59 GMT Lisa Minter wrote: > Anyone know what the reasoning was on this? > http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050430/ap_on_hi_te/verizon_nyc_wi_fi It's pretty clear from the story. They are introducing EV-DO 3G data service on the Verizon Wireless network, and operating a free outdoor wi-fi network that doesn't produce any revenue isn't exactly going to be good for business on their new pay-to-use data network. Also, I'm not sure how much use the wi-fi network gets. How many people use their laptops while on the city streets? I tried to use it once; there was a base station at the phone booth across the street from a hotel I was staying at, but I got no signal from it. I got a good solid signal from a hotel two blocks away that I couldn't use because I didn't have a room number and password, and I got a bunch of unencrypted signals from the apartments of people with cable modems or DSL. I successfully freeloaded on one of those for a few minutes. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD (USA) (Replace "example.invalid" with "com" in my address.) ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 18:21:28 -0400 In article , lisa_minter2001 @yahoo.com says: > Anyone know what the reasoning was on this? > http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050430/ap_on_hi_te/verizon_nyc_wi_fi Um, their ownership of Verizon Wireless holdings perhaps? I'm ready to testify against Verizon when they pull the same crap in Providence. ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Re: Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 22:34:45 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Lisa Minter writes: > Anyone know what the reasoning was on this? > http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050430/ap_on_hi_te/verizon_nyc_wi_fi Verizon, as a promotional tool for their landline DSL service, set up a hundred or so (they announced more...) of their payphones with WIFI (wireless interent/802.11) internet access. If you had a _paid_ DSL account with them, your username/password worked with these as well. And typically they were good for 100 or so feet down the block pretty reliably. Quite handy for some folk. But they've lately decided that the costs of maintining that network (small, but real) weren't getting them enough additional customers for their landline DSL service to warrant continuing it. And... they've also got numerous flavors now of region-wide paid internet wireless service, so they've decided to shut down the (kind-of) freebie. And to confuse things more, the NYC franchise and taxing authorities were looking at ways of charging VZ additional fees for the payphone locations that were used as base stations. I know some people who used it quite a bit, but the numbers just weren't there for the VZ budget folk. (Again, this wasn't "free". You got it as a no-cost add-on when you had a paid landline dsl account). _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Rick M Subject: Re: Is There a Device to Block Selected Incoming Numbers Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 01:32:15 -0500 Reply-To: r.muscoplat_nospam@vikingelectronics.com Telco selective call blocking is best answer. Only the Telco knows the I.D. of the incoming call before it generates ring voltage on your phone line. In order for an aftermarket device to do what you want, you would have to hear at least one ring, because the caller I.D. information is sent in digital format between the 1st and 2nd ring. So, an aftermarket device would have to process all 1st rings thru the unit, or, all first rings would go thru to all house phones. Either option is not very marketable. ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Is There a Device to Block Selected Incoming Numbers Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 02:29:32 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Tim@Backhome.org: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That's what they call it here also, > and what Illinois Bell called it in Chicago. And the limit is ten > numbers, which I think _should_ be enough if you use it in a judicious > fashion; in other words, only on the worst, most hopeless cases. You > should not rush to do *60 everytime some drunk in a bar somewhere > calls you; only for the really persistent and sort of stupid callers. > It's hard for me to imagine you have _that many_ total jerks in your > life to deal with. And bear in mind, all the problems with the > service (such as out of LATA in the case of Southwestern Bell) and > people sending bogus ID (again, Southwestern Bell) and people who > walk around from one pay phone to another. I still maintain though > that for the 'average phone user' it pretty much does what the > original correspondent requested, especially if used in conjunction > with *77 (reject all 'anonymous' [deliberatly blocked ID] callers). > Although I am no longer with SBC -- I find Prairie Steam much > better and far less expensive -- I still get both those features > (*60 and *77) through Prairie Stream now. PAT] I left SBC in California and went with my local cable company when wireline LNP became available several years ago. But, then SBC began offering Privacy Manager and the cable company did not (and still does not, apparently because Privacy Manager requires a dominant presence in the network that the cable company simply does not have.) Privacy manager, in conjunction with talking Caller ID does the trick for us. I find most nuisance calls have no Caller ID delivered, which anonymous call rejection will not reject; Privacy Manager does, yet gives the caller a chance to identify him/her self with a voice announcement. If a Caller ID comes through that we don't recognize we let it go to voice mail. ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Inmates Use Intermediaries to Go Online Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 01:00:36 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , PAT wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would like to know one thing about > prison phone systems, which are notoriously rip-off systems. The > prison authorities _claim_ the recipients of phone calls from > prisoners are not allowed to use _call transfer_ or _call forwarding_ > or _three way calling_ on calls from prisoners. I guess that is > because the end result -- the person with whom the prisoner wound > up conversing with -- would possibly not be on the 'approved' list > at the prison. Does the prison phone system have the technical > capability to restrict the called party's phone in that way? For > example, I forward my phone somewhere, then you, in prison, call me > as we agreed on. Or, you call me from the prison, I flash the > hook and bring someone else on the line with me. The prison says > in their literature that is impossible. Is it really? PAT] It's certainly possible: the type of line is part of the calling party identity in SS7 ISUP, and "prison" is one type of line (along with normal stations, payphones, etc.) specifically to allow this sort of service discrimination. I used to have a reasonably good set of CLASS service documentation but it is in storage. To know if call forwarding, 3-way calling, etc. are specified to not work if one leg of the call is a prison line, those Bellcore specs would be where to look. To know whether a given switch implements it that way, you'd need the switch documentation; maybe someone here with a documentation set for a recent 5ESS or DMS generic can have a look. Of course, it may just say that the switch does what the spec requires, in which case you would still need the CLASS spec to know for sure. Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com "The inconsistency is startling, though admittedly, if consistency is to be abandoned or transcended, there is no problem." - Noam Chomsky [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There was an interesting situation like this in 1972, as ESS was first getting introduced around Chicago. The first two offices cut over were Chicago-WABash in the downtown area and Chicago-SUPerior on the near north side. Then the cutovers went along until about 1980 or so when the final uncut exchange LOngbeach-1 in the EDGewater office went also. The oddity was in the way Call- Forwarding was handled: -A- forwards his phone to -B- then later, -B- forwarded his phone to -C-. A person dialing into B got forwarded to C as you would expect, except a person dialing into A only got forwarded to B, and not onward to C. Telco's rationale was that the person calling into A 'expected to reach' B, not C, so that is why the forwarding stopped short at that point, except if B dialed into A and in that case it stopped with A anyway, regardless of A being forwarded to B then B to C. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Inmates Use Intermediaries to Go Online Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 16:51:57 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Lisa Minter wrote: > Very few prisons/jails allow inmates any use of computers at all > because the authorities assume the prisoners will use them for > no good. Why, who knows, they may even use web sites to try and > drum up sympathy for their cause. > http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050501/ap_on_hi_te/internet_inmates > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would like to know one thing about > prison phone systems, which are notoriously rip-off systems. The > prison authorities _claim_ the recipients of phone calls from > prisoners are not allowed to use _call transfer_ or _call forwarding_ > or _three way calling_ on calls from prisoners. I guess that is > because the end result -- the person with whom the prisoner wound > up conversing with -- would possibly not be on the 'approved' list > at the prison. Does the prison phone system have the technical > capability to restrict the called party's phone in that way? For > example, I forward my phone somewhere, then you, in prison, call me > as we agreed on. Or, you call me from the prison, I flash the > hook and bring someone else on the line with me. The prison says > in their literature that is impossible. Is it really? PAT] "Not allowed to" means "not *ALLOWED* to". It does not mean it's "impossible", or that the prison operation can prevent you from doing it. Residential-line telco-based "call fowarding" is relatively easy to detect in software, at the originating end, if you have direct SS7 interconnect. 'Internal call forwarding' within a PBX would be virtually impossible to detect. *Most* PBX-based _external_ call-forwarding has stigmata that would allow "generally reliable" automatic detection. 'Call transfer' is relatively easy to detect via software -- just a DSP that looks for anything resembling a 'ring' cadence, after the initial ringing stops. "Three-way calling" can also be detected with a fair degree reliability by automated instrumentation. The _absolute_ silence on the inbound channel is 'suspicious'. it _could_ be a 'mute' button, or it could be 3-way. Justifies 'flagging' the recorded conversation for later checking by a 'trained ear'. What it _does_ mean is that if they catch you doing it -- and those outgoing calls _are_ subject to monitoring by the prison -- your number can, and probably *will* "disappear" from the 'callable numbers' list. It is simply "if you want to get calls from us (the prison), you agree to play by _our_ rules." ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 01 May 2005 22:42:25 -0500 From: John Mayson Subject: Last Laugh! What's Purchased in Omaha is Useless in Omaha Organization: Nyx Net, The Spirit of the Night http://www.theomahachannel.com/news/4431759/detail.html "Some cell phones sold this week at area a Target stores won't work in Omaha. The mistake was discovered after a KETV NewsWatch 7 viewer called 7 Can Help." John Mayson Austin, Texas, USA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For a collection of the better 'Last Laugh!' items over the years including my favorite "Honesty on the Internet" and a changing daily feed from 'rec.humor.funny' please see http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/honesty.html every day or so, as new jokes move in on the newsfeed. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #192 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Mon, 2 May 2005 19:23:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 193 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Scrambler Will Prevent Cell Phone Leakage From Vatican (Lisa Minter) Internet Outages Annoy Comcast Customers (Lisa Minter) Motorola Set to Unveil iRadio for Cell Phones (Lisa Minter) Sharpton Wants U.S. FCC to Step in on Violent Radio (Lisa Minter) Michigan Joins the Legal Dogpile on Vonage (Jack Decker) Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story (Charles Cryderman) How is Weather Channel Data Delivered to Cable Head-End (Dan Griffin) Will Try to Connect Later? (Carl Moore) New VOIP Mailing List: www.voiplook.com Voip Products, Forum (VOIPMALL) Still Waiting for an Answer (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: The End of Analog TV (J Kelly) Re: Spam Mentioning "242 W. 36th St" (Scott Dorsey) Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders (Lisa Hancock) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: 02 May 2005 14:50:13 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Scrambler Will Prevent Cell Phone Leakage from Vatican [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Our apologies that a couple of the newswire items Lisa does are just a _wee_bit stale dated today. You may have seen this item elsewhere. Recall that two weeks ago, this _massive_ flood of spam hit us one day and caused many legit items to disappear. A few of those items have been found where they were hiding, and are dealt with in this issue. Of course, we have already had the new Pope for a few days now. Again, sorry about it. PAT] ==== originally dated April 16 ================== A system has been set up to scramble any cellphone communications between the Sistine Chapel and the outside world during the secret conclave that will elect the next pope, the Vatican announced today. The step is an extra precaution, since cardinals as well as Vatican personnel from medical staff to elevator operators have been sworn to secrecy ahead of the conclave, which is to begin Monday. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told a news conference that journalists would be able to verify for themselves, during a press visit later Saturday to the Sistine Chapel, that their cellphones will not work. The late Pope John Paul II's 1996 apostolic constitution calls on authorities to "be especially vigilant in ensuring that there is absoultely no violation of secrecy with regard to the events occurring in the Sistine Chapel, where the voting takes place, and in the adjacent areas before, as well as during and after the voting." It refers specifically to "audiovisual equipment for recording or transmitting." Copyright 2005 Agence France Presse NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, AFP, Agence France Press. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: 02 May 2005 14:53:48 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Internet Outages Annoy Comcast Customers ========== Originally date April 16 ========= By Dan Lee, Mercury News Cable provider Comcast said Thursday that it was working on technical problems that caused a series of outages in recent days for many of the 7 million people who subscribe to its high-speed Internet service. Some customers could not access Web pages or e-mail at all. Some had slower-than-normal service, while others had no problems at all, Comcast said ."It doesn't affect all customers, according to Comcast spokesman Andrew Johnson. "The length varies and the customer experience differs." Philadelphia-based Comcast is the dominant provider of cable service in the Bay Area. Johnson said the network operated without any problems Thursday. The outages started late last week and cropped up again Tuesday and Wednesday, he said, causing several hours of down time in the evening. Some Comcast Internet customers were as annoyed ith the company's response to their calls as they were with the outages. Dan Calic of Menlo Park said he was unable to gain access to the Internet or e-mail from his home computer from Tuesday evening until Wednesday morning. When he called customer support, he received little information other than that Comcast was aware of a problem. "It would seem to me that they might be able to provide you with some more information and/or some possible work-arounds," said Calic, who found he could access the Internet using his laptop and home wireless network. Comcast said the outages had been intermittent and its engineers were working to pinpoint the source of the problem. Johnson said the problem relates to the company's Domain Name Servers, the equipment that translates the Web addresses users type into their browsers into the true numerical Internet Protocol addresses read by the computer. Some Comcast customers made postings at the Comcast forum at www.broadband reports.com on how to switch to an alternative Domain Name Server. Maggie Sherman of Los Gatos said she has had trouble with her Comcast access to the Internet for periods Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. "The first time I called," she said, "I was on hold for 12 minutes and disconnected." Johnson said customers with questions should contact customer service at (800) 266-2278. Contact Dan Lee at href="mailto:dlee@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5425 Copyright 2005 SiliconValley.com NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, San Jose Mercury News. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is one good reason for keeping a dialup ISP in the background. When we had that quite short outage on Cable One last week, I was preparing to switch to dial-up (and 56K!) as needed for the 'duration', which was thankfully very short. And this also goes to show how different cable internet services have different ways of dealing with problems. Our local office of Cable One _called me_ in the process of calling all their various customers in the Independence, Cherryvale, Neodesha area to notify us that there was trouble. They called me back fifteen minutes later or so to tell me it had been cured. I gather from reading this report, that Comcast let their customers discover the problems on their own. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 02 May 2005 14:55:09 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Motorola Set to Unveil iRadio for Cell Phones =====originally dated April 16=======

By Deborah Cohen Motorola Inc. is betting consumers will pay to have it both ways, gaining control over the content on their car radios and the flexibility of taking their music with them on their cell phones when they turn off their engines. Motorola, the No. 2 maker of mobile telephones, is set to unveil a service called iRadio that will let users download preselected audio content from a range of providers on their home computers, dump it on their cell phones and listen to it on their car stereos. The company is banking on the popularity of portable music underscored by sales of Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod digital music players and growing demand for high-quality, commercial-free radio provided by satellite radio companies Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. "What we set out to solve was finding a way to get the breadth of content into the stereo where people listen," said David Ulmer, director of marketing for Motorola's media solutions business. "We looked around and noticed that everyone had a cell phone in their pocket. There is a very large market of potential customers to go after." The iRadio service, which will let customers download 10 hours of content at a time, will be available at the subscription cost of about $5 to $7 a month. When not driving, customers can listen to content on a phone with a headset. By comparison, Sirius and XM charge about $13 a month for access to more than 100 channels; an online music content provider gets about $15 in the same period for unlimited downloads to a computer, or digital music player. Apple's iTunes music library charges about 99 cents per song. "It's just another way to offer entertainment on the cell phone," said Albert Lin, an analyst with American Technology Research. In a recent research note, he called providing preselected audio content for cell phones "a massive market opportunity." Several companies are already betting on the potential, boosted by the popularity of a multitude of cell phones that enable music downloads. Clear Channel Communications Inc. the top U.S. radio operator, earlier this week said it plans to begin offering clips of programs over handsets by the end of 2005. Outside of the United States, operators like Virgin Radio in Britain and Swedish broadcaster SBS Broadcasting System SA are creating interactive radio to deliver to users. COMPLEMENT TO iTUNES? Motorola has already seen the value in delivering music content. Through a partnership with Apple, it will soon launch a cell phone that works with the Apple iTunes service. But iRadio requires a substantial up-front investment. A customer will initially lay out about $200 for a mid-range Motorola phone with at least 256 megabytes of storage, built in iRadio software and Bluetooth, a low-range wireless technology that streams content from the phone to the car radio or home stereo, Ulmer said. The service also requires buying a $75 wireless audio adapter that must be installed in the car radio, either by the customer or a service provider. A USB connector to hook the phone to the desktop computer comes packaged with the handset. Ulmer said Motorola plans to test the service in several U.S. markets in mid-May and launch nationwide in the fourth quarter. The company is also in discussions with several music content and wireless service providers, he said, but he would not provide specifics. Motorola will begin selling the iRadio service at retailers, but it is also in talks with auto companies, who may eventually install iRadio in luxury cars, similar to arrangements that satellite radio providers have, Ulmer said. (With Sue Zeidler in Los Angeles) Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. To discuss telecom news items, go to our conference room area, http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/chatpage.html *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters Limited. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: 02 May 2005 14:57:01 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Sharpton Wants U.S. FCC to Step in on Violent Radio Al Sharpton, a community activist and one-time Democratic presidential candidate, on Thursday urged the government to step in to stop what he said was violence fomented by radio stations. He spoke to the Federal Communications Commission and two Democratic FCC commissioners, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein. He encouraged the agency to hold field hearings to investigate violence involving radio stations, bar artists from the air for 90 days if linked to violence, and consider such incidents when deciding whether to renew broadcast licenses. Some stations were double-booking rival music artists and gossiping about competing musicians on the air just before they arrived which led to fights, Sharpton said. He noted two incidents, one with Grammy winner Lil' Kim in 2001, involving shootings outside a New York hip hop station owned by Emmis Communications Corp., Hot 97 FM. "This is a misuse of the public airwaves," he told reporters in the lobby of the FCC after his meeting. "I would think a pattern of bloodshed in front of federally regulated radio stations has a compelling reason for government intervention." Sharpton said the FCC officials expressed interest in his ideas and the possibility of field hearings. "We welcomed the opportunity to meet with Rev. Sharpton to discuss media violence, the issue of violence in the media is one the commission ought to take more seriously," Copps said in a statement. Martin and Adelstein declined to comment. The agency has not directly addressed the issues raised by Sharpton, but Congress last year did ask the FCC to study violence on television and the impact on children. The FCC was asked to report back by January of this year, however it has not yet done so. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters Limited. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 14:06:43 -0400 Subject: Michigan Joins the Legal Dogpile on Vonage I have yet to see any comment anywhere supporting the AG's action. I think most everyone, with the possible exception of the traditional telephone companies and their PR firms and "astroturf" organizations, think that this is entirely the wrong approach and the wrong thing to do. http://voip.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000603041833/ Michigan Joins the Legal Dogpile on Vonage Posted Apr 29, 2005, 4:59 PM ET by Ted Wallingford Michigan is legally threatening Vonage, claiming the startup VoIP carrier intentionally misled consumers by not providing “enough” notice to its customers that 911 call routing needs to be activated before users can access the emergency dispatch capabilities of Vonage. Michigan isn't exactly known for being at the forefront of telecom theory. But, really, I don't see how state governments suing IP telecom operators is going to improve E911 compliance. Quite the contrary, I don't even believe the idea that a majority of VoIP subscribers don't realize they can't call 911 using their service. To me, it would seem that an early adopter who's savvy enough to jump on the VoIP bandwagon during the industry's infancy is in a very well-informed minority, indeed. So what's all the fuss about, Mr. Attorney General? I have two questions about all this. First, why Vonage? There are plenty of VoIP carriers out there. Second, why not push for legislation to regulate disclosure rather than going the judicial route? Apparently, as was the case in Minnesota last year, attorneys general would rather compete in the arena of the injunctive and punitive -- that is,-- courts than in the arena of ideas. *sigh* Article + reader comments at: http://voip.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000603041833/ [There was one comment posted when I found this:] 1. Posted Apr 30, 2005, 9:09 PM ET by Roy I live in Michigan and have Vonage. The first thing I did when the VOIP was working, register my number with 911. I agree, whats all that fuss about? (maybe SBC lobbist?) How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Lingo (Primus Telecommunications) Horror Story Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 14:17:05 -0400 From: Charles Cryderman In Telecom Digest V24 #183 Ed, replying to his own post stated: > Problem is, Customer Service (one phone number) does not seem to have > a good line of communication with the other department, Domestic > Collections (another phone number). I could be wrong but it appears > to me that Customer Service and Domestic Collections are not even > in the same country. I'm assuming poor communications here because > talking to one department does not seem to affect the actions of the > other department (in my case)." Ed, In my 26 years working in communications one of truths I have learned Communications Companies can be great a providing communications to others but suck at communicating with themselves. I have seen it in my employers as well as the many communications companies I have to work with as both, a customer and supplier. Do hope your saga has ended. Chip Cryderman ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 12:34:57 -0600 From: Dan Griffin Subject: How is Weather Channel Data Delivered to Cable Operator Head-End Does anyone know how "The Weather Channel" distributes the regional forecast information (as seen during the "local on the 8's" portion) to the local cable companies. Is it data in the vertical interval of the TV signal, or do they use internet connections (broadband, dial-up), or some other communication channel? Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 15:10:38 EDT From: Carl Moore Subject: Will Try to Connect Later? What sort of call is this? I answered a ringing phone and apparently only got recorded-voice snippets. I was told that the call was trying to connect, and that it eventually failed and would be tried again later. ------------------------------ From: VOIPMALL@gmail.com Subject: New VOIP Forum/Web site: www.voiplook.com Voip Products; Forum Date: 2 May 2005 13:36:37 -0700 Please check out: www.voiplook.com All Voip product and company list, VOIP forum List ------------------------------ Subject: Still Waiting for an Answer Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 17:12:51 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) A week or so ago here, I asked a question about the distinction -- if any -- between 'podcasting' and audio/video 'streaming' which is a technique which has been on the net for a long time. No one has yet replied! Is 'podcasting' just a new name for an old technique? Is it thus named because the (rather specialized) computers which are used for receiving 'podcasts' do not typically do any other functions like 'normal' computers? Is it because 'podcasters' often times do not have any 'regular, over-the-air' type broadcasts to accompany their computerized streaming presentations? Can anyone answer these questions, or is 'podcasting' just much ado about nothing new? PAT ------------------------------ From: J Kelly Subject: Re: The End of Analog TV Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 13:28:00 -0500 Organization: http://newsguy.com Reply-To: jkelly@*newsguy.com On Sat, 30 Apr 2005 07:17:17 -0700, Tim@Backhome.org wrote: > Depends what the converter will cost. Anyone know the price? Currently, the cheapest one I know of is at WalMart for $199. One of the problems with these devices is licensing, Zenith has patents on the 8VSB modulation schemeso anybody that wants to build a set top box has to pay $$ to Zenith for every box they build. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Spam Mentioning "242 W. 36th St" Date: 2 May 2005 13:46:54 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) wrote: > You may wish to search the BODY of your incoming spam for > "242 W. 36th St" > My wife has been getting spam every day saying: "To stop all future > mailings, follow the link below or send your email address to: > Member Services 242 W. 36th St,12th floor > New York, NY 10018 (866) 872-6022" > She sent me with her Email address to 242 W. 36th St,12th floor New > York, NY. I went last week. It is an unrelated business there. They > know nothing about spam. Business there is in TV production > company. I called (866) 872-6022 and only an answering machine > answers. I asked that they give correct address in their out-going > message. Spammers lie. You called their answering machine, and you left a message, which NOW means you're going to be put on a bunch of sucker mailing lists as well. If they put their correct address in, PEOPLE WOULD COMPLAIN. They do not want that. They are spammers. > Could I perhaps be mis-dialing? Could others please call and ask that > correct address be put in their out-going message? To avoid your > private phone number being harvested, I recommend that you too call > from a payphone. Of course they don't give correct identification information. Would you expect muggers and rapists to give correct identification? --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders to Test Date: 2 May 2005 12:13:22 -0700 Jack Decker wrote: > Cell phones have been around a LOT longer than VoIP, yet to the best > of my knowledge no state attorney general has ever sued a cell phone > company over the way they handle 911 calls. But individuals have sued cellular carriers over problems reaching emergency aid from the cell phones. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But the _original_ cell phone carriers were the telcos (and still mostly are). The VOIP companies consider telco to be athenema, and telco says the feeling is mutual. Yes, individual persons have sued cellco and telco alike; and VOIP and telco are always going at it. But there is no reason for telco to egg on Attorney General to get him to sue their sisters, the cellco. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #193 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Tue, 3 May 2005 00:47:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 194 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson 9/11 Lawsuit Against Motorola Tossed Again (Lisa Minter) A Megachurch's Leader Says Microsoft Is No Match (Lisa Minter) Qwest Withdraws Bid After MCI Accepts Verizon Offer (Lisa Minter) The Good God Google (Monty Solomon) Google Eyes (Monty Solomon) Re: Sharpton Wants U.S. FCC to Step in on Violent Radio (Steve Sobol) Re: Spam Mentioning "242 West 36th Street" (not valid) Re: How is Weather Channel Data Delivered to Cable Head-End (N Mclain) Re: How is Weather Channel Data Delivered to Cable Head-End (G Wollman) Re: Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi (Philip R. Mann) Re: Will Try to Connect Later? (FrazNor@gmail.com) Re: Still Waiting for an Answer - Podcasting (Dean M.) Re: Still Waiting for an Answer (FrazNor@gmail.com) Re: Still Waiting for an Answer (David B. Horvath) Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders (T L Simon) Re: Last Laugh! What's Purchased in Omaha is Useless in Omaha (S Cline) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Mon, 2 May 2005 18:48:33 PDT From: Lisa Minter Subject: 9/11 Lawsuit Against Motorola Tossed Again BY WILLIAM MURPHY STAFF WRITER Relatives of a dozen city firefighters who died on Sept. 11 cannot sue Motorola Inc. and the city for problems with department radios, a federal appeals court panel ruled Monday. The three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the lawsuit was barred by the decision of the relatives to file claims with the federal Victim Compensation Fund. In addition to damages, the relatives were hoping that the suit would reveal evidence to support their contention that the radios were defective. The appeals court noted the emotion of the case, but decided it on strictly procedural grounds. The law creating the federal compensation fund "balanced the certainty of no-fault recovery against the relinquishment of one's right to bring a federal action -- created by the statute -- for injuries arising from the disaster," the three-judge panel said. The radios in use that day, which were the subject of the suit, were Sabre model Motorolas that were put back into service earlier in the year after a newer Motorola model delivered in 2000, the XTS3500, was found to have deficiencies. That model was returned to use in 2002. Copyright (c) 2005, Newsday, Inc. Visit Newsday on line at http://www.newsday.com This article originally appeared at: http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/wtc/nyc-rad0503,0,2464109.story?coll=nyc-homepage-breaking2 NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 20:32:53 -0500 Subject: A Megachurch's Leader Says Microsoft Is No Match By SARAH KERSHAW Ken Hutcherson claims to be the person who forced Microsoft to withdraw its support of a gay rights bill before the Washington State Legislature. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/national/02minister.html?ex=1115697600&en=86ce1da88060f83f&ei=5070 Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. Also check out news on the NY Times/NPR/Christian Science Monitor page: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 20:40:23 -0500 Subject: Qwest Withdraws Bid After MCI Accepts Verizon Offer By JENNIFER BAYOT Qwest's decision appears to end the three-month takeover battle with Verizon for MCI. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/business/02cnd-phone.html?ex=1115697600&en=3577f122c9a97c89&ei=5070 Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 23:12:05 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Good God Google By MATHIEU BALEZ Special to Globe and Mail Update Front Lines is a guest viewpoint section offering perspectives on current issues and events from people working on the front lines of Canada's technology industry. Mathieu Balez is vice-president and co-founder of Syllogix Inc., a management science consultancy based in Montreal. Google Inc., Silicon Valley's latest garage-to-riches story, is metamorphosing before our collective eyes into the single most important company on the planet, if it hasn't claimed that title already. And if you haven't been following its (near) weekly parade of new Web-based software tools, then it's time you took notice: The Internet ... nay, the entire computing experience ... nay, the fundamental way in which we access and interact with information, is soon to become radically different. Whether it be under Google's benevolent technological hegemony or within its sinister monopolistic grasp, however, remains somewhat unclear. http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050322.gtflgooglemar22/BNStory/Technology/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 23:22:11 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Google Eyes / The Company Everyone Loves Knows More About You Google Eyes The company everyone loves knows more about you than you might realize. BY DAN KENNEDY Is there a company anywhere within these United States with a better public image than Google has? We love it. We need it. We use it -- more than 200 million times a day, by some accounts. The unofficial slogan - "Don't Be Evil" - epitomizes everything we want in a business relationship. And more often than not, Google lives up to those words. But there is another side to Google, and it's one that the company would just as soon you not think about. It's what happens each and every time you look up a piece of information. Maybe an old boyfriend. A political organization you heard mentioned on television the night before. A possible vacation spot. Perhaps you're a student trying to track down a terrorist group's web site for a paper you're writing. Or a church elder who likes to look at hard-core pornography. You might be seeking information on how to grow your own marijuana. Who knows? Google knows. According to Lauren Weinstein, an internet activist and privacy expert based in southern California, Google keeps track of every search that's made, as well as the internet location of the computer from which the search is taking place -- and then it stores that information for possible future use. Moreover, he said, it would not be terribly difficult to trace those searches to the person who made them. That's you and me. http://www.fwweekly.com/issues/2005-02-02/feature.asp ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Sharpton Wants U.S. FCC to Step in on Violent Radio Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 16:33:37 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Lisa Minter wrote: > Al Sharpton, a community activist and one-time Democratic presidential > candidate, on Thursday urged the government to step in to stop what he > said was violence fomented by radio stations. Al Sharpton is not one to be commenting on this. I recall at least one major incidence of violence where he was eager to jump in and get some publicity for himself. I don't think he actually cared about the victim. > He noted two incidents, one with Grammy winner Lil' Kim in 2001, > involving shootings outside a New York hip hop station owned by Emmis > Communications Corp., Hot 97 FM. I wish I could comment, but I'd need to know something about the specific incidents before I could say anything. JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@surplus4actors.INFO Subject: Re: Spam Mentioning "242 W. 36th St" Date: 2 May 2005 20:03:16 -0700 The only messages I left was telling them which payphone I was at and for them to change their OGM to give correct address. Tomorrow I will be in midtown Manhattan again, so I will call to let them know that I am within walking distance of their office. As I get closer to address they gave I may keep calling until I get correct address. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 21:56:02 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: How is Weather Channel Data Delivered Dan Griffin wrote: > Does anyone know how "The Weather Channel" distributes the regional > forecast information (as seen during the "local on the 8's" portion) > to the local cable companies. Is it data in the vertical interval of > the TV signal, or do they use internet connections (broadband, > dial-up), or some other communication channel? The local-weather data is distributed by satellite along with the primary video signal. It's distributed simultaneously over several different satellites in different formats; a list of more-or-less current assignments is at http://www.lyngsat.com/amc10.html (scroll down to Weather Channel). Three typical cases: AMC-ll transponder 13 (3960 MHz, Vertical) http://www.lyngsat.com/amc11.html Video is distributed as analog NTSC; audio, local-weather data, and other metadata are encoded on subcarriers and the combined signal is encrypted with the VideoCipher II scrambling system. At the headend, the signal is decrypted with a VideoCipher II decoder and sent to a so-called "Weather Star", a proprietary (and very expensive) rack-mounted PC that decodes the local-signal data and inserts it on cue in place of the default video (maps of various parts of the country showing rudimentary forecasts) received from the satellite. If the Weather Star is not used, default video passes through. This format is now all-but-obsolete, but presumably it's still available for the benefit of smaller CATV systems and the lodging industry, many of whom don't use Weather Stars. AMC-10 transponder 24 (4180 MHz, Horizontal) http://www.lyngsat.com/amc10.html Video, audio, local-weather data, and other metadata are multiplexed into a single data stream which is then encrypted with the DigiCipher scrambling system. At the headend, the signal is decrypted and sent to a digital version of the Weather Star. This format is now used by most CATV systems and many high-end hotels and casinos. DirecTV 1R/2/4S unknown transponder http://www.lyngsat.com/dtv101.html Video, audio, and metadata, along with several other video signals and their respective audios and metadata, are all multiplexed into a single data stream which is then encrypted with the DirecTV's proprietary scrambling system and modulated onto one of DirecTV's transponders. There is no local-weather data; all DirecTV subscribers get the default video. Echostar (Dish Network) uses a similar proprietary scheme. Presumably, Voom did so too before it ceased operations. Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: wollman@khavrinen.csail.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: How is Weather Channel Data Delivered to Cable Head-End Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 23:43:04 UTC Organization: MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory In article , Dan Griffin wrote: > Does anyone know how "The Weather Channel" distributes the regional > forecast information (as seen during the "local on the 8's" portion) > to the local cable companies. Is it data in the vertical interval of > the TV signal, or do they use internet connections (broadband, > dial-up), or some other communication channel? None of the above. It's one-way IP over digital satellite (using multicast IIRC). They have some sort of a backchannel, but I don't remember what it was. The one box also handles all of the video (de-)compression. (It's a PC running FreeBSD, for those to whom this is meaningful, with specialized satellite and video hardware.) -- Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every wollman@csail.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own Opinions not those | search for greater freedom. of MIT or CSAIL. | - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) ------------------------------ From: Philip R. Mann Subject: Re: Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 19:46:32 EDT Reply-To: Philip R. Mann On Sun, 01 May 2005 22:06:59 GMT, Michael D. Sullivan wrote: >> Anyone know what the reasoning was on this? >> http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050430/ap_on_hi_te/verizon_nyc_wi_fi > It's pretty clear from the story. They are introducing EV-DO 3G data > service on the Verizon Wireless network, and operating a free outdoor > wi-fi network that doesn't produce any revenue isn't exactly going to > be good for business on their new pay-to-use data network. Two different concepts. Verizon WiFi was useable only by Verizon DSL customers; it had nothing to do with VZW. Also, it was available only in NYC (primarily Manhattan) AFAIK. ------------------------------ From: FrazNor@gmail.com Subject: Re: Will Try to Connect Later? Date: 2 May 2005 17:42:38 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com A telemarketing computer could not find an available droid to talk to you. Fear not, the computer will call you again. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 17:15:38 PDT From: Dean M. Subject: Re: Still Waiting For an Answer - Podcasting Dear Pat. It seems it is its own thing; i.e. less an old something disguised as a new something and more a really new something. From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting Podcasting is a way of publishing sound files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new audio files automatically. Podcasting is distinct from other types of audio content delivery because it uses the RSS protocol. This technique has enabled many producers to create self-published, syndicated radio shows. Users subscribe to podcasts using "podcatching" software (also called "aggregator" software) which periodically checks for and downloads new content. It can then sync the content to the user's portable music player, hence the portmanteau of Apple's "iPod" and "broadcasting". Podcasting does not require an iPod, however; any digital audio player or computer with the appropriate software can play podcasts. ------------------------------ From: FrazNor@gmail.com Subject: Re: Still Waiting for an Answer Date: 2 May 2005 18:04:53 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com It seems that podcasting is simply sticking the file into your Ipod or .MP3 player and then 'casting it your ear. I did this years ago with a 32mb .mp3 player. Now it seems radio stations are officiialy going along with this by making some of their programs avail for d/l. WNYC in NYC I tik is one. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 22:24:08 -0400 From: David B. Horvath, CCP Subject: Re: Still Waiting for an Answer On Mon, 2 May 2005 17:12:51 EDT, ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) wrote: > A week or so ago here, I asked a question about the distinction -- if > any -- between 'podcasting' and audio/video 'streaming' which is a > technique which has been on the net for a long time. > No one has yet replied! Is 'podcasting' just a new name for an old > technique? Is it thus named because the (rather specialized) computers > which are used for receiving 'podcasts' do not typically do any other > functions like 'normal' computers? Is it because 'podcasters' often > times do not have any 'regular, over-the-air' type broadcasts to > accompany their computerized streaming presentations? > Can anyone answer these questions, or is 'podcasting' just much ado > about nothing new? PLEASE remove my email address, too much SPAM as it is. Podcasting is the process of creating audio files that will be downloaded into iPods and listened to at the convenience of the downloader. It isn't much different from downloading a WAV to a Windows PC and listening to it on a laptop during a long flight. Actually, the big difference is the iPod is a lot smaller than a laptop and the batteries should last longer. For streaming, you have to have connectivity for the entire length of the artifact (1 hour for an hour long show). With the WAV/podcast, you only need to be connected long enough to download the file. - David [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But, if I download the entire file to whatever system I intended to use to listen, then iPod='streaming' in that case, doesn't it? And if I were so inclined, I could use a search engine to go around all over the net looking for .wav files, download them all as found to my jillion GB hard drive and play them off as desired. Apparently, if I understand your message, podcast is a way of doing that same thing, but 'more effeciently' and 'quicker'? PAT] ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders to Test Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 23:04:49 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , wrote: > Jack Decker wrote: >> Cell phones have been around a LOT longer than VoIP, yet to the best >> of my knowledge no state attorney general has ever sued a cell phone >> company over the way they handle 911 calls. > But individuals have sued cellular carriers over problems reaching > emergency aid from the cell phones. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But the _original_ cell phone carriers > were the telcos (and still mostly are). Not exactly. AMPS licenses were granted to *two* carriers in every market: one "wireline" (incumbent LEC) telephone company, and one independent carrier. So it is only right to say that *half of* the original cell phone carriers were the telcos. Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com "The inconsistency is startling, though admittedly, if consistency is to be abandoned or transcended, there is no problem." - Noam Chomsky [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are correct. The 'A' side was the 'competitor' and the 'B' side was the wireline incumbent. Now, let's examine those roles as they were played out in two metropolitan areas, Chicago and St. Louis, circa 1982-85. In Chicago, 'A' was (still is?) "Cellular One", a brand name used by various carriers, in this instance Southwestern Bell. 'B' was Ameritech Mobile Services, back then a division of Illinois Bell. So, Southwestern Bell 'competed with' Illinois Bell in Chicago. Now go to St. Louis, and the roles were switched: 'A' was the 'competitor', Ameritech Mobile; and 'B' was the established wireline incumbent, in this instance d/b/a/ 'Southwestern Bell Mobility'. Move a bit west in Missouri/Kansas around KCMO; lo and behold, the incumbent on the 'B' side was United Telephone Company, a cousin to the Bells, and on the 'A' side was "Cellular One", but this time the Dobson outfit d/b/a. So, at least in Chicago/St. Louis (and wherever else) it was telco versus telco. "Cellular One" you see, at least in those days was just a brand name used by various companies, as often as not telcos who were _not_ allowed to market telephony under their own name in that area. No way, in those days at least, Southwestern Bell would have ever been allowed to 'move into or take over' the Chicago market, which was Illinois Bell (and soon to be) Ameritech. And telcos do not sue other telcos which is what I said all along ... It is okay for telcos to gang up on VOIP, and VOIP to retaliate, just as back in the 1970s AT&T and MCI were constantly threatening to (or actually) suing one another. An organization called USITA (United States Independent Telephone Association) started back about 1890 as a defense thing to protect the independent telcos who were in the same position as VOIP is now. Bell was going to kick their asses! USITA was formed to help them defend themselves. But how times change! In 1982 as divestiture was getting underway, guess who the honored guest and principal speaker was at the USITA convention that year? None other than Charles Brown, AT&T chairman. After 80-some years, you see, they all got to be bossum buddies. Thirty years ago, it was the same thing with MCI/Sprint versus AT&T. Now, they tolerate each other. Now 'Independent' is an obsolete word in telecom, so for a few years now USITA has been simply USTA (United States Telephone Association.) We publish their newsletter here each day. Reminds me of my two cats: Missy and Callie (the domestic long hair and the calico.) Missy was here first and absolutely hated Callie for a couple months; was always slapping her around and stealing her food, and chasing Callie out of the common litter box they both use. That's how AT&T is: they were here first; hate and despise any newcomers. But when cell phones first started in the 1980's, it was still telco versus telco, not fifty percent as you claim. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 20:11:51 -0400 From: Stanley Cline Reply-To: sc1@roamer1.org Organization: Roamer1 Communications Subject: Re: Last Laugh! What's Purchased in Omaha is Useless in Omaha John Mayson wrote: > http://www.theomahachannel.com/news/4431759/detail.html > "Some cell phones sold this week at area a Target stores won't work in > Omaha. The mistake was discovered after a KETV NewsWatch 7 viewer > called 7 Can Help." Per the article, the phones in question are T-Mobile prepaid phones. T-Mobile does have some native coverage in Omaha per the Personal Coverage Check tool on their own web site, but for some odd reason doesn't sell service there and has no local numbers available. (There are some other places, largely in the Midwest, where the same holds true -- Quincy, IL comes to mind.) A T-Mobile To Go would work just fine in Omaha, although with somewhat limited coverage; it looks like the coverage that's there (just like in Quincy) was built out largely as a license-save measure and/or to keep people from other markets from roaming on other carriers. -- Stanley Cline // Telco Boi // sc1 at roamer1 dot org // www.roamer1.org "it seems like all you ever buy is Abercrombie and cell phones" --a friend [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Hello Stan! Been a long time since I saw you here in the Digest. Write more often, won't you? Don't be such a stranger! 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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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 V24 #194 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Tue, 3 May 2005 20:47:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 195 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Unstable SS7 Links and G.703 Baluns (sarkar.abhik@gmail.com) Time Warner: Computer Back-Up Tapes Lost (Monty Solomon) Multi-Tech Offers No Risk VoIP Solutions (Jack Decker) Discussion of MPSC Order on VoIP on BroadbandReports.com (Jack Decker) Chicago, Chicago... (Jim Haynes) State of CT Sues Vonage Over 911 (Jack Decker) Qwest Drops MCI Bid (Telecom DailyLead from USTA) Re: Inmates Use Intermediaries to go Online (no one) Re: Inmates Use Intermediaries to go Online (Scott Dorsey) Re: Megachurch Leader Says Microsoft is no Match (Steve Sobol) Re: Google Eyes (Greg Skinner) Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders (Justin Time) Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders (John Levine) Re: Spam Mentioning "242 W. 36th St" (Scott Dorsey) Re: Still Waiting for an Answer (Robert Bonomi) Re: Still Waiting for an Answer (Justin Time) Re: Still Waiting for an Answer About Podcasting (Colin) Re: Still Waiting for an Answer (anonymous) Cheap Vacation SPAM With a Toll Free Number (Steve Lichter) Digest Woes (Lee Sweet) Last Laugh! http://www.welfarestate.com/binladen (nynwo_7729) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: sarkar.abhik@gmail.com Subject: Unstable SS7 Links and G.703 Baluns Date: 2 May 2005 23:34:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, We are connecting some Cisco SS7 equipment (ITP) to a GSM network using Black Box G.703 balun modules. Attached is a schematic diagram of the connections. The links work fine most of the time. But, occasionally all the E1 links on the Cisco SS7 equipment go down. We haven't yet found what causes the problem. Usually the only way for the links to come up is to reboot the equipment or sometimes to shutdown and startup the E1 controllers. We have some connections going straight to another SS7 equipment through a couple of baluns. We suspect these connections might be causing some problem because we haven't got the grouding configuration correct for the balun's involved in these connections. Ever since we have disconnected these connections the problem seems to have vanished. Can someone suggest anything or has someone seen any problem like this before? Thanks, Abhik. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Abhick's schematic diagram was _not_ included with his message. Perhaps any of you who know about this topic can commuicate direct with him as needed. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 01:10:48 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Time Warner: Computer Back-Up Tapes Lost NEW YORK (AP) -- Media and entertainment company Time Warner Inc. said Monday that computer back-up tapes containing data on 600,000 individuals were lost by an outside data storage firm. The data were on current and former employees going back to 1986, as well as some of their dependents and beneficiaries, said Kathy McKiernan, a Time Warner spokeswoman. The tapes did not include personal data on Time Warner customers, the company said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48820133 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 11:25:27 -0400 Subject: Multi-Tech Offers No Risk VoIP Solutions This is a press release. Multi-Tech has been around for a long time but their equipment has always been a bit pricey (though not horribly so). For some multi-location businesses that are not quite ready to replace their old phone equipment, but still want the cost savings of VoIP, there may be an interim solution here. http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-03-2005/0003539219&STORY&EDATE= Multi-Tech Offers No Risk VoIP Solutions MINNEAPOLIS, MN USA 05/05/2004 http://www.multitech.com http://www.interop.com Add VoIP Gateways to Existing Phone Equipment and Routers MINNEAPOLIS, May 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Virtually any multi-location business that wants to reduce toll charges between frequently called or faxed locations can do it without replacing existing equipment. All you have to do is add a VoIP gateway to each location connected to existing phone equipment and routers. Now Multi-Tech(R) Systems, Inc., a leading data communications and telecommunications technology company based in suburban Minneapolis, can make that a "no risk" proposition by letting qualified users try out a pair of MultiVOIP(TM) voice over IP gateways free of charge (U.S. only) for a 60 day evaluation period. There is no need to buy expensive new phone or router equipment, because MultiVOIP VoIP gateways will operate with most existing equipment. Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040505/MTSLOGO ) "We have been providing add-on voice over IP solutions for over seven years and were one of the very first companies to offer it," states Chip Harleman, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Multi-Tech Systems, Inc. "It has always seemed very natural to us that users who are satisfied with their phone systems and data networks should add an application like VoIP to that existing equipment rather than taking the more expensive route of replacing it. The return on investment can be very short even with a company using the most inexpensive long distance calling plans. For instance, a company with a central site in California and remote sites in Chicago and the UK can pay for a MultiVOIP gateway in each location in less than six months with typical business phone usage. With ROIs like that it is easy to see why investing in VoIP technology is a smart business decision." The MultiVOIP voice over IP gateways provide toll-free voice and fax communications over the Internet or Intranet. By integrating voice and fax into an existing data network, businesses can realize substantial savings on inter-office long distance toll charges. The MultiVOIP family is available in analog and digital models ranging from one to 60 ports. MultiVOIP products connect directly to phones, fax machines, key systems, PSTN lines or a PBX to provide real-time, toll-quality voice connections to any office on a VOIP network. The MultiVOIP gateway is designed to help maximize investments already made in the existing data and voice network infrastructure. Multi-Tech Systems is an ISO 9001:2000 certified global manufacturer of award-winning telephony, Internet and device networking products that connect voice and data over IP networks, add connectivity to equipment using embedded technologies, and provide the latest in cellular wireless technologies. With a 34-year history of inventing products known for their reliability and performance, Multi-Tech Systems still employs the same mission on which the company was founded: to provide solutions that solve real business problems. To reinforce this philosophy, Multi-Tech Systems prides itself on developing and fostering mutually beneficial long-term relationships with its worldwide network of technology partners, sales channels and customers. Privately held, Multi-Tech Systems has over 60 U.S. patents and numerous international patents. The company's intellectual property portfolio includes patents covering transmission of multiplexed voice, data and video packets used in technologies such as Internet telephony, PC telephony, voice over IP or frame relay, and DSVD modems. For additional information, contact Multi-Tech in the U.S. at 800-328-9717 or +763-785-3500, via fax at +763-785-9874, EMEA at T: +(44) 118 959 7774 (UK) or T: +(33) 1 64 61 09 81 (France), and via fax at F: +(44) 118 959 7775 (UK) or F: +(33) 1 64 61 09 71 (France) or browse the company's World Wide Web home page at http://www.multitech.com . Multi-Tech and Multi-Tech product names referred to in this news release are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Multi-Tech Systems, Inc. Other company names and their products mentioned in this news release may be the trademarks of their respective companies. SOURCE Multi-Tech Systems, Inc. Web Site: http://www.multitech.com http://www.interop.com ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 11:53:24 -0400 Subject: Discussion of MPSC Order on VoIP on BroadbandReports.com See this thread: http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,13309798 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Subject: Chicago, Chicago ... Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 20:09:44 GMT When I travel I take along a laptop to keep up with the email. My ISP has local access numbers in lots of places, so most of the time I can connect with a local call. Not so around Chicago, where it seems that to call from one suburb to another, or maybe from one prefix to another, you get dinged for a small fixed charge. A motel that gives free local calls can't cope with the fixed charge, so I have to use the ISPs 800 number, for which there is a substantial per-minute charge. Whereas if I go over to Michigan there are dozens of local phone numbers listed for each of the places I am likely to stay. No news in all this, just wanted to get my gripe up in the air. jhhaynes at earthlink dot net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The situation was like this: Chicago, for some sixty or seventy years, had 'local area' calling for just one 'unit' or call. Illinois Bell had that system over the entire northern Illnois area. Local, or one-unit, untimed calls within the _corporate city limits_ where you lived. You could call from Howard Street on the north to 145th and Avenue M on the far south side for one unit, talk as long as desired. To be extreme about it, the limits of the city of Chicago can stretch for _35 miles_ in a few instances. But, going outside the city limits, even a block or so, and you began a multiple unit, timed situation. When I worked on Howard Street on the far north end of town, I could all anywhere I wished south of me for one unit. But to call _across the street_ literally, since at that point 'across the street' was the City of Evanston, IL -- to the McDonald's to order my lunch, it was two units for five minutes and counting. Now, provincial people in the center of town who seldom traveled anywhere thought that was a good deal, and it was. A 'unit' cost about two cents, and the typical residential service plan gave 80 such units free as part of your telephone subscription. Where I could call to downtown Chicago for 'free', someone who lived in one of the outer suburbs had to pay five or six units for a three minute call. Even though downtown Chicago was part of their 'community of interest' (as it was mine) _they_ had to pay a slight fortune to call the same places, often times because a simple street and a city boundary line got in the way. Sometime in the early 1980's, Illinois Bell -- I think it was Ameritech by then -- decided to redefine 'local' so the term came closer to reality for most of the area. In reality, my 'community of interest' did not go way out to the far south side of Chicago; like everyone else I was much more interested in things closer to me. And that new system 'evend the score' considerably for the suburbs, many of which are quite rinky-dink in size (for instance the little town of 'Golf' is about four blocks long by two or three blocks wide; it sits in the southeast corner of a bigger suburb called Glenview [thus named because it was founded a hundred years ago by the members of the Glenview Country Club and golf course which sits in that area], but I digress.) Instead of being able to call 'locally' for one thin unit, the new local system allowed for an eight mile radius _of your central office_ as your 'local area' and one untimed unit. Now, the only people who really got screwed were the folks in the highrises along Sheridan Road and (in general) the EDGewater phone office. Sitting as they do along the lake, an eight mile radius of them would put many of them out in Lake Michigan. But Bell knew they could not please everyone with any scheme. So no matter what area code you are in (around Chicago) you call your own central office or any contiquous ceentral office and it is a 'local call'; further away it is a 'unit' (time plus mileage) call. Oh, one other small small-print 'gotcha': the above only applies to _residential_ service. For business service (essentially anything that does not apply as residential is business) the new system said every call is timed, even the one unit 'local' calls. So, hotels/motels/ dormitories/hospitals -- any place with a switchboard for residents -- pays every time a phone goes off hook and a connection is estab- lished. 'Business' in this context is not just the 7000 station PBX at First National Bank. So you may see how small motels, etc would have a devilish time keeping up with it all. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 17:55:14 -0400 Subject: CT Sues Vonage Over 911 - States Bitter They Can't Tax To Death [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are so many links in this latest report from Jack that I am leaving them all in the article as we go along, with apologies to the _text only_ readers. To get the full benefit of seeing/relating to all these links, you may wish to read this article in the online 'latest issue' file via the web site at http://telecom-digest.org 'Latest issue' comes out as often as this Digest is published. Consider reading the Digest there daily. PAT] http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/63207 CT Sues Vonage Over 911 States bitter they can't tax to death, sue over 911 Suing Vonage is the new black! Houston sued the company, http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/61967 claiming they don't make it clear users need to set up their 911 service. http://www.broadbandreports.com/r0/download/800075~433b0c31ec1520970b77229393b7d713/vonage.png (This screen is apparently too confusing). http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/63110 Michigan may sue the company claiming the limitations of its 911 services are not clear. Now Newsday http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/connecticut/ny-bc-ct--911callslawsuit0503may03,0,20771.story?coll=ny-region-apconnecticut> reports that Connecticut is suing Vonage for violating the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, by "misrepresenting" their 911 service. Vonage advises users maintain an alternative way to contact 911, as VoIP 911 is still in its infancy. [Comments: There is a slight error in the above, as one reader pointed out in a comment: "Actually the City of Houston did not sue Vonage. While the incident with 911 was in Houston, it is the office of Texas (state) Attorney General (who is in Austin, the TX capital) that sued Vonage." And in case you wondered, yes, Connecticut is a SBC state.] Article + reader comments at: http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/63207 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 12:45:09 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Qwest Drops MCI Bid Telecom dailyLead from USTA May 3, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21272&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Qwest drops MCI bid BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * France Telecom sells stake in Germany's MobilCom * Cablevision to sell Sprint wireless service via online store * VoDSL market expected to soar * Satellite TV tops cable in rural homes, study says * Qwest reports earnings USTA SPOTLIGHT * Newton's Telecom Dictionary -- 21st Edition EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * AT&T plans enterprise VoIP offering * Korea: World's first TV service for cell phones begins REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Michigan may sue Vonage Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21272&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: noone@nowhere.com Subject: Re: Inmates Use Intermediaries to Go Online Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 16:38:18 -0400 Organization: NETPLEX Internet Services - http://www.ntplx.net/ On 30 Apr 2005 18:43:17 -0700, Lisa Minter wrote: > Very few prisons/jails allow inmates any use of computers at all > because the authorities assume the prisoners will use them for > no good. Why, who knows, they may even use web sites to try and > drum up sympathy for their cause. > http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050501/ap_on_hi_te/internet_inmates > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would like to know one thing about > prison phone systems, which are notoriously rip-off systems. The > prison authorities _claim_ the recipients of phone calls from > prisoners are not allowed to use _call transfer_ or _call forwarding_ > or _three way calling_ on calls from prisoners. I guess that is > because the end result -- the person with whom the prisoner wound > up conversing with -- would possibly not be on the 'approved' list > at the prison. Does the prison phone system have the technical > capability to restrict the called party's phone in that way? For > example, I forward my phone somewhere, then you, in prison, call me > as we agreed on. Or, you call me from the prison, I flash the > hook and bring someone else on the line with me. The prison says > in their literature that is impossible. Is it really? PAT] I don't see how they can prevent a person outside the system from using a two-line phone to conference two calls on two separate analog lines. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Inmates Use Intermediaries to Go Online Date: 3 May 2005 15:21:12 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) TELECOM Digest Editor noted in a comment to Lisa Minter : > Does the prison phone system have the technical capability to > restrict the called party's phone in that way? For example, I > forward my phone somewhere, then you, in prison, call me as we > agreed on. Or, you call me from the prison, I flash the hook and > bring someone else on the line with me. The prison says in their > literature that is impossible. Is it really? PAT] It is, because the person who is assigned to monitor the telephone call will disconnect it when they hear this happening. Not a technological solution but an effective one. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: 3 May 2005 19:41:17 -0000 From: Greg Skinner Subject: Re: Google Eyes / The Company Everyone Loves Knows More About You Monty Solomon wrote: > Google Eyes > The company everyone loves knows more about you than you might realize. > BY DAN KENNEDY > Google knows. According to Lauren Weinstein, an internet activist and > privacy expert based in southern California, Google keeps track of > every search that's made, as well as the internet location of the > computer from which the search is taking place -- and then it stores > that information for possible future use. Moreover, he said, it would > not be terribly difficult to trace those searches to the person who > made them. That's you and me. > http://www.fwweekly.com/issues/2005-02-02/feature.asp This is old news. In fact, for quite some time, search engines, portals, and other large information-oriented sites have kept track of this information. Perhaps Google should put a disclaimer on their usage policy stating something like "your IP address may be linked to you through the use of address registries and/or your ISP usage records," but would it matter? (It's not as if the vast majority of Google's or any other search engine's users read the privacy policies.) People have decided (for whatever reasons) that it is worth releasing some of their "personal" information in exchange for the "free" use of search engines, portals, etc. I don't expect this to change anytime soon. Furthermore, I don't think law-abiding individuals have anything to worry about. At the very least, if Google is going to be the target of such criticism, it should be applied to other large search engines and portals as well. ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: A Megachurch's Leader Says Microsoft Is No Match Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 15:02:49 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Lisa Minter wrote: > By SARAH KERSHAW > Ken Hutcherson claims to be the person who forced Microsoft to > withdraw its support of a gay rights bill before the Washington State > Legislature. IMHO there is a disconnect here. Reverend Hutcherson is a member of an ethnic group that has endured far, far too much hate and discrimintation. He's old enough that he may even, unfortunately, have been the target of such hate himself (though hopefully, he didn't have to deal with it directly). Yet he's engaging in discrimination against another group ... **SJS (this isn't the first time I've seen this phenomenon; won't be the last) JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: Justin Time Subject: Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders to Test Date: 3 May 2005 06:05:18 -0700 Pat, I'm not certain what this word from your comment is: athenema, but if you strip the first three letters it does get the point across about the feelings between VoIP and the telco providers. Rodgers [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you have athenema, you have feelings of much hostility and anger toward someone else, or some group, etc. And 'enema', well, that means ... uh ... PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 3 May 2005 14:57:55 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders to Test Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Not exactly. AMPS licenses were granted to *two* carriers in every > market: one "wireline" (incumbent LEC) telephone company, and one > independent carrier. So it is only right to say that *half of* the > original cell phone carriers were the telcos. Pat is right -- most of the A carriers were LECs from somewhere else, or perhaps for the first 15 minutes someone who bought a kit to bid in the cellular auction and then turned around and sold his ticket to SBC or Bell Atlantic. R's, John [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But SBC in those days was Southwestern Bell, and its eastern boundary was Missouri. Please correct me as needed, but weren't all or most of the -A- or 'competing' carriers in fact one 'Celluar One' (as a brand name) or another? I know here in southeast Kansas the A/B thing got screwed up somehow; where Sprint (the old United Telephone) is the 'B' or established telco in the northern part (old 913 area code) of the state and 'Alltel' is the 'A' carrier when you get south where I am (the old 316 and now 620 area code) Alltel is the 'B' carrier and Cingular Wireless is the 'A' carrier, which they inherited when they took over AT&T's old territory here. But in the 1980's SBC would have never dared to go up to Chicago to hawk their wares. It just wouldn't do. That's why they had to have their make believe company 'Cellular One' do it for them. I know our local 'Cell One' is a Dobson thing, and they are on the 'B' side here along with Alltel. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Spam Mentioning "242 W. 36th St" Date: 3 May 2005 10:30:08 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) wrote: > The only messages I left was telling them which payphone I was at and > for them to change their OGM to give correct address. > Tomorrow I will be in midtown Manhattan again, so I will call to let > them know that I am within walking distance of their office. As I get > closer to address they gave I may keep calling until I get correct > address. Why would you ever get a correct address? They are spammers. It is their _business plan_ to keep their address secret. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Still Waiting for an Answer Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 04:44:00 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , David B. Horvath, CCP wrote: > On Mon, 2 May 2005 17:12:51 EDT, ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu > (TELECOM Digest Editor) wrote: >> A week or so ago here, I asked a question about the distinction -- if >> any -- between 'podcasting' and audio/video 'streaming' which is a >> technique which has been on the net for a long time. >> No one has yet replied! Is 'podcasting' just a new name for an old >> technique? Is it thus named because the (rather specialized) computers >> which are used for receiving 'podcasts' do not typically do any other >> functions like 'normal' computers? Is it because 'podcasters' often >> times do not have any 'regular, over-the-air' type broadcasts to >> accompany their computerized streaming presentations? >> Can anyone answer these questions, or is 'podcasting' just much ado >> about nothing new? > PLEASE remove my email address, too much SPAM as it is. > Podcasting is the process of creating audio files that will be downloaded > into iPods and listened to at the convenience of the downloader. It isn't > much different from downloading a WAV to a Windows PC and listening to it > on a laptop during a long flight. > Actually, the big difference is the iPod is a lot smaller than a > laptop and the batteries should last longer. > For streaming, you have to have connectivity for the entire length of > the artifact (1 hour for an hour long show). With the WAV/podcast, you > only need to be connected long enough to download the file. > - David > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But, if I download the entire file to > whatever system I intended to use to listen, then iPod= 'streaming' in > that case, doesn't it? And if I were so inclined, I could use a > search engine to go around all over the net looking for .wav files, > download them all as found to my jillion GB hard drive and play them > off as desired. Apparently, if I understand your message, podcast is > a way of doing that same thing, but 'more effeciently' and 'quicker'? > PAT] 'Streaming' is "real-time" transfer from the server to the user-machine, at the rate needed for presentation to the user. And only that fast. "Podcasting" is just high-speed file-transfer, for _later_ listening. second-cousin to napster, kazaa, etc. The audio content is packaged in a format optimized for iPod use. It's *not* 'real time' transfer, the whole idea being that you can download much faster than the listening rate, and you can then be listening _after_ you have disconnected the 'pod' from the Internet. It's "off-line" audio listening; like off-line mail-reading, back in the days of dial-up. You download a bunch of stuff, _fast_, and then wade through it 'at your leisure', without being tied to the phone line. ------------------------------ From: Justin Time Subject: Re: Still Waiting for an Answer Date: 3 May 2005 06:00:26 -0700 If you want to use the streaming analogy, then streaming is live, podcasting is dead -- just like having a tape of a "live concert." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 23:02:45 +1000 From: Colin Subject: Re: Still Waiting for an Answer About Podcasting TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > A week or so ago here, I asked a question about the distinction -- if > any -- between 'podcasting' and audio/video 'streaming' which is a > technique which has been on the net for a long time. Podcasting is a subscription service like RSS. indeed it uses RSS for audio files. You select the content, e.g. the daily radio program you want to listen to, and it is downloaded in the background, ready for you to listen to when you want to, rather than when it was originally broadcasted. Download ipodder and try it! http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/faq/index.php Podcasting is a subscription service like RSS. indeed it uses RSS for audio files. You select the content, e.g. the daily radio program you want to listen to, and it is downloaded in the background, ready for you to listen to when you want to, rather than when it was originally broadcasted. Download ipodder and try it! http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/faq/index.php Regards, Colin [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I do that now. I go to a web site with audio/visual content and click on a link which says 'listen to what this man said on the radio last week'. Either I listen to it then and there as it is pushed out to me, or I 'right click' and save the file to my jillion Gb hard drive and play it later. Is ipod just another thing similar to Real Player or Windows Media or QuickTime? And for convenience in use, I can always fire up my laptop with the 802.11 card can't I? And you may pay for RSS content; I do not. I use many java scripts in td-extra which go all around the net looking for things it (meaning me, of course) wants to see, and brings it back to my web site. There are countless numbers of 'syndicate our news for free' pages everywhere on the net. Why do people pay? Maybe they are too dumb (or not brain-diseased enough like me) to get what they want for free? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 18:19:15 -0500 From: Anononymous Reader Subject: Re: Still Waiting for an Answer Podcasting is unloading playlists from (usually) iPod like devices and the station plays those lists. Effectively the listeners are providing the playlists. Streaming is distribution of signal over an IP network. Essentially, one has nothing to do with the other. Podcasting could have been done by listeners sending postcards to the station giving a hour's worth of music they would like played and the order in which they would like the music played. The stations would pick lists they liked (or at least did not mind) and build their station playlists that way. ------------------------------ From: shlichter1@aol.com Subject: Cheap Vacation Spam With a Toll Free Number Date: 3 May 2005 15:55:40 -0700 Got this piece of junk. Looks interesting. Give them a call at their toll free telephone number as its much easier to use a payphone since it costs you nothing and helps others. ============================ The promotion is almost over and we did not want you to miss out. Please call us as soon as possible as there are very few packages available at this special promotional rate. (866) 702-0972 - THIS IS A TOLL FREE NUMBER. Sincerely, Gary Rogers Promotions Director Florida Travel Bureau / Coral Beach Travel, Inc. Celebrating 13 years as Travel Leader Florida Licensed Seller of Travel Reg. No. ST15053 ------------------------------ From: Lee Sweet To: editor@telecom-digest.org Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 13:08:07 -0400 Subject: Digest woes? Pat, I've been catching up with about ten days of TD (out of town and then a cold... :-) ), and was wondering what was up, and didn't see you discuss it (I could have missed it ...). I got about 6-10 issues with no 'number' information in the subject, and each was exactly 30K long. These were about numbers 184-190 (from the inside info), I think. Then/and, other issues before that had the sender in various formats. More issues from being spam-overloaded or something else? Thanks for your illuminating info, as always! Lee Sweet Datatel, Inc. Manager of Telephony Services and Information Security How higher education does business. Voice: 703-968-4661 Cell: 703-932-9425 Fax: 703-968-4625 lee@datatel.com www.datatel.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ah, so you noticed ... well, I at first thought that maybe John Levine, who administers the mailing list through majordomo had fallen asleep at the switch(board) ... although I did think it a bit unusual that my volume of hate mail had fallen off a little (although the amount of spam and viri had stayed constant or maybe increased a little.) Then I discovered that about 6 or 7 issues (184 through 190 I think) had not made it though the sendmail here at massis. I do (at least) two things here: a script of mine, from years back when I still had all my marbles intact, called 'posterd&' (the ampersand means to run in the background) which in turn calls 'nntpxmit' (a process which posts comp.dcom.telecom on several sites at the same time, message by message) and 'hypermail' (a script which posts the individual messages in each issue 'usenet style' message by message on http://telecom-digest.org/TELECOM_Digest_Online _AND_ I also run 'send-telecom' (which itself calls up a background job called 'send.now', the purpose of which is to (1) make up the latest-issue.html file on the fly and (2) preserve a copy of the Digest in our archives in numerical order and last but not least, (3) invoke [or would you say PROvoke] an instantiation of sendmail to get this out to the mailing list readers, with a few clever tricks out of sendmail which I am allowed to use as a priviledged user at MIT [such as the -f flag allowing sendmail to refer to me as 'editor@telecom-digest.org' rather than just as 'any old sap user@ lcs.mit.edu'. [Quite aside, but now and then some other site somewhere on a spam-fighting tangent discovers that our sendmail here allows me to make 'those adjustments' and it kicks my stuff back or shreds it undelivered, whatever]. In the process of doing these two jobs, I sometimes grow impatient, since hypermail -xp takes fu---- forever it seems, now that I have those Google ads in there, and the larger my stash of messages gets, the more ads I get people to look at, etc. So my diseased brain, in its wisdom thought of an 'improved' way of handling things: I would invoke posterd& and after seeing it get happily on its way doing its job I would then invoke send-telecom, letting them both run at the same time, while I went to have a cigarette and feed the cats. Ah, but this new scheme of mine, this shortcut led straight to hell, an express lane so to speak; it failed, miserably, as diseased brains are want to do; the sendmail (portion) of the send-telecom job got broken, because sendmail could not find a couple files it insisted on having, since the earlier script (posterd&) had not yet had a chance to create them for sendmail to find. _Not all_ scripts running in the background which invoke sendmail bother to tell the invoker when something goes wrong, so I sat here blissfully assuming that things were going along fine. I still have not figured it all out yet, although transparently 'it' works the way it should from the reader's perspective. You cannot write a Unix script without lavish commenting to remind yourself what you did [and no _real man_ ever bothers to document his scripts] then go back twenty years, two heart attacks and one brain aneurysm later and understand what you wrote or how to fix it if it gets broken. By purely hook and crook, I found out one thing (after I had manually forced those six or eight issues you got all at once through the sendmail slot at the postoffice): the regularly scheduled issue got through okay! But I had done it _exactly, precisely_ as I had done it in the past when posterd& and one of its components hypermail -xp only took a few minutes to run instead of the twenty minutes it takes now with all those God Damned Google ads that have to be on each page it creates. So ... if I do it in _this_ order (posterd& _then_ send-telecom) by George, John Levine gets it, the readers get it, etc. So, there has to be one or more files _in common_ to both scripts which send- telecom needs (but posterd& has not yet created or has created but is working on them when send-telecom comes looking for them or maybe posterd& had the audacity to rm them while send-telecom was using them or looking for them, etc), I dunno. I have the scripts back to where they mostly work, but I still have to do some manual 'tidy up' afterward on them. Ah, if we could have only known twenty (even ten!) years ago what we know now about mailing lists, interaction with the web and stuff like that. Maybe someday my hero will come along and work all the inconsistencies and bugs out of my scripts so I can do this in a modern way. I know I sure cannot do all that any longer. Enjoy it and use me while you can. Someday I won't be around to get kicked any longer. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nynwo_7729 Subject: Last Laugh! http://www.welfarestate.com/binladen Date: 3 May 2005 13:13:35 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Just to show you the kind of crap I have to deal with each day I submit now this entry from a user at Microsoft Mail about our good friend Mr. BinLaden. You know, BinLaden is the surname, or 'Family Name' for a good many decent people in the USA and elsewhere. I understand, that like the Townsend people, some of them have changed their last name out of disgrace for things that happened in the past. PAT] ==== here is what my correspondent said ==== my indication show that the 9/11 hijackers on thiswebsites http://www.welfarestate.com/binladen can take out the 911 phone bank system acrossing the united state.nynwo_7729@msn.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mr. nynwo_7729, thank you very much for your intelligent analysis of world events. I needed that. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #195 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Wed, 4 May 2005 16:21:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 196 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Turn Your Cellphone Into a Modem (Monty Solomon) Online Ads Moving Beyond Pop-Ups (Monty Solomon) Intrado Delivers VoIP E-911 Solution With Verizon in New York (J Decker) Vonage's $10-Million 911 Plan (Jack Decker) Must Read Article: A Question of Independence (Jack Decker) Connecticut Suing Vonage Over 911 Disclosure (Jack Decker) Wireless Headsets for Cordless Phones (Jimbo) Forward Fax to Email (Jeremy) American Tower Buys Spectrasite (Telecom Daily Lead from USTA) Need AT Command to Invoke Push To Talk Button of Motorola (vemulakiran) Re: Spam Mentioning "242 W. 36th St" (NOTvalid@surplus4actors.INFO) Re: Spam Mentioning "242 W. 36th St" (B.M. Wright) Re: Chicago, Chicago (Julian Thomas) Re: Unstable SS7 Links and G.703 Baluns (Scott Dorsey) Re: How is Weather Channel Data Delivered to Cable Headend (Neal McLain) Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders (John Levine) Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders (BV124@aol.com) Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders (M.D. Sullivan) Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders (F Goldstein) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Tue, 3 May 2005 23:00:10 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Turn Your Cellphone Into a Modem PERSONAL TECH By Michelle Johnson | May 2, 2005 Navigating the Web on the average cellphone can be an exercise in frustration. You're either reduced to clicking through stripped-down screens of mostly text, or forced to squint at pages scrunched onto a tiny display. The PocketSurfer Web viewer, which works with a cellphone, is aiming to change all that. However, it has some quirks. About the size of a checkbook, the PocketSurfer looks a bit like a tiny laptop or PDA. But the resemblance stops there, because this is a single-function device, meant strictly for accessing the Web. Essentially, it turns almost any cellphone into a wireless modem via a Bluetooth connection, so it will work anywhere there's cellphone service. (If your phone isn't Blue-tooth enabled you can purchase a separate adapter.) I recently tested a PocketSurfer with a Bluetooth-enabled Motorola V600 cellphone and found that while it offers definite advantages, setting it up and using it require jumping a few hurdles. http://www.boston.com/business/personaltech/articles/2005/05/02/turn_your_cellphone_into_a_modem/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 23:02:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Online Ads Moving Beyond Pop-ups @LARGE By Scott Kirsner | May 2, 2005 SAN FRANCISCO -- Jarvis Coffin moves through the crowded aisles of AdTech, an advertising trade show, like a union boss at the annual picnic. He greets every other person by first name, clasping hands and promising phone calls and e-mails; others wave at him from across the crush. Coffin is the chief executive and one of the founders of Burst Media in Burlington, a broker of online advertising that has been around since 1995. (The very first Web ad, a banner promoting AT&T, appeared one year before that.) The company's arc, from instant ignition to near flame-out to recent resurrection, has closely traced that of the entire online advertising industry. Now, thanks to Google's clever method of placing pithy and relevant text ads next to your search results, and an array of flashy new ad formats, advertisers are making the Net a serious part of their marketing strategies. Online ad sales totaled $9.6 billion last year, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau, and are expected to hit $12.7 billion in 2004, based on estimates by the research firm eMarketer. Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker, who gave a talk at AdTech, observed that online advertising still represents only 3 percent of total US ad spending, calling the Internet 'the most underutilized advertising medium that's out there.' If 1994 to 2000 were the experimental days of online advertising, with marketers pouring money in to see what worked, and 2001 to 2003 was an interregnum where many dot-com companies vanished and Fortune 1000 companies stepped back to reevaluate their online strategies, then 2004 and 2005 represent a resurgence. Consumers are spending more time on the Internet -- hours that tend to be stolen from television -- and they're increasingly connected at high speed. Advertisers have discovered formulas to make Internet advertising pay off, and in the next five years, some of the same companies that developed technologies for delivering and measuring Internet ads will sneak into your TV set, to manage the ads that appear on your TiVo or through your video-on-demand service. http://www.boston.com/business/personaltech/articles/2005/05/02/online_ads_moving_beyond_pop_ups/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 19:56:04 -0400 Subject: Intrado Delivers VoIP E-911 Solution With Verizon in New York http://mrtmag.com/news/intrado_verizon_e911_050305/ May 3, 2005 5:51 PM By Donny Jackson Leading 911 vendor Intrado has announced it is installing equipment to deliver voice-over-IP (VoIP) emergency-service calls in New York City directly to appropriate public-safety answering points (PSAPs) with address and call-back information through the traditional E-911 system. Intrado has offered a 'V-911' solution that directs VoIP 911 calls to the appropriate PSAP, but those calls are delivered to the PSAP's administrative line instead of being routed directly to a dispatcher. But the New York City solution uses an Intrado gateway that directs VoIP 911 calls in the New York area to the appropriate selective router -- owned by incumbent phone carrier Verizon Communications -- so they can be answered by a PSAP dispatcher, said Marcus Andronici, Intrado's product and marketing manager for VoIP 911. "Here, we have gone another level, in that we're creating the infrastructure to deliver calls to Verizon's selective routers," Andronici said. "This is going to be the first access to a Verizon selective router." Indeed, leading VoIP provider Vonage has repeatedly stated that gaining access to incumbent carrier's selective routers is necessary to provide emergency-calling service in the legacy 911 system. After initially meeting with some resistance from incumbent carriers, Vonage officials have said their company has reached agreements with Verizon and Qwest Communications on selective-router access. But access to the selective router is not just a limitation for companies like Vonage, Andronici said. Even Verizon's own VoIP product, VoiceWing, was not allowed access to the selective router because the VoiceWing arm is not regulated as a telephone carrier, he said. Full story at: http://mrtmag.com/news/intrado_verizon_e911_050305/ How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 03:15:06 -0400 Subject: Vonage's $10-Million 911 Plan http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=11984&hed=Vonage%E2%80%99s+%2410-Million+911+Plan Vonage will spend cash to work with Verizon and other operators to offer emergency services. Vonage will spend $10 million to start providing 911-style services for its customers, partly by using Verizon's infrastructure to connect callers with emergency dispatchers, the VoIP provider announced Wednesday. The investment is Vonage's first substantial attempt to close the company's emergency calling gap. The cash is a relatively low price to address a shortcoming that has become a publicity nightmare for the company, which has spent tens of millions of dollars to market VoIP service. Vonage calls the investment a major undertaking, describing the plan as 'the first domino to fall' in a plan to offer emergency services nationwide. Vonage and Verizon will implement the system over the next six months. For now, the Verizon contract includes emergency service access in Verizon's footprint. A Vonage call will be routed over the Verizon network to connect to the Public Safety Answering Point, or PSAP. The 911 operator is then able to access a database of the caller's personal information due to a unique key encoded in the call. Full story at: http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=11984&hed=Vonage%E2%80%99s+%2410-Million+911+Plan ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 13:04:20 -0400 Subject: A Must-Read Article: A Question of Independence Read this, print it out, give it to others to read ... Please note that this article specifically mentions The New Millennium Research Council, The Progress & Freedom Foundation and The Heartland Institute. I strongly suspect that in Michigan, you could add the Mackinac Center for Public Policy to that list, since they seem to be pretty much "cut from the same cloth" as P&FF and Heartland. http://news.com.com/A+question+of+independence/2009-1034_3-5681661.html A question of independence By Marguerite Reardon Staff Writer, CNET News.com May 2, 2005 4:00 AM PDT Charges of "astroturf" lobbying are flying in the debate over municipal broadband, as researchers rush to meet the growing demand for data and economic analysis. The term "astroturf" typically describes the use of artificial grassroots groups that pose as citizen initiatives but get major funding from corporate interests -- a strategy perfected by the telecommunications industry in its fights with regulators. Consumer groups complain that the Bells and cable operators are using a similar tactic in their efforts to prevent cities from building broadband networks that would compete with their own. The phone and cable companies have weighed in on this topic, lobbying state legislatures to pass new laws that would prohibit or limit these networks. They've also taken their fight to the public, through advertising in various communities. Supporters of municipal broadband say these companies are also influencing the debate by helping fund self-identified independent research groups that criticize city-owned networks. Groups singled out for criticism include The New Millennium Research Council, The Progress & Freedom Foundation and The Heartland Institute. "It's deceptive when the public hears the name of an organization that sounds like a respected organization with some authority behind it, when in fact it is being backed by an interested party," said Kenneth DeGraff, a policy advocate at Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports. "We look at issues purely from the consumer's perspective. Sometimes we agree with the phone companies, and sometimes we don't. But we never accept any money from an interested party." Full story at: http://news.com.com/A+question+of+independence/2009-1034_3-5681661.html ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 13:46:29 -0400 Subject: Connecticut Suing VoIP Provider Vonage Over Disclosure http://www.technewsworld.com/story/news/12400AVS07L4.xhtml By John M. Moran The Hartford Courant Because Vonage does not route its 911 calls through the system used for traditional wireline telephones, consumers placing such calls might get sent to a non-emergency number or even a recorded message instead of a live dispatcher, said Connecticut Attorney General Richard [.....] Vonage spokeswoman Brooke Schulz said the company disagreed that consumers were not fully informed about how Vonage's 911 service works, although Vonage remains "open to suggestions" for improving its disclosure. Working Toward Agreement But she said the real problem is that Vonage has not yet been able to negotiate an agreement with SBC Communications, the dominant wireline phone company for most of Connecticut, for access to its 911 network. Howard Riefs, an SBC spokesman, said talks between SBC and Vonage about 911 are ongoing. "We've been meeting over the last few weeks on this issue, and we're hopeful that we'll be able to reach agreement," he said. Late Tuesday, Vonage said it had reached an agreement with Verizon for access to its 911 network, allowing emergency personnel to receive calls from Vonage customers directly, along with related information, such as location and call-back number. Full story at: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/news/12400AVS07L4.xhtml ------------------------------ From: Jimbo Subject: Wireless Headsets for Cordless Phones ? Date: 4 May 2005 12:02:21 -0700 I am wondering if there is a way, or a product, that would allow someone to wear a cordless headset (like the Bluetooth earpieces used for cell phones) and access a cordless (land line) phone setup ? My wife is handicapped and I would like to set her up this way so she does not have to carry the cordless phone around all day. Thanks in advance. JM [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am similarly situated; partially paralyzed due to my brain aneursym, and a good cordless landline phone with a headset (and caller-ID built in as well) is from Uniden. A good friend of mine got it for me at a Costco store in Oregon. It is very light weight and can be clipped on a belt or shirt pocket while you wear the headset. Its not that I am _that totally disabled_; I can get up and walk around, etc, but very slowly sometimes, and invariably the person calling hangs up before I got to wherever I had earlier left the phone. So unless I forget where I left my head (as I used to with the phone) I can reach down and just push a button to turn it on and off. The price was right; about fifty dollars for the whole thing. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jeremy Subject: Forward Fax to Email Date: 4 May 2005 10:48:30 -0700 I currently have a fax number that is widely used by my clients. Problem is that I get a ton of fax "spam" if you will. I am looking for the BEST solution to have these faxes forwarded to e-mail, while keeping my existing fax number since that is the one everyone knows and uses. I am somewhat familiar with e-fax, but they can not re-use my existing number, plus you have to pay for outgoing faxes. I have seen where I can have a forward feature put on my fax line that would forward to an e-fax number, and I would still be able to use my fax machine for outgoing faxes (at least that is how I understand it). Because of the number of "spam" faxes I receive via fax, I have to replace my toner about every other week. As you can imagine this is a very high expense for me, so I thought if I could have them sent to e-mail then i could print the ones I want to keep and delete the trash. Does anyone have any better solutions than this. Someone mentioned a Microsoft Fax Software, but I did not have any luck finding anything out about it, so therefore I know nothing about it. Please let me know if there is a better alternative solution. Thanks, ju [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why don't you consider forwarding all of it, _everything_, to email, then using one of the several programs available for sorting out spam look at it and those things that are _not_ spam have them automatically sent on to your clients through an outbound email to fax thing. Sometimes, when things get as overwhelming as spam has become, you have to work things in the reverse fashion. I think it would be a lot cheaper than trying to take it all and try to do it as you are talking about. Take email for example: Instead of battling it all, what would happen if everyone just used a 'white list' of what they would accept and bashed _everything else_. Here, the 'internet postage; scheme might work okay: To get on my 'white list' you send me some nominal amount of 'internet postage' (off hand, let's say 5 cents), if I approve you for my white list I return your nickle and add your email to the white list. As of some certain day, everything else is blacklisted. If I do not want you on my list, then I keep your nickle and ignore you. Stuff that is not on the white list just gets automatically smashed and destroyed. Before long, so-called 'public email' would just be spammers (anyone who did not send a nickle one time, with a request to be added. That way we do not need filters, and we do not need to try and trace it back, etc. The presumption is that _all is spam_ except the occassional good, valid pieces of email, as per the white lists. Spammers would not send the nickle to start with, and although valid users would send it one time to be validated on the white list, they'd soon get their nickle returned. Maybe we should just write off email as any sort of useful tool; force the spammers (and YOU have to _prove_ you are not a spammer by sending that first nickle with _no guarentee_ you would get it back from anyone) to play it our way. Instead of trying to sort through it all, let's just asume it is all spam, and start from scratch. Newcomers late to the initial 'enrollment' period would have to begin their 'email experience' by sending a nickle to the person they wish to white list them. To get that nickle to me, the newcomers (once we have gone entirely to a white list system) would have to have a 'flag' on their email that first time with some sort of sensible email saying 'I want to be on your white list', otherwise of course they'd be killed like all email, presumed to be spam, since that is how we now define email. For almost all of us, it would be far easier to work with a handful of regular correspondents than a few thousand items to sort through each day, most or all of which is spam anyway. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 13:15:51 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: American Tower Buys SpectraSite Telecom dailyLead from USTA May 4, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21318&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * American Tower buys SpectraSite BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Speakeasy launches WiMAX network in Seattle * Smart phones set to go mainstream * Mergers help Verizon, SBC increase clout in business market * Progress Telecom helps wireless providers improve coverage * BT's 21CN vendors keep quiet USTA SPOTLIGHT * Carrier Grade Voice Over IP -- Now at www.telecom-bookstore.com EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Bluetooth group works with UWB backers * VoWi-Fi emerges on the scene REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Connecticut sues Vonage; Verizon gives Vonage users access to E911 Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21318&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: vemulakiran@gmail.com Subject: Need AT Command to Invoke Push To Talk Button of Motorola Date: 4 May 2005 06:38:40 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I want AT Command to invoke Push To Talk button of Motorola V400. please help on this. I wrote a program to communicate with Motorola V400 through Data Cable. I need AT command for Push To talk button. Thanks & Regards, kiran ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@surplus4actors.INFO Subject: Re: Spam Mentioning "242 W. 36th St" Date: 3 May 2005 22:27:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > Why would you ever get a correct address? Gee, it's a shame then, that they have to pay for a surchage for all the calls from payphones. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The other thing about using payphones is then the spammer does not get _our_ correct adress either. PAT] ------------------------------ From: B.M. Wright Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 08:12:19 UTC Organization: XMission Internet http://www.xmission.com Subject: Re: Spam Mentioning "242 W. 36th St" Scott Dorsey wrote: > wrote: >> The only messages I left was telling them which payphone I was at and >> for them to change their OGM to give correct address. >> Tomorrow I will be in midtown Manhattan again, so I will call to let >> them know that I am within walking distance of their office. As I get >> closer to address they gave I may keep calling until I get correct >> address. > Why would you ever get a correct address? > They are spammers. It is their _business plan_ to keep their address > secret. You've lost the plot haven't you Scott? It cost THEM (meaning the spammers) money when he calls their toll free number from a payphone to "notify" them of this. Get it now? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I thought everyone knew this routine by now; apparently some people still have not caught on. For how long did I run a 'business directory' here of spammers -- err, legitimate business people with their 800 numbers. Maybe we need an update on the directory. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Julian Thomas Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 09:46:38 -0400 Subject: Re: Chicago, Chicago ... [Pat, as usual, please obscure my email address] In <20050504004837.8187A14EE3@massis.lcs.mit.edu>, on 05/03/05 at 08:48 PM, jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu typed: > When I travel I take along a laptop to keep up with the email. My > ISP has local access numbers in lots of places, so most of the time > I can connect with a local call. Not so around Chicago, where it > seems that to call from one suburb to another, or maybe from one > prefix to another, you get dinged for a small fixed charge. A motel > that gives free local calls can't cope with the fixed charge, so I > have to use the ISPs 800 number, for which there is a substantial > per-minute charge. Check out bamnet.net -- my ISP [small regional] doesn't have local numbers anywhere and their charge for a direct dialup internet connection is less than almost any ISP 800# charge. Or -- stay at a Hampton Inn or other place with free high speed internet connection ... Julian Thomas: jt at jt-mj period net http://jt-mj.net In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State! -- -- Hex dump: Where witches put used curses... [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Better quality motels are all getting into high speed internet connections for their guests, anyway. Here in Independence, the Microtel Inn and the Super 8 both support broadband internet. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Unstable SS7 Links and G.703 Baluns Date: 4 May 2005 11:22:57 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) wrote: > The links work fine most of the time. But, occasionally all the E1 > links on the Cisco SS7 equipment go down. We haven't yet found what > causes the problem. Usually the only way for the links to come up is > to reboot the equipment or sometimes to shutdown and startup the E1 > controllers. > We have some connections going straight to another SS7 equipment > through a couple of baluns. We suspect these connections might be > causing some problem because we haven't got the grouding configuration > correct for the balun's involved in these connections. Ever since we > have disconnected these connections the problem seems to have > vanished. > Can someone suggest anything or has someone seen any problem like this > before? This sounds like a typical ground loop problem to me. Get out the scope and start looking for 60 Hz trash on the balanced lines. I bet you see some problems. Everything should have one and only one path to the central ground. Never none and never two. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 18:25:11 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: How is Weather Channel Data Delivered to Cable Headend In my previous message on this subject, I included an erroneous link for the list transponders carrying The Weather Channel. Here are the correct links: List of transponders carrying The Weather Channel: http://www.lyngsat.com/nettv/United-States.html Format of a typical analog transponder: AMC-ll tp 13 (3960 MHz, Vertical) http://www.lyngsat.com/amc11.html Format of a typical digital transponder: AMC-10 tp 24 (4180 MHz, Horizontal) http://www.lyngsat.com/amc10.html Format of a proprietary digital transponder: DirecTV 1R/2/4S transponder number unknown http://www.lyngsat.com/dtv101.html Also, I forgot to mention how closed-caption data is carried. It's carried on Line 21, the universal standard for such data. It passes unchanged (hopefully) through the entire encryption/decryption process, ultimately being decoded by the viewer's TV receiver. Neal McLain [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Regards closed caption, since I sometimes these days do not hear as well as I would like, I frequently leave closed caption turned on (it is an on/off option on my television set) even though I am also using sound as well (closed caption allows me to keep up with words I miss or do not understand occassionally.) But has anyone else noticed how they really _blow it bad_ sometimes, with trash symbols instead of the words, etc, or sometimes just approximations of the phrases used instead of the actual words? And in the case of VCR or DVD movies, I assume the closed caption is just encoded right on the finished product, is that correct? And if it is a 'live program' such as a newscast instead of some pre-recorded stuff, it appears they also create the closed caption live, since it drags behind the audio by a few seconds. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 4 May 2005 00:46:26 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders to Test Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But SBC in those days was > Southwestern Bell, and its eastern boundary was Missouri. Please > correct me as needed, but weren't all or most of the -A- or > 'competing' carriers in fact one 'Celluar One' (as a brand name) or > another? They were, but a whole lot of those Cell Ones were SBC (or maybe SWB at the time) underneath. My cell phone here in upstate NY is now Cingular and was originally Cell One, but it was always SWB/SBC underneath. Ditto the Bell Atlantic Cell Ones in much of New England before they merged with NYNEX and had to sell them off. R's, John ------------------------------ From: BV124@aol.com Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 22:32:56 EDT Subject: Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders to Test Did you mean "anathema"? [TELECOM Digest Editors Note: -- err, goof. Yes, I guess I did. Sorry about that. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders to Test Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 02:51:58 GMT Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But the _original_ cell phone carriers >> were the telcos (and still mostly are). > Not exactly. AMPS licenses were granted to *two* carriers in every > market: one "wireline" (incumbent LEC) telephone company, and one > independent carrier. So it is only right to say that *half of* the > original cell phone carriers were the telcos. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are correct. The 'A' side was the > 'competitor' and the 'B' side was the wireline incumbent. Now, let's > examine those roles as they were played out in two metropolitan > areas, Chicago and St. Louis, circa 1982-85. > In Chicago, 'A' was (still is?) "Cellular One", a brand name used by > various carriers, in this instance Southwestern Bell. 'B' was > Ameritech Mobile Services, back then a division of Illinois Bell. So, > Southwestern Bell 'competed with' Illinois Bell in Chicago. In Chicago, the A block cellular carrier was originally Rogers Radio Communications Service, a long-time radio common carrier and Bell competitor. Its network was ultimately acquired by Soutwestern Bell Mobile Services, which was building up a nationwide presence as a nonwireline carrier in markets where it didn't own the telco. This company became part of SBC, and its licenses were ultimately transferred to Cingular, which SBC co-owns. The B block carrier was originally AT&T's AMPS subsidiary, which transferred the license to Ameritech Mobile as part of the AT&T breakup. When SBC merged with Ameritech, the B block license was divested to GTE, which later became part of Verizon Wireless. So the non-telco A block license is now owned by an affiliate of the telco, and the original telco B block license is now owned by a telco that isn't a telco in Chicago. All clear? > Now go to St. Louis, and the roles were switched: 'A' was the > 'competitor', Ameritech Mobile; and 'B' was the established wireline > incumbent, in this instance d/b/a/ 'Southwestern Bell Mobility'. A was originally licensed to the nonwireline company Cybertel, which sold out to Ameritech. B was AT&T/AMPS/Southwestern Bell Mobile Services, the local telco affiliate. The Ameritech license was transferred to GTE and then Verizon Wireless, as in Chicago, when SBC merged with Ameritech, and SBC's license went to Cingular. > Move a bit west in Missouri/Kansas around KCMO; lo and behold, the > incumbent on the 'B' side was United Telephone Company, a cousin to > the Bells, and on the 'A' side was "Cellular One", but this time the > Dobson outfit d/b/a. Dobson Cellular is affiliated with the Dobson Telephone Company, but it's involved in cellular in rural markets all over. > So, at least in Chicago/St. Louis (and wherever else) it was telco > versus telco. "Cellular One" you see, at least in those days was > just a brand name used by various companies, as often as not telcos > who were _not_ allowed to market telephony under their own name in > that area. No way, in those days at least, Southwestern Bell would > have ever been allowed to 'move into or take over' the Chicago > market, which was Illinois Bell (and soon to be) Ameritech. The Cellular One brand was originally created and owned by the Washington Baltimore Cellular Telephone Co., the Washington/Baltimore A block licensee, which was owned in part by the Washington Post; the name was created for licensing as a common brand name for A block licensees, who didn't have the national brand recognition that the telcos had on the B side. Ironically, Southwestern Bell bought out the Washington Post and, eventually, the other owners of the Washington Baltimore Cellular Telephone Co. It continued to use the Cellular One name for its A block systems, and continued to license its use by others, until it formed Cingular. When it was decided that Cingular would use its own name and not Cellular One, the Cellular One name and licensing rights were sold to Western Wireless, which alredy used the name widely. And now Western Wireless is being acquired by Alltel. Funny thing about the phone business. Almost every company in the business either started out as a phone company or becomes one. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD (USA) (Replace "example.invalid" with "com" in my address.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I _think_ my original response to Lisa Hancock is still true however. We were discussing VOIP troubles and how cellular phone companies 'never got sued' (in the old days) because of their inability to route 911 correctly. I suggested that rarity of lawsuits may have been a function of their underlying ownership; unlike VOIP, which is coming in cold, the cellular companies all had 'telco' in their family trees somewhere. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 23:48:32 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Who Answers 911? Cell Phones and VoIP Put Responders to John Levine wrote, >> Not exactly. AMPS licenses were granted to *two* carriers in every >> market: one "wireline" (incumbent LEC) telephone company, and one >> independent carrier. So it is only right to say that *half of* the >> original cell phone carriers were the telcos. > Pat is right -- most of the A carriers were LECs from somewhere > else, or perhaps for the first 15 minutes someone who bought a kit > to bid in the cellular auction and then turned around and sold his > ticket to SBC or Bell Atlantic. It didn't happen that way at first. The original A licenses were handed out to existing Radio Common Carriers -- mainly paging companies. Metromedia nabbed several important licenses on the East Coast, including Washington and Boston, and they created the Cellular One brand name, which was licensed to many other A-side carriers. After the big city licenses were handed out free, and some license lotteries were scandalous, the FCC went to an auction system, which is how all of the 1900 MHz PCS licenses were assigned (except for a couple of "pioneer preference" gifts). Metromedia sold out to Southwestern Bell, which kept the Cellular One name until it joined forces with BellSouth and came up with the new Cingular brand. McCaw sold out to AT&T. Connecticut's A-side carrier, Metro Mobile, sold out to Bell Atlantic, and is now VZW. So yes, by the mid-1990s, a good share of the A-side ("non-wireline") licenses were owned by ILECs. Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #196 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Thu, 5 May 2005 02:25:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 197 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Next-Generation Xbox to Be Media Hub (Monty Solomon) Wireless Developers Plan to Meld Bluetooth (Monty Solomon) SBC Communications Selects Amdocs for Project Lightspeed (Monty Solomon) T-1 Mobile USA Tops Wireless Carriers for Overall Business (M. Solomon) Verizon Wireless Wins Network Computing Magazine's Award (Monty Solomon) Vonage Calls SBC Proposal "Half-Baked" (Jack Decker) Here's How Vonage-Verizon E-911 will work (Jack Decker) Connecticut's Suit Against Vonage is Less Than Baseless (Jack Decker) Collect Calls From Correctional Facilities (Jack Decker) Money Problems For This Spammer (Julian Thomas) Re: A Must-Read Article: A Question of Independence (Lisa Hancock) Re: Forward Fax to Email (LB@notmine.com) Spam and Scam: E-mail From PayPal and Ebay (shlichter1@aol.com) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 22:23:58 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Next-Generation Xbox to Be Media Hub By FRANK BAJAK AP Technology Editor SEATTLE (AP) -- Microsoft Corp.'s next-generation Xbox gaming console will be more of a digital entertainment hub than its predecessor, making it even more of a PC hybrid than ever, Bill Gates told a meeting of business journalists on Monday. The console, code-named Xenon, is due to be previewed in an MTV half-hour special later this month. Gates, Microsoft's chairman and co-founder, was vague on specific features of Xenon but said the company's consoles would be evolving to include improved communications tools for making multiplayer online gaming more convivial. He told the annual meeting of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers that Xenon's software menu would be similar to that of the company's Media Center edition of Windows, which is designed for computers meant to be located in the living room. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48864448 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 22:26:05 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Wireless Developers Plan to Meld Bluetooth By BRUCE MEYERSON AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- Wireless developers plan to work together to meld Bluetooth, the short-range technology that links cell phones and cordless headsets, with an emerging technology designed to beam video and other large content short distances between TVs, home entertainment systems and computers. The plan, announced Wednesday, comes at a crucial time for Bluetooth. After years of hype, the technology is finally becoming a mainstream feature on mobile devices, only to be met with predictions it may soon be supplanted by other technologies and disappear. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group, a 3,400-member group whose backers include Nokia Corp., Motorola Corp. and Intel Corp., said it has begun working with two industry bodies developing rival versions of the technology commonly referred to as ultra-wideband, or UWB. The discussions with the WiMedia Alliance and the UWB Forum are very preliminary, so it is unclear whether the collaboration will produce an integrated platform combining Bluetooth with UWB. There are also issues such as UWB regulatory approvals and signal interference with other wireless technologies that need resolution. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48865887 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 22:28:10 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: SBC Communications Selects Amdocs for Project Lightspeed SBC Communications Selects Amdocs for Project Lightspeed; Amdocs IP Convergence Solution to Enable Complete Customer Lifecycle Management - from Ordering to Billing - to Ensure a Superior Customer Experience SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 4, 2005--SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC) announced that it has awarded a multi-million dollar, multi-year contract to Amdocs (NYSE:DOX) to support Project Lightspeed, the SBC initiative to expand fiber optics deeper into neighborhoods to deliver Internet Protocol or IP-based TV, voice and broadband services. Amdocs will provide the SBC companies with a range of services to ensure the best possible customer service, as well as its IP (Internet Protocol) Convergence solution. The Amdocs IP Convergence solution is based on the Amdocs billing, customer relationship management (CRM), ordering and payment mediation products, combined with Amdocs consulting and systems integration services. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48868808 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 22:29:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: T-Mobile USA Tops Wireless Carriers for Overall Business Customer T-Mobile USA Tops Wireless Carriers for Overall Business Customer Satisfaction - May 4, 2005 08:05 AM (BusinessWire) BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 4, 2005-- T-Mobile(R) Get More(R) Promise Delivers Great Customer Satisfaction to Businesses Business professionals have several choices when it comes to selecting a wireless service, and when it comes to receiving a great wireless experience, business leaders rated T-Mobile USA (NYSE:DT) highest in customer satisfaction for business wireless service. J.D. Power & Associates announced the results today of its first-ever Business Wireless Satisfaction Study(SM). In a survey of decision makers from small businesses to large enterprises, T-Mobile scored higher than the other four national carriers and well above the industry average. T-Mobile ranks highest in five out of the eight factors that drive overall business wireless satisfaction. The wireless service provider scored significantly better than the industry average in four of the eight factors including sales representatives and account executives, billing, promotions and cost of service. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48872294 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 22:44:37 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Wireless Wins Network Computing Magazine's Well-Connected Verizon Wireless Wins Network Computing Magazine's Well-Connected Award for Business Data Services Wireless Data Services Achieves Outstanding Status in Networking BEDMINSTER, N.J., May 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, CMP Media LLC's Network Computing announced that Verizon Wireless has been awarded Best Business Data Service for its BroadbandAccess service in the publication's 2005 Well-Connected Awards, beating out business data services of two other major wireless carriers. Verizon Wireless, the nation's leading wireless service provider, was selected for the exceptional performance of its wireless data services for enterprise customers. The Well-Connected Awards honor the year's outstanding technology products and services and are selected by technology editors from products that have been tested and evaluated in CMP Media LLC's Network Computing labs during the past year. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48874826 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 18:17:52 -0400 Subject: Vonage Calls SBC Proposal "Half-Baked" http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3502621 Vonage and Verizon Call up E911 Vonage will spend tens of millions of dollars to interconnect with Verizon's enhanced-911 system (E911) under a first-of-its-kind agreement announced today. The pact between the Voice over IP upstart and regional carrier means location and callback numbers of Vonage subscribers dialing 911 from Verizon's territory will be delivered to emergency dispatchers. Schulz hopes the remaining Baby Bells -- SBC and BellSouth -- will follow Verizon's lead. Vonage and SBC have scrapped over E911. However, Wes Warnock, an SBC spokesman, said the discussions with Vonage continue. "Last week we provided them with a commercial agreement, whereby Vonage would have direct connections to 911 systems that are identical to connections provided to CLECs," Warnock said. "We're hopeful that we will be able to soon reach an agreement." But Schulz called SBC's proposal "half-baked." "Until SBC offers to sell us the same elements Verizon and Qwest have offered, we are not going to be able to implement E911 in their territory," she said. Full story at: http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3502621 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 19:51:29 -0400 Subject: Here's how Vonage-Verizon E-911 Will Work Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=397 5/4/2005 -Posted by Russell Shaw @ 2:26 pm As was expected, Vonage and Verizon have announced an agreement that will allow Vonage customers to access Verizon's Enhanced 911 network. When the system is in place by the end of this year, it does not appear at the outset that it will solve all the problems of E-911 access experienced by customers who contact these services when they are at a different location from their address of record. It will, however, ensure that some of these calls can be identified by originating address - making the handoff smoother for Vonage customers who have an address on record that is within Verizon's service area. Here's how the process will work: Full story at: http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=397 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 19:49:07 -0400 Subject: Connecticut's Suit Against Vonage is Less Than Baseless http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=399 5/4/2005 -Posted by Russell Shaw @ 4:05 pm Connecticut is the latest state to sue Vonage for misrepresenting the way in which the service handles "911" calls. Seems to me that Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal instructed his staff to obtain a copy of the Texas suit -- and after doing so, did some CPR (cut, paste, rewrite). Then, they drafted the current suit. The Connecticut suit has less than no merit. No specific Vonage customer in Connecticut seems to have suffered the trying consequences of Vonage 911-connect failure like that customer in Houston may have. And what about the fact that Connecticut filed the suit just about on the eve of today's announcement that Vonage will work with Verizon (the main local telco in Connecticut) to enable E911 solutions? Maybe Blumenthal and his folks didn't bother to check. Or, maybe he and his staffers were concerned that 911 solution progress is slower between Vonage and SBC (which covers part of Connecticut) than it is between Vonage and Verizon. Full story at: http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=399 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 00:26:08 -0400 Subject: Collect Calls From Correctional Facilities Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com Found a thread on BroadbandReports.com, at that mentions a company called Inmate Phone Services (IPS) . From time to time there has been some discussion about the high cost of calls from correctional facilities and also the fact that in many cases, people who have only cellular or VoIP service are unable to receive such calls, and this appears to be a partial solution. However I am unable to find any reviews from anyone who has utilized this company's services, so if any of you happen to have done business with this company I'd be interested in knowing if they provide a useable alternative, especially for calls to cell and VoIP phones. Of course I hope that no one on this list has any friends or family members that are being detained, but realistically I would imagine that a few of you probably do, so please let me know if you have used the services of this or any similar firm, and how well it worked for you. ------------------------------ From: Julian Thomas Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 16:25:11 -0400 Subject: Money Problems For This Spammer PAT, as usual, pse obscure my email address. Keep a copy handy, folks, for the next time you are near a pay phone. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following message is forwarded to you by "Julian Thomas" (the From user of this message). The original sender was "Brooks Mays" . It was sent on Thu May 05 at 03:15:00 by "Brooks Mays" . ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Every new day gives you a chance to move forward from your present situation. Have you thought of running a business? We've made it easier than ever to get started. Online cassiinos are bigger than ever, we will set you up and help you cash in. All you need is motivation, a computer and a small bit of start up money. Interested? Call 1-877-800-5085 extention:315 for more information from a real person. disulfide teleprinter everything dogtooth lufthansa ecology frilly canvass ----------------------------------------------------- -- End of forwarded message ----------------------------------------------------- Julian Thomas: http://jt-mj.net In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State! -- -- Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: A Must-Read Article: A Question of Independence Date: 4 May 2005 13:39:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jack Decker wrote: > "It's deceptive when the public hears the name of an organization that > sounds like a respected organization with some authority behind it, > when in fact it is being backed by an interested party," said Kenneth > DeGraff, a policy advocate at Consumers Union, the publisher of > Consumer Reports. "We look at issues purely from the consumer's > perspective. Sometimes we agree with the phone companies, and > sometimes we don't. But we never accept any money from an interested > party." For many years lobbying and advocacy groups have used neutral sounding names; this is nothing new. As to Consumer's Union's statement above, it would be more accurate to say that they look at issues purely from what _they think_ the consumer's perspective should be. Often, but by no means always, are they correct. (They offered a service where, for a fee, they'll tell you the dealer's cost of a car to assist in negotiating. I paid for this and got their printout. It was worthless. The option sets they described were nothing like the options offered on the car. Most significantly, the dealer offered the car for me at a cost lower than CU's claimed dealer cost.) Their product/service ratings are just a starting point. What is good for one person is bad for another. In our context here of new technologies the above axiom clearly applies. Technocrats have always lauded brand new technology as the end-all solution to every problem, ignoring that every new thing develops serious problems. Some new users are well equipped to deal with those problems, but many are not. Sometimes the new tech is claimed to be superior than it really is, or that some bugs still remain to be solved. Likewise with new public policies, there are complex issues. Those favoring the new policies are not of pure heart--they are business people anxious to sell something and technocrats anxious to get recognition and implementation. What is good for them is by no means good for the rest of the public. At the same time, those against new policies are not necessarily acting out of selfish interest (as implied here). Too many of those in the telephone business have a knee-jerk reaction against anything offered by a traditional carrier -- I've seen this here as well as heard it personally. Knee-jerk is never good. Historically, new technology was rolled out gradually. The bugs were worked out, prices dropped, and if good, it grew. Sometimes a different mfr than the pioneer is the one to make the product a national success. (It was Mr. Kroc who built McDonald's up, not the orig McDonald brothers; Univac invented the commercial computer but IBM put it on the map.) But it seems now the technocrats and their business backers are so anxious for instant high profits that they're jumping the traces, pushing out bug-ridden products too early and imposing new procedures on the public. ------------------------------ From: LB@notmine.com Subject: Re: Forward Fax to Email Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 18:31:13 -0400 Organization: Optimum Online Jeremy wrote: > I currently have a fax number that is widely used by my clients. > Problem is that I get a ton of fax "spam" if you will. I am looking > for the BEST solution to have these faxes forwarded to e-mail, while > keeping my existing fax number since that is the one everyone knows > and uses. Snipped OP for brevity. Uh Pat ... "[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why don't you consider forwarding all of it, _everything_, to email, " It would seem Jeremy is asking how to do just that. How does one forward everything from a fax number to an email address? LB ------------------------------ From: shlichter1@aol.com Subject: Spam and Scam: E-mail From PayPal and Ebay Date: 4 May 2005 18:26:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anyone get either or both of these e-mails? I know they were frauds right off since I have never used the address they were sent to for anything, except once last week to make a post here, that was before I fixed my newgroup client to munch my return address. I have also gotten notices telling me I have won some lottery, I can't believe people would respond to something that reads like someone in 2nd grade. The only good Spammer is a dead one? Have you hunted one down today? I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Company [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I get about a dozen each day of variously, the PayPal or E-Bay 'security department' telling my account has been detected using fraudulent access (replete with a 'fraud claim/file number') and that as a result my account will have 'limited access to my funds' until such time as I click on the link they provide (but of course!) and supply them with the proof of my identity. At one point I was doing as the _real PayPal_ was asking, and forwarding these to their office but I got bored and busy and quit bothering to forward them. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #197 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Thu, 5 May 2005 15:15:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 198 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson New Twist on 'Phishing' Scam - 'Pharming' (Lisa Minter) Who Gets to See the E-mail of the Deceased? (Lisa Minter) Yahoo Says its Video Search Now Widely Available (Lisa Minter) U.S. Cities Set up Their Own Wireless Networks (Lisa Minter) Sock Puppets Defend Puppet Show (Jack Decker) FCC Seeking E-911 Requirement for VOIP (Telecom Daily Lead from USTA) Re: Connecticut's Suit Against Vonage is Less Than Baseless (Thor Simon) Re: Connecticut's Suit Against Vonage is Less Than Baseless (Tony P.) Re: Forward Fax to Email (Carl Navarro) Re: Forward Fax to Email (Dave Garland) Re: Forward Fax to Email (Scott Dorsey) Re: Wireless Headsets for Cordless Phones ? (Scott Dorsey) Re: Wireless Headsets for Cordless Phones ? (Jimbo) Re: Here's how Vonage-Verizon E-911 Will Work (Justin Time) Re: Collect Calls From Correctional Facilities (Lisa Hancock) Re: Collect Calls From Correctional Facilities (Mike Riddle) Re: Spam and Scam: E-mail From PayPal and Ebay (Barry Margolin) Re: Spam and Scam: E-mail From PayPal and Ebay (NOTvalid@surplus4actors) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Thu, 5 May 2005 12:42:06 -0400 From: Lisa Minter Subject: New Twist on 'Phishing' Scam - 'Pharming' http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0505/p13s01-stin.html by Gregory M. Lamb Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor "The pharmers are coming! The pharmers are coming!" Hang warning lanterns all over the Internet: It's under attack by a new scam. For two years users have been hearing about "phishing," the sending of bogus e-mails -- allegedly from a bank or other online business - by criminals who hope to hook the unwary. Those who bite by clicking on a hyperlink in the e-mail are shipped off to a phony but authentic- looking website and asked to enter sensitive information. If they type in their passwords or account numbers, thieves have that data. Now phishers have been joined by "pharmers," who have made the ruse more sophisticated by planting a seed of malicious software in the user's own computer -- or poisoning servers that direct traffic on the Internet. The result: Even if you type in the correct address of a website, the software can send you to a bogus one. "It's a rapidly growing threat, and one we've been seeing a lot more discussion about" among Internet security experts and people in the banking industry, says Lance Cottrell, founder and president of Anonymizer Inc. in San Diego, an Internet privacy and security firm. Phishing attacks "rely on some gullibility of and participation by the victims," Mr. Cottrell says, since they must be persuaded to click on a link within the e-mail. -But not clicking on such links "is no protection against a pharming attack.-" Here's how the scam works. The thieves rely on the fact that the word address you use, such as www.my-bank.com, is connected to a distinct numerical address, like a browser to the right website. Pharming replaces the number with a fraudulent one, sending you to a criminal site instead of the real one. Besides keeping antivirus and antispyware programming up to date on their PC, users have few other ways to defend themselves from pharming. But any website that is conducting financial transactions should be able to maintain a secure website, Internet security experts say. The corner of the browser should display a padlock symbol, and the address in the address bar should begin with "https," not simply "http." Are you being scammed? To determine if you're at the real site, click on the lock symbol and make sure it displays the address you are expecting to be at, says Mikko Hyppoenen, chief research officer of F-Secure, an Internet security company in Helsinki, Finland. But another kind of pharming, sometimes called "domain spoofing," "domain poisoning," or "cache poisoning," attacks the servers that route traffic around the Internet. These so-called domain name system (DNS) servers also link the word address to its underlying numerical address. To corrupt a DNS "takes significantly more expertise, more access" than attacking PCs, says Peter Cassidy, secretary-general of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, which has offices in Cambridge, Mass., and Menlo Park, Calif. That's why thieves first will try to get into individual computers. "They're the low-hanging fruit," he says. But "they'll try anything that works." Some servers are hard to crack, he says, but others don't keep their defenses up-to-date. Unlike the traditional landline telephone system, which was built from the outset to be a commercial enterprise, the Internet was designed to make sharing of information between scholars and researchers fast and easy, not for secure financial transactions. "It was built in a laboratory by guys who knew each other and married each other's sisters," Mr. Cassidy says. Now new layers of security continually must be added, as criminals probe for weak points. Spreading fraud The Anti-Phishing Working Group reports that the number of new phishing messages rose by an average 38 percent per month in the last six months of 2004. And pharming was one of the top five Internet scams in March 2005, says a recent report from the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance, a nonprofit arm of the Direct Marketing Association. Internet fraud in general, which includes phishing and pharming, cost merchants $2.6 billion in 2004, $700 million more than in 2003, according to CyberSource Corp., which processes Internet financial transactions. While Cassidy has seen some disturbing pharming attack reports from Britain, "we haven't seen it taking over the universe," he says. "We have seen significant attacks, but not rapid proliferation, partly because it does take a little more expertise." One pharming technique is to flood the DNS server with messages to trick it into saving false information that will send users to a phony website, Cottrell says. "Then in many cases [the criminals] try to bounce you back to the real bank's website, so that you're not aware that anything has happened." Phishers and pharmers set up their fake websites for only a few days or even a few hours, then move on before they can be found out. Cottrell's company, Anonymizer, runs all its clients' Internet traffic through its own secure DNS servers, which he says can protect clients from pharming. Keyboard trouble: But even if crooks can't get at your PC or the DNS server, they can always hope that you just can't spell. Early last week, F-Secure discovered that a malicious website had been set up at www.googkle.com, just one keystroke away from the famous www.google.com site. Users who accidentally went to the site using the popular Internet Explorer browser immediately were inundated with spyware, adware, and other malicious software that tried to secretly load itself onto their PCs. By the end of last week, the site had disappeared. But Mr. Hyppoenen still warns people not to try to visit it out of curiosity. "These things sometimes pop up again," he says. The technique isn't new. Similar attack sites have been created just a slip of the finger away from sites such as CNN.com, AOL.com, and MSN.com, Hyppoenen says. The people behind the malicious sites can be anywhere from South Korea to Brazil to Russia. The PC operating the site could be "somebody's grandmother's computer in Canada" being remotely controlled without her knowledge, he adds. Gone 'phishing': "Phishing" means sending out official-looking e-mails to tempt users to visit a bogus website and type in personal or financial data. Here are key points from a March report: * Since July 2004, the number of websites linked to the scam rose an average 28 percent a month. * The United States hosted a third of the phishing sites -- more than any other nation -- followed by China (12 percent) and South Korea (9 percent). * Financial services are the most frequent target, with 4 of 5 phishers appropriating the brand of a bank or some other financial institution. * Such sites only last an average 5.8 days before they're taken down. * A new version of the scam -- "pharming" -- plants malicious software on PCs to direct users to bogus sites. Source: Anti-Phishing Working Group Copyright 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. Read the Christian Science Monitor on line here each day also: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html (then scan the far right column). *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, The Christian Science Publishing Society. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 12:44:10 -0400 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Who Gets to See the E-mail of the Deceased? http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0502/p12s02-usju.html by Susan Llewelyn Leach Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor It's an old story with a heart breaking twist. A young marine is killed in the line of duty in Iraq and his parents, in their sorrow, request all his belongings, including his correspondence -- in this case, his e-mail. The Internet company refuses to give out the marine's password, saying that would violate its privacy rules. The parents go to court, causing a storm of discussion on the Net and in the media. This small episode involving Yahoo! and the parents of US marine Justin Ellsworth raises new and tricky questions about the nature of e-mail. Should it be treated as paper correspondence or as something new? And how much access should relatives have to a record of the thoughts of a loved one who has passed away, especially ones that can be as extensive, intimate, -- and even embarrassing -- as in e-mail? In this case, the probate judge ordered Yahoo! to hand over the contents of the account. Yahoo obeyed the judge's instruction. Many bloggers, of course, were horrified. "We thought we had absolute privacy and now we have learned that after our death, a family member could possibly wrangle access to [our] personal space," one blogger lamented on drudge.com. "If the soldier had wanted his family to read his e-mail, then he would have CC'd or BCC'd them," another wrote. Yet many legal experts say Yahoo! acted correctly. It denied the family's informal request and only yielded under court order. "I would hope that the Yahoo! position here would become a trade practice -- that e-mail would only be released if a judge approved it," says Gerald Ferrera, executive director of the Cyberlaw Center at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass. For Yahoo!'s part, the company says it still stands behind its commitment to treat each user's e-mail as private and confidential. "We are pleased that the court has issued an order resolving this matter ... and allowing Yahoo! to continue upholding our privacy commitment to our users," says Yahoo! spokeswoman Mary Osako. But from a legal point of view, e-mail's status is not clear cut. Even the experts can't agree. One law professor describes it as "a property interest," but not intellectual property. Another lecturer on law says absolutely it is intellectual property and is covered by copyright laws. What makes these legal distinctions more critical is the growing volume of e-mail -- and with it rising privacy issues. Free e-mail accounts -- some with storage capacities up to 250 MB -- allow people to pile up digital photos, documents, and volumes of correspondence without a second's thought. Few people are thinking through the ramifications, says Alan Chappell, a privacy and data-collection consultant. For instance, "You might have a situation where someone is carrying on an affair and doesn't want his family to know about it if he should die," says Henry Perritt, dean of Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Or a confidential exchange of e-mails might never be meant for a third party's eyes. The legal solution, Professor Perritt says, is to write a will and bequeath the e-mail to a trustee who is instructed to destroy it. "That would leave no doubt in the service provider's mind about what's supposed to happen," he says, "and it would keep it away from your family." But that takes considerable forethought. Most people leave their privacy in the hands of e-mail providers, rarely reading through the terms of service and privacy policy before clicking the "I agree" box. Yahoo! states that its accounts are nontransferable and that "rights to the Yahoo! I.D. and contents within the account terminate upon death." Destroying the data once the contract ends simplifies life for Internet service providers (ISPs), says Mr. Chappell. That gatekeeper role of ISPs and the amount of responsibility they should have in retaining information are among the constant battlegrounds in Internet law, says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. For reasons of cost, ISPs are reluctant to keep data indefinitely and then turn it over at a moment's notice, says Mr. Palfrey. Another area of contention in cyberlaw is whether contracts override other rights such as copyright law, Palfrey adds. The tension here is between a strict legal construction of the contract, he says, "versus an equity or fairness analysis which would say, 'We've put a lot of our personhood and identity into the information we're putting online and it doesn't much matter what this contract says.' " "In e-mail," he says, "your identity is wrapped up in it in a way that your identity is not wrapped up in your car or some other tangible object." Copyright 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. For a free sample copy of the print edition of the Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/aboutus/sample_issue.html NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. To review several good newspapers with no registration or login requirements, and hear audio news reports from National Public Radio, please go to URL http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, The Christian Science Publishing Society. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: 05 May 2005 09:38:07 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Yahoo Says its Video Search Now Widely Aavailable Yahoo has been working hard on this feature for a long time. What are your thoughts about it? http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050505/wr_nm/tech_yahoo_dc ------------------------------ Date: 05 May 2005 09:38:58 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 01:52:39 -0400 Subject: Sock Puppets Defend Puppet Show http://wifinetnews.com/archives/005233.html By Glenn Fleishman Okay, this is a new one on me: the curtain is thrown back but the socks keep on talking, claiming there's no hand inside them: This is pretty remarkable, but the New Millennium Research Council and Issue Dynamics are defending their paid work on behalf of their incumbent telecom and cable customers directly. No pretense, no hiding. They want their cake and eat it, too. Can it be said any clearer in this News.com article than a policy advocate at Consumer's Union? "Sometimes we agree with the phone companies, and sometimes we don't. But we never accept any money from an interested party." NMRC pretends to be independent. I have asked the many reporters who have interviewed them, and unless they ask, the funding sources aren't revealed, though NMRC does disclose its relationship with Issue Dynamics on its Web site and vice versa. Reporters are being handed experts to talk to that don't provide reasonable disclosure about their financial ties to the organizations they are commenting on. The president of Issue Dynamics, Sam Simon, says, "We try to be reasonably open about the fact that some research funding is from business interest." It's true, they are from their end. But NMRC is much less so, and it's not in Issue Dynamics's clients interests for NMRC to be seen as an arm of the media relations firm. (Update: Simon has jumped into the fray in the comments below; I've posted his remarks unedited and replied.) Full story at: http://wifinetnews.com/archives/005233.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 12:51:05 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: FCC Chief Seeking E911 Requirement for VoIP Telecom dailyLead from USTA May 5, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21359&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Report: FCC chief seeking E911 requirement for VoIP BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Report: W. Europe to reach 100% mobile phone penetration * Ericsson to close CDMA business in North America * NFL Network, Verizon sign carriage deal * MCI reports earnings USTA SPOTLIGHT * Hear Telecom Crash Course author Steven Shepard at Telecom Engineering Conference @ SUPERCOMM EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Qualcomm takes wraps off all-in-one chips * Searching the Web via cell phone * MSOs bet on video e-mail REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * SEC probes Qwest stock trades Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21359&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Connecticut's Suit Against Vonage is Less Than Baseless Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 07:13:02 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Jack Decker wrote: > And what about the fact that Connecticut filed the suit just about on > the eve of today's announcement that Vonage will work with Verizon > (the main local telco in Connecticut) to enable E911 solutions? Maybe Jack, Sometimes it seems you can't get _any_ of your facts straight. The "main local telco in Connecticut" is SNET. Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com "The inconsistency is startling, though admittedly, if consistency is to be abandoned or transcended, there is no problem." - Noam Chomsky ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Connecticut's Suit Against Vonage is Less Than Baseless Organization: ATCC Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 07:12:07 -0400 In article , jack- yahoogroups@workbench.net says: > http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=399 > 5/4/2005 > -Posted by Russell Shaw @ 4:05 pm > Connecticut is the latest state to sue Vonage for misrepresenting the > way in which the service handles "911" calls. > Seems to me that Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal > instructed his staff to obtain a copy of the Texas suit -- and after > doing so, did some CPR (cut, paste, rewrite). Then, they drafted the > current suit. > The Connecticut suit has less than no merit. No specific Vonage > customer in Connecticut seems to have suffered the trying consequences > of Vonage 911-connect failure like that customer in Houston may have. > And what about the fact that Connecticut filed the suit just about on > the eve of today's announcement that Vonage will work with Verizon > (the main local telco in Connecticut) to enable E911 solutions? Maybe > Blumenthal and his folks didn't bother to check. Or, maybe he and > his staffers were concerned that 911 solution progress is slower > between Vonage and SBC (which covers part of Connecticut) than it is > between Vonage and Verizon. Actually Connecticut is SBC, not Verizon. That might have something to do with it. ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Forward Fax to Email Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 03:23:03 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On 4 May 2005 10:48:30 -0700, Jeremy wrote: > I currently have a fax number that is widely used by my clients. > Problem is that I get a ton of fax "spam" if you will. I am looking > for the BEST solution to have these faxes forwarded to e-mail, while > keeping my existing fax number since that is the one everyone knows > and uses. > I am somewhat familiar with e-fax, but they can not re-use my existing > number, plus you have to pay for outgoing faxes. I have seen where I > can have a forward feature put on my fax line that would forward to an > e-fax number, and I would still be able to use my fax machine for > outgoing faxes (at least that is how I understand it). > Because of the number of "spam" faxes I receive via fax, I have to > replace my toner about every other week. As you can imagine this is a > very high expense for me, so I thought if I could have them sent to > e-mail then i could print the ones I want to keep and delete the > trash. > Does anyone have any better solutions than this. Someone mentioned a > Microsoft Fax Software, but I did not have any luck finding anything > out about it, so therefore I know nothing about it. Please let me > know if there is a better alternative solution. The E-fax product has an ongoing cost of $12.95 a month, even if you can get a local number. Not very cost effective, since you still have to maintain your fax number and pay for outbound faxes. I use MaxEmail, which is a lot less, but my number is in suburban Chicago. A quick search of "fax software" on Google brings up www.electrasoft.com where, for $60 you can get 3 or 4 fax programs that will use your existing fax line and internet connection to send and receive faxes. I'd put this on the fax line, and program the fax maching to not answer calls until the 4th ring. Let the computer answer the faxes and you can choose whether to send faxes via computer or just walk to the fax machine. You can try the software before you buy it. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Forward Fax to Email Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 02:33:06 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when Jeremy wrote: > Does anyone have any better solutions than this. Someone mentioned a > Microsoft Fax Software, but I did not have any luck finding anything > out about it, so therefore I know nothing about it. Please let me > know if there is a better alternative solution. Since your fax line is (presumably) already located where you wish to read the faxes, you can skip the email step. You'll need a computer with a fax-modem in it (that's most modems made since 386 computers and Windows 3.1 were the cutting edge of technology, and virtually all computers sold in the last 5 years) and software. There's software that comes with Windows (since Win95), or bundled when you buy a faxmodem, there's shareware, there's programs you can purchase separately. Most of these will save the faxes as images, one to a page, and you can review them, delete the unwanted and select which to print out. Other programs often come with computers, or are bundled with modems, some are shareware, some are commercial software, many of them provide more bells and whistles than the version that comes with Windows. But you probably don't need bells and whistles. Use your desk computer, or dedicate an old junker, this doesn't require much computing power. (Of course, whatever computer you use, you'll have to leave it turned on.) If you're running Windows XP, see http://tinyurl.com/24csp or http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/crawford_02october21.mspx for instructions. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Forward Fax to Email Date: 5 May 2005 10:08:19 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Jeremy wrote: > I currently have a fax number that is widely used by my clients. > Problem is that I get a ton of fax "spam" if you will. I am looking > for the BEST solution to have these faxes forwarded to e-mail, while > keeping my existing fax number since that is the one everyone knows > and uses. I find that if you take one or two of the fax spammers to court and get judgments against them, you get on their bad list and suddenly the amount of fax spam you receive is dramatically lowered. > Because of the number of "spam" faxes I receive via fax, I have to > replace my toner about every other week. As you can imagine this is a > very high expense for me, so I thought if I could have them sent to > e-mail then i could print the ones I want to keep and delete the > trash. That's why it's illegal to send fax spam, yes. Has been for well over a decade. An afternoon in small claims court can get you a judgement for a few tens of thousand dollars (which will probably never be paid, of course), but more importantly it will provide relief. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Wireless Headsets for Cordless Phones ? Date: 5 May 2005 10:04:58 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Jimbo wrote: > I am wondering if there is a way, or a product, that would allow > someone to wear a cordless headset (like the Bluetooth earpieces used > for cell phones) and access a cordless (land line) phone setup ? > My wife is handicapped and I would like to set her up this way so she > does not have to carry the cordless phone around all day. It wouldn't help, because bluetooth only has a range of a few feet, so she would still have to have the cordless phone on her body. You can get cordless phones with headsets and body packs. Hello Direct has a couple models. That might be closer to what you're wanting. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: Jimbo Subject: Re: Wireless Headsets for Cordless Phones ? Date: 5 May 2005 07:02:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Thanks, Pat ... My wife is in about the same place -- she can move around ok, but getting to the phone on time is a challenge. I was hoping for something that didn't require something to be clipped on a belt or shirt pocket (apparently the fairer sex do not normally have these things), but I will look into this as a start !! Thanks again, [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, the Uniden cordless phone is sort of light-weight, you don't really notice it in your pocket or clipped on your belt, and mine at least goes about a block away from home if I wish to carry it around, when walking outside, although in those cases I usually just carry my cell phone. (My set up is landline rings three times, and call is set on ring/no answer to then go to my cell phone. I'd let the landline ring 4-5 times before transfer to cell phone but many people would grow impatient and disconnect, which they sometimes do anyway, even with just three rings [which they hear; I may have only recieved two rings and the start of the third], and there is the briefest pause where they hear silence while the central office yanks the call back and forwards it to my cell phone.) The other suggestion made today was 'Hello Direct' which is a fine company but I think a bit pricey. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Justin Time Subject: Re: Here's how Vonage-Verizon E-911 Will Work Date: 5 May 2005 05:30:45 -0700 While the process documented mirrors the process for traditional landline phones, it doesn't address what happens when the VoIP user takes their phone someplace else and then calls 9-1-1. Which center is called? The one for their home of record or the one serving the hotel/motel/grandma's house? Rodgers Platt ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Collect Calls From Correctional Facilities Date: 5 May 2005 08:20:19 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jack Decker wrote: > . From time to time there has > been some discussion about the high cost of calls from correctional > facilities. This is by state policy to make a handsome profit. Considering the families of prison inmates did nothing wrong and often poor, such a policy seems immoral. Considering that continuing family contact is very helpful in inmate rehabilitation and morale (which translates to less fights and riots within the prison and less recidisvm crime), it would be good public policy NOT to make a profit on such calls, rather, to encourage such calls at no more than cost or even at a subsidy. The actual toll cost to prisons for such calls is extremely low since states buy long distance in bulk at very low rates; though there is a monitoring cost and that is important for numerous security reasons. > ...and also the fact that in many cases, people who have only > cellular or VoIP service are unable to receive such calls, and this > appears to be a partial solution. Can cellular and VOIP services receive collect calls placed from traditional locations, such as pay stations or landline phones? Since VOIP could serve as someone's home telephone service, though ought to be able to receive collect calls. Emergencies happen. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Lisa, the Corrections Industry runs things, not social workers. The Corrections Industry has no interest at all in keeping guys from going back to prison. They are hoping in fact they do go back. Nothing warms their hearts more than some seventeeen or eighteen year old guy who gets a life sentence with no chance of parole. That _always_ gives them a thrill when they contem- plate the next thirty or so years of that guy's life. So please don't get any weird ideas about 'keeping the family involved' or being able to 'stay in touch with the world, etc'. Corrections has no time nor place for all that rot. The _only reason_ prisons/jails have phones for prisoner use at all is because those liberal Supremes and their 'run-away activist' court required them to do so several years ago. You know the Judiciary which thinks _it_ is in charge of things. Illinois, for example, deliberatly builds its prisons at the far south end of the state -- 300 miles from Chicago -- although 95 percent of the inmates are from Chicago. Their thoughts in Chicago are the prisoner is 'scum' by extension his family must be also. Now regards _Billed Number Screening_, the telco database which (if you choose to get listed on it) allows no collect nor third party billings to your number. Ask your service rep if you want to get listed there. It is a national (inter-telco) database which all telcos consult when someone asks to make a 'collect' call or to 'bill this call on my home phone'. VOIP and cellular are all listed there by default. You _cannot_ 'call collect' to VOIP or cell, and of course VOIP does not even have any 'operator services' anyway, however cell does have operator services, usually brokered through the incumbent telco in the area. I know Prairie Stream (our local telco) for example brokers its operator services from SBC and its directory assistance through SBC also. You cannot 'call collect' to my house either; with the cost of collect/third-party billing calls being so extravagent as compared to the pennies you pay for direct dial (and an 800 number being so cheap these days as well), why take a chance on some phreak or phone phraud person playing a trick on you. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mike Riddle Organization: Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish & Short Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 11:55:58 -0500 Subect: Re: Collect Calls From Correctional Facilities Jack Decker wrote: > From time to time there has been some discussion about the high cost > of calls from correctional facilities Related to Jack's initial inquiry, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled on the question of jail charges and surcharges. Gilmore v. Cty of Douglas, found online at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=3Dcase&court=3D8th= &no=3D04-1325 Pamela Gilmore brought an action against the County of Douglas [Nebraska] under 42 U.S.C. 1983 alleging that the Douglas County Corrections Center (the DCCC) violated her Fourteenth Amendment equal protection rights by assessing her charges for collect telephone calls made to her from inmates in the facility. The district court concluded that Gilmore failed to state a cause of action and dismissed the complaint pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). The Court of Appeals affirme the district court. ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Spam and Scam: E-mail From PayPal and Ebay Organization: Symantec Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 08:54:04 -0400 In article , shlichter1@aol.com wrote: > Anyone get either or both of these e-mails? > I know they were frauds right off since I have never used the address > they were sent to for anything, except once last week to make a post > here, that was before I fixed my newgroup client to munch my return > address. Uhh, where have you been? Phishing scams like this are now one of the most prevalent forms of spam. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@surplus4actors.INFO Subject: Re: Spam and Scam: E-mail From PayPal and Ebay Date: 5 May 2005 09:10:49 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Report bank/Ebay/Paypal scam/spam to Spam@uce.gov other good addresses: mail-spoof@cc.yahoo-inc.com, spoof@yahoo-inc.com, spoof@ebay.com, spoof@paypal.com I have the UCE and Spoof addys in address books of several several EMail accounts including wife's. For a second opinion, on questionable offers, submit to The Internet Fraud Complaint Center http://www.ifccfbi.gov/index.asp REMEMBER: The new Federal Trade Commission address to report spam is: Spam@uce.gov -- Incredibly low long distance phone rates, as low as USA-Canada 1.9CPM! Works as prepaid phone card. PIN not needed for calls from home or cell phone. Compare the rates at https://www.onesuite.com/ No monthly fee or minimum. Use promotion code "034720367" for some FREE time. ------------------------------ 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 V24 #198 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Thu, 5 May 2005 17:45:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 199 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson The Front Lines - May 5, 2005 (Jonathan Marashlian) Vonage Partners with Verizon to Boost 911 Services (Jack Decker) FCC Boss Proposes 911 for Internet Phones - Sources (Jack Decker) May 6th - 50th Anniversary of Disk Storage (Lisa Hancock) Re: Forward Fax to Email (Marise A Klapka) Re: Forward Fax to Email (DevilsPGD) Re: Who Gets to See the E-mail of the Deceased? (Lisa Hancock) Re: U.S. Cities Set up Their Own Wireless Networks (Henry) Spam? Scam? What is This? "Make Extra Cash!!!" (netbuxfan@yahoo.com) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Jonathan Marashlian Subject: The Front Lines - May 5, 2005 Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 13:08:49 -0400 Organization: The Helein Law Group http://www.thefrontlines-hlg.com/ The FRONT LINES http://www.thlglaw.com/ Advancing The Cause of Competition in the Telecommunications Industry AT&T FILES EMERGENCY FCC PETITION; SEEKS LEVEL PLAYING FIELD IN REGULATION OF PREPAID CALLING CARD PROVIDERS On May 3, 2005, AT&T filed an emergency petition for "immediate interim relief" with the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC"), asking it to "level the playing field" in prepaid services no later than May 17, 2005. In its petition, AT&T stated that the FCC's February 23, 2005, decision ordering AT&T to pay $160 million in Universal Service Fund ("USF") charges and subjecting the company to intrastate access fees for its "enhanced" calling card services and the FCC's concurrent issuance of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ("NPRM") on other enhanced prepaid services, skewed the regulatory environment and "created uncertainty and asymmetries." In order to create regulatory neutrality now, AT&T said that the FCC should immediately adopt interim rules that all prepaid service providers pay USF (Universal Service Fund) and interstate access charges on all their services. This interim measure would apply to "any form of prepaid calling services that allow users to pay in advance for a specified amount of billing, whether by card, virtual card, or PIN-based, serial number-based, or some other account identification mechanism." AT&T wants this to apply regardless of the technology that is used to provide service. According to AT&T's petition, the FCC has authority to remove the Enhanced Services Provider ("ESP") exemption for prepaid service providers and direct that USF be paid on all prepaid card services, regardless of whether they are ultimately determined to be information services or telecommunications services. To make sure that all prepaid service providers are subject to the same access charges, the FCC could just simply remove the intrastate exemption and treat all access charges as interstate, according to AT&T. AT&T says if the FCC does not want to preempt state regulations, it could instead rule that prepaid service providers will be subject to interstate or intrastate access charges. AT&T said that, as an alternative, the FCC could require that all prepaid calling service providers pay intrastate access charges on all calls within a state, and interstate access charges and USF on other calls. If this alternative is adopted, AT&T said the interim rules should include "stringent reporting and certification mechanisms." According to AT&T's petition, there is the risk that if the FCC does not institute AT&T's proposed measures immediately, in addition to creating an unfair competitive environment, the Commission is risking the collection of USF from prepaid service providers. At this time, the FCC has not taken any action on AT&T's Petition. FCC CIRCULATING ORDER TO REQUIRE VoIP PROVIDERS TO OFFER 911 SERVICES Recent reports indicate that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has proposed requiring Internet-based telephone service provider ("VoIP") to offer 911 emergency services to customers by as early as the end of September. After a few incidents where customers failed to reach emergency officials when they dialed 911, federal regulators are increasing pressure on companies to ensure those calls get routed and answered properly with location information. The proposal would require VoIP providers to route 911 calls directly to primary emergency lines within four months of the order being issued. Martin has circulated the proposal to his fellow Commissioners which means it could be voted on as early as the FCC's May 19th open meeting. FCC UPHOLDS COMPETITIVE ACCESS TO ILEC DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE On April 29, 2005, the FCC released an Order upholding and clarifying its rules governing the duty of local exchange carriers to grant competing carriers access to directory assistance information. The FCC denied a petition filed by BellSouth and SBC seeking reconsideration of rules that bar them from imposing restrictions on the use by competitors of directory assistance information competitors obtain from the LECs under the Communications Act. Section 251(b)(3) of the Act requires that LECs provide nondiscriminatory access to directory assistance, and the FCC has determined that this permits competitors to have the same access to directory assistance information that the LECs provide to themselves. The order clarifies however, that a LEC must not provide access to numbers that are unlisted at the customer's request. And while competing directory assistance providers may be entitled to nondiscriminatory access to directory assistance information, they still must adhere to the privacy requests made by LEC customers. Finally, the FCC rejected SBC and BellSouth's argument that LECs should not be required to provide access to local listings that were obtained from third parties. Even though the FCC has declined to require LECs to provide nondiscriminatory access to nonlocal directory assistance data, it has consistently required nondiscriminatory access to all of their local directory assistance database listings. _____ The Front Lines is a free publication of The Helein Law Group, LLP, providing clients and interested parties with valuable information, news, and updates regarding regulatory and legal developments primarily impacting companies engaged in the competitive telecommunications industry. The Front Lines does not purport to offer legal advice nor does it establish a lawyer-client relationship with the reader. If you have questions about a particular article, general concerns, or wish to seek legal counsel regarding a specific regulatory or legal matter affecting your company, please contact our firm at 703-714-1313 or visit our website: www.THLGlaw.com The Helein Law Group, LLP 8180 Greensboro Drive, Suite 700 McLean, Virginia 22102 _____ THLG Affiliations: http://www.voicelog.com/ http://www.voicelog.com/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 11:51:10 -0400 Subject: Vonage Partners with Verizon to Boost 911 Services http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1812846,00.asp By Libe Goad Some voice over IP customers in select parts of the country could, within 6 months, have improved access to 911 emergency services, thanks to a new alliance forged between broadband phone service provider Vonage Holdings Corp. and Verizon. "Verizon is a responsible steward of the E911 [Enhanced 911] public trust," Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron said, "through their foresight, Vonage is able to implement an E911 solution that will serve all customers." After the rollout takes place, customers will be relieved from having to tell emergency operators their whereabouts because, for the first time, the service will let operators know the caller's location and callback number. Since the broadband service allows customers to use area codes from other parts of the country, routing these calls to a localized emergency service has taken some serious maneuvering. "We've historically offered the wireline service, a select kind of solution that's restrictive because it can only use local telephone numbers," Vonage spokesperson Brooke Schulz said. "We need to architect a solution that works for all of our customers, especially since 40 percent or more use non-local phone numbers." Full story at: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1812846,00.asp How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 11:48:49 -0400 Subject: FCC Boss Proposes 911 for Internet Phones - Sources http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=MUOJOYJHQOOL4CRBAELCFFA?type=technologyNews&storyID=8397206 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin has proposed requiring Internet-based telephone services to offer 911 emergency services to customers by as early as the end of September, people familiar with the plan said on Wednesday. After a few incidents where customers failed to reach emergency officials when they dialed 911, federal regulators are increasing pressure on companies to ensure those calls get routed and answered properly with location information. The proposal would require companies like Vonage Holdings Corp. to route 911 calls directly to primary emergency lines within four months of the order being issued, the sources said, declining to be identified because the proposal is not a public record. Martin has circulated the proposal so it could be voted at the agency's open meeting on May 19, the sources said. He would have to win the votes of two of the other three FCC commissioners for approval or work out a compromise with them. An FCC spokesman had no immediate comment. Full story at: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=MUOJOYJHQOOL4CRBAELCFFA?type=technologyNews&storyID=8397206 ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: May 6th -- 50th Anniversary of Disk Storage Date: 5 May 2005 10:56:56 -0700 On May 6, 1955, IBM publicly demonstrated its new invention, disk storage. The disk drive would hold far more data at lower cost than the existing magnetic drum. The disk drive allowed for information to accessed immediately since the disk arm went directly to the location of the data. With magnetic tape, the tape file must be sequentially read record by record to find the desired data. The initial disk drive was huge and contained 5 million characters. Improvements got that up to 50 million. The drive was formally announced as a product in September, 1956. The disk was 350 and was part of the 305 system. The 350 disk was later enabled to attached to existing and upcoming IBM computers. [I don't know what IBM considers the "official" anniversary date.] For the first 30 years, disk drives remained expensive and limited to critical information. But soon the price dropped and capacity climbed making them very cheap even for home use. The Internet could not exist today without the disk drive which stores everything we want to see. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Forwad Fax to Email From: Withheld on Request Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 11:41:00 -0500 * PAT - PLEASE REMOVE MY NAME AND E-MAIL ADDRESS. THANKS. Jeremy wrote: > I currently have a fax number that is widely used by my clients. > Problem is that I get a ton of fax "spam" if you will. I am looking > for the BEST solution to have these faxes forwarded to e-mail, while > keeping my existing fax number since that is the one everyone knows > and uses. You may want to look into a fax modem and check out Symantec's WinFax Pro software. I haven't tried it myself, but the description seems to have what you're looking for. -Marise ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Forward Fax to Email Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 12:23:03 -0600 Organization: Disorganized In message LB@notmine.com wrote: > Jeremy wrote: >> I currently have a fax number that is widely used by my clients. >> Problem is that I get a ton of fax "spam" if you will. I am looking >> for the BEST solution to have these faxes forwarded to e-mail, while >> keeping my existing fax number since that is the one everyone knows >> and uses. > Snipped OP for brevity. > Uh Pat ... > "[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why don't you consider forwarding all > of it, _everything_, to email, " > It would seem Jeremy is asking how to do just that. > How does one forward everything from a fax number to an email address? http://www.relayfax.com/ is an example of one product that will do the trick. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Who Gets to See the E-mail of the Deceased? Date: 5 May 2005 12:48:49 -0700 Lisa Minter wrote: > by Susan Llewelyn Leach Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor > It's an old story with a heart breaking twist. A young marine is > killed in the line of duty in Iraq and his parents, in their sorrow, > request all his belongings, including his correspondence -- in this > case, his e-mail. The e-mail should be treated no differently than any other personal belongings and they revert to the next of kin or recipients specified in a will. This really should be a no-brainer, and the parents should not have had to go court to get what was rightfully theirs. There is nothing special about e-mail that make them any different than any other very personal belongings, such as a diary or account statements. All of these pass on to an estate via the executor or next of kim. Some critics complained that email might contain embarassing information. That is not an excuse because (1) legal protection against "embarassment" ceases when one dies and (2) diaries, bank account statements, etc., might also contain just as much embarassing information. Just because e-mail is intangible is irrelevent. Money is bank accounts is intangible too--just bits on a computer--until the bank releases it and converts it into cash. In the event there is any legally confidential material in an email account, the estate executor would be responsible to care for it just as he would any confidential documents found within an estate. Senders of sensitive information by email have often been told that email is not private and to be cautious. > The Internet company refuses to give out the marine's password, saying > that would violate its privacy rules. To do that the Internet company would have to have explicitly had a contract clause stating it would destroy all stored email upon the death of a subscriber in all cases. However, I'm not sure such a clause would be legal since it might interfere with estate law. Someone's will may have to contain a directive "in the event of my death destroy the following..." (as many wills do contain). Quoting Christian Science Monitor report again: > And how much access should relatives have to a record of the > thoughts of a loved one who has passed away, especially ones that can > be as extensive, intimate, -- and even embarrassing -- as in e-mail? That is utterly irrelevent. It's the same risk as paper. Unfortunately, during wartime many loved ones did find out painfully things that their family was doing that were very hurtful through the discovery of letters. > "We thought we had absolute privacy and now we have learned that > after our death, a family member could possibly wrangle access to > [our] personal space," one blogger lamented on drudge.com. "Absolute privacy" doesn't exist in the on-line world unless someone makes special arrangements for it to be there. > "If the soldier had wanted his family to read his e-mail, then he > would have CC'd or BCC'd them," another wrote. It doesn't work that well. Your personal effects automatically revert to your family or estate unless you explicitly give instructions otherwise. This is the way it always worked. The executor of an estate is duty bound to ascertain all assets and personal property of a deceased and distribute per the will. Accordingly, the executor needs access to anything and everything belonging to the deceased. If no executor was appointed, that would to next of kin with the same rights of access. > The legal solution, Professor Perritt says, is to write a will and > bequeath the e-mail to a trustee who is instructed to destroy > it. "That would leave no doubt in the service provider's mind about > what's supposed to happen," he says, "and it would keep it away from > your family." That is correct and the only way to do it. And that not only applies to email but other personal effects as well. If you have letters from an old (or current) lover you want kept secret, or a collection of certain magazines you're embarassed about, you must make advance arrangements for their prompt destruction in the case of your death or severe disability. The lesson here is (1) have a will which covers your personal papers and (2) never put anything in an email you don't want the entire world to know about. There's far too much risk of release. ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: U.S. Cities Set up Their Own Wireless Networks Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 22:51:54 +0300 Organization: Elisa Internet customer Lisa Minter wrote (discussing the wireless network set up in various towns): > What about where you live? Lahti is a city of 100,000 people in south-central Finland. http://www.yle.fi/news/id11139.html cheers, Henry ------------------------------ From: netbuxfan@yahoo.com Subject: Spam? Scam? What is This? "Make Extra Cash!!!" Date: 5 May 2005 12:18:09 -0700 Looking to earn extra cash for an absolute minimal amount of work? Well, this is it! NETBUX is the answer. Go to this link: http://netbux.org/?r=127820 Register yourself with Netbux and earn money for just browsing your favourite subjects on the web! Get paid $0.02 for each search, which is then deposited to your Paypal account. And better yet you receive an an additional $0.02 for every search made by your friends, family and virtually anyone you tell about Netbux. And of course they make money when they tell other people. Don't be sceptical. This does work! I've made lots in the last few days as a registered member. Just for turning people on to this opportunity and searching a few subjects. YOU'VE GOT NOTHING TO LOSE AND EVERYTHING TO GAIN!!! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So, first of all, that ?r=127820 at the top as part of the URL tells us _you_ will get your two cents worth. I went over to netbux and looked at their FAQ, their 'policies' and their registration form. The company went into business just a month ago it appears. For one thing, you have to do all your searhes from _their_ search box, and you are limited to 40 searches per day, or 80 cents. But, like any good pyramid scheme, you also get paid for the guys you can lure into joining you there. A question on their FAQ was 'how do you (meaning the netbux people, I assume) get the money you pay to us?' They say they make their money by the advertisements that people view (and I presume click on) when on the netbux page. On their search box, although there are many search engines to pick through, the default search engine appears to be Google, and I would suppose not many of the inquirers bother to change the default, but you can if you wish. If this is just a pyramid scheme then all I can say is I am glad I am a Google publisher and not an advertiser. But, the netbux people say it is all on the up-and-up and if they 'catch you cheating' you will not only be suspended from their program, but probably all your downline will come under much suspicion also. Netbux says they will pay you for your searches done once per month via PayPal at the rate of .02 per search X up to 40 per day [80 cents] X 30 days in a month X .02 per each person you bring into the 'program' _and their searches_ with payout on the 15th of each month when you have at least fifty dollars accrued. Both the FAQ and the 'program policies' pages are quite lengthy and detailed. If anyone wants to investigate this and write a summary on exactly what the deal is then look at http://netbux.org but don't use the ?r=127820 part on the end unless _you_ decide it is a worthwhile thing; in which case login again and use it so the dude will get his two cents for your body and two cents for each of your searches. In any event, do write and tell me what I am missing. I am curious. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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 V24 #199 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Fri, 6 May 2005 15:00:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 200 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Americans Face Stricter ID Checks (Lisa Minter) Sprint, Intel Announce WiMAX Partnership (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) BellSouth Gives VoIP Operators Some 911 Help (Jack Decker) SBC Pushes Ahead With Video Despite Franchise Laws (Jack Decker) FCC Rejects SBC Petition on New Internet Services (Jack Decker) Nickelodeon and Verizon Wireless Launch Nick Mobile on V CAST (Solomon) Hazardous Things, Those Cell Phones (Charles G Gray) Google Trying to Patent News Ranking by Quality (Lisa Minter) Re: Forward Fax to Email (LB@notmine.com) Re: A Plan to Offshore ... Just 3 Miles Out (Gene S. Berkowitz) Re: Here's how Vonage-Verizon E-911 Will Work (Barry Margolin) Re: Here's how Vonage-Verizon E-911 Will Work (DevilsPGD) Re: Here's how Vonage-Verizon E-911 Will Work (John Levine) Re: Who Gets to See the E-mail of the Deceased? (Justin Time) Re: Who Gets to See the E-mail of the Deceased? (Lisa Hancock) Greenzapscam.com (Not Valid) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Fri, 6 May 2005 11:50:10 -0400 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Americans Face Stricter ID Checks http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0506/p01s04-usgn.html By: Peter Grier Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor (WASHINGTON)From driver's licenses, to passports, to plane tickets, the paperwork necessary to enter and move about America may soon be subject to more restrictive rules -- all in the name of homeland security. In some cases (licenses) the paperwork may be difficult to get. In others (passports) it may have to be proffered more often. These changes, added together, may have the biggest effect on Americans' routines of any made for security's sake since the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. Some analysts say that the changes are more oriented toward controlling illegal immigration than fighting terrorism. Others argue that those two efforts are inextricably linked -- and that the US has to start somewhere, given the number of undocumented people that cross the nation's borders every year. "Unless we discourage people from entering the US, our border security problem is unsolvable," says James Jay Carafano, senior fellow for national security and homeland security at the Heritage Foundation. The prospective change that may affect the most people is probably the move to make it more difficult to obtain driver's licenses. Historically, the rules and regulations surrounding driver registration have been left to the states, which issue some 70 million licenses a year. Today, getting one usually requires simply proof of age, plus a few other basic forms of ID. Under the terms of the Real ID Act, currently attached to the $81 million emergency spending plan for Iraq and Afghanistan, applicants for driver licenses would be required to prove that they are in the country legally. They would also have to provide a valid Social Security number, home address, and photo identification. The Real ID measure was attached to the supplemental spending bill only after weeks of wrangling between House and Senate negotiators. It could clear both chambers as early as next week. Not that this tightening is uncontroversial. Far from it -- it has been decried as everything from a back-door attempt to establish a national ID card, to a method of making US roads less safe, via forcing undocumented workers further underground. It is much more an anti-immigrant move than an antiterrorism one, according to Juliette Kayyem, a security expert at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Some of the Sept. 11 hijackers would still have qualified for licenses under this new rule, Ms. Kayyem points out. There are other homeland security changes she would set as having higher priority -- such as getting the FBI a computer system that works. "In an ideal world, in which information flowed smoothly, I guess the [licensing change] could have some effect," says Kayyem. But the driver's licenses might not be the only thing that will soon take more documents to obtain. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has announced that it will require airlines to ask for passengers' full names and birth dates when selling tickets. Ticket-buyers won't actually be required to provide this information. But if they don't, there will be a much better chance of their being pulled aside for extra security checks before being allowed to board. The change should help keep people from being confused with others who have the same or a similar name and are on terrorist watch lists, said TSA officials. It will also help them implement Secure Flight, a computerized passenger screening program set to enter tests this August. In addition to all this, new rules proposed by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security would eventually require Americans returning from nearby destinations, such as Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, to proffer their passports upon reentry. Previously, returning from these destinations did not require such documentation. Under the rules -- which are now in a comment phase, and have yet to be adopted -- US travelers coming from the Caribbean and Panama would need passports beginning next January 1. A similar requirement for return from Canada and Mexico would be phased in over subsequent years. Cruise lines and other modes of travel to the popular warm islands just south of the US are particularly unhappy about this prospective change. In some ways, the total effect of all this tightening is beside the point, argues Mr. Carafano of the Heritage Foundation. Requiring ID to get a driver's license might not by itself snag the next Mohammed Atta. But it is a step the US has to take as it moves inevitably toward keeping greater track of who is in the country. "Is digging a hole in the ground going to give you a home to live in? No," says Carafano. "But you have to dig a hole to lay the foundation." Among other changes he would recommend is establishment of a simple method for employers to check whether potential employees have a right to work in the US. Kayyem of the JFK School, for her part, thinks making sure police and fire departments across the nation can talk to each other should be a high priority homeland security change. The method for distributing federal homeland security dollars should also do a better job of steering money where it's truly needed, she says. (c) Copyright 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. Click here to order a free sample copy of the print edition of the Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/aboutus/sample_issue.html NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. Read lots of newpapers online, no registration and no login requirements, little advertising. http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html . Discuss today's telecom and general news at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/chatpage.html *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 12:31:55 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Sprint, Intel Announce WiMAX Partnership Telecom dailyLead from USTA May 6, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21394&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Sprint, Intel announce WiMAX partnership BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * SBC, AT&T continue with Covad as broadband partner * Survey: Bundle customers want a more tailored experience * What's next for BellSouth and Qwest? * Vonage to raise $200M * Verizon offers TV service on Cablevision's turf USTA SPOTLIGHT * Order Telecommunications Billing Systems Today! EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Nickelodeon, Weather Channel go wireless VOIP DOWNLOAD * VoIP still faces virus, security concerns * Covad's commercial VoIP business picks up pace * Study: VoIP closes in fast on traditional telephony REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC denies SBC's Internet services request Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=21394&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 07:59:26 -0400 Subject: BellSouth Gives VoIP Operators Some 911 Help By Ben Charny Staff Writer, CNET News.com BellSouth is opening up its 911 routers to all Net telephony operators and nearing a deal to give Vonage access to its emergency calling infrastructure, the Baby Bell said Thursday. A day earlier, a spokesman for Verizon Communications, which also owns a significant portion of the 911 infrastructure, said it signed a pact with Vonage for the same kind of access. The two developments highlight rapid changes that will, starting later this year, allow Vonage and other voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers to offer a 911 service that accompanies each emergency call with the person's address and phone number. Full story at: http://news.com.com/BellSouth+gives+VoIP+operators+some+911+help/2100-7352_3-5696954.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 08:11:13 -0400 Subject: SBC Pushes Ahead With Video Despite Franchise Laws [COMMENT: Funny how SBC seems to want to have its cake and eat it too. They argue here "that a new competitor with new technology should not face old rules", yet in the case of VoIP they seem to have the opposite idea, that VoIP companies should be burdened with the rules that currently bind traditional phone companies. I happen to agree with their argument here, that new competitors with new technology should NOT face old rules, but wish that SBC would realize the hypocrisy of arguing one way in one situation and advocating for the opposite position in another similar situation, just depending on which argument is most to their benefit.] http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=8403855 By Justin Hyde WASHINGTON (Reuters) - SBC Communications has charted a collision course with local governments with its plans to launch a video television service late this year without seeking local franchise agreements. SBC, the second-largest U.S. telecommunications company, plans to offer video to 18 million homes over the next three years, using a combination of new technology and existing telephone wires, in a plan it calls "Project Lightspeed." But it is running into federal and state regulations for cable television franchises, which can govern everything from where a company can offer service to how many public-access channels it has to offer. SBC is pressing its case with lawmakers and regulators, arguing that a new competitor with new technology should not face old rules, and that forging franchises with up to 2,000 small governments would greatly slow its plans. Full story at: http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=8403855 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 11:21:04 -0400 Subject: FCC Rejects SBC Petition on New Internet Services http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=8410141 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Thursday denied a petition by SBC Communications Inc. that sought to exempt new Internet-based services from traditional telephone regulations. The SBC petition would have shielded the company and its peers' new Internet networks from rules that are applied to traditional telephone networks, like providing competitors access to that infrastructure at wholesale prices. The FCC voted 4-0 to reject the petition on procedural grounds, stating SBC asked the agency to withhold imposing regulations that may or may not apply to the companies or services. Additionally, the FCC said the company failed to define what services, locations and companies it wanted the agency to exempt from the traditional telephone regulations. Despite the rejection, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin kept the door open for possible movement down the road. Full story at: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=8410141 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 01:25:30 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Nickelodeon and Verizon Wireless Launch Nick Mobile on V CAST, Bringing Kid TV Favorites to Verizon Wireless V CAST Phones Nick Mobile on V CAST Kicks off with Nick Jr.'s Dora the Explorer, Blue's Clues, The Backyardigans and LazyTown Music Videos NEW YORK and BEDMINSTER, N.J., May 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Nickelodeon, the number-one entertainment brand for kids, and Verizon Wireless, the nation's leading wireless service provider, announce the launch of Nick Mobile today, bringing Nickelodeon video content to Verizon Wireless' V CAST wireless phones. Music videos from Nick Jr. favorites Dora the Explorer, Blue's Clues, The Backyardigans and LazyTown will be the first available content on Nick Mobile, with Nickelodeon television programming scheduled to roll out this summer. Eight Nick Jr. Videos, each approximately one to three minutes long, are available at launch on Verizon Wireless' V CAST wireless broadband multimedia service: The Backyardigans' 'A Pirate Says Arrr' and 'The Yeti Stomp' LazyTown's 'Bing Bang Song' and 'There's Always a Way' Blue's Clues' 'Colors' and 'The Planets Song' and Dora the Explorer's 'We Love to Sing' and 'Tenemos Amigos.' Nickelodeon plans to release three new Nick Jr. videos each week. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=48919311 ------------------------------ Subject: Those Hazardous Dangerous Cell Phones From: Charles G Gray Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 08:20:07 -0500 Pat, see the item on the attachment about Sony and dangerous chemicals used in cell phones. This is probably a much larger threat than any radiation from the antenna. Note that this material is copyrighted. I am on their distribution list. Regards, Charles G. Gray Senior Lecturer, Telecommunications Oklahoma State University - Tulsa (918)594-8433 - Forwarded by Charles G Gray/mgmt/cba/Okstate on 05/06/2005 08:17 AM - "Telecompaper" Sent by: 05/06/2005 02:50 AM To: cc: (bcc: Charles G Gray/mgmt/cba/Okstate) Subject: Telecom Headlines, Friday May 6, 2005 Telecom Headlines Friday May 6, 2005 Daily e-mail about the Telecom business. For questions or remarks, please contact us. (excerpt in question here) Sony, Sony-Ericcson replace poisonous materials in phones. Sony and Sony-Ericcson will not use damaging materials anymore for the production of mobile phones and other products. It concerns damaging materials which are hard decomposable, pile up in fat tissues and often have hormone disturbing features. This decision has been made after talks with Greenpeace ... more http://www.telecompaper.com/index.asp?ta77693 2000-2005 Telecompaper. Telecompaper/ P.O. Box 356 / 3990 GD Houten / The Netherlands Tel. +31 30 6349690 / Fax. +31 30 6349699 / http://www.telecompaper.com/ NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ Date: 06 May 2005 08:13:01 -0700 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Google Trying to Patent News Ranking by Quality Another bright idea from Google ... Google trying to patent news ranking by quality http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050506/wr_nm/tech_google_patent_dc ------------------------------ From: LB@notmine.com Subject: Re: Forward Fax to Email Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 05:41:03 -0400 Organization: Optimum Online DevilsPGD wrote: > In message LB@notmine.com wrote: >> Jeremy wrote: >>> I currently have a fax number that is widely used by my clients. >>> Problem is that I get a ton of fax "spam" if you will. I am looking >>> for the BEST solution to have these faxes forwarded to e-mail, while >>> keeping my existing fax number since that is the one everyone knows >>> and uses. >> Snipped OP for brevity. >> Uh Pat ... >> "[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why don't you consider forwarding all >> of it, _everything_, to email, " >> It would seem Jeremy is asking how to do just that. >> How does one forward everything from a fax number to an email address? > http://www.relayfax.com/ is an example of one product that will do the > trick. Costs $180.00 LB ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: A Plan to Offshore ... Just 3 Miles Out Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 00:30:32 -0400 In article , monty@roscom.com says: > By Hiawatha Bray | April 25, 2005 > Don't start with the pirate gags -- eye patches, pieces of eight, > Johnny Depp with a cutlass. David Cook and Roger Green have heard them > all. > Still, it is hard to resist the analogy. Here we are, with thousands > of American software engineers clamoring for more work, and these two > guys have a plan to carry even more jobs offshore. Not to India this > time, or to China. Just ... offshore. They figure three miles out in > the Pacific should be far enough. > Roger Green is a software entrepreneur. David Cook was once a > supertanker skipper who spent 15 years hauling crude oil through the > world's sea lanes. Now the two men have announced a remarkable venture > called SeaCode, a company that plans to hire 600 superb software > designers from every corner of the world and house them in a luxury > cruise ship just out of reach of US immigration law -- but close > enough to bid on multimillion-dollar US software contracts. > It sounds goofy, but Cook and Green say that since news of their plan > got out last week, their website's nearly been hammered flat by > engineers around the world who are eager to sign on. Of course the > SeaCode concept isn't nearly as popular with Americans worried about > the loss of jobs to foreign competitors. > http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/04/25/a_plan_to_offshore____just_3_miles_out/ Too bad international waters are 12 miles out, and that an "exclusive economic zone" extends out 200 miles. Too bad that a "luxury cruise ship" can only carry fuel and provisions for about two weeks. Supply ships aren't cheap, nor are port fees should they decide to dock periodically (and then see how many of those "superb" coders try to shimmy down the mooring lines). Not to mention, but the only thing that keeps a cruise ship habitable is a huge contingent of low-paid menial workers to cook, clean, oil, scrape, and paint. A sweatshop is a sweatshop, no matter where it's anchored. Let's hope they get WiMax working, because it's a long way to stretch a T1 line. ... and then there's that laid off, disgruntled engineer in that Zodiac packed with explosives ... --Gene ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Here's how Vonage-Verizon E-911 Will Work Organization: Symantec Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 20:56:09 -0400 In article , Justin Time wrote: > While the process documented mirrors the process for traditional > landline phones, it doesn't address what happens when the VoIP user > takes their phone someplace else and then calls 9-1-1. Which center > is called? The one for their home of record or the one serving the > hotel/motel/grandma's house? There's been a long thread this week on the NANOG (North American Network Operators Group) mailing list regarding the technology that would be needed to get this right. Until that technology is developed, I'd expect it to be based on the location that the customer provided when they registered. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Here's how Vonage-Verizon E-911 Will Work Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 21:32:36 -0600 Organization: Disorganized In message Justin Time wrote: > While the process documented mirrors the process for traditional > landline phones, it doesn't address what happens when the VoIP user > takes their phone someplace else and then calls 9-1-1. Which center > is called? The one for their home of record or the one serving the > hotel/motel/grandma's house? The one of record, of course. However, if they can get a quick and easy way to update your address (preferably with scheduled changes in advance -- So that I can enter my travel itinerary in advance), it should smooth the whole "VoIP adapter isn't at home today" problem. ------------------------------ Date: 5 May 2005 20:39:22 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Here's how Vonage-Verizon E-911 Will Work Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > While the process documented mirrors the process for traditional > landline phones, it doesn't address what happens when the VoIP user > takes their phone someplace else and then calls 9-1-1. Which center > is called? The one for their home of record or the one serving the > hotel/motel/grandma's house? What kind of nitwit would go to all of the effort of booting up a VoIP phone in those circumstances rather than using the POTS phone next to the bed? The VoIP E911 issue only really matters for people using VoIP as a primary home phone, and it is my distinct impression that those phones rarely move. R's, John ------------------------------ From: Justin Time Subject: Re: Who Gets to See the E-mail of the Deceased? Date: 6 May 2005 05:24:04 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lisa Hancock stated: > e-mail should be treated no differently than any other personal > belongings and they revert to the next of kin or recipients specified > in a will. > This really should be a no-brainer, and the parents should not have > had to go court to get what was rightfully theirs. " The underlying question behind this is who owns the email. Both private companies and governments have been at issues with their employees over this since email became the prevalent means of communication. Courts have ruled that if you are using equipment provided by your employer, then the messages that are composed, reside and travel through those systems is the property of the company or government. Witness the FOIA or Freedom of Information Act requests governments respond to daily. The issue that needs to be resolved is if the ownership of the data, residing on the company's (in this particular case - Yahoo!) belongs to the sender or is it the property of the equipment provider? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ignoring for a minute those situations where the computer belongs to the company and the worker _should be_ attending to the business of his employer. In those cases I do agree the computer's output should belong to the employer. I am thinking now instead of those cases where one has an account with an ISP such as Yahoo for example: If I am _renting_ the use of the computer then the computers output should belong to me. Another example might be I live on a farm and rent or lease a machine to plant my crops. Now my crops grow and are harvested. Do the crops belong to you since I rented the machinery from you to do my work? If I am employed on the farm and work with your tools, then I suppose the crops are yours also. But not if the machinery, etc is under my exclusive control for some period of time. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Who Gets to See the E-mail of the Deceased? Date: 6 May 2005 06:56:52 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lisa Hancock wrote: > It doesn't work that well. Your personal effects automatically > revert to your family or estate unless you explicitly give > instructions otherwise. This is the way it always worked. I want to add some additional information. First, one should have a will prepared by a lawyer that includes directives for things like personal effects, documents, any "intellectual property" including stuff on computers. In this way there is less chance for misunderstanding. Second, one should have a power-of-attorney document prepared by a lawyer designating someone you absolutely trust access to your affairs in the event you become disabled. A lot of people have wills but not a power-of-attorney, and with today's privacy laws, it can be difficult for others, esp friends and distant relatives, to provide care in a medical emergency. In some cases a spouse automatically has this power, but it is less clear for other relatives. There is also a Living Will document. Third, in order to gain access to bank accounts and other privacy guarded affairs, one needs official documentation. A lawyer can explain a certified power of attorney (one that is officially filed) document as well as the estate certificate that specifies someone as the executor of an estate. Be cautioned that even with these documents you will have to be patient with institutions. (I had to wait 90 minutes in a bank before they accepted a power-of-attorney document I had for someone in my care). Lawyers do charge to prepare these documents and there are filing fees, but IMHO it is worth it to smooth things in the future. ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@surplus4actors.INFO Subject: Greenzapscam.com Date: 6 May 2005 10:33:55 -0700 PAT: When you start getting GreenZap spam, see http://www.greenzapscam.com/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What, pray tell, is 'greenzapscam'? Would it be any 'get rich quick' sort of scheme? PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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